All things Civ IV

Cafe Society
1

Just picked up the game last week and since I’m unable to work due to health reasons I’ve been playing it rather a lot lately. I was wondering if anyone would like to go over tactics and strategy on what works for them and what doesn’t. I’m just going to ask a scatter of questions…feel free to respond to any or all of them or discuss anything else you like with reguards to the game. I know there have been several threads on this, and some of my questions have been answered in some of those, but I’m hoping to have a unified thread here discussion all aspects of the game.

There are so many different aspects to the game. What order do you do research in? Religion first or city building…or warfare. Or a mix? How do you expand your civilization? Build one capital city to a certain point then start slowly spreading out? Build many cities as rapidly as possible and take the early hit on developing technology? Build up a few cities and start pumping out military units and go the conquest route?

How about your military units? What have you found that works as far as specialty skills (I’m still figuring out this part myself)? Do you mix things up or do you have stock skills you give to particular units? Do you build just enough units to hold your cities early or build a lot of units? Do you upgrade your units later or just throw them away and build new?

What wonders are must haves that you always try and go for…and which ones are game breakers to you if you don’t get them? Do you try for ever wonder that comes up or jsut a few…or none?

Do you push religion hard? Do you use missionaries and priests to spread religion to other civilizations? Do you try and found one of the great religions?

Do you use spy’s a lot? I used them quite a bit in the first game (basically I would build up my money then send them and/or diplomats in an buy up all the enemy cities) but I can’t seem to figure out what to do with them this time around.

What variations on the game do you like best? I like playing the Epic time frame as I get more turns. Also I’ve played both with and without the Spaceship as a victory condition. Whats your preference?

Has anyone tried out the multiplayer? How good is it? Is it worth doing?

Lastly if anyone has links to good mods I encourage you to post them in the thread. I’m hoping that there are a number of 'Dopers who are playing and enjoying the game. I think its the best one yet, even including the first one. Civ has never been my absolute favorite game, but I’ve bought every one thats come out (some have been absolute dogs) and do enjoy playing the game. Anyway, hope to hear from you guys…

-XT

2

There are a lot of tactics and strategy on the two main fansites: apolyton.net and civfanatics.com. Checking out there (I post on Apolyton) will show you the numerous strategies.

One of them is going straight for bronze working, which will allow you to do selective chops of forest (to gain early shields) to speed up early buildings.

Another one is focusing on the capital to get a science boost early on. It involves getting to Code of Laws and soon afterwards finishing building the Oracle, which gives you a free tech, which you use to take Civil Service. Then you change your civic to Bureaucracy. Also use two scientists in your capital to create a Great Scientist, to build an Acadamy. Your capital will be HUMMING with research beakers.

Of course any strategy will depend on your leader attributes, your starting position, and unique units. If you have an early unique unit, go for the techs that’ll get you there first (depends, of course). If you have a great starting position, get the 2nd city done quick. If not, then focus on the capital.

Then, of course, you have the arguments about whether to build a worker, settler, or warrior/scout first, with points on either sides.

3

So far I haven’t discovered a best strategy. I started a thread a while back and discussed much of this and the concensus was that the way the game is designed this time around there’s essentially no right or wrong way to do things. There’s a excellent tutorial out there which shows the potential of a well played religious tactic, the hydra as it’s been called.

Typically I vary my start based on the surrounding resources. If I need husbandry I go for it, if I need mining I go for it. If I have military resources I go military. If I have stone/marble I go for city/wonder building. Play to strengths.

Unless I have a really good reason I tend to minimize military units. Try and expand and build up as soon as possible without adding more units than needed. As for skills and promotions I usually save them until I need them. No need to promote a unit until I know if he’ll be attacking or defending. I always upgrade units and never disband them

I have no idea. This is the aspect of the game I’m really bad at managing. For some reason it’s the thing that always gets overlooked for me. I think I screw up by not having enough long-term foresight.

I dunno. There’s examples of using it really successfully, but you have to think on a macro level to do it well. I suck at that so I’m usually left stumbling blindly.

Never once built one.

I usually play with the defaults usually. Temperate, continents, large map, standard time frame. I figure there’s no need to start f-ing with the settings until I figure out how to play the damn game better. I don;t need to introduce and extra variables to screw me up more than the game already does.

In summary, I still pretty much suck at the game. I’m much better than I was the first few times, but still nowhere near as good as I was at Civ 3. This game is so well balanced and the AI so competent that you can;t neglect anything an hope to be good. I still don’t know all the ins and outs, and for all the things I do know I can’t build a strategy that considers all the variables. Tough tough game.

4

What about updates? Have the early bugs — especially for installation — been ironed out? Or do you still have to download auxilliary files and utilities to do special unzipping and whatnot? What about the hardware issues? There was a considerable uproar early on about systems that were well within the recommended specs crashing and slowing to a crawl.

5

I’ve gotten a little better since the last Civ IV thread, but I can still only hold my own without winning on Monarch.

As for military, the best piece of advice is that bombardment units (cats, cannons, artillery) are now VERY important. You aren’t going to take a city without these. Before you even consider sending in a regular unit, bombard the city defence down to 0%. Then attack the city with a number of bombardment units; you’re going to lose, but in the process you’re going to be causing collatoral damage to the defending units and softening all of them up.

As for other things, I’ve recently started playing on Epic or Marathon speed. It just seems better because in regular speed by the time I build enough cats and knights to invade, it’s already time for riflemen. Epic seems to allow you to take your time.

Religion. As for this, I’ve since not gone for one of the early religions recently. I go for improvement techs (husbandry, mining), techs for archery and techs for metals. Then, I see if there is a religion left and go for it. Religion is a double edged sword. You get some money and culture, but your surrounding civs might decide to hate you because of your religion.

Spaceship victory. I’ve turned it off a few times. It just seems like one of the AIs can always get to spaceship before me, and the best man doesn’t always win.

6

Two good sites to visit are Sulla’s and Sirian’s

Sulla: http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4.html
Sirian: http://sirian.warpcore.org/civ4/dawn.html

Perhaps too many sccreenshots. But they often explain why they mad ethe move they did.

I like reading the reposrts and I don’t even HAVE Civ IV.

Brian

7

Open borders and good use of missionaries can usually end up converting your neighbors to your religion. Personally, I like to stockpile as many of the religions as possible not just for the gold but also for the happiness boost when I switch over to Free Religion later in the game.

8

I agree that there is a lot of flexibility in this version (jolly good!)

I have had success up to (and inluding) Noble level with the Saladin of the Arabs; either gaining most of the religions and on to a Cultural victory, or building masses of Camel Archers and winning by Conquest.

9

The thing that I’m having trouble with is this specialization of cities that I read about. I have no idea how to determine which city will be my production city, commerce city, science city and great people city. I have no idea how to make it into that.

I just don’t think I have the attention span to every be truly great at this game.

10

I will make some longer posts later if I have the time. I’ve been playing it pretty nonstop over the last week or so, for some reason. I’m at the point where I can win consistently on monarch with Huanya Capac (Incan) and the Chinese guy who isn’t Mao. I don’t really play “right” though in that I barely ever specialize my cities like everyone seems to say you should. I will say that the shift from Prince to Monarch has had mostly to do with an increased aptitude at war - on the higher levels, if you leave your opponents alone, they’ll probably beat you unless you’re playing perfectly.

This game is so addicting :slight_smile:

11

Yeah, please do.

The one war tactic that I’ve started that has been working decently is to declare war and not send in any troops. That way, the opponent comes and attacks me with his available units. I can pick them off easily in my territory by selectively attacking them and allowing them to attack my cities. Once those forces are gone, he is left with his standing armies fortified in the cities, and I can more easily get my forces to them without suffering damages along the way. Also, it makes pillaging easier so I can knock out his one source of iron or horses and he can’t produce further units.

12

I don’t think you have to make every city fall into one category.
And one main idea of this version was to move from the large number of cities necessary in Civ 3 (say 16 - 25) to a smaller but efficient number in Civ 4 (say 6 - 10). There are also automated worker, scout etc. options if you don’t like micro-managing.
It’s true this game needs an attention span, but much less so than Civ 3. Also I find it far easier to come back to and pick up where I left off…

City function will certainly be strongly influenced by which special resources they are near. If you have Cows, Iron and Hills nearby, then you can get a high production.
If you have a lot of spare food (Wheat, Fish, Flood Plains), then you should be able to factor some specialists into the city for Great People.

13

Okay, a few things I’ve found have gone well (note that these apply mostly to single-player games only):

  • You obviously want to be a step ahead of your opponent in military tech as often as possible if you’re going to invite conflict. This goes doubly so if you aren’t playing an aggressive Civ. I find there are certain tech periods where I “like” to make war:

::As early as humanly possible as the Incans. Quechuas match up extremely well with archers, and the AI is too stupid to build anything else to defend their cities early on. Put up an early barracks or two, kick out half a dozen Quechuas, and take the nearest town you don’t like. More if possible. Grab, grab, grab.

::If you’re playing another Civ, the 5-8 str range units are a good place to do some selective fighting. Horse Archers are alright (and good for mobility), but Axemen and Swordsmen are money units even if you are pretty even on tech - just make more and match up with the right stuff. It’s pretty possible to beat the AI to Construction even on the higher diff. levels, and worth doing so if you have access to ivory: Elephants and Catapults = destruction.

::I like to settle down for a bit after that period. Because of the stuff I like to tech, I am not going to beat anyone to Knights, and I find most of the early gunpowder units underwhelming, especially for offensive purposes. Hopefully by this point I’ve taken out the weakest AI civ near me, and I can turn what is likely a tech deficit into an advantage with my larger empire size, until I hit…

::Cavalry. If you get Cavalry before a nearby AI has either Cavalry or Riflemen, that AI is done. He’s probably still using Longbows or MAYBE Musketmen as his defensive units, and you can absolutely eat him alive.

::Tanks tend to need Artillery support to conquer stuff; Modern Armor tends to run over anything at a lower level on its own (Barrage promotions, by the way), plus by then you can have stealth bombers. As a result, later Modern armies tend to have a lot more conquering mobility, and I like to push to them rather than use tanks, if I can afford it.

  • The key for all of this to work is to make up the tech disadvantage that you have on the higher levels. The two ways to do this are to either have better cities (via specialization), more cities (via early conquering or lucky placement), or all of the above. Even when you have such advantages, you’ll spend a lot of time wondering how Bass Ackwards Civ on the other side of the map just beat you to Liberalism or Physics by a couple turns to deny you the bonus.

  • The biggest obstacle will tend to be an inevitable invasion during whatever one period you pick to slack on military a little and tech hard. Neighboring Aggressive civs (Alexander, I’m looking at you) are the worst, though the culprit can come from anywhere. I’ve found that the best way to protect yourself is to try to make sure you have one city on “point” - that is, if the aggressive civ bordering you decides it’s time to attack, there is one city that it will almost certainly feel the need to attack first. Fortify this city with a mix of defensive units. Even if he attacks you because your overall national army isn’t as huge as his, you will be fine as long as he sends his Knights right into your waiting Pikemen.

  • Slavery is your friend. Whip those citizens. They deserve it - they’d just be bitching about health conditions anyways, or asking silly questions about why we’re still at war. Have them aid the cause by getting some extra units or buildings out there.

  • Always try to get at least one really good ally. Someone who will cover one of your borders, like the same people as you, hate the same people as you, and be at least decently competitive on his own (though ideally not your main rival) throughout the game. Also someone you can bribe into helping you with wars, and Defensive Pact with in the late game. The hippy pacifist civs are often the best for this (Gandhi and Mansa Musa, you’re up).

  • More than anything else, I tend to find that games go down the drain if I don’t get at least one of the good early war resources - Iron, Ivory, or at LEAST Horses. If I can’t do an early land grab, my little puny civ will not be able to keep up with the cheating AI civs.

  • Lastly… I don’t like sea warfare that much. At all. If I’m playing Continents, I tend to take over everything on my own continent and then push for a non-military victory. If I’m on Pangaea, run everything on the mainland over and ignore any island cities. If I’m on Archipelago, I cry a lot.

  • Domination and Culture are the two most fun victories to get, IMO, and the ones I play for the most often. Space Race is the desperation backup. Diplomatic is for sissies.

I love this game, and will gladly answer any more specific questions, listen to criticism or possible improvements of my stuff, or discuss why Financial is so vastly superior to all of the other leader characteristics :smiley:

14

I’ve had the game, but didn’t actually start playing a full game on yesterday. What’s the deal with the difficulty levels on Civ IV? I think on Civ III, Regent was the level where neither the player nor the AI had any advantage (i.e. free units, faster research, etc.). What level is that on this version? Noble?

15

Wow, I have no idea what happened to that sentence. I’ve had the game for a while, but didn’t start playing until yesterday.

16

All computers play on Noble level. It’s your choice what level you play on.

P.S. I live in the UK. I don’t think my version of the game is different from the US one…

17

Thanks for your comments - most enlightening!

As a Cultural chappie, I like Philosophy and Spiritual. I would be interested to hear why you prefer Financial…

18

Financial basically lets you do anything. You can expand fast, as long as you have a lot of workers building cottages to help pay for the upkeep. By the time you’ve reached the Modern era, all your cottages will be towns and generating tons of commerce. You’ll have more than anyone else because of the fast expansion. You’ll be discovering new techs in 3-4 turns. At this point I like to get Communism, buy the Kremlin (if you’ve done it right, turning science down to 0% will net you 1000+ gold per turn), switch to Universal Suffrage, and then either:

  1. buy a huge army and go for the domination, or
  2. buy missionaries, temples, cathedrals, and all remaining wonders until I get a cultural victory, or
  3. build the spaceship (most boring, IMO)

I took a city from 4,000 culture to 50,000 culture in less than 75 turns thanks to Financial+Kremlin. It’s really powerful.

19

I think this is wrong. As I understand it the Noble level is where you and the AI Civs all have the same production and research rates etc. You always play on “Noble” level as a Civ. When you increase the difficulty to Monarch you’re still playing with the Noble rates and specs but the AI is all playing with faster growth, production and research. The challenge is leveraging your flexibility and human foresight to make your Civs grow as strong as the others even though your multipliers are lower. In contrast, playing Cheiftan means that the AI is all playing with a fractional multiplier, they grow and discovers slower than you can. Therefore any mistakes you make are easier to absorb to to the production advantage.

Last night when I read this thread it inspired me to track down some guide online. In addition to the Sulla and Sirian pages I found these items helpful.

This Civs leaders guide does a nice job or comparing and contrasting each Civ and leader combonation. It rates their relative effectiveness and adds a good degree of context to how good players think about this game at it’s most fundamental levels.

this guy threw together a Civ Reference chart as an Excel Spreadsheet that I find infinately better than the Civilopedia. Other users are constantly updating it so be sure to d/l it from the last page of the thread. This is the type of quick glance guide that I think helps prevent details frm getting lost in the shuffle.

20

I got the game for Xmas and played it pretty much nonstop all through January, but had to take a break when it started infecting my dreams. Not necessarily nightmares…but dreams in which I’d spend hours & hours micro-managing my cities (which can take up to an hour per turn on really big maps!) and then wake up to find I had to do that crap ALL OVER AGAIN! So I switched to Morrowind in order to clear Civ4 out of my mind – and now in my dreams I’m wandering the Civilization landscape finding bandit caves and tombs of the undead. :smack:

Starting strategies for each game depends heavily on what leader you play, what resources are available in your starting area, and which neighbors you have. In one game I wound up squeezed between Genghis Khan & Louis XIV, which of course put me on a military footing immediately.

I tend to skip founding an early religion since the AI always seems to beeline for those. Of course by the time I found Confucianism or Islam, the rest of the world is Buddhist and/or Hindu and they all hate me as a result. I do spam missionaries everywhere and build monasteries as fast as possible (since they go obsolete) because when you control a few holy cities, you’ll be swimming in dough!

If I’m Industrious I’ll try for early Wonders, otherwise just a few like The Oracle and Colossus. Then I’ll build up a military and steal the others. :smiley: I did play one game (on Warlord level) where I built 70% of the available Wonders in my capital city (it was CROWDED in there!) and the rest in two other cities, got a Cultural Victory almost by mistake in that game.

Spies are great for recon and seeing what your neighbors are working on, even if you’re not at war with them. (Your spy can open up the city screen of any city it’s standing on.) This is especially handy during the Space Race.

Nukes are fun. TOO much fun, in fact! Once I nuked every other civ back to the stone age, then started taking out their strategic & food resources with nukes. Including the sheep. KA-BOOOM!!! I still can’t believe I actually NUKED SHEEP! :cool: