Sérgio’s blog

I’m addicted to Civilization. That’s the only game I keep playing and I played all the games in the series.

Civ 4 is the best one (not surprisingly) but it can be very hard to win when you increase the difficulty level.

Here are some tips and tricks:

• Secure your cities and resources but remember that military units cost money.
• Science, new cities and unit upgrades also cost money so keep your eye on the money…
• Do not ignore terrain defence bonus: do not cross rivers to attack unless your unit has the amphibious promotion or you’re sure it can destroy the defending unit.
• Make sure your civ builds the Chichen Itza (all civs want this one) and The Pentagon military wonders – at least make sure you know who built them.
• Chop your forests and jungles for increased production in your city. Do it when you need it for building wonders for example. To chop faster use the chop action instead of any of the other actions that also remove forests and jungles.
• Do not use your special people immediately when they are born. Use great engineers to build wonders and great scientists to build academy improvement (each city can have one). Great artists can be used to create great work in cities you need to expand your borders (to access resources).
• Build cottage terrain improvement for money.
• Use catapults, cannons and artillery to destroy city defence and damage target city units (when those units attack a city they produce collateral damage on other defending units). You’ll have to build many of them because you’ll probably lose them – but you’ll keep the units that can defend your conquered cities.
• Make sure you expand your civ but don’t do it too quickly because you need to pay for city maintenance!
• Go to war early. Control your continent. Even if you get behind in science earlier in the game (make sure you have the state-of-the-art military units). Attacking from sea is much more difficult.
• Use bombers and fighters to find enemy units using recon missions.
• Build the Internet!

There are many more tricks to this legendary game! Explore, try new approaches to the game and let me know about your findings!