Leaders/settings: So far I’ve had the most success with Quin Shi Huang (China, industrious/financial) for more peaceful type games, and with Huanya Capac (Inca, aggressive/financial) for games where I want to kill things. I am still better with the more peaceful approaches, but I’ve gotten a lot more proficient at war over my last couple - my last game was with the Incans on Prince, where I got off to a good start, took a tech advantage while I did a couple selective border wars to secure some resources, sucked up to my neighbors after that via being their silly religion, and then opened a can of whoopass when I hit tanks and artillery to go against their cavalry and riflemen.
At least on the middle difficulty levels, using forest-farming to pump out two additional, prime-location cities ASAP is extremely effective in getting an early advantage (research straight to bronze working from where you start, produce a worker first and a settler second, use selective deforestation around your city to make the settler come out in 6-8 turns instead of 25, then either do one warrior and a second settler or just a second settler if you feel daring).
The thing with financial is that if you do cottage/town centered city builds for as many as possible, once you hit the middle to late-mid stages of the game (with printing press and universal sufferage to go with your financial), you end up extremely rich and extremely productive, as long as you are able to defend yourself up until then.
I’ve tried a few of the different map setups so far… I tend to like the more land-based ones, as I’m not a big fan of naval war until I absolutely have to. I like tropical over temperate and low sea level over normal, but neither of those is a game breaker either way. Hoping to move up to get some decent success on monarch if I have the time this weekend
Qin Shi Huang or Victoria is probably the best, but I like Alexander since the Greeks were cool. I like Napoleon too, but always seem to have the worst luck with him. Last time the village near my start popped five hostile warriors. They conquered Paris and wiped me out on turn three.
You’re absolutely right. This sounds exactly like my issue.
As JC pointed out, it seems that it’s best to specialize your cities (something I’m not the best at keeping track of) instead of the Civ3 tactic of just builing whats recommended in every city. Granaries and Aqueducts still seem to be close to necessary in every city eventually, but definately not Libraries, Barracks, Universities, Markets etc. I’m still trying to understand the impact of Temples, Monasteries and the such. Having a state religion and spreading it is critical in the early stages, but later in the game it seems to fall by the wayside in my games. Also, certain of the middle civics seem to make building temples moot. Still trying to work that out. Funny how my IRL atheisim has pretty much ruined my skills for religion in Civ games…hehe.
I’m going to try and specialize cities in my next game and see how that goes.
No, primarily because there is no map that looks anything like the real thing. That’s kinda the whole point though. When you start from 4000 BC it’s not like you’d be expected to know what England is, let alone that it’s located on an island off Europe with London in it’s SE corner. As it stands, each game has a randomly drawn map, with randomly selected nations (any combo of the 19 or so nationalities can pop up) and random placements. I has to be that way or else each game would probably play out the same every time,
Reminds me of the SNL skit Meeting of the Minds - “Ennggland?”
Probably for the the best, I agree. However, you know that there will be maps of Earth availble before too long - even if it is so somebody can make WWII scenarios.
Play to your advantages. Pretty straightforward but it’s something I didn’t see mentioned above. If you’re Saladin or another Philosophical leader, your +100% Great Person birth rate is useless unless you’re actually producing Great Person points via wonders or specialists. If you’re an Aggressive civ, then push out some melee units with a free Combat I upgrade, and if they’re coming out of a city with barracks and you’ve got Theocracy going, well, strike while the iron is hot.
Use the in-game combat calculator. It’s not mentioned in the manual to my knowledge, but if you select a unit and right-click-and-hold over an adjacent enemy unit, you can see the actual combat odds including all unit promotions, unit abilities, and terrain modifiers. Just because your gunship is a 20 strength and an longbowman is a 6 strength doesn’t mean you’ll annihilate it when it’s got City Garrison skills and is fortified in a city on a hill. It’d be useful before you attack to find out that the longbowman is actually defending at a modified value of 17.7.
There already are a number of scenarios included with the game, such as Earth (with civilizations in pre-determined historic starting locations) and Earth 1000 AD, which is surprisingly fun. All civs at their historic levels of development and expansion, with some modified civs (such as Vikings!).
Really? I have even come close to scratching the surface of what is available, yet. And from what I’ve seen in this thread, many of the stratagies that I used in Civ II should work in Civ IV.
True, although there is an Earth scenario you can choose to play if you choose (I’ve never played it, so don’t know if the civ placements are accurate… they were back in Civ I.)
Very true, I found this feature by clicking the “Go To” button for the unit and pointing it at the unit I’m looking to attack. The modified stats pop up, but I still swear I get my ass kicked by units with half my modified strength.
To add to this, Combat 1 doesn’t seem like a big deal. Big whoop. But that means that your unit’s next promotion will be some of the cooler stuff, like Medic.
Other way to view the calculator is to have your unit selected and then hold down the Alt key while moving the mouse over the enemy units.
True, it’s a good early one. But Theaters are better- cheaper and more culture- and if you do Writing-Alphabet-Drama (an easy path, and opening up Music with the free Great Artist), there’s not much of a lag between the two.
But even if you lay down certain buildings in every city “just in case”, you can still leave those “possible but not essential” buildings to later in the queue.
And on culture- I make it my major goal early on to get Stonehenge, no matter what. Cheap, provides culture in every city (giving me access to the second ring while fighting off enemy borders), and usually worth a Great Prophet… who either founds a religion for me, or adds constant gold and hammers to a city.
Culture bombing – if you’ve got a city pumping out Great Artists, don’t trickle them in. Stock up a few and then build a city on an enemy border and then throw up several Great Works in the same turn in the same city. Watch cultural boundaries just explode.
Don’t waste your elite units! You can’t keep them in reserve forever or else their advantages go to waste, but don’t throw them away in futile attacks or leave them exposed. A swordsman with multiple City Raider promotions can be an absolute monster when it comes to hacking his way into a city in the early game, but if he gets caught by an Axeman, he’s dead.
And don’t be afraid to restart the game if you’re in a bad situation early. Geography plays a significant role in the development of pretty much every civ in the game.
