Opening the game in Civ4

If you don’t have Civilization 4 installed on your PC right now you really need to go to a quiet place and do some contemplation. How has your life taken this sad turn? Where did you go wrong?

Well, you probably went wrong when you didn’t go out and get Civ4, genius. When you’re done navel-gazing go out and take care of business.

Anyway, I’ve been asked to give my early game strategy tips. So here you go. These strats will probably work on any skill level up to prince. I haven’t tried anything above that yet. My style of play is weighted toward combat, but a lot of these tips will work with any strategy.

I like to go random when picking my civ. It’s a good way to get a feel for all the civ and it forces you to try different strategies and be flexible in your approach. Pay attention to the special unit of your civ and your leader’s attributes. Industrious? Try to get stone/marble and build some wonders. Philosophical? Find ways to crank up your great people points. Financial? Build tons of cottages.

Try to take advantage of your special unit. Make them count.

If you get a civ with the starting tech hunting, then you’ll have a scout. Otherwise, you’ll have a warrior. Send that scout/warrior out to find the minor tribes to get free techs and whatnot. Search in a radial pattern around your main town so you can also see what kinds of resources you’ll be able to snag with your next city. Turn on the feature that pops up the little pointers to resources. This is an easy way to spot them when the fog of war is obscuring the terrain.

What to build first? A second scout is generally not worth the 8-12 turns it takes to build. In my experience the second scout usually just gets eaten by a bear or killed by a barbarian warrior and almost never finds any more minor tribes. Also, if there are a bunch of trees or jungle around then the scout’s movement bonus is lost. So build a warrior.

What to research first? If you have mysticism as a starting tech, go for polytheism so you can found Hinduism. Don’t try for Meditation. The AI will beat you to it on prince level or higher.

A note on religion: if you have a lot of AI opponents, consider waiting before converting to a religion. It usually just pisses them off when you inevitably end up with different faiths. This is especially true of aggressive type AI’s like Montezuma. Isabella’s another one where religious differences seem to goad her into war. Of course, if your neighbors are the same religion as you, then go for it.

Back to research. Usually, you’ll want to get about two techs to allow worker improvements and bronze working as your top priorities. If your neighbors are agressive, get bronze working fast. You’ll need it for three things: chopping down forests to rush production, slavery (again for rushing), and axemen/spearmen (for defense).

Chopping down forests for the production bonus (chop rushing) is pretty much the best way to get a leg up on the AI. Those 30 hammers in the ancient period are worth relatively more than later in the game. What forests should you chop? I like to pick the ones on grassland near water since you probably want to irrigate those anyway. Also, if you’re city borders are wide enough, don’t forget you can chop the forests outside the “workable” area of the city. One other thing to look out for: If you’re going to improve land that has a forest on it (say a mine on a forested hill), chop the trees, then build the improvement. You’ll get the production bonus quicker.

What to rush build? I say settlers and wonders. Since cities are the fount from which all goodness flows, it makes sense to get those settlers out early. Wonders are kind of self-explanatory. Be aware that you can only reasonably chop rush the early wonders. 30 extra hammers won’t put much of a dent in the middle or late game wonders at all.

Population rushing (from slavery) is a great. If you have a town with a resisting laborer due to unhappiness, pop rushing will actually make the town happier most of time. The 10 turns of unhappiness is hardly ever a big deal. Just don’t reduce the population to the point where the city takes too long to recover. A population of 3 or 4 is about the limit depending on the city’s resources.

Once you have bronze working, look for copper. If you can’t secure a source of copper, get animal husbandry to look for horses. If you can’t get horses, go straight for iron working. You must have either copper, iron, or horses — the three key military resources — to survive when the AI decides that your close borders are sparking tensions. This is especially true if you’ve converted to a religion that your neighbors haven’t adopted. They’ll be chomping at the bit to come after you.

Do not neglect your military! On the higher skill levels the AI will send in dozens of units to attack you. I took out 56 Keshiks against Genghis Khan once on prince difficulty. Build counter-units! If your opponent has chariots or horsemen, build spearmen. If he’s got swordsmen, build axemen. If he’s got axemen, build more axemen (no real counter for them). Throw catapults at big stacks of units. They’ll probably die, but collateral damage is very powerful.

My build order is usually warrior, worker, (2nd warrior if I started with a scout), settler, best available military unit (x2), settler. I might change it if I’m going for an early wonder like Stonehenge or The Oracle.

By the time I get the worker out, I expect to have bronze working so I can start chop rushing. Delay building the worker if you don’t have anything for him to do yet (i.e. you haven’t researched any worker techs like The Wheel). Also, don’t start the worker until your town has 2 population. Otherwise, he’ll take forever to build. If you’re a couple of turns away from 2 pop, work on barracks or the 2nd warrior for a bit then switch (you won’t lose your investment by switching — when you go back to building the barracks, it will resume where you left off).

Hopefully, these tips will actually be helpful.