OK cats. Here’s the deal. I suck at Civ IV. It’s been made clear over the last week or two of compulsive play by me. I realize there’s an existing Civ IV thread out there, but that’s a overall impressions thread, this one’s gonna have to be a “winning strategies for Civ” thread.
Couple quick hits about me. I played the original Civ back in college and was pretty thoroughly addicted. I was pretty damn good at it, but I never really challenged myself by playing the highest difficulties and never developed any insightful strategies. Basically I took advantage of the fact that the AI was stupid. After several years away I bought Civ III and played it for a while, but never really played it to death. The AI was smarter, and I was worse at it. I would get killed at the high levels, and only survive the medium difficulties through a Time Victory via pacifism.
Now I’ve been going along with Civ IV for a couple weeks and I just got done getting pasted by the coputer at the Noble level…which isn’t exactly a difficult one. So, I decided I needed Doper help, desperately.
The question is basically this: What strategies have you learned in the couple of weeks since it’s been out to beat it? What type of victories have you been going for?
I’ll probably follow up with more specific questions once we get some feedback, but for now I want to open the floor for you uber-gamer’s to educate this simple chap.
I tend to hit a point around 1500ish where my civ has all cities completely upgraded and I have nothing to shovel production to other than military units.
So I go ahead and find someone a bit weaker than me, bribe a person or two to jump on them, and claim a good half of their cities.
If you’re really lucky you can sweep in and take a city after your allies have beaten the defenders down to nearly nothing…
I find that shocking. What level are you maxing out all your city’s by 1500?
Also, how the heck are you able to persuade other leaders to attack foes? Every time I go to the diplomacy screen pretty much every option besides resources and money are red and unavailable.
Culture is a much more difficult victory in this game than it was in Civ III, IMO (but also MUCH more satisfying). Diplo is a little harder than it was, but still is one of the easier ways to win (so many stupid things piss off the AI civs, including - but not limited to - expressing that you aren’t willing to be their complete bitch in any particular way). Space Race is by far the easiest, probably even more so than a Time Victory.
Leader qualities have a lot to do with how any given game goes. In particular, Industrious (for the +50% wonder growth) and Philosophical (for the extra great people) can be pretty huge - unfortunately, there is no leader which combines both. The others are all pretty decent if you are planning on playing a particular way, also; those two, though, are big for getting you ahead of everyone else early on, which is the easiest way to run a successful game.
The Pyramids are one of my favorite early wonders to rush to, just because the flexibility helps a bunch in the mid-game.
If anyone has any comments on making war… well… worth the effort, I’d love to hear them. I usually try to play it as pacifist as I reasonably can, only going to war for vital resources and when I have a clear advantage otherwise… but I have a feeling that as I push up in difficulty I’m not going to have much of a choice, given the AI’s tendency to pick fights even now (I have been playing Prince lately, and am just now feeling pretty in control of it).
War is much more complicated this time around. You can’t just go in with your one best unit and pound the crap out of the opponent’s city.
First, you have to bombard until the city’s defenses are at 0% (you see the percent under the city? That’s the defense percentage.) Use catapults early, cannons, artillary. Battleships for coastal cities and planes if they are far in. Get that number to 0. Then, send in more bombardment units to attack the city. They are going to lose. You are going to lose a large number of bombardment units so bring extra. But each one that loses is inflicting collatoral damage on all the units in the city. So, when you finally send in your ground offensive, the city’s defenses are gone and the units defending are very softened. Basically, if you do it right, you shouldn’t lose an ground unit in taking even the best defended city if the city’s defenses are bombarded first.
That’s all that I’ve figured out. I too, suck. I’m playing on Noble and finally one a game on the time limit, which isn’t a real win in my book!
I can’t figure out how to use specialists to save my life, and I tend to forget about them until late in the game.
Sounds like you and I are pretty much on par. I’ve been making war using whatever thebest unit is, and as you pointed out that doesn’t work that well this time around. It’s very important to create a composite of complementary units. I haven’t figured out those combos yet, but I agree with your synopsis.
I also have been totally inept at managing my religion, specialists and great people.
Well, in the particular case here I was trying to play as a very quickly expansionist nation. I controlled more than 50% of the landmass, but cities were not strongly defended and the terrain wasn’t improved enough. Also a major factor was that by sheer bad luck I had no access to horses or elephants. At one point I got dogpiled by all three nations I shared my continent and it was a decisive defeat. They had so many quality units at their disposal I felt like the game was bogus, literally they dumped no less than 30 units apiece against me at once. It was all I could do to have a 2 unit garrison in each city.
I’m following the “cuban isolationist”* succession game in the forums (mentiioned above). They managed to start 6 of the 7 religions (everything but Taoism)
Brian
self imposed rules:
NO OPEN BORDERS
No map trades
Our ships may not leave culturally controlled waters.
A few days ago I read a walkthrough of a game played (and written) by one of the testers. It had some pretty decent advice in it, especially about how to work with Great People. It also had a bit on unit combinations, which I’d summarize as your best guys + catapults + a healing unit.
I’m also finding that it’s better to have your cities specialize. There is no reason to build a barracks in every city. So, I have one or two cities with barracks be my army producing cities. I have a few cities that produce my research, one for wonders, etc. I’m working out the kinks, but it’s an improvement over what I had before.
My biggest problem is that when I do finally decide to go to war, it takes me fifty turns to get an army together. By that time, the units I started building in the beginning are obsolete! I have to remember to keep something of a standing army.
That’s probably a decent strategy, though it seems that it’s important to have a few range weapons too. In the earlier stages it seems important to have some combo of spearmen, archers and then a strong melee unit.
Civ IV has been designed to punish the rapid early expansion (REX) tactic that was so popular in Civ III by making it trash your economy. I’m going to guess that not only did you have few terrain improvements and defenders that your tech slider was also down. Supposedly having a leader with the financial trait makes this easier to do, but I haven’t tried it myself. Courthouses and Markets are essential for expansion this time around.
It depends on what units your enemies are using. If they have lots of mounted units I’ll attack with swordsmen, spearmen, and catapults, if not I’ll usually attack with swordsmen, axemen, and catapults. I don’t think that I’ve ever attacked with archers, and usually only use mounted units for pillaging.
I finished my firstgame yesterday and was going to starta CIV4 question thread. Guess this is it.
What I’ve found out so far:
I went with Sulla’s advice and played as Salladin. I don’t know how anarchy affects the gameplay, but changing civics and having revolution was very smooth and I think I’ll stick to that as long as I’m a newbie.
I agree with **fiveyearlurker ** - specialize those cities. Later in the game, there are wonders that will only work in the city they are built, e.g. Red Cross, which will give medic upgrade to all units produced there. This means that you have to decide early on which city will hous your military-industrial complax and which will be your science center.
Having founded all religions helped enormously.
Gunships suck. If you haven’t got that far, this is what you upgrade your cavalry to. My advice - don’t. Kepp them as cavalry. Reason 1: The friggin things are hard to spot on themap, so when you’re trying to find them, you can keep on searching for a long time. And they are slow. And they won’t cross open water squares.
Bribe your friends to go beat up on stronger nations. Pick weaker close-by nations for your own wars. Never, ever go to war in a faraway land. I used to get railroad to work to my advantage in Civ3, but now, it costs movement points, so it’s just not a question of laying down tracks and moving a bunch of cavalry to the other side of the map to kill of that pesky, last remaining city of a civ.
I turned off barbarians, which was a big mistake. Fighting them means having a chance to gain exparience points early in the game and those become crucial later on.
Upgrading units is expensive. You’re gonna need a big war chest and a very strong economy to keep up the arms race. (Extra hint - try to go to war before your enemy has SAM infantry. Those guys are bloody murder to get rid of.)
Now - my own questions:
a. What happened to rally points? Or centering the map on the capital? I found that very useful when I had a lot of troups that I needed to gather before an attack.
b. I can raize a city when I capture it, but how about later? I’ve tried starving them, looked in the manual, checked the interface, and searched civfanatics. Is there no way to get rid of a city once you have it?
Just finished reading this…damn, I have a whole new appreciation for the scope of this game. This made it abndantly clear how my disregard of the religions aspect hurt me finacially.
I also always had a basic tactic of denying Open Borders requests. Bad idea, kills your trade and pisses everyone off. Thats probably been my biggest problem.
Yup, this pretty much nailed it. However it was somewhat of a secondary concern in that example since the treasury went to negative at about the same time I was overrun by 3 different allied civs.