The following guide is not prepared for veteran players looking for highly advanced strategies, enabling them to perform things like winning in 100 turns. However, if you are a novice looking for rather basic information and guidelines, this text is just for you.

I hope of course that more advanced players find some interesting pieces of advice here, but my main objective was to help a beginner who has never played Civilization before.

I’ve assumed that reader knows the game’s manual and knows how to use the Civilopedia so I’ve avoided copying information from both sources except when it was absolutely necessary.

Civilization IV is, as every game from the series, very complex and open ended. Your gaming experience is different every time you start a new game. That’s why it’s impossible to give any kind of strictly defined winning strategy – what may be a good choice in one game may lead to your quick downfall in any other one.

It is very important to learn how to plan every decision. “Focus” is the key word. Not only have you to know how to do something, but also why.

There are many tools in game which give you lot of important information about your empire and your competitors. The most useful one is the point ranking which makes it possible to compare your civilization to other nations.

Other tools worth remembering are your advisors (f1-f7) and statistics screen (f10) – use them often.

Last technical information: all numbers in this guide are based on a standard settings game (world size: standard, normal speed).

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Sid Meier's Civilization IV

2007-9-6 23:45

City specialisation

One of the most important factors of your success is level of infrastructure development. In CIV it is essential to control some well developed and highly advanced cities as foundations of every advanced strategy. In CIV it is possible to specialise cities - focus them mainly on one function. It’s not obligatory and especially on lower difficulties (up to noble) it is possible to win without even trying to specialise. It’s very helpful nevertheless – as in real life focusing on some kind of activity can give a real advantage. Despite the usefulness of specialization – it’s simpler in theory than in real game. In most situations you will control some kind of hybrids, but knowledge how to focus cities on one function is very helpful. There are three main kinds of specialisation – The Commerce City, The Production City and The Great People Factory. The Commerce City – the main goal is to maximise commerce. Further it’s possible to specialize into a research centre (emphasizes on science) or a financial centre (emphasizes on amount of income). The Production City – your industrial centre, a place where you are able to quickly produce new units and raise expensive buildings (especially Wonders). Its main function is to build up your military and create some Wonders. The Great People Factory – city focused on generating “Great People”. It’s possible to bias it on specific kind of GP. Moreover, due to big number of specialists it will generate a lot of science/commercial/cultural output – depends on sort of specialists.

City placement

The first step of raising a successful metropolis is finding a suitable place for it. You have to know what type of city you want to build from the very beginning. Different types of cities have different terrain preferences. First of all let’s look at general factors which we should consider when looking for the best place to start a city: Good terrain for development – most obvious and most often used factor. The good idea is to avoid placing cities near other cities’ terrain whenever possible – every part of territory already used by another city is useless for the new one. Secure important resources – especially strategic ones. It’s most important when it’s likely that one of your competitors can overtake you in the race for this particular resource. Military reasons – good placement is the best defence for the city. Bonuses form culture, buildings, terrain (hill and river) and eventually well planned units’ promotions can make your city insurmountable castle. Limiting your opponents’ expansion - without Open Border Treaty no civilization can enter another one’s territory without triggering a war. Well positioned city can cut off some big parts of a continent from your competitors’ settlers – and save it for your own people.

City specialisation and surrounding terrain

Every specialized city requires a specific topography. Now I would like to give you some suggestions about what kinds of terrain are ideal for specific city types. As usual – a perfect terrain is a rather uncommon thing to find – so in most situations you will just have to use whatever you can find and make best use of it. Plains, hills, forest. Ideal placement for future industrial centre The Production City – a lot of hills, preferably forest hills and some grassland tiles, flood plains or (luckily enough) some Food resources. Strategic resources which are giving us Production bonuses – like iron, copper, stone or coal are extremely useful. This landscape is more diverse. You have Gold, flood plains, but also forest (useful in limiting of negative influence of flood plains on health of our citizens) and two resources in reach. The Commercial City – a lot of grassland (possibly with forest) and flood plains. Some hills would be helpful, too. Luxurious resources are a nice addition, especially Gold, silver, gems or wine. If your Leader has the Financial trait, the coastal city also can work as commercial city – with use of some nice commercial gains from sea tiles and really profitable sea trading. However, land city plays the role much better, even if it needs more time to develop. Despite the type of city, you need to avoid situations when your commercial centre doesn’t control any Production generating tiles. Even huge amounts of cash won’t help if simple buildings are created in dozens of turns. Here you have an example of perfect game starting position. Flood plains, a lot of trees and health resources. This city can definitely harvest huge amounts of Food – and that means it will be able to support a lot of specialists. This landscape can also work well in case of commercial city – but this time it will be The Great People Factory. The Great People Factory – a lot of grassland near river or lake, one or two Food resources, flood plains. The key is to be able to support maximum number of citizens. With terrain improvements you try to maximize Food output.

Terrain - general advice

The most valuable tiles are those near rivers (every tile adjacent to river has +1 Gold) but the most important is to have fresh water (river, lake, or oasis) on tile where we build city. What is also important - the kind of resources that will be generated by the city tile doesn’t depend on its type of terrain. It means that a city tile always gives you 2 Food, 1 hammer and 2 Gold, whether you build it on a desert, grassland or on a valuable resource. That’s why the best place for the city is the hill (+25% for defence) surrounded by a river (gives another +25% and guaranteed fresh water and +1 Gold from all adjacent titles) Building a city on a resource is in most situations a bad idea. You have access to this supply but loose a bonus from the tile where it is situated. There is one exception from this rule - if you are more interested in securing access to this resource than developing a particular city. Flood plains are an interesting matter. They give you one of the best sources of Food, helping very much in quick growth of cities. On the other hand, it has negative influence on health level in the city. However, it is worth to pay this price, especially if you have forest (which works opposite) in the city reach – but you have to manage the growth of these cities carefully. A typical coastal city. As we can see, there are same land improvements increasing Production output – it’s very important especially when you want to produce same naval units. Case of coastal cities is a little bit more complicated. They have some major advantages and disadvantages: Advantages: The ability to produce naval units – quite obvious merit, but nevertheless worth mentioning, because the city besides being placed on coast must have good Production output to play a decent role in producing units; Trade income - especially after you build a harbour and research on Astronomy, it can be a significant part of our commerce; Quicker spreading of your religion – it is perfect when we have the Holy City and the Shrine in one of our coastal cities; Good benefits from coastal tiles even without any improvements. Only thing which you have to do is to build a lighthouse. After that you will have 2 Food and 2 commerce (+1 with Leader’s trait Financial) from every coastal tile. Disadvantages: A coastal city is vulnerable when it comes to sneak attacks. Enemy can always suddenly attack this type of cities and use his ships as artillery support for the invasion; Coastal tiles can’t be improved (except those with resources) what limits the city’s potential of development; Oceanic tiles (meaning those which aren’t adjacent to land) are even less useful generating only 1 Food (2 with a lighthouse) and 1 Gold; Limited Production output – no sea tiles generate Production, so you are restricted to Production from land improvements and city specialists. That’s why coastal cities are so specific. From my experience the best solution is to build cities next to deep and narrow natural harbours – ideally in deltas, limiting amounts of water tiles, maintaining sea access in the same time.

Forest

The next specific case is forest. Forest grows on one of four main type of terrain: hills, grasslands, plains and tundra. It’s generating some of additional output functioning as a natural improvement (gives +1 to Production) what makes it one of the most useful early-game terrains. In addition, every city which has it in reach takes +0,4 health bonus for one forest. The most important feature of the forest is the possibility of removing it. There’s a worker action called “chop trees” which becomes available after inventing bronze working. Chopping the trees and removing the forest gives our nearest city a sudden Production bonus of at least 20-30, what can be extremely useful in situations when you are looking for the opportunity of rushing building of some units or buildings. The classical use of this trick is rushing a settler or Wonder, but it’s useful in variety of situations. So called chop rush, especially in extreme version is very a controversial strategy because you gain very significant addition to Production output for the price of loosing really useful terrain. It’s impossible to plant trees, and even the fact the forest is constantly expanding doesn’t change the situation, as its growth is very slow and you haven’t got any influence when and where it happens. There are some ways of limiting the negative influence of this strategy for your empire. First of all, it is possible to chop trees outside of city reach and still receiving a Production bonus. It even works to cut trees growing outside your borders (but not in another empire’s territory) and still receive this bonus. So, when you have a huge forests somewhere you don’t plan to expand you may chop rush without any negative consequences. The second situation when we can cut the trees without any remorse is building any improvements (except Lumbermill) at forest title. You simply give your workers an order to build improvements and he will cut the trees and build the structure in this same time. You will have a beneficial influence from this tile and bonus Productions – all in one. The jungle is in some way opposite to forest because of its subtract amount of output from specific tile and gives health penalty. It doesn’t give any benefits from being cut down except, of course, being removed.

Terrain improvements

You should improve landscape surrounding your cities as fast as possible – every improvement gives significant benefits for the city in which’s reach is has been build. You shouldn’t create too many extra improvements – the only functional are the ones which you intend to actually use. It is done by creating workers in your cities and giving them proper orders. As a rule of thumb I propose to build one worker for one city – it should be enough except specific situations like rebuilding improvements pillaged in war, or after inventing important technology giving new specific and important improvements (like Railroad or Lumbermill). In medium-game if you don’t want to micromanage all workers it’s a good idea to automate them. Before you do this I strongly recommend turning off the option allowing them to change already existing improvements.

City specialisation and improvements

As I’ve said the well placed city is first step of city specialization. The second step is to construct appropriate landscape improvements. The Commercial City Cottages. A lot of them. This is absolutely most important improvement to build. If particular city has even low but reliable Food surpluses, it’s a good idea to create Cottages on every possible (and used) flat tile. Cottages are a very specific kind of improvement because it takes a lot of time to fully develop them into town (70 turns). On hills you can put Windmills – they give some commerce and a good amount of Food. Nevertheless it is good idea to leave some tiles only for Production improvements (Mines, Lumbermills, Workshops, Watermills). As I’ve said, even the most advanced city needs a few hammers – without them it will take ages to build all the useful buildings. The Production City Two types of improvements: farms and all Production enhancements. We start with mines and forest only so I advice avoiding chop rushing close to productive cities. In later game Workshop, Watermill and Lumbermill become available and can help us in generating more Production output. Usefulness of Workshops is strongly connected with your technological advancement – at first this improvement is only useful when you have no other means of giving more Production to the city (no forest, no hills). After inventing Guilds and Chemistry Workshops become much more valuable. The one of the most important Production improvements is Lumbermill (available with Replaceable Parts) witch gives +1 Production from terrain (forest) which already generates additional Production. Railroad is a very balanced (bonuses to health and usually some Food Production) improvement – this is the main reason to limit the chop rush. The Railroads are very handy too. Lumbermills and Mines with Railroad has +1 to Productions which makes it’s the most productive improvement in the game. The Great People Factory As I’ve said the intention of GPF city placement is to maximize of Food harvest. Every city’s resident uses 2 Food, what means that to maintain specialists you need two residents working on grassland farm (generating 3 Food) for every specialist. That’s why Food resources and flood plains in case of GPF are so important – they make it possible to have more specialists for less number of Food generating citizens.

City residents

In general the more residents city has, the better. Every citizen makes it possible to put him to work on next tile in city reach or to make next specialist – so, the number of citizens is strongly connected with your global Production, cultural, financial and research potential. However, you should avoid uncontrolled city growth – too much new people in short time makes part of them unhappy because you don’t have means to maintain order in city. Following factors determine a maximum number of city’s inhabitants: Food output; buildings – Aqueduct and Hospital are increasing health; Forge, Coal Plant or Factory are decreasing it; landscape – forest and fresh water helps, flood plains and jungle - cause harm; Global availability of Food resources – the health bonus is vital. Every one gives +1 health, and with proper building +2; Technological advancements – genetics and future tech increasing health by +3 and +1 respectively. A little more complex is the technology’s influence on Food output: Bureaucracy makes possible to build Farms without fresh water adjacent to another farm; Biology gives +1 Food from Farms and allow to build Farms even without fresh water and adjacent Farm; State property civics give +1 Food from Watermills and Workshop. As you see, most of these factors are directly linked with city placement, but there are also important global factors which can help a lot – but only if the city has appropriate terrain. Happiness factors: Temples – Every one gives +1 happy; Religion – After you choose state religion, in every city where believers of this particular faith are, you will have +1 happy (and +2 culture, what is usually also very important); Culture – With such buildings like Colosseum or Theatre culture generated with your Global Settings (more about this in chapter Money) greatly improve citizens’ happiness; Luxurious resources – every one gives +1 happy, and with proper building gives another +1.

Citizens Management

Every city’s resident can be put into work on one of the 17 tiles in city reach. Tiles give Food eaten by citizens, Production used to build different structures and military units and commerce spend on research or put into empire treasury. Every tile which generates less than 2 Food is slowing city growth because residents working there eat more Food than harvest itself. When the tile isn’t generating Food at all, the situation is as if this citizen would have been a specialist – it means that he has to be fed completely by another city resident’s work. This is the reason to aim in at least small surpluses of Food – this makes possible to have specialist and use tiles generating no Food. In this helps Food generated by city itself – it’s especially useful when city is small. In emergency, particularly when you have a granary and huge amounts of Food in city reserves, it’s acceptable to allow a few turns of Food deficit when you use your citizens in more important duties. As a side note - city governors are quite helpful for the people who don’t like micromanagement. You can set priorities (emphasise grown, Production, research and so on) and amount of power which governors have and city will be developed without our constant attention. However, I suggest a limited trust and using this tool only in cities without strategic importance.