Upgrades are certainly worth doing, but I’m surprised you can conquer cities defended by fortified Archers with your Warriors.
What level of difficulty are you on?
The AI leaders echo their real life counterparts, so learning something about each of them is necessary to plan your diplomatic strategy.
Isabella, the real life founder of the Spanish Inquisition, is fanatical about religion. If you share the same state religion, she’s your best friend. If you have a different religion, she’s your worst enemy.
Montezuma is extremely warlike and will always be fighting someone. Keep an eye on the power graph and make sure you’re not the weakest Civ or he’ll come after you. The best way to make friends with him is to find a mutual enemy and invite Monty to war with you. The shared conflict bonus can be substantial.
Tokugawa is very protectionist. Usually, as soon as I get Writing researched, I offer Open Borders to all other Civs. Tokugawa won’t accept Open Borders even when Pleased with you. He’s very tough to make friends with because he refuses to trade with people. Lot’s of gifts are necessary.
I use one or two Archers (later upgrading to Longbowmen), plus a Warrior (later upgraded to Axeman), because you get bonuses e.g. Axeman is +50% v any melee unit.
I also have a mounted unit ready to rush down the roads linking all my cities.
Brennus couldn’t enter your territory to attack until he declared war on you, so you did have notice!
I don’t know which option you’re using. I always get called by the name of my Civilisation’s leader.
I play Beyond the Sword as Americans on Noble level. I probably build too many cities, but I can’t bear to see my opponents gobble up that juicy territory. Besides, that city I choose not to build might just be on top of some oil or coal or uranium and I won’t find out for some time. I don’t see the advantage of not building lots of cities, unless it’s because unhappiness starts to build or there are just too many attractive targets for your opponent.
Usually I’ll be king of the world for a while and then toward the start of the industrial era someone takes off and makes me look like crap. Or I’ll be friends with everybody, only to find the Stack Of Death parked just outside my borders. The AI seems to sense your weakest defensive area and hits it like an infected wound.
I find that if you build too many workers, they often run out of things to do once you’re done building cities. My capital tends to be the wonder maker and the other cities become jacks of all trades. I think specialization is something I need to work more on, let 1-2 cities build barracks and stables and all the units, let some others be research centers, etc.
The other leaders are untrustworthy scum. I hate them all.
It was a border city, and no, I didn’t. Or rather, I had one turn which did not suffice to pump out more than one unit, although I had more on the way from my panicked crash build program.
Which of Combat Strength, First Strikes, or City Defender better for archers?
I’ve been playing around with building Stonehenge. So far it has seemed ot be fairly handy for increasing city radii without having to build monuments everywhere.
I haven’t played this as much as I have liked. Granted, I’m still playing on rather easy levels, I still have great success in REXing from Civ III. So, I have a ton of cities and get a huge technological advantage early. If I see one of my neighbors building a huge force, I’m usually so far ahead technologically that I send in a preemptive strike. On the harder levels, I find other Civs might be looking to take me from behind (aahhh, the dreaded backdoor action), but I’ve learned to anticipate this more preceptively. I also think that my cities should have everything. If one only adopts 5-6 cities, when does one have a chance to go to war?
There are financial penalties for building new cities, which increase with difficulty level.
I find three workers is usually enough to do all the tasks necessary.
After you’ve improved all your cities, you can build a road to your opponents cities, which means your military forces can arrive smoothly there.
Granted but the AI seems to build pretty big empires too. And does the number of desirable cities for a civ depend on map size? I always play the biggest map.
Well as I said, I usually have an Archer and an Axeman in each city, plus a mounted unit ready in my capital.
If you build temples, your Cultural area expands, which means an invader has further to go (when he declares war, all his units are thrown out of your Cultural area.)
If Archers are defending cities (which they are perfect for), then City Defender is best.
Stonehenge does indeed expand the Cultural area of all your cities. The Oracle grants an extra Technology and there are several other useful early Wonders. But make sure you don’t tie down your Civilisation to just building Wonders - you still need Settlers and military units.
What do you mean by a ton of cities?
In Civ3 I used to get 32 cities, but you can’t do that in Civ4.
On higher levels there isn’t time to build everything in every city (unless you are remarkably diplomatic?!).
With 5-6 cities and playing the Arabs or Spanish, I go to war soon after discovering Engineering and Guilds. Usually the game ends before anyone discovers Gunpowder.
The AI is fixed on Noble level, no matter what difficulty you set yourself.
As i said the number of desirable cities is dpendent on level, because of the financial penalties.
Instead larger map size gives you more choice where to build, and less chance of interruption from opponents (because you’re all spread out.)
We were in a bit of a culture war. I was pushing him back and I think this was his response…
Ah - but expanding your Cultural area is not the same as declaring war. In fact an opponent’s City which gets fairly Culturally surrounded by yours may decide to join you peacefully (again no war is declared.)
If you get a Great Artist, one way to use him is the Culture ‘bomb’, where you move him to one of your border cities and instruct him to build an artistic masterpiece. this gives your city thousands of Culture points and really expands your Cultural area
Tokugawa is a paranoid sonuvabitch. In one BTS game, I was pursuing a religious strategy and had managed to build the Apostolic Palace and spread my religion to the far corners of the world. Except for Tokugawa. He was a neighbor on my continent but was, fittingly, isolated behind an impassable mountain range. The only way to get to him was around a large peninsula owned by another leader. Tokugawa rather easily agreed to Open Borders at first, but by the time my caravel with a missionary arrived at his shores he had gone isolationist again. I had to wheedle and bribe him with lots of gold and technology to get him to open his borders again. Once he agreed, I snuck my missionary in and finally got myself elected Pope.
Not true. I won a Domination victory playing as Korea on Noble; in the end I had more than 50 cities. Here’s how it works. In Civ III, each new city had a penalty taken off the top of all its output before you got to do anything with it. So if you built too many cities (the number varied with difficulty etc.) the new ones would be more and more worthless. Civ IV has a different mechanic though. Cities have their full output, but are also charged a maintenance fee out of the national treasury. This fee increases with city size and distance from a government center (the capital, Forbidden Palace, or Versailles). A new city on distant shores might cost you a lot of money to maintain, but its local output will not be affected.
What this all means is that you can maintain a larger empire as the game progresses. In the early game you don’t have any way to multiply your income, so you can’t grow very large. But then you start getting access to Marketplaces, and Banks, and Stock Markets, and international trade, and corporations. The medieval period is where a Financial leader starts to boost your economy a lot. By the late game, if you’ve properly taken advantage of that, you can control huge tracts of land.
In my current game as the Romans, I have 16 cities on two continents and I just discovered the calvary. I built 10, wiped out one of the tribal ones (sorry I forget, I’ve been playing off and on for the last month) and got 2 from them, I got one from the Japanese which I refuse to Open Borders with (the map is on three large continents and 2 small ones, with one of the small ones unmanned), and I got the rest from the Germans which I’m in the process of wiping off from the face of the map. I didn’t even bother with catapults, just cheap swordsmen equivalents, and some horses. I might have a musketeer or three. I don’t see how I could conquer the map without getting 32+ cities.
Oh, and on another note, I was checking the civfanatics cite, and I think it was there where I saw people launching the rocket ship just after 1100 AD (or somewhere around there). How did they do that?
I know. I think the AI might have been peeved at my culture starting to move in on his territory. He had plopped a city down near one of mine, but my culture radius started taking over his good properties. The distance between them was so short that even with a good culture radius he cancelled the Open Borders, Declared War, and was at my gates all in the same turn.
As for “which tech should I research”, the best answer is “something nobody else has”. There are several techs where the first discoverer gets some sort of bonus. They found a religion, they give you an extra great person, or what have you. These are always good to shoot for.
Others are techs that let you build that key wonder. If several other civs have the tech before you get it, it’s usually not worth trying to build that wonder because someone will beat you to it. But if you’re the first, you can start that wonder building and even if everyone else gets that tech there’s no way they can catch up.
Others are techs that let you see new resources…so you can put a city there before anyone else. Civ3 supposedly allowed AI Civs to see hidden resources, but I haven’t noticed that in CivIV.
Others are techs that give you a temporary advantage over everyone else. If you’re the only one who can build horse archers, and everyone else is using chariots, you’ve got a powerful military advantage. The only trouble is that it could take many turns to build up that advanced force, by which time the enemy has caught up. So if you’ve got a pot of money to upgrade your old units to the new type, then you’ve got a veteran force that can roll over your enemy. Tanks are the classic technology advantage that allow you to gut an enemy. Your Tanks vs his Grenadiers and Riflemen? That’s a beautiful thing. Getting tanks is the perfect time to start a modern war, because before tanks you’re in a WWI situation…the defenders have a huge advantage. But tanks have blitz, 2 movement, bombard, and city raider.
And last, tech whoring. If you’ve got a tech no one else has, you can often sell it to 80% of the other civs. You can catch up on techs you’ve missed, amass a lot of gold, and help out the wimpier civs so they aren’t sitting ducks for your enemies. This not only keeps you swimming in gold, it keeps your enemies poor, which lowers their flexibility. They crank up their gold production to keep up, which lowers their science, and then you scoop up that gold, and they can never catch up.
I just rediscovered why I hate the Space Race victory. Aside from being very dull, there’s always some AI player who’s never been even remotely challenged and power-games right to it.
Well then, the thing to do is find the guy who’s getting close to a space race victory and fuck him the fuck up. He isn’t going to be winning a space race victory when your Modern Armor is peeling open his capitol city.
Different AIs have different play styles, for instance Mansa Musa likes to play as a builder and often gets a big tech lead. This is GOOD, because you can trade techs with him and the two of you can get a big tech lead on everyone else. But you’ve got to make sure he’s the junior partner, and if he gets too big you’ve got to take him down three or four notches. Best time to do this is when he’s been attacked by one of the nastier AIs.
Of course, you can also turn off the space race victory option when you start a game, with a custom game you can specify all the victory modes you allow. Any victory other than domination or space race are very rare. An AI can win a space race victory or a points victory, but that’s about it. Oh, I’ve been eliminated by an AI a few times, but if I’m in the game towards the end there’s no way any AI is even close to a domination victory. Their only hope is a space race victory.
If you want to learn about certain aspects of the game, give the custom game menu a workout. If you always play as a builder and try to win by space race, turn off that option to force yourself to win by domination. Or vice versa. Or turn on permanent war or permanent peace, or such.