This sounds kinda dumb. Why exactly would horses be hidden? It makes logical sense with things like Copper and Iron and other stuff in the grown, but why would horses be hidden. I mean the only logical argument is if you decide that horses are a comparable military resource to Iron/copper and therefore should be hidden at the outset. Even so, do any of you guys think this needed fixing?
On the other forums someone posted this :
He then went on to describe in detail how chariot rushes work. I guess that is what the patch change is aimed at.
Glad to hear it’s going better this time!
No reason not to go for both end conditions- Space Race is a tech race combined with getting lots of cities to produce big stuff; Diplomacy is all about getting other people happy with you.
My English game ended up in a Diplomacy victory, though mostly that was because with 58% of the population by that point, getting the 60% of the vote needed to be elected was pretty simple. (And I still needed another 8% of the land to get Domination. Ah, well, next time.)
My suggestsions on a Dip win:
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Go for Free Religion. If you only have one other person on your continent, chances are that the other AIs all have their own religion. Free Religion means you wouldn’t have the Dip penalty with them. And given that you have 3 religions of your own, it also makes the most happiness out of those. Finally, to get Free Religion you need to get Liberalism, and since the first person to get to Liberalism gets a free tech, it’s something you want to push for anyways.
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Scapegoat. Once you meet the other civs, find out how they feel about each other. Each civ has at least one hated enemy that they will eventually demand you stop trading with; if you do so, and even better if you join in their wars, you can get massive friendship bonuses. At the end of my game, the three major other players (Germany, Egypt, and Mongolia) were Pleased with me because I spent the last half of the game kicking the hell out of their most hated rivals (France, Aztecs, and Japan). The only reason Egypt didn’t vote for me in the election was because she was forced to run against me.
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Be prepared to give away tech. Nothing makes people like you more than tech. More importantly, nothing pulls people into wars better than the offer of tech. How did Germany like me so much when I was Hindu and they were Christian? Because I handed them tech to join me in a war against the Aztecs. Niether of those two actually fought each other much, but I got a major friendship bonus for having fought a war on the same side as Germany.
Here’s a Q:
What happens if you are the first to develop a religion, and choose to ignore it? Does it disappear? Would the next person to discover that tech get the religion? It might be an interesting approach if you could “destroy” some of the religions.
This might be a graphics card issue: Does anyone have problems seeing some resources in some areas? Specificially, I didn’t notice I had spices in a forest until well into the space race.
I’m finding war to be much more difficult this time around. I thought I had the new system pretty well sussed out. But I invaded my neighbor Spain with superior numbers and tech, and had a hard time taking a city. This is with a catapult, too. My force had 10 or 12 units in it. This was what I used to take with my to devastate an entire civilization in Civ III days.
Also, after my war with Spain, I planted a settler in the now free territory. Built the city of “Groovy Spain.” Over time, I developed culture and even had 2 Great Artists develop their great work in the city, but Spanish culture was still dominant. My borders on that side never expanded. The Spanish border came right up to the city. I was never able to get the % of population more than %49 of my people. I tried to move a settler and some workers in there, but I was unable to have them join the city. Which was weird.
One complaint: the space for naming things is less than it used to be. I name my cities after my favorite songs, and I can no longer name my capital “Eyes of the World” which I always thought was a great name for a capital.
Enough chitchat, back to the game. This time, the One People will take over the world!
What do you mean? Even if you choose not to adopt it as your state religion, it still spreads among your cities.
“a catapult”? 
You should bring at least 4 or 5. Enough to bring the defense rating down to 0 in a turn or two and to suicide with.
I’m pretty sure that settlers and workers can no longer join cities in Civ IV. This is why I usually don’t fight limited wars… culture is a bitch.
So, I just finished another game in which I lost. Big shock.
I ended up founding 4 different religions, I have no idea if this is a good thing or not. Thoughts?
I never fought a single war, and all 7 Civs were pretty evenly dispersed across the continents. I led the whole game in game points as usual, but the #2 Civ beat me to the Space Race by about 12 turns.
A couple of annoying things that certainly played a part in my late game struggles was the lack of copper on my entire continent (and the whole map strangely as only one opponent had it and wouldn’t trade it) and the lack of coal anywhere near me.
I’ve sorted out the early game and feel pretty good about my tactics to expand and grow at the outset. I’m still pretty inept when it comes to the mid game, and figuring out a winning strategy. I don’t quite have a handle on the specialization of a city, and I seem to be hopeless at outracing the computer to either the Space Race or the Diplomatic conditions.
Military victories seem to be pretty much impossible in this game, and that pretty much precludes the domination victory.
Sigh, maybe I’ll figure this stupidthing out.
For what it’s worth, I won my third game on Noble yesterday. Not that the scores have been anything great (Harding-esque), but a win’s a win and I’m learning some new things (especially out of yesterday’s game).
[Bold]Omni[/Bold], I think that founding one religion is good enough. If you got the other ones by luck, then so much the better, but I wouldn’t actively try to get all of them. the reason I think founding one religion is so important is the money from the Great Shrine in the late-early/mid-game. Get the shrine build and get the missionaries out to rake in the cash, err, spread the word, I mean. Then often you can get another Civ to flip to the same religion as you, which makes a lot better situation if you’re going for the diplomatic win.
Also, I realize now that it doesn’t matter how friendly you are with a neighbor, if they take a peek into one of your border cities and see it’s underdefended, they’re going to try to take it. The Greeks took Yakutsk from me around 1880 because I think I had, oh, swordsmen defending it at that late date. So Al the Great had that enclave inside my territory for the ENTIRE rest of the game. I meant to roll over him, but the Aztecs attacked in the meantime, so it was never diplomatically or militarily correct to try to get it back. Monty was the number two guy, to my number one and he wasn’t going to go away.
The war against the Aztecs taught me a valuable, if simple, lesson. Overwhelming force and a combination of units seems to be the answer. Get Police State and build up, build up, build up. Artillery, tanks, and marines were my units of choice for eradicating the Aztec scum. Bombers and Modern Armor simply iced the cake later on. I rolled over the border and took two of his cities in the same turn. I can’t tell stress the importance of artillery to a successful attack. Reducing the city defenses is absolutely critical. Then the collateral damage from later artillery attacks is crucial for keeping your “tough units” from getting nicked up too much. That way you don’t have to stall the offensive by waiting to heal. Marines get fortified in the city and the assault rolls on.
Oh, another thing is, if you can get a unit, or even better, a bomber loose in the enemy’s rear, knock out their oil wells and their pretty screwed. That was a lot of fun.
Somewhere earlier in the thread somebody mentioned gunships being useless…I agree to a point. But if the enemy has tanks…gunships are absolutely great. Tanks really can’t withstand a gunship attack at all.
Again, I’m far from a wizard at this game. These are just my impressions. If anybody read through this lengthy garbage, I’d be interested to hear if you concur or not.
I’m weird in that, the games I like to play are on a standard pangea map, with all 18 civs on there (this can be done if you go into the “custom game” page). My last one I won a domination victory. The key is to go to war with a neighbor eary on, to get an early advantage, then you can slowly take on others.
I haven’t actually tried this yet, but from http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=141975,
I’ve seen that mentioned during the opening sequence when starting a new game.
Very good once you have Free Religion.
[Quote=Phlint
I haven’t actually tried this yet, but from http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...threadid=141975,
[/quote]
The thing is, when I have my units spread all over the map and want to re-group them, for the next war, it was convenient (in Civ3) to be hable to hit [H] and center the map on the capital, sending all troups there and re-stacking them, instead of trying to point to an uncertain location on the world map or scrolling. With 40-50 modern armor, it was easier, is all.
Some advice to Omni, go for an easier level, to find your way with the gameplay. I started playing as settler, which basically lets you be the first to discover all techs. This in turn lets you play a whole game to the end without getting killed by the AI, and you’ll find out first hand why certain decisions early on play a role in the end game.
With that experience, it’ll be a lot easier to jump to noble.
(At least, it’s what I did. It’s a quick gameplay too, you should be industrial in 4-5 hours.)