[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Irenicus

You seem to having some trouble with the jungle to the left of your heartlands.

Indeed, personally I hate maps with lots of jungle

The barbarian city looks like it took away a pretty good city spot there. I imagine you were building those chariots for an expedition there?

Yea, I was actually like WTF! They had to set it up right now??? That set me back a bit. I actually was trying to build chariots to take the barb cities, but it actually takes longer then it should. Chariots weren't the best choice as you'll see soon, considering the zulu have the mobile impi spear unit. But yea, I was slowed down greatly by this. It could have been prevented though...

Nice tutorial. It's good to see how other players play. (And were you trying to start a war between Justinian and João of Portugal for a moment there? XD)

Yes, but alas they're hard people to convince.

it's a good idea to check that option every now and then. If it's redded out with "we have enough on our hands right now" it either means they are at war, and if they're not, they're planning to attack someone. With this in mind, if this happens to you, and you are close, you must prepare an army. If they are pleased or better, ask them for a cheap gift-- that creates a forced peace treaty for 10 turns.

Fortunately, the BUG mod, which I was using will check for you as well as other notifications about what people will trade. It doesn't change gameplay in any way, but is mostly for interface improvements. http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4bug/. It's probably one of the most popular mods out there.

I myself still can't find the best balance between early military/worker production which cost me in different ways. Sometimes I lose workers to barbarian raids because I don't have enough warriors. Other times I get left behind because my tiles aren't developed enough to keep up with AI in tech. I think it's because I'm chronically reluctant to whip production when I should.

Depends on the map. If you see no metal or horses, then you might want to invest in archery. But you shouldn't need anything besides warriors to fight against barbs until near the end of the BCs when Barb axes start coming out. Warriors fortified on forested hills can take barb archers on usually.

Actually a lot of the best players don't even fight barbs at all. They abuse the fact that barb units cannot spawn within 2 tiles of any unit. By creating these "spawn busters" they can ensure that barbs never spawn that much to begin with. But if there's a lot of empty land, that may not be feasible. This also means that if you're isolated/semi-isolated, you have to worry more about barbs.

In general, (and I was sadly too lazy to do this) you should create a ring of warriors around your empire, fortified on hills. This gives you much more advanced notice on barbs.

As for when to whip, that's kind of a hard question. If your city is unhappy, it definitely could use a beating. If you're working only good tiles, you might want to hold off on the whip except for whipping extremely important infrastructure. Well, early game, you don't really need infrastructure besides a granary and perhaps a monument, if one isn't creative. I guess a whipped library in the capital early works wonders too.

Also, don't get caught up on wonders too much if you're not Industrious or have a special resource. Although I personally like wonders a lot, for the purpose of the video, I largely avoided them, except the Great Lighthouse, because it's that damned good.