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[CoolTrick]

Anyone find Civilization IV more frustrating than the 3rd? Everything is crammed on to the screen with no reasonable explanation, and where are the different advisors?!

Also even on the second lowest difficulty level it's taking me 45 turns to build a worker, on the first city!

Any tips/recommendations?

(Btw the ground texture does not "work" for me. It's all black. I get the trees/waves/etc. What's up? Also the character portraits only display the eyes and mouth, making it look like they are floating in midair. Any help on how to fix this?)

 

[siege]

Try patching the game.

 

[Illuminati]

Make sure you build your first city in a location that has access to many resources.

 

[AstroLad]

1. Patch.

2. Workers shouldn't take that long, build on a tile with decent resources, and close to resources. Also this is just my personal preference but I don't like to build workers/settlers first since I like to let the city grow by one or two citizens first before halting its growth (which worker/settler building does). Also on the higher difficulty levels you need to protect yourself immediately b/c you will get ambushed by Barbarians or other Civs if you don't whereas on Warlord and below you can basically win the game w/o building more than one or two military units per city (as long as you're willing to cave in to the more aggressive Civs' demands).

3. Build on a river or on the coast. River gives you a health boost and connects your cities on the river (useful for when you build your second). For some reason the AI always recommends sites one space off the coast, which makes absolutely no sense.

4. Also I would recommend starting at least on Warlord even if you barely know the ins and outs of the Civ 4, it is ridiculously easy.

 

[Blackace]

Make sure you build your first city in a location that has access to many resources.

pro tip!!

 

[Deku]

pro tip!!

:lol You're funny

I usually build my first city where the game generates my settler. The new map generator and settler placement algorithm has gotten quite good at putting your settlers right next to a river. Although there's the odd instance where the starting position is barren with no resources to be seen. In those cases I just generate a new map.

As for frustration Civ4 is no more frustrating than Civ3 was to the player used to playing Civ2. In fact, 4 is smaller change than 3 was compared to 2. A lot of changes are more incremental. Just be prepared to get your ass kicked by the AI in the space race in Civ4.

 

[Illuminati]

pro tip!!

You would be suprised what some people do in multiplayer games. I've seen people with their capital city built on places like swamps or icy tundras. Then they wonder why their cities can't grow beyond level 3 or 4 and their citizens are sick\unhappy all the time. I guess these are the people who never have played a civilzation game in their life.