OK, I could be wrong because I haven’t tried 4 yet. In 3 there was a method for getting rid of a city if you really really wanted to, but it’s unpleasant and wasteful. First you starve the pop down to 2 and get zero growth, then build a Settler. After several turns of zero growth, the game will pop up and ask you if you want to can the city, then you can say yes. Did they eliminate that in 4?
Wow. Thanks for this link. Made me realize that there are a million things that I’m not paying any attention to.
Yes- settlers no longer cost population. Rather, cities do not grow while settlers (and workers) are being built, and excess food is used as production for those units.
While I’ve won once on Monarch, that gives me an over-all success rating of about 4% on that level, so take my tips with a grain of salt:
-
Don’t look for a canned strategy. Evaluate your surroundings when your start and build a strategy from there. “Always do this” strategies don’t always work.
-
Having said that, try to build a worker early and build your initial city up. Given that mass spamming of settlers will destroy your economy, it’s generally better to get your initial city up to the max population and have it using all worked tiles so that you can throw out units and Settlers at 6-7 turns each rather than the 25 turns for a pop 1 or 2 city to pop a Settler. Of course, in doing that you risk losing a few good sites to other civs.
-
Prioritize Horses. They’re the only military resource on the map you can see initially, and if you can get them hooked up, you can build a nice 6-strength unit. Iron is better (for Swordsmen and Macemen, and eventually Knights), but given the techs you’ll need just to see it, grabbing Iron is a bit more random. Horses are also usefull until the Industrial Age shows up, while Iron isn’t needed post-Gunpowder.
-
The two most important techs early on are Archery and Bronze Working. Bronze Working lets you chop forests, and each forest chopped gets 30 production for the closest city. In the early game, that’s about 5 or 6 turns shaved off of anything- including Wonders! Archery is important because Archers are your best early city defense. And it won’t be long before the barbs start spamming Archers down to attack you, and Warriors will not survive the onslaught.
-
Religion is vital. “Organized Religion” as a civic grants 25% building production bonuses to all cities with that religion; it’s a civic I rarely leave. But more importantly, other people’s religions are vital. Having the same or different religions is the biggest factor in what the computer players think of you; if you want a game of isolation and constant warfare, start your own religion and don’t spread it around. If you want peace and security, take whatever religion the most of your neighbors have.
Thanks. I’ve been wondering if forest chopping really helps Wonder building go faster. Was this true in 3 also?
If so, you’d think it would be tempting to keep planting forests and chopping them again and again, but I heard in Civ3 you get the chop shields only once per tile in a game. Is that still true in 4? So if you’ve chopped a forest already and you want to chop yourself some more shields for the same city, you’d need to plant a new forest on a tile that had not previously held a forest.
P.S. The Uzbek word for the verb “chop” is chop, pronounced the same as in English. A coincidence.
No. In fact, if you had shields from chopped forrest and tried to shift production to a wonder, that option wouldn’t be available.
In Civ4 there is no option to plant forrest, so once chopped, it’s gone forever.
Something that gunships are good for are destroying an enemy’s infrastructure. They can blow up 2-3 improvements per turn, and are relatively free from attack if your enemy doesn’t have flight yet.
Well, forests do grow back randomly on unutilized squares. So it’s not quite forever, however it’s tough to use this as a production strategy.
And to continue the OP, I just finished a 15 hour marathon game. (It’s scary how addictive it is, no? I forgot to eat today forchrissakes.) I played on Noble again, with a small world (5 total Civs) and just barely lost it at the end. I was 10 turns away from another time victory (was also trying to get voted in via the UN) and the bloody Germans finished the Space victory.
Anyways, that walkthrough made a huge difference. Helped me be successful in the early stages, and pretty much stay at peace until I decided to pick a fight. I’m still having trouble in the mid-game. My production gets stagnant once the map fills up and it becomes too time consuming to micro-manage every detail of the city screen. Also I’m having a hell of a time conquering citys even with vastly suprior units. Riflemen taking out Tanks and Marines like they were Warriors from within cities. Grrrr.
Still eager to hear if anyone’s learning anything interesting.
Also, I’d like to take a mini-poll of what Leaders everyone likes and why, and what game settings you tend to play and why.
This is true, however I tend to not destroy infrastucture of cities I’m trying to conquer. It’s unlikely that those few turns of production will turn the tide in a well executed strike, and it’s nice to have fully functional cities to inhabit.
Granted, so far I’ve been so inept at taking out cities that the war of attrition they turn into makes my point moot at best, and ignorant at worse.
Just to clarify… you do make sure to destroy infrastructure on things like horses, iron, etc., right?
I’m fairly sure that in 3 you could just ask to abandon the city, accompanied by a distressed advisor asking if you were completely sure. Maybe its only available if you have any of the expansion packs? 
But be careful and don’t go willy-nilly chopping forest as forest squares around a city can aid with health and later in the game, happiness, in the city.
As an aside, I used specialists last night as advised in the walkthrough, and it was much better.
You don’t have to decimate it; I also like to have the fully functioning city to rule when I take it over. But you can make things very tough in the short term for them with not much trouble to rebuild at the end. I once had my only source of oil on the edge of my territory, and an enemy civ zapped the well on their way through. I eventually beat them back, but it became a real dogfight for a while. It’s also useful to isolate a city from its land links; it kills their economy and might keep them from resupplying their city for that one crucial turn. You should have tons of workers on the go at this point anyway to rebuild after you take it over.
Really, you shouldn’t need to micromanage- the city auto-AI is usually good enough.
If you’re having trouble with production, I’d suggest three things:
-
Grab Metal Casting earlier (in theory, it’s a Classical Era tech, though most AIs don’t pick it up until Medeval) so that you can build Forges for the 25% bonus.
-
Stay in Organized Religion a bit longer, and make sure to spread your religion across your cities- OR gives a 25% bonus to building production.
-
Focus cities. Unlike previous Civs, you don’t need to build every building in every city. And chances are, you won’t have time, either. Given that commerce is much less omni-present (if you’re not coastal or on a river, you don’t get commerce unless you build cottages), you’re best off making commerce-focused cities which produce libraries, banks, etc., and production-focused cities which build your army.
Are you completely taking out the city’s defenses with bombardment, first?
Have you suicided a few artillery at the city for collateral damage?
Tank = 28 strength.
Rifleman w/ City Defender I & II, in a 60% defense city = ~30.
I’ve been playing Pangaea recently; it eliminates the problem of being on the less-populous continent (which guarantees that you’ll be behind in tech by mid-game), though it introduces the problem of being surrounded by angry, angry neighbors. Nothing else special about my starts.
As for Leaders- for culturally chauvanistic reasons, I like to play Caesar of Rome. But for actual “best civ”, I tend to play Victoria of England or Peter of Russia.
I get the feeling that you and I are having the same problems. I think it is stemming from pressing that “Enter” button to move to the next turn too quickly without going through and checking whether cities can be altered in their specialist usage or whether the civics can be changed. I think that there is a smidge of micromanagement that needs to be done every turn to keep things going.
Also, what I used to do in Civ3 is pretty much cookie cutter production in my city: defensive unit, granary, temple, library… But now, I think that you have to check, is that library really necessary here? Is it a waste of time to build?
The auto AI doesn’t do anything with specialists, does it?
I’ll have to check, but I think it does- I think the walk-through mentioned that.
One thing I hated about Civ III was that although you could link starting positions of civs culturally but not geographically. Unless you had someone else make up a map first of course.
Do the Civs in Civ IV start where they should start? The English in SE England, Chinese in East Asia etc etc
So far I’ve had fun with the game but I’ve got one huge complaint: Not enough wars.
And the wars that happen aren’t bloody enough.
It seems that basically every civ (except that psychopath Tokugawa) is perfectly content to sit there, advance slowly, and end the game. MAYBE they go on offense during Full Court Press Mode in the last 100 turns. But besides that everyone just SITS there.
I know there’s an “always at war” mode…but I don’t want that. Trade and such are a big part of the game. And I certainly don’t want to play against the schizophrenic AI of the older versions of the game, either.
But still…everyone is a wuss.
Opinions?
-Joe
Some people never learn that lesson.
But wasn’t it great when you could move dozens of units across the board in one turn via railroads? I haven’t got Civ IV yet. I wasn’t thrilled about CIV III. The idea of using units together sounds good. They tried it in III but it never really worked that great and it was easier to just send in oodels of your toughest attackers with one good defensive unit.
I wish there was a way to obliterate a city and then maybe you could have a refugee element to have to deal with as well.
Something I never liked and I wonder if they changed it. Cities get unhappy when their units are away. But it seems to me that if those units win, the city should get happy. The population loves it when you win a war. In earlier games, having units die actually made their home city happier. Not very realistic. It also could add an element to battles that you have to have units from a particular city ‘win’. You have to play politics with the war. Maybe a little too complicated but hey, it’s Civ.
To add to this…fighting a war is expensive.
If you’re demolishing the right stuff (towns and the like especially - and remember sometimes you just want to destroy the city so who cares about the improvements?) you can make some major cash. Enough to allow your economy to keep an even keel even when you’re running at a negative on the ol’ cash-o-meter.
I’ve used pillaging to pay for wars before. Kind of like the idea of…nevermind, this isn’t GD or the Pit.
-Joe