I’ve been trying to follow and research the old Civ IV threads, but there haven’t been many. I’ll keep this easy, my questions are pretty simple:
Are there any patches I should be getting from Civ IV? What do they do? I didn’t like the ones from Civ III, but you needed the one to at least fix corruption.
What is Civ IV Warlords? Is it worth getting?
I’m pretty good at Civ III, will I be just as good at Civ IV? I recall earlier posts and review saying that Civ IV was specifically designed to make REX-ing a losing strategy. I do some REX-ing, but not a lot (I do early rush and conquer, and make alliances to get other civs to fight with/for me).
Just download the latest patch from Firaxis. If you’ve never played an earlier version you won’t complain about the subtle changes that make this or that strategy less or more effective.
One major change is in how maitainence works. In Civ3 each building cost maintence. This meant that an empty undeveloped city didn’t cost you anything. Civ4 changed that model, now maintence is based on the number of cities you have. Corruption is eliminated. Pollution is eliminated, now each city has a health rating based on size, hospitals, food sources, etc. If your unhealthyness exceeds your health then you lose one food for each unhealth. So unhealthy cities stop growing.
Specialists are completely reworked and are now a vital part of the game. And you also generate “great people” instead of “great leaders”. Great people (scientists, engineers, artists, prophets, merchants) can be added to cities as permanent specialists, or cashed in for tech or rush building or golden ages. Resources are totally reworked and a lot more diverse. Religion is added, although the religions are generic in the sense that every religion works exactly like every other religion. Units seem to cost a lot more to build, you generally have fewer units than Civ3.
Overall, Civ4 is a lot better, richer game than Civ3.
This is based on my 50 odd games, although there are some real specialists at: www.civfanatics.com
As Lemur said, just download the latest patch from Firaxis. (I think I’m on version 1.09).
The patches do a mixture of things, from fixing bugs to tidying up minor inconsistencies. They’ve all been useful.
Civ4 Warlords is worth getting in my opinion. It’s a bit pricey, but think of the hours of gameplay.
It introduces a new Great Leader - the General. When you win battles against other Civilisations (not barbarians or animals), you get points towards the General. (Each General costs more than the previous one.) The General can either provide military experience for every unit built in one city, give a 25% production bonus to military unit production or give experience to a group of units (and ‘attach’ itself to one unit to make promotions easier.
Warlords also offers a ‘vassal state’, where a civ faced with defeat can effectively play on as a tribute state.
There are also some new units, a few changes to leader abilities, a new ‘civ-specific’ building and some scenarios. (I really like playing the Barbarians against the computer playing all the civilisations!)
On Civ3, it was worth getting a huge number of cities. This was almost mandatory.
Civ4 introduces a financial penalty for each extra city, which soon becomes burdensome.
I usually build 6-10 cities only in Civ4. But I enjoy this, since I can micro-manange all of them!
The use of special resources and workers having 2 moves per turn is great. You can plan your city placements and have ‘specialist cities’.
The game suits every type, from military conquest, through cultural victory to becoming the Secretary-General of the UN and passing a resolution for your own voctory!
Yes, there are patches. Get them and install them.
One of the biggest differences that you will notice with the patches is the change to the way chopping down forests works. In the original out-of-the-box version, chopping down a forest near a city nets you a huge production bonus that can catapult you ahead of the (comparitively) dim-witted AI.
After the patch, forests provide only 2/3 the shields that they did originally; the caveat is that the discovery of Mathematics increases this yield by 50%!
“It’s an expansion,” and “yes.”
Like Lemur866 says, you get a few new goodies (Great Generals, Unique Buildings, new Famous Leaders) to make it more interesting than the original. You need to understand how Civ IV is different from Civ III to make sense of this, though.
Remember adjusting to the concept of “Culture” when you went from Civ II to Civ III? There’s going to be quite a bit of that when you go from Civ III to Civ IV - especially if you’ve never played Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.
What can I say? The man is a genius.
In Civ IV, combat is based on a unit’s strength, and modified by conditions and promotions. You no longer have an “attack” value and a “defend” value - just your strength. Terrain still gives advantages (defending a hill or a forest is easier than standing out in the open), but attributes of different units and promotions earned by veteran units can make serious differences.
Remember how Pikemen got a bonus in Civ II to defend against mounted units? Imagine a whole maleable system of bonuses and penalties like this. For example, Archers get a bonus to defend hills. Veteran units (i.e., those that have survived combat and earned experience by vangquishing foes) can select a promotion that gives them a bonus to defend hills. As these promotions stack, you gain the ability to move faster in hills, and eventually even a bonus to attack other units in hills!
This kind of thing plays a tremendous role in the development of your military strategy, and is probably the biggest change from Civ III, IMHO. Think you can get away with not learning it by being a “builder” instead of a “conqueror?” Impossible. At the very least, you will likely need to learn how to stop the Barbarians at your doorstep with whatever is in your arsenal during a given age. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out bronzeworking and you’ll be beating back Barbarian Axemen instead of Warriors.
Like Lemur866 said, there is a substantial penalty for adding cities to your empire. You need to be able to balance these out if you want to stave off intellectual stagnation and financial ruin.
This is the second most important change since Civ III, right behind the combat system.
It puts a bigger strain on your machine. Unlike the earlier Civs, Civ IV is fairly resource-intensive, so the bigger your map is, the harder your rig will have to work.
In Civ IV, each leader has two Traits, plus each Civilization has a unique unit. With Warlords, each civilization also has a unique building. One thing that I noticed as being more substantial than in Civ III was the effect of your great leader’s qualities; at least, the effects were more accountable in Civ IV than were stated in Civ III.
For example, in Civ III, you are told that for “Commercial” rulers, larger cities produce some more gold, but we’re left to speculate as to how. In Civ IV, a “Financial” rulers cities earn one extra gold for every working tile that is already generating at least two gold. It’s measurable, and it works.
I will warn you not to get too confortable with the Trait combinations as they appear in vanilla Civ IV. Warlords not only adds new leaders with new Traits, but scrambles the combination of Traits on the existing leaders as well.
Should I play Civ IV first or load the expansion set right away? IOW, does Warlords make it an entirely different game, thus, I should learn the basics in Civ IV? Does getting the strategy guide help? I used to follow Civ III on the Civ fanatics site, but I just didn’t like the way info was organized.
I wouldn’t bother with the strategy guide… this is the type of the game where you learn from mostly experience and seeing what works well and what doesn’t. Failing that, there’s more than enough stuff around on the 'net to help, and a bunch of us here love the game and will help out with questions.
As for the first question, I’d say install the expansion right away. It more adjusts than transforms.
I’m not ashamed to say that one of the biggest reasons I’m looking forward to getting a new computer is so that I can play longer games on Civ on larger maps at a more playable speed. Civ IV is just an excellent game all-around.
No, go ahead and jump right into Warlords. For the most part, it’s purely additive: more units, more wonders, more civs, etc. It does fundamentally change anything that was in the regular version.
I haven’t got Warlords yet, but if it’s anything like the Civ3 expansion sets there’s no reason not to install it…you’ll just get used to the earlier version and have things subtly changed when you upgrade. If you’ve played the hell out of the vanilla version the changes can be fun to learn, but if you’re starting from scratch there’s no reason not to learn the new way from scratch.
I wouldn’t bother with the strategy guide. Civ4 as usual comes with a thick book, it’s helpful but the actual stats are completely out of date. The Civilopedia is the place to go. The most helpful section is the design notes that talk about the changed concepts.
Best change is getting rid of pollution and city unrest. These were features that punished you, not with an in-game punishment, but with BOREDOM. Micromanaging workers to clean up pollution, hitting every city every turn to make sure it wasn’t going to revolt next turn. ARG! Pollution is replaced by health, unhealth just makes cities grow more slowly. And unhappy workers don’t cause revolts, they just don’t work. Although your cities CAN revolt via culture flip this doesn’t happen randomly ala Civ3…if your city is about to flip you’ll know because it will be engulfed in the other civ’s borders.
Ironically enough, I indulged in some REXing to seal my first Civ IV victory. The amount of territory I controlled was just barely not enough for a Domination Victory, so I cranked out settlers to claim every useless scrap of tundra that was out there. Sure, it probably wouldn’t have been terribly hard to amass the forces needed to take the necessary amount of territory from the one remaining civilization, but fighting was pretty much all that I had been doing throughout the game, and I just wanted to wrap up the win in the least intense way possible.
Yeah. The big difference is that in Civ3 those worthless tundra cities far away would have been worthless due to 99% corruption, but wouldn’t cost anything, and might let you claim a resource. In Civ4 those cities produce normally, but every new city costs a fixed amount of gold/turn. So a worthless new city is definately a drain unless you’re under your optimum.
You used to be able to build a mine on top of a remote resource-is that still there?
I got burned out on Civ III a few years ago and haven’t really felt the urge to play it (any
version of Civ) since. Perhaps in a few months I’ll get that ol’ itch again and have to scratch
it.
No, you can only build tile improvements (except for roads) on territory within your national borders.
Which, actually, is another big change: all tile improvements have to be researched, first. You can’t build farms until you research agriculture, you can’t build roads until you research the wheel, you can’t mine until you research mining. There’s also a bunch of resource-specific improvements. If you want to use that marble resource, you need to research masonry so you can build a quarry, silk doesn’t do you any good without researching calenders, so you can build a plantation, and so forth
You had to sacrifice a worker to build an Outpost in Civ 3.
As Miller says, to build or use it, the resource has to be in your cultural territory.
As you put in buildings like temples and libraries, your cultural boundaries gradually expand.
If you really want a remote resource, you can build a city next to it.
When a city is about to flip due to cultural pressures (too close to enemy capital / mostly surrounded by superior foreign culture), the player gets one warning. Unless you do something, the city then flips later.
As others have said, the Strategy Guide is more like an overview. It does collect information in one place, but it’s not up-to-date.
I found articles on civfanantics.com to be clear and relevant.
I’ve just started my first multi-player Internet game. It’s working well. Civ4 uses mutual access to GameSpy for this, and neither of us have had difficulty with firewalls.
(Of course firewalls are essential - I just mean that Civ4 asks if you want ot permit Internet access when you install and that’s working.)
I achieved my first ever Domination Victory last night. My cities always grow to large size, so the population goal wasn’t a problem. I subdued Germany, the Vikings, and the Mali, making them my vassal states; and I annihilated the Indians and the Greeks to take over 64% of the land.
Being the Arabs isn’t a bad deal; I really get a kick out of “Protective” for the City Garrison and Drill promotions right off the bat, and being Spiritual allows me to change Civics at a drop of the hat with no Anarchy.
Right before I would go to war, I’d switch to Vassalage and Theocracy, giving me +4 XP for each unit (my state religion was spread to all cities by missionaries), and build up a nice task force of veterans to wipe out the competition. The Greek Riflemen were brave, but no match for my Tanks, Bombers, and Marines.
As well as your Civics, I also use Police State to produce military units faster.
But what are these units of which you speak?
Surely the Arabs only need Trebuchets and Camel Riders (with the added experience from Stables) to wipe out all opposition.
Camel Archers are cool indeed, and I had some with so much experience and promotions that I dared not upgrade them to Cavalry, since I would not only lose the extra XP they had gained, but they were already capable of taking on Cavalry anyway.
I am a builder, so my society typically runs the forfront of science and production until I get mean. In this particular game, it would have been difficult to achieve a domination victory without at least getting to Navigation (and thus Galleons), since the Greeks were on an island all to themselves, and it was conquering them that gave me the extra land I needed.
By the time I had forced the Germans to kneel at my feet, Hannibal and his Carthaginians had become nearly as technologically advanced militarily as I had (I spotted SAM Infantry inside his cultural borders on a routine reconaissance mission), so I picked on the Greeks because they were an easier target.
