[Beefy78]

So I've never really played strategy games. Not since the early versions of Sim City (I had it on the Spectrum!) and then Theme Park on the Amiga. I picked up Civ IV, with the expansions, a few years ago but didn't play it until this weekend.

I loaded the game up at 5.30pm on Saturday to try it before the football and eventually turned off at 5am. Then spent most of Sunday playing as well. I love it and am well and truly addicted.

I went through the tutorial at the start but I'm going into this completely cold in terms of my knowledge of thw game or of the series (or genre, really) so I was wondering if anyone had any basic tips. Just a few bullet-points really for how I should be going about the game and what I should be looking for.

Also, do people have any suggestions for other games I should try, either on a low-spec PC like mine or maybe using Online (I think Civ V is on there).

Thanks,

[Blitzkrieger]

It's not that complicated really - you'll pick it up as you go along. One tip I would give the newbie player is "espionage". Try and pick the player most likely to attack you (a neighbour or someone on the same continent who is "furious" with you) and make sure you spend enough espionage points and/or adjust where your points are assigned to see what's in their cities. If you see them building up troops in a city near you, they're attacking soon.

Be friendly with your neighbours. A gift of a world map (worthless) or trading spare resources for even a small amount of gold will build happyness over time. If someone declares war on you, it'll then be easier to bribe them into declaring war on your enemy, if only so that your enemy doesn't bribe them into declaring war on you.

I could go on all day, but you can find plenty of guides online. Try googling the Apolyton forums, and when you get better, come look us up on Darkkeep.com for some multiplayer.

As to other games, Civ 5 will work on an older PC, just slower - I wouldn't go above the standard world size. Beyond that, have a look through the older threads here for recommendations.

[Beefy78]

Cheers. I was wondering what the espionage points were for. I presume that these are different from just building spies?

I've got 80-odd turns left on my first game. I'm then going to try another couple of play throughs to try to see how different things work before ramping up the difficulty a bit.

[TwoShedsJackson]

Check out www.civfanatics.com plenty of strategy etc. on all the versions of Civ, they still have a fair bit on Civ IV as quite a few players didn't like V.

If you only have the original game, get the Beyond the Sword expansion, it really improves things, and when you are more familiar with the game download the BUG mod from the civfanatics modding forum, it makes the interface far less opaque.

[Beefy78]

Yeah I've got the complete collection so its been Beyond the Sword that I've been playing. It only just occurred to me to see if it needed patching, which it did so I'll probably notice some tweaks next time I start a new game.

[Beefy78]

Urgh. I just got my arse kicked in my second ever game. Fell behind straight away and got bullied throughout the game until finally getting wiped out at the start of the 21st Century.

Definitely need to do some reading.