Hey all.
So I recently purchased Civ IV after playing Civ III for a while. I'm pretty bad at Civ III so I figured I'd switch things up a bit and try out Civ IV. So far I must say I'm a big fan. It's much more involved, which I love, and there's actual strategy to be implemented. I've picked up some things through CivFanatics, YouTube, and others, but figured I'd post here asking for additional help.

Being somewhat of an experience Civ player I have the basics understood (I think haha). I play on Noble and plan to hang there until I get really comfortable with the game. I also plan to play on Continents for most of my games. I'm not in love with worrying about having a naval presence but it makes the game more realistic. I think I only have a smidge over 10h of gameplay under my belt.

Any tips/strategies are much appreciated, along with any suggestions for 'outside' help. Information for all skill levels is welcomed. Some specific topics I'd really appreciate (but please feel free to branch out) are Expansion, Military build-up, Tech Tree powerhouses, and strategies for winning outside of Domination, especially Culture.

I understand every game is different, and should be approached that way. There are dozens of variables that have an affect on the game before you even found your first city. And I dig that. I'm just trying to gather as much knowledge on the game as possible. I tried searching for threads about this topic but didn't really find much. If I missed something, my apologies.

Thanks in advance!

A fleet with aircraft carriers is actually a very potent weapon to reduce the defence values of enemy cities. When reduced, steamroll with infantry blobs.

Thanks Titanium.
I haven't gotten that far into the game but will keep this in mind. I read a strategy of using siege weapons such as Catapult or Artillery to soften city defenses, then attack with ground units. Your strategy is like the naval version, which I never read about.

It's a late game strategy to quickly go for aggression victory. The problem with siege is they are very slow and have positioning problems in regards to counterattacks. But naval power especially aircraft carriers can go deep quickly and strike long without much problems. You clean the outskirts with battleships, reduce the cities with bombers with help from air dominance fighters, and then you can quickly mop up with fast infantry and mounted/armoured as the situation dictates. Having marines helps because you get them quickly to the city and with the right specializations they get in with little issue.

I'm writing this from memory, I haven't played IV in a long time.

I absolutely love Civilization IV. After years and years there is always something new to try or learn, and new strategies and sinergies to discover.

The place to read about Civ 4 is CivFanatics. You will find dozens of guides at https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

If you want to learn the basics by watching videos, the best is Sullla's Beyond the Sword tutorial playing Willem of the Dutch: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL62E77EB66DBE2145

I would warn that Continents is very luck-based. Which AI's and which resources are present on your continent can make a continents game either very easy or incredibly hard. You also have to be very careful if one of the continents gets all the religions, as this can make culture victory happen super early. If you have two or three civilizations on the same continent that aren't fighting and are just peacefully racing for culture victory it can be nearly impossible to stop it. Get out a worker as soon as possible. Tile upgrades are essential. Settle your first cities around food resources. If a location doesn't have access to a special food resource or fresh water it's going to be a net economic loss until later in the game so you're usually better off skipping those areas unless they are of vital strategic importance.

Be careful about over-expanding early! Cities have very high upkeep, until you have access to either Code of Laws or Currency you can easily end up in a situation where you can't afford the upkeep on all your cities. Generally once you have either Code of Laws or Currency (but preferably both) this becomes much more manageable. Currency gives you an easy way to produce extra cash, while Code of Laws unlocks a building that greatly reduces city upkeep. The best way to produce military quickly is a city that has 2-3 food resource tiles (rice, pigs, wheat, etc), a granary, and slavery. Because the city produces so much food it can quickly bounce back from the population loss and you can churn out military units very quickly.

Slavery isn't very good in the late-game, but early-game it's the way to go. The key to high tech output is either to build libraries and employ scientists, or spam cottages for very high overall commerce output and then run a high science rate. You want as many religions as possible! You can build 1 cathedral per religion in a city, and each one gives +50% culture to the city. That adds up big time if you have lots of religions. The Sistine Chapel is an incredible wonder for culture victory as well. Remember that culture victory only counts you 3 most cultured cities, so don't bother with anything but your 3 best cities, everything else exists just to spam temples

The general game plan with cultural victory is to tech rush up to Drama, Music and Liberalism, adopt Free Speech, and then cut your tech output to nearly zero and raise your culture output very high. You then cross your fingers and hope no one kills you before your all-in culture blitz crosses the finish line. It's very much an all-in victory type.

Thanks Consul.
I've read a handful of guides through CivFanatics but somehow never landed on the link you shared. That's A LOT of content. Great stuff.

Great stuff Darwin. I get what you're saying about Continents; I'm kinda living that in my current game. I'll also focus more on settling around food resources. And thanks for sharing the information on Religion. Assuming you want to focus on Religion I wasn't sure if it helped to aim for just one or multiples. In my current game I have 2 Religions and wasn't sure if that was useful or not.

Early rushing for a religion is a very good tactic for most victories. Without a religion, you miss out on one of your entire civics branches, and with a holy city, you'll eventually get at least one good money city.

I recommend going for Monotheism so you can also get the building production civic in the same swoop.

The problem with early religions is the way they are founded (being the first to research a certain technology). Esrly religious techs compete with worker techs (Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Mining, etc.) and other essential stuff (e.g. Pottery for granaries), so going for them has a big opportunity cost. Plus they will be almost impossible to get unless you start with Mysticism.

In most cases it is more efficient to just let a neighbour's religion spread to your lands. This way it's also easier to fit into the most advantageous diplomatic bloc. Shrines are nice to have but spreading the religion with missionaries cost a lot in hammers, and Holy Cities can be conquered anyway.

For a Cultural victory things change, as you want to have as many religions as possible and culture from buildings double after 1000 years (easy to get in the Ancient Age). But you can get it done with the late religions as well.

Thanks mqstout.
I read opinions on both sides and tend to lean towards your thought process. I feel like, if it's a viable option, I will strive to be less reliant on military and more on science/religion. This of course aligns with that approach.
Yea I noticed that during my current game. There's a give and take for sure, but I went in with the intentions of striving to be Religious and avoid war. I want to extend deep into the game to get a good feel for it. So far it's been working.

It depends on your strategy. Usually you will start with one religion in the early-game since Organized Religion is going to be your only religious civic for quite some time and you probably want to benefit from it. From there you either stick with one religion or you start spreading more religions in your territory in preparation for converting to Freedom of Religion later.

Since cultural victory wants to spam lots of cathedrals they will be perfectly set up for Freedom of Religion, but you still stick with a single state religion until you hit Liberalism so you're benefiting from Organized Religion until then. The one case where you definitely want to stick with a state religion is if you have a religious wonder (Spiral Minaret or University of Sankore) since those stop functioning if you adopt Freedom of Religion (Apostolic Palace, however, keeps working!)

As ConsulCaesar points out, there is a huge opportunity cost to pursuing religions early-game. In general I find Taoism and Confucianism are the easiest religions to get since the AI typically doesn't prioritize Philosophy or Code of Laws early, so you don't need to rush these techs to found those religions. However, this does delay founding your religion. In most worlds Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism will be the most dominant religions simply due to their headstart over the others. Continents does give a chance for the late-comers to shine if they're founded in places that don't already have a religion present, but if there's an already-established religion on the continent it's a big uphill battle to get them established.

Everything in balance. Without science your technology will stagnate and you won't develop. Religion is a powerful tool for making your empire stronger through civics and buildings. And if a neighbor decides to invade you, you'd better have military!

You can do great things for war with religion once you get theocracy. Vassalage, slavery, theocracy can make for a great military.

Personally I find Theocracy + Vassalage to be overkill in most situations. You only need one or the other (in conjunction with a Barracks) to create units that start with two promotions, which makes you eligible to create units with Shock, Charge, Cover, Pinch, and Medic without having to earn battle experience. You need 5 additional experience points to unlock a new promotion, so having both doesn't give you any new promotions on newly built units under normal circumstances. Sure, you're closer to the third promotion, but you still need to fight and survive to see it so it's not nearly as impactful.

The places I feel this combo has real merit are archipelago scenarios, charismatic leaders, and massed cavalry unique units. Naval units don't have an equivalent to the Barracks, so you need a little extra XP to be able to get the second promotion. This is really important for navigation, which is very major on galleys and triremes because they're so slow. Charismatic lowers XP requirements, so with Theocracy + Vassalage you can get two promotions without a barracks and with a barracks you're only 1 point away from your third promotion. Finally, for cavalry a barracks plus a stable takes you to 5 experience, and adding 4 points takes you to 9 so again you're only one point away from the third promotion just like charismatic.

Drydocks would like to have a word with you. (Which is admittedly late and expensive.)