It's easy for us to mock, but it's worth remembering that that's how the bulk of the casual game playing world sees Civilization, just randomly choosing whatever orders seem like a good idea at the time. It's not always easy to understand what's going on and what's good in such a complex game. It's not immediately obvious how fast a worker recoups the zero-growth time to build him. It's not at all obvious that having gold in hand is bad (should be spent into research instead), or that losing 5 gold per turn is peanuts, or that dropping to 20% research is a GOOD thing (means you're expanding fast enough), or that culture does squat beyond the first pop or a border clash. It's *really* not obvious that extra religions don't do anything and founding them is misplaced effort -- even veterans of several years make that mistake. As for military, it's not immediately apparent that trying to attack in early years makes for a wasteful bloodbath, but then it suddenly becomes much easier with the midgame advent of drafting and cannons. It's not intuitive that the best offensive stacks consist of half or more siege units. We have the advantage of thousands of man-years of perspective on this game, let's cut one little old IGN writer some slack. He never said it was meant to be a strategy guide or even good play, just a textual Let's Play as a look at a trip through the game.
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November 16th, 2012, 00:53
(This post was last modified: November 16th, 2012, 00:58 by TheHumanHydra.)
Can I also just attest from personal experience that the constant whipping employed by veterans may be the least intuitive element of the game? I still haven't mastered it, and I'm almost onto Deity (BRick, you will find this post funny, given our other conversation, I'm sure!).
I think that's part of why I find it so funny, as I can relate to making those sorts of stupid mistakes. My games I've played here, much less games I play online here, have been fraught with errors. I don't mean any ill will towards the writer, but I acknowledge that many of his statements are humorous in the advice that they offer.
It's funny because he wrote a ton of words about strategy with almost zero reasoning or experience backing him up.
Oh no, I find him hilarious too. I don't know why you would write a strategy guide when you're quite aware that you're new to the game. I just wanted to add to T-hawk's post about things we take for granted that are really not obvious. I'm still laughing!
Random guy on a blog I cut some slack.
 Professional writer working for a major gaming website? No way. He should know what he's talking about. This is intended to be a GUIDE written by IGN. It should not be laughably wrong about almost everything. If they didn't have anyone on their staff who knew the game, they should have hired someone from CivFanatics to write their guide. I did a vastly better job for free when I wrote the Walkthrough on my website, and that was posted the first seven days of Civ4's release. This was the second expansion, almost two years after Civ4 came out. There's no excuse for not having someone who knew game basics do the article. No, I don't give them a break at all. This is a piece of crap that should never be appearing on IGN. It deserves mocking. 
T-hawk Wrote:just randomly choosing whatever orders seem like a good idea at the time. It's not always easy to understand what's going on and what's good in such a complex game To T-Hawk's point, I do remember feeling that way about Civ 1. I just really did not understand any of the mechanics. Of course in my defense, I was like 14.... 
IT IS NOT A STRATEGY GUIDE! When did he ever say that? The title is "Sample Match", on the left side link and on all the pages. It's a textual Let's Play, that's all. The first page describes some of the strategy he wanted to apply, but nowhere does he ever say it's good strategy or any kind of tutorial. He wasn't making any claims at all to be an instructor or guide. Don't rag on him for something that the article emphatically is not trying to be at all. Not everything IGN writes is strategy, explicitly or implicitly. He's allowed to post an article just showing how he's having some fun with a game.
Top page: http://www.ign.com/wikis/sid-meiers-civi...-the-sword
I will quote: Quote:Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword Wiki Guide Not buying it. They advertised this whole section very clearly as a guide for new players.
He also clearly states opinions on things that are incorrect (civic guide blatantly says Slavery is a bad strategy), arguing that certain strategies are important and some are bad. Combine that with the fact that he is a professional writing for a fairly big publication, and I'd say that makes it more than fair game for criticism.
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