Civ4 for noobs

[Warik]

What would you Civ veterans suggest for a noob who's giving Civ4 a try? Never played any of the old Civ games. I like turn based strategy games because it gives me time to think about what I'd like to do, but the endless variables and countless ways to progress in Civ4 have me sort of wondering wtf I SHOULD do.

I completed the tutorial but it was more of a "how to control everything" rather than "how to play" type deal.

How do you guys suggest I begin? What should I look out for as I progress?

Oh... and is Civ4 one of those games where a mistake I make on one puny insignificant turn at the beginning of the game could screw me and make the game TOTALLY unwinnable after hours of hard work? Shogun: Total War was like that at times and it totally pissed me off...

[swede123]

Do a search for a message board dedicated to Civ4. I'm sure there's a few around. Pick one that has lots of traffic and start weeding through the threads.

Swede

[Warik]

You mean the endless threads that summarize as "Civ4 rules here is why" that requires the poorly functioning search button to find?

=(

[swede123]

Now, I haven't played the game myself yet. But from a quick search I found this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=155) forum, which seems to offer some of what you are looking for.

Swede

[Blarg]

Yes, Civ is exactly the kind of game in which in hour 48 of what would be a 70 hour game, you realize you made a crucial mistake in hour 12 that cannot be fixed and which basically lost you the game. I hate that too.

However, from what I understand, you can adjust the game speed, as well as a whole host of other things, like how long you spend in each age, map size, etc., that can make the games playable in a single night or two or three hours. I've got my Civ 4 coming in the mail, and I'm sure I'm going to work it so that most of my games by far can be played in one or two nights at most. The 70 hour games are just too brutally punishing even if you win.

You should check out some of the civ boards. I've been looking one over that was linked here by someone earlier(thanks, Someone!), and it has people asking the same question and getting lots of answers several times a day. The community there was pretty strong before the game even came out because the board handled Civ's 1 through 3 already.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=144

I think people are saying that a good way to start is to play on Noble level, which gives neither you nor the computer any advantages and isn't too hard, and you can play on a map like Chieftain, which I'm not sure is the quickest, but usually gives you enough space to build a bit before being overwhelmed by other civ's.

There's also an excellent walk-through Someone linked earlier, but it looks like it's down or something, so I can only give you the page I was on from last night, not the home page, and dunno if either of us will be able to access it fully again (hope so, this is one slick and cool walk-through):

http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/sullla/civ4_walk_2.html