I was playing on the world map, and all the “real” civs were on Asia, Africa, and Europe with me. I figured if any civs were on North and South America, we would have made concact already. So I planned to build one caravel (Rome and I were in the middle of an arms race, so I couldn’t spare any cities to build transport units) and send him twice. The first time with an explorer, the second with a settler and a pikeman. As soon as I unloaded my explorer, I noticed he was right next to a level 13 city, and at the end of my vision, I could see at least four other cities near. It took me a good 100 years to clear out North America or barbarians. I never did get South America, stupid China declared war on me. What sucked about that was he had an open borders agreement with Persia, wheras Persia hated me, so I didn’t. They would attack me, and then retreat into Persian lands, where I couldn’t retaliate.
I ended up expending 15 ICBMs on him. Jerk.
Um, well, the psycopath Montezuma attacked me unawares and took London. Unceremonious end to a mistake ridden start, in 375 BC no less.
One thing I’m finding increasingly annoying is how terrain and such is distibuted. Jungle next to tundra? Nina tundra tiles with one tile of plains in the middle. When I starta game and look around to see jungle, I figure I should be close to the equator on the map, only to find out a couple of turns later that when my first city expands, it’s next to that awful tundra.
I know the developers have thrown in fur, deer and some other resources to make tundra suck less, but it’s still shitty to find out that there is only one direction in which you can expand with good and strong cities.
I played out an archipelago game on Prince (Alexander) over the last couple days. It was easier in that it was extremely difficult for the AI to invade me… but difficult in that it was just as difficult to expand and pick up an island with a resource I needed. I went the entire game with no stone, marble, or coal, and picked up a Space Race victory (barely - Saladin was within 5 turns of finishing his ship, and Huanya Capac had just landed a dozen tanks on my main island) around 1980. Backpedaled myself into the Warren G. Harding school of leadership from my normal Constantine or higher finishes. As much as I dislike war in general, I disliked being unable to expand when needed even more, not to mention having a much more narrow choice of where to put cities for the best results.
Planning on going for my first Monarch game on Thursday evening (have a big project due in my Antitrust class that afternoon) - I will probably go for either Continents or Inland Sea, Tropical, Standard, and Huanya Capac, as I expect I will want the Aggressive to deal with the civs on the same land mass as me at the higher difficulty level.
Re: Great People - I’m liking Scientists, Engineers, and Prophets the most, but I tend to pick up Artists the most as a result of the wonders I normally work especially hard for (and also because the National Epic is +Artist, I assume). Not feeling the usefulness of Artists when I’m not pushing for the cultural victory. Merchants are nice, but I’m usually planning on not having that gold, so while it’s a good bonus it doesn’t exactly give a major boost in how I am playing.
It’s still a work in progress, but maybe this mod will be able to help you once it’s done.
Something else that might be interesting to do would a game along the lines of the game of the month over at the Civfanatics boards: have 1 person start a game, save immediately and then put the file up for download. Then everyone could play through the game from the same starting situation and compare/contrast how things worked out for them.
Ugh, Mr Harding level was my finest showing to date…excuse me while I weep.
So far I’ve won several times on Warlord, and made a fair showing on Noble but barely lost. My last game was on the Ice Age map, which was kind of interesting. I played as Persia and started in Africa, which had good land but somewhat less resources than more northern areas. My main enemy was Spain, who was by the end of the game sprawled across most of northern and central Asia. Isabella really had it in for me for some reason, but because she was marching across the Sinai Peninsula I was able to deploy a bunch of troops on the choke points and stall her there.
I eventually lost when someone built the spaceship before me, but I was ahead in the total score and culture before that. I took over maybe 6 cities over the course of the game by cultural assimilation, and would probably have gotten several more if so many wonders hadn’t gotten stolen out from under me while I was trying to build them.
My best city was situated in a fertile valley with a lot of plains and grasslands, a few hills, and a whole mess of rivers all over the place. At the endgame I could build anything other than wonders in 1 or 2 turns, and wonders in under 20 turns.
Cynic that I am, I find that religion is useful for making the populace work harder and keeping them happy. Great Prophets, when turned into a permanent specialist in a city, boost your production a lot. If you work to spread as many religions as you can through your cities, you can build all the various temples and such, and get a bunch of culture, happiness, some research in the early game, and - if you founded a religion and built the shrine - a bunch of extra money. Of course, with so many religious buildings you will tend to produce mostly Great Prophets.
Ah poop, I always find myself wanting to play the actual world instead of the made up ones. I’ll still buy it, probably get it for Christmas actually and by that time someone will have made a map of the world for me 
Huh? I thought Caravels were extremely limited in what units they were allowed to carry…
-Joe
I’m pretty sure that Caravels can’t carry settlers or buff military units. Just the scout/explorer/worker guys I thought.
Ok. Now I’m playing a game where I’m paying attention to the specialists. I’ve been adding specialists to cities when they can sustain them and still have at least a minimum of food for growth. Though, it’s often hard to figure out what the best kind of specialist is at any given time. But, things are going much better now. Many more great peoples, and my science is light years ahead of anyone elses.
Though, I’m still on Noble…
Pushkin, see above. There are Earth maps available for play under the “Play A Scenario” option.
Speaking of, last night I decided to move up from Prince to Monarch as Frederick of the Germans on the Earth map. I opened by making a beeline for Iron Working and then knocking off the Romans and taking their three cities with Swordsmen, and then settled down to colonize from Ireland to the Ukraine. China and Mongolia both launched an attack on me which I beat back and then bought off with a worthless tech.
I could not believe how successful I was being. I had a good start by doubling the size of my Civ in the early game, but I was lightyears ahead of everyone else… so when Alexander of the Greeks decided that I should suffer for not helping him in his wars, I rolled out the modern armor and sacked my way to Central Asia. I saved around 1820 or so, in order to have a point to which I could go back and win the game in other ways. I’d only had space-race victories up to that point.
All I can say is, it’s so, so fun to stockpile four nukes for every enemy city on the map, declare war on the entire world, and then unleash goddamn hell. I never get tired of seeing that horribly beautiful mushroom cloud.
I’ll never do this well on Monarch again.
Oh, pshaw.
I’m having a blast with my latest Monarch game- Medium pangaea map and me as Vicky of the English.
I got the most beautiful city start you could imagine: of the 21 tiles for the city, about 10 were flood plains, and there were a few forests and hills outside of the city. Cottages on flood plains + Financial = $$$$$ and growth. It’s hard to get shields… unless it turns out that the one useless plains spot near your city turns out to have copper on it.
I was also finally smart enough to not bother with grabbing my own religion, and instead strategically choosing one to appease neighbors. Being Hindu means that Genghis and Tokugawa, normally warmongers, have been pleasant friends for the entire game. Hell, I actually had open borders with Toki for ten turns.
It’s 1805 now, and my Redcoats have kicked the tar out of the French and the Aztecs, stealing 3 cities total; I’m swinging around to make final war on the Aztecs as my Redcoats are turning into Infantry and he’s still trying to gather Musketmen to defend. 
Things I’ve learned this game:
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Military Tradition is a very circumstantial tech. Cavalry is incredible if your enemies lack Gunpowder techs; but if your enemies have Muskets, you’re better off getting Rifling for Riflemen (1 strength lower, but +25% vs. Gunpowder units turns into 3 points better, usually).
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If you plan on grabbing a Religion, plan on forcing that religion down opponents’ throats. As I said earlier- the two most war-like and hostile players (Tokugawa and Ghengis Khan) are generally friendly towards me given that we share religion.
In the game I finished last night, I had some problems with religion. I had founded Judaism and then used a great leader to build Solomons Temple, it showed up in the city list but everywhere else in the game it wasn’t ‘there’ I couldn’t build anything other than Jewish temples in cities. However, I didn’t have the same problem when building the Church of the Nativity with a great leader. Has anyone else seen this sort of bug, or is the game anti-semetic? ;j
Even given that, Montezuma and Genghis seem to hate me in every game I’ve played so far. It seems I’m always having a conversation that goes like this:
“Look Genghis, babe, we’re all Confucian here. Why can’t we just get along nice-like. I mean, come on, we share a border with that rat bastard Taoist Greek…why don’t we kick his ass?”
At this point I realize that I’m talking to an animated icon on my computer screen. Then I realize that everything’s in red on his side anyhow. And he still usually slaps me (through the monitor?..you be the judge).
Let me see if I understood this - you founded Judaism and used a Great Prophet to build the Temple of Solomon in City X. In that city, the Temple of Solomon showed up in the building list on the left side of the city screen as expected, but in every other city you couldn’t build any units or buildings other than Jewish Temples?
I’ve never seen that, ever, and I’ve certainly played with Judaism before.
(I’ve just spent the last hour reading through the Civilization 1 content on civfanatics - damnit, I miss the old days! Civ 1 is still better than Civ 4, damnit!)
Not quite. In the cities that had Judaism I could only build the first Jewish building - I think that is the temple - but no other Jewish buildings so I couldn’t build missionaries to spread the word. Other buildings and units were fine. I could only build the first of the three Jewish buildings and nothing else that was Jewish. I wonder if it is because I had built a pasture for the pigs 
Ah. While it may be a bug, there are certain conditions that must be met to build certain religious buildings. For example, once you get Scientific Method, monasteries are obsolete and can no longer be built, and “super-temples” (Christian Cathedrals, Jewish Synagoges, Islamic Mosques, etc) can only be built in a 1:3 ratio to Jewish temples. So if you have 3 cities with Judaism, each with a Jewish Temple, and start building a Synagogue in one of them, the others won’t be able to build a second synagogue until you have at least 3 more Jewish Temples built. This works the same way for all religions.
Just to clarify this point, that’s a 1:3 ratio to temples of the same religion, not specifically Jewish temples. You can have ten Jewish temples but still not be able to build a single Christian Cathedral.