Sid Meier's Civilization IV Game Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

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).