GOTM - 01: Pre Game Discussion

Welcome to the first pre-game discussion thread for the Civ4 GOTM.

This starting save was generated by Aeson. :)

Game settings:
Civilization: Rome (Leader: Caesar; Traits: Expansionist & organised)
Rivals: 6 (Random)
Difficulty: Noble ("even" level - the AI gets no bonuses, but neither do you!)
Map: Continents
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Waterlevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal

Victory Conditions: all enabled
Other options: all disabled (Raging barbs would be fun... but not the first game. ;) )


The starting screenshot is here:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/gotm01large.jpg


This month, as many people have not played much Civ4 (or if you don't have a copy of the game yet, have never played it, I have tried to provide a bit of starting info to help you with your thoughts on possible strategies.

OK - lets look at some of the issues.

Leader Traits

First up, Julius Caeser is Organised and Expansive.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/avatars/civ4julius.jpg

Organised:
-50% Civic Upkeep.
Double production speed of lighthouse, courthouse.


Maybe one of the weaker traits, especially in the early game. The early civics are fairly cheap, so the reduced upkeep doesn't provide much benefit. In the later game, cash-flow doesn't tend to be as big of an issue as in the early game, so again the higher civics can be supported with not too many problems.

Construction of lighthouses can be useful though - they provided one extra food / water tile, and helps grow a coastal city large enough that it can provide a good commercial boost to your civ. They require research of sailing to build them.

Courthouses are useful in reducing maintenance costs. To build them, you have to research Code Of Laws - this can be a good tech to get after early, especially if you have missed-out on one of the early religions (first to Code Of Laws founds Confucianism). In addition, to build the Forbidden Palace, you need to build 5 courthouses (and have at least 8 cities).


Expansive:
+2 health / city.
Double production speed of granary, harbour.


On noble difficulty level, you start with "+3" health, so with the expansive bonus, you are at +5 and can allow cities to grow to around size 5 before you have health problems (one food / turn is lost for every excess citizen above the health number). Settling on a source of fresh water (like that shown in the starting screen shot) will give you an extra +2 as well.

With the double production speed of a granary (which adds +1 health from Corn, rice and wheat; plus stores food like it does in Civ3), you should be able to grow cities reasonably large fairly quickly before you get health problems. Granaries can be built once you've research pottery.

The double speed of harbours allows +1 health from clams, crabs or fish. It also provides for an extra 50% trade route yeild in the city, which can help your commerce as well.

Unique Unit

You unique unit is the Praetorian; a replacement for the swordsman. It costs the same as an ordinary swordsman (40 hammers), and also requires iron (becoming available with Iron Working). The difference between the swordsman and the praetorian is that the praetorian has a strength of 8, compared to 6 for the standard swordsman.

The downside of the praetorian is that it does not have the 10% city attack bonus that the swordsman has. Still, with even a city raider 1 promotion, this unit can be very powerful in the early ages whilst cities are still being defended primarily by archers.

The Starting Screenshot

If you look really closely at the starting save (or if you want to see the full version, download it from here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/gotm01full.jpg)), you will see the following:

The starting location is on a hill, and on a river.
There are gems, silks and corn visible.
For you Civ3 players - you have no worker!

A river starting location is common in Civ4. As mentioned previously, it provides health for the city founded on it, but it also acts as a link to the trade network - any other cities built on the river (or connected to the river by roads) will be linked.

The Romans start with fishing and mining. With no coast in sight, the fishing may not be particularly useful, but mining will allow you to mine the gems, and therefore get benefit from them.

Undeveloped, gemstones provide +1 commerce on the tile, but the real benefit from them is when you mine them. A mine (and a connection to the trade route) provides one extra happiness bonus in every city. In addition, a plot that is worked by a city generates an extra 5 commerce and one hammer when mined! In the early game, this can be a significant boost to income.

The corn provides +1 food on the tile. Once you have researched agriculture (a first-level technology), you can build a farm that will add a further 2 food. Connecting the corn to the trade network will also provide one extra health to all connected cities (+2 in cities with a granary).

The other resource that you can see is silk. Silk doesn't become really useful until you research the calender. Before you have researched the calender, they provide +1 commerce from the plot. With the advent of the calender, you can build a plantation on the silks. This provides 3 more commerce, plus a happy face in every connected city.

One other feature that was brought to my attention was the number of forests in the starting aread. In Civ4, forests can either be chopped for 30 hammers (once you've discovered bronze working), or they can be left in-place. You can't plant forests (although they do grow randomly periodically!) but left intact, each forest provides 0.40 health to the nearest city, whether the forest is actually being worked or not. If they are worked, they provide +1 hammers over the base terrain. The decision on whether to chop them or not must be made carefully, but they can provide a nice bonus to rush an early unit or building.

The Civ3 players amongst you who have yet to play Civ4 may notice that there is no worker. In Civ4, workers have to be built, and in addition, technologies to do the basics (build farms, mine resources or even build roads) must be researched.

Ok - that's a bit of an introduction to the information presented in the startng screenshot. Now its over to you to discuss the implications and possible strategies.

We'll be starting this game when the first patch comes out - hopefully this won't be too long (but no firm ETA AFAIK).

Awesome :D

With praetorians on noble, winning the game by military conquest shouldn't be too difficult although I'm curious if the evil-geniousness of the civ3 gotms has carried over to leave us without iron :p

Looks like settling E or NE might be a good idea.

Anyway, great to see that you're so quick to begin the civ4 gotms, let's just hope that Firaxis releasees the patch soon so we can get going.

looks good :thumbsup:

btw, it looks like we start on a hill/grassland, which is actually a nice tile because you get some food from it as well as shields.
Corn is 1T N of the settler, gems are 2T E, but, due to the newness of the game, I can't find the silks? Is it 2T NW of the warrior?
I'm thinking perhaps settling 1T E would be a good choice, but I'll probably move the Warrior SW to the hill 1st.

Corn is 1T N of the settler, gems are 2T E, but, due to the newness of the game, I can't find the silks? Is it 2T NW of the warrior?
North, west and Southwest.

Personally, I like the resource visibility flag - I struggle to tell the difference between (say) silks & sugar. :ack:

ditto :lol: maybe you could post a zoomed out screenie with that because now I'm really confused as to the locations of the resourses (SW looks like a grass/forest to me, not a resource :crazyeye: )

ditto :lol: maybe you could post a zoomed out screenie with that because now I'm really confused as to the locations of the resourses (SW looks like a grass/forest to me, not a resource :crazyeye: )
I linked to a full-screen version in the first line of post 3. ;)

Get it here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/gotm01full.jpg).

Nice work Ainwood! I might just get sucked back into submitting GOTM again! :)

In Civ4, forests can either be chopped for 30 hammers (once you've discovered bronze working), or they can be left in-place. You can't plant forests (although they do grow randomly periodically!) but left intact, each forest provides 0.40 health to the nearest city, whether the forest is actually being worked or not.

I'm no expert at CivIV since I've only played it for less then a week, but here is what I've learned about forests.

You get 0.4 health for forests in the normal two tile radius (21 tiles) your city can work. So the break even points are 5 forests (+2) and 3 forests (+1).
You can only chop forests within your borders. However, these often extend outside of your city radius, so any forest not in your city radius is a prime candidate to chop.
30 hammers is a bigger deal then 30 shields in CivIII because you don't lose the excess. Go over and you get it on your next build item.
In some cases, chopping produces more then 30 hammers, I think 51. Not sure if this is terrain based or distance from city. Might be adjacent to city.
Chopping is quick, like 3 worker turns. Very, very efficient way to get early production.
You need bronze working to get the ability to chop, but it is very worth it in my opinion.
Some improvements on top of a forest (like building a mine) include the forest chop in the total time to complete, but I think you get the bonus hammers in the middle of the total time, as if you had chosen to just cut down the forest.
Other terrain provides a negative health modifier! Floodplains are -0.4 health and jungle is -0.3 health! Same rules as forests, the 21 tile radius around the city.


StanNP :cool:

I hope i'll get the damn thing to work after the first patch. I did manage to play up to about 1AD in my first game, but it crashes to often and i won't be able to have 1 hour sessions :( The starting moves will propably be moving warrior to the hill and if he doesn't see anything good settle in place. From my very limited experience i would say that going for an early religion is not a good idea unless you start with mysticism (which seems to be civ4 version of alphabet :D) because you may fail to get it and even if you do get it you'll have to delay growth too much. I would go for agriculture and start with building a worker. I know that this means that i won't be able to grow for 15 turns, but getting +3 food from corn earlier will quickly pay off imo. I'll emphasize food and grow the capital as much as happiness allows, then i'll start building settlers and workers. New cities will propably start with a granary hurried by a forest chop. The later game strategies will depend on the scoring system, which is not yet clear ;)

Great job Ainwood, nice for those of us without the game yet :D .

Forests are extremely useful, not only in chopping them initially, but later in the game you can build logging camps, for a great boost in production.

Settling on floodplains gives you a -3 health. They give you extra food, though.

(Question about chopping forest outside of your city radius, I'm assuming it gives the hammer bonus, right? I've never tried, in fear of lossing the bonus and three turns of a worker's time)

This is a pretty good position to start in. I'd like to join in, though I'm pretty horrible at Civ games (I've been playing Warlord mostly).

Final question, why are we waiting for the first patch? I can only assume it's with the hope that the patch'll fix many of the terrian/crashing bugs that people have had.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. I've started only a couple of cIV games...both on Noble, and I seem to be doing okay in both, but I'm really flying blind.

I don't have a feel for what to do with the terrain yet; the game clues you in with cyan circles over its recommended tiles to work, but I sometimes can't figure out why, especially when it doesn't seem to care whether I build a cottage or farm. My first thought is to move 1E to get more hills to work.

(EDIT: See below for link to this info) Is there a terrain table in the manual? I looked through the tables in the appendix but saw no terrain matrices. The civilopedia has some terrain, modifier and bonus stuff, but I saw nothing about hills in there or what affect the rivers have on terrain. I think the river just gives +1 commerce to each adjoining tile, right? (Just speaking of terrain effects here, not trade routes etc..) But someone somewhere on this forum seemed real excited about grasslands by rivers.

D'oh, I just realized I haven't tried mining flatlands yet...can you do that? In Civ3 I tried to balance tiles in general: mine the grass, irrigate the plains. Should cIV go the same way? Cottages seem to be popular, but I haven't found a need for money yet.

By the way, I've read that forests only grow on unimproved tiles, so in my games so far and in this game I'll try to leave some spots by forests untouched if I want a forest there in the future or if I just don't need the tile soon.

Calendar is needed to make use of the silk, but calendar obsoletes a couple of things...Stonehenge in particular, and whatever it is that gives you free obelisks (still Stonehenge?). I'm avoiding Calendar in a current game so as not to lose my free obelisks, but I'm losing out on a sugar bonus. Here we have the same issue with silk. Should we get calendar relatively quickly or put it off?

That river is longer than the ones I've had in my games. It could be a nice quick traderoute connector for new cities.

EDIT: Looks like someone made a terrain production matrix (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=136433)

(Question about chopping forest outside of your city radius, I'm assuming it gives the hammer bonus, right? I've never tried, in fear of lossing the bonus and three turns of a worker's time)The fail-safe method is to move a worker onto the forest. Mouse-over the forest chop icon, and you'll get a tool-tip message saying '30 shields in xxxx' - so you see where the shields will go. I think they go to the nearest city.


Final question, why are we waiting for the first patch? I can only assume it's with the hope that the patch'll fix many of the terrian/crashing bugs that people have had.Partly due to crashes; partly due to the peace-treaty exploit (you can get a civ to agree to insane deals like giving you all their cities, due to a bug).

HOT!!

I can't wait for some GOTM competition. Thanks to the staff for throwing this together!

Okay, after reading around and thinking some more:

I'm thinking settle 1S. This will give early access to 2 plains forests (1f 2p) and 4 grass forests (2f 1p), most of which are on a river for +1 commerce. This will give the governor early choices for food and hammer production. (I'm liking the way the governor handles the city so far...still don't trust it for worker actions, though.)

I won't touch the hills; I hope for them to grow forests. With agriculture the corn will be a food boost. Later when population is up and the hills are either forested (hopefully) or mined (if I have to or if they have iron/copper, or if I want to prospect for minerals) I can farm the forested grass by the river for a food boost to support working the hills.

1S should still be on the river for the trade bonus. With this many forests, the corn and this plan I think I would consider settling off the river if the land were beneficial because I think we'll have plenty of health for a while. However, since my preferred location is on the river anyway, I'll take the health bonus. (There's +2 health for settling on fresh water, right?)

I don't have the tech tree in front of me, but this looks like a very research-strong start. I'm not sure if I'd want to specialize some sort of tech rush or be happy that I can grab most/all the low techs and stay in the tech race. You'd think this could lead to a wonder play, but ... (next paragraph)

I think I'll let the city grow a while before making a worker or settler...in fact I may make the settler before a worker. The land is nice and I want high pop to take advantage of it. The flipside of this is I doubt I'll want to take time to build a wonder until after the first settler is produced.

EDIT: Also, since I'm counting on the forests here I won't want to chop in the city radius. I'll also avoid chopping by a tile I'm hoping the forest spreads to. I should have enough production to build something culture-producing, so by the time I'm ready for a settler my border should be big enough for me to find a choppable tile near the outskirts of the empire.

first some comments on stuff already posted.
btw, it looks like we start on a hill/grassland, which is actually a nice tile because you get some food from it as well as shields. have i been playing a different game? city tile still produces same thing as in civ3, 2 food, 1 hammer and (i dont remember if it makes money).
In some cases, chopping produces more then 30 hammers, I think 51. i'm fairly certain that the 51 is on games of different speed. fast games i think are 51 (though i dont remember the number, using yours), normal are 30 and epic are 20 something (21 iirc)
Some improvements on top of a forest (like building a mine) include the forest chop in the total time to complete, but I think you get the bonus hammers in the middle of the total time, as if you had chosen to just cut down the forest. i've had them come in at completion of the mine i was building (on a forested hill), so i think you're wrong there about the timing. and i have yet to find a worker action that builds on a tile (thereby removing the forest) that does NOT give a city the bonus hammers.
Settling on floodplains gives you a -3 health. They give you extra food, though. you sure that its the place you settle? i thought it was number of floodplains in city radius as StanNP posted 3 posts above yours.
I won't touch the hills; I hope for them to grow forests.having not yet had a forest grow (i improve all tiles i can) why would you want this? i mine hills as soon as i can. what effect does a forested hill give that i dont know about?

now for my own observations.
i see 4 silks on the map. (where warrior is, SE and E of warrior, and N of settler)
for the first turn, i'll move the warrior NE so that i can see if there's anything good on the tile SE of that. If it is a good one, then i'll move settler 1 east and settle, this adds the 3 unseen tiles to the east to the city (hopefully something good in there, i think one of em is a hill) even though it does make me lose the silks that the warrior is standing on, but one of 4 aint a big loss for the gamble on 3 additional tiles.
if the tile the warrior reveals (N+NW of settler) is a bad one (like plains or grassland with no bonuses) then i'll move the settler one South and settle. This leaves the city with a all the river squares it has now (ie settling without moving) and leaves it all 4 Silks and the gems and corn ofcourse. and i'm fairly certain this spot (1T S of settler) is still on the river, so still getting the health boost. but the important part to me is that it will add 4 unseen tiles to the city radius. with the rate of bonuses i've seen in my games so far, i think there's a good cahnce atleast one of the 4 has a bonus.

because forested tiles do not get the river +1coin bonus, and all 4 silks are on the river, and all 4 are in forests, i think one of the first tasks i'll have a worker do is chop down those forests and improve the silk tiles with whatever fits them best (farms or mines, if mines are possible, dont remember).
with the river bonus coin and the silk bonus coin, those tiles will be making 2 coins each. 2 of them are grassland under the forest, so that will be 3 food and 2 gold with farms. and 2 are on plains, so thats 2 food 1 hammer and 2 gold with farms. and with the huge gold bonus from the mined gems my research will go like as if i had a library up.

i like letting my cities grow to size 2 before i start the first worker, and i can usualy get a warrior out of the city by then to explore with more then just the one warrior i start with.

I'm in agreement Puppeteer. I believe I would also settle 1S. Though my first move would be warrior to the plains/hills 1SW. If I found a domestic animal resource in the tile 1SE from warriors hill, then I woud consider settling 1SW.

i'm fairly certain that the 51 is on games of different speed. fast games i think are 51 (though i dont remember the number, using yours), normal are 30 and epic are 20 something (21 iirc)I just checked the event log for my current epic game on a huge map, and verified that the forests yielded 45 hammers. I remember there were some higher yields, but for some reason only four of my logging endeavors registered in the log. I believe I logged at least a dozen forests.

Perhaps map size as well as game speed have a relation to the value of harvasted forests.

having not yet had a forest grow (i improve all tiles i can) why would you want this? i mine hills as soon as i can. what effect does a forested hill give that i dont know about?

I thought if the forest grew on the hills it would save me from mining them since a forested hill is the same production as a mined hill. (When you have 1-3 population or so you're usually not working a hill as they're a bit worthless unimproved and unbalanced after mining, so I thought I was giving them time to sprout.) But in a test game I've been playing none of the hills sprouted trees (although 3-4 flat grass tiles did over a looooong period of time), so I had to mine them, anyway.

Also I was thinking the forests would let me concentrate on building other things besides workers. But in my test game I ran out of things to build at about pop 3 or 4 and started the worker to connect a bronze resource that I found.

For my test game I restarted with Rome and these settings a few times until I had some flat grass forests, flat plain forests, a river and grass & plain hills. I went for pottery first since Rome gets to build granaries at half price. After that I went for Bronze Working and then Iron Working, so I didn't have many build options and had about 3 warriors and a granary before making a worker earlier than I had planned.

I'm babbling now, but the point is the work-the-forests gambit seemed to slow me down, and I had to improve several tiles before they had a chance to get a forest.

My 2nd and 3rd cities in the test game were by food bonuses (or flood plains) and mixed hills away from forests so I improved their tiles methodically, and those cities grew quickly and were very productive.

Given my test game I think I'll still settle 1S but plan on farming the grass on the river and mining the hills. If I need the food or the chop boost I'll chop forest on the river and replace it with a farm (simultaneously w/build farm command).

I'm still not sure what to do with the plains tiles...I guess I'll leave the forests on them or put cottages on them.

This seems to be a very good start for a first CivIV GOTM. My previous experience with the Mali Civ on Rhye's World Map with all those unhealthy floodplains arround has shown to me, that a strategy of maximizing food at all costs is not always the right strategy. This setting seems to be different, though.

If the first move of the warrior does not reveal anything spectacular, I will probably settle just on the hill with its defense bonus. My first build will be some units for exploration. This will also ensure that Rome will have some turns of undisturbed growth. With city size of three or four, I will build a settler. Probably followed up by another one or a worker.

The worker is not my first priority, though. There are enough good tiles for the first turns and no need for an early activation of the gem luxuries.

In the long run, I would like to leave five forest in the city radius for a good health bonus. The rest will be choped. Of cause the ones next to the river. The silk tiles by the riverside are probably the best choice.

Hmm... with the play-time somewhat reduced I definitely want to give this a go. :)

Furthermore, I am not burdened (yet) with any usefull knowledge or experience on this game, which makes setting up an early strategy much easier. :blush:

Let's take a look at what's interesting for Rome : granaries, lighthouse, praetorian (bronze and iron working) and later courthouses.
That means I'll probably start research on agriculture, followed by the wheel and pottery, then writing to get libraries.
I consider that more important than bronze and iron working right away. those praetorians won't be needed in the first couple of turns in the game.
All this means that we blatantly ignore all the religions that will be discovered around us. Oh well, one thing less to worry about (we won't be short on money anyhow, I think).
Edit : after pottery, I might go mysti-medi-priesthood-CoL, to get Confusionism, I mean, Confucianism.

First move will be to let the warrior climb the hill. I'm hoping he'll discover a nice coastline with clams or fish or something. Can't imagine the coast being far away if Rome gets part of its advantages from there (lighthouse).

I don't really see a point in moving the settler. I like the hill for defense (you never know), and I don't see any immediate compensations for the lost turn.

I'm also thinking of building a worker before a settler, to mine the gems first and then gnaw some corn. I might even build a worker right from the start. The alternative (a warrior) seems less useful for a couple of reasons :
- we already have one
- searching good spots for a second city is less urgent than it was in Civ3
- making contact with other civs seems also less important : nothing to trade anyhow.
All in all, the concept of early exploration seems to be devaluated a lot.


Some final notes :
- is the QSC also revived ? I hope so...
- Map created by Aeson, hèh ? Somehow that sounds reassuring. "Reassuring" as in "Welcome aboard this airplane. Your pilot will be Indiana Jones" : you're in for lots of excitement, but you know up front there will be a good ending. :D

Chopping a forest is best done, I expect, when you are building a Worker or Settler. That way you have less turns of zero growth.
It sounds like we will not have any health problems soon in this game - happiness will rather be the limiting factor on city growth - so I see no reason not to chop all the forests that we won't be working on.

I don't think I like settling on the starting tile, because I want to work that hill, and get another within my borders at the same time. So I am inclined to settle one tile east.

With only one resource (Corn) providing a food or hammer bonus, starting on a Worker right away (15 instead of 12 turns) sounds like the way to go. That should be long enough to invent Agriculture, too.

I'm not sure what to do next. I will study the advantages of Rome and make a plan.

Ok. I'm eagerly waiting for the file. :-)

Me too :bounce:
__________
http://img467.imageshack.us/img467/2391/civ69np.gif > [c3c]

@Ambiorix: "4otm", I like it! Good point on bronze & iron. It's important to know before settling, but maybe there's some time to grab another couple of techs before needing to know where the metals are. On the other hand I hate making warriors, and it seems silly spend time researching archers when we may have UUs available shortly after.

@everyone: An odd thing I didn't mention about my test game is that nobody would trade Myst and following techs to me. Nobody. I was researching Drama and Currency and such and the two close civs wouldn't trade me Myst long after the wonders were built and the religions were founded. At the time I traded I may have been an opposing state religion; no telling if that had an effect on this specific tree branch, but otherwise relations were okay. I finally started picking the techs up one by one between higher level techs, and the others still wouldn't trade any of the after-Myst tree to me.

A couple of different hypotheses explaining the resistance to trade: Maybe the AIs prefer to trade within a particular branch of the tree: post-Myst tech for post-Myst tech, perhaps. Or maybe the Myst branch is guarded more not just because of the religions and wonders but the powerful religious buildings they allow.

EDIT: Stop holding your breath for the 4otm file release. They said they're waiting until after the first patch, and I don't see a first patch yet. Try playing a practice game as the Romans..it helps. Does anyone know how to quickly reroll a start with the same parameters and name? I had to go through the options for each reroll.

I decided to get some practice last night and I started a game with good 'ol Ceaser. I came to the conclussion that it is actually far better to develop techs such as hunting, agriculture, wheel, pottery and develop infastructure early on. You get a much better lead than if you go for one of the early religions. I might go for Christianity or Islam .. who knows.

@Ambiorix:

I'm also thinking of building a worker before a settler, to mine the gems first and then gnaw some corn. I might even build a worker right from the start. The alternative (a warrior) seems less useful for a couple of reasons :
- we already have one
- searching good spots for a second city is less urgent than it was in Civ3
- making contact with other civs seems also less important : nothing to trade anyhow.
All in all, the concept of early exploration seems to be devaluated a lot.

I'm not really convinced by your argument. You won't need a worker for a couple of turns. At least until you research agriculture. The mine on the gems brings one happiness, which isn't necessary until you have a much bigger city. Therefore I would go for someting else.

One thing I would really like to discuss with you guys out there: Is it recommendable to wait with the production of food consuming units until the city grows to a certain size? I know there are a lot of die-hard statisticians out there. What about looking at the impact of both strategies: building workers and settlers first for quick expansion or building someting else for a better city growth. I know, this probably depends heavily on one's individual strategy, but there should be some general advises.

don't really see a point in moving the settler. I like the hill for defense (you never know), and I don't see any immediate compensations for the lost turn.p\
settlers and workers move 2 in civ4, so moving 1 tile does not cost the settler a turn, move 1 and settle on the first turn. (as long as you dont move into a forest or onto a hill)

I thought if the forest grew on the hills it would save me from mining them since a forested hill is the same production as a mined hill.
mine adds 2 hammers to a hill,
forest adds 1 hammer to a hill
if your reason for waiting for not mining hills was what you state, then i'll stick with my mining. ;)

i started a game with same settings as this one last night.
i found that the best thing, by far to do was forget settlers alltogether and just go strait for iron working (well after agriculture) and just take one of hte AI civs's second city.

so assuming that i dont need animal husbandry if there isnt a cows of pigs revealed in the city radius (in the hidden tiles) then my research will go:
agriculture
bronze working
iron working

the two warriors i'll have (build one while growing to size 2) will find the closest civ (not to mention hopefully some bonuses from huts)
the worker i build (after city grows to two) will chop down the forests under the silks to make those tiles give 2 coins a piece and help with production of the praetorians (once i get iron).
realy hoping/gambling that there's iron close to the starting location somewhere.
i've found that the AI places their second cities prety well (ie using quite a few bonuses) so i usualy keep their cities if they're relatively close to my capitol. i have yet to have a game where the AI didnt want peace a few turns after i've taken their second city from them.
as i'm going for the metals techs early, i'm hoping to have to fight mostly wariors or chariots and not so many archers (man i hate those guys)
if there's a bronze in the rome city radius then i'll make my initial attempt at a city capture with an axeman or two probably. those guys are actualy prety strong if they're not fighting archers in cities. then once iron comes in i'll be able to scare the AI into peace with my superrior units :)

One thing I would really like to discuss with you guys out there: Is it recommendable to wait with the production of food consuming units until the city grows to a certain size? I know there are a lot of die-hard statisticians out there. What about looking at the impact of both strategies: building workers and settlers first for quick expansion or building someting else for a better city growth. I know, this probably depends heavily on one's individual strategy, but there should be some general advises.
a couple of my first games i actualy play tested this.
i came to the conclusion that its best to get a worker as soon as possible.
the time you spend "growing" your city on undeveloped corns and rices is a waste compared to making a worker and then growing twice as fast after you put a farm (or pasture) on your bonuses.
at the same time i wouldnt recoment starting a worker on turn 1 because it usualy takes only 8 turns to get to size 2 (there's almost always a 3 food tile) and the second worked tile does two things:
1, it makes the worker be built by about 3 or 4 turns faster (so you only losing 4 or 5 turns over starting worker right away)
2. it (usualy) gives you gold also, so your early techs go faster.

the one time i did worker from turn 1 i found that once the worker was built, he had nothing to build. i still didnt have the wheel to build roads and mining was pointless cause the city needed food more hten hammers. and i hadnt gotten to animal husbundry yet (the city had cows and pigs, but no corn/wheat/rice)

edit: sorry for not putting these two posts into one.

mine adds 2 hammers to a hill,
forest adds 1 hammer to a hill
if your reason for waiting for not mining hills was what you state, then i'll stick with my mining. ;)

You sure about that? Everything I've read so far says both add 1 hammer unless there's a resource bonus the mine unlocks. I think this is the way it was in my game. I know I've seen forested hills give 3 hammers, and I know I've seen a mined iron hill give 4 hammers. I may have missed something, though.

However it's a bit of a moot point for me now as I waited half a gamespan and didn't see a forest grow on a hill, so next time I'm mining that hill--ideally shortly before I need to work it. (Assuming I have the food to support working the hill.)

@Puppeteer : credit for "4OTM" goes to Ainwood, who raised it in a different thread. Too lazy to search which one, though.

@CivCinque : Ainwood explains at the start of the thread that mined gems result in 5 commerce and 1 hammer. Seems worth it, no ?


Edit : it just struck me : 'Ambiorix' playing the Romans. Caesar would turn over in his grave if he knew. :lol:

@Puppeteer : credit for "4OTM" goes to Ainwood, who raised it in a different thread. Too lazy to search which one, though.I don't think it's actually gonna be called that, at least I hope not.

You sure about that? Everything I've read so far says both add 1 hammer unless there's a resource bonus the mine unlocks. I think this is the way it was in my game. I know I've seen forested hills give 3 hammers, and I know I've seen a mined iron hill give 4 hammers. I may have missed something, though.

However it's a bit of a moot point for me now as I waited half a gamespan and didn't see a forest grow on a hill, so next time I'm mining that hill--ideally shortly before I need to work it. (Assuming I have the food to support working the hill.)
yes, you missed something:
there are two types of hills (well 2 good types)
there's hill/plains, which gives: 2 hammers, 3 hammers with forest, 4 hammers with mine
and there's hill/grassland, which gives: 1 food 1 hammer, 1 food 2 hammers with forest, 1 food 3 hammers with mine.
in addition to that, a mined hill will give a coin bonus if next to river, a forest does NOT get a coin for being next to river.

this seems to be a common misconseption on the internet. an article in the single player civ4 articles forum has it wrong, and either it took info from somewhere, or everyone is taking it from there.
i've posted a correction.

people gotta stop reading and start testing (sorry to those who dont have game and cant test)

Great job Ainwood. It's very interresting to have all the information you gave with the description of the differents aspect of the game.

ROME. As I remerber Rome was the first GOTM1!!!!!

I'm looking foward to start my C4GOTM!!!!
When the patch will be released ?

LeSphinx

Anxiously awaiting the patch and my first GOTM!

I am anxious to try out this GOTM too for the 1st time.

Do we have an estimate on when the patch is due out?

Good work Ainwood and Aeson! I'll be trying this game when it becomes available.

Fot the people planning to start one S, there seems to be desert in the fog south of the hills... Would be a shame of a nice starting situation....

you sure that its the place you settle? i thought it was number of floodplains in city radius as StanNP posted 3 posts above yours.

After learning more about the game, and specificly, tile bonuses and penalties, you're right.

-Still learning the game

Good work Ainwood and Aeson! I'll be trying this game when it becomes available.

Fot the people planning to start one S, there seems to be desert in the fog south of the hills... Would be a shame of a nice starting situation....
dang, you're right. that does look like a desert. hopefully its an oasis or a floodplain.

Do we have an estimate on when the patch is due out?Unfortunately, no. :(

My *guess* is that they will be quite keen to solve some of these bugs & crashes sooner rather than later. I would hope that we'd get one within a week or so, but its just speculation.

Good catch on the desert S of the hills. Given that and leaving my tree-hugger idea behind I'm looking at 1E to settle now to maximize river grass and hills. There should be enough food to work all the hills, then the rest of the grass gets cottages. Chop and burn the forests!

For tech I'll want agriculture for farms pretty soon. We already have mining. I still want a granary early, and I think that will come before cottages or even roads.

This start looks so good that even if I see a coast just east or west I'll probably still settle 1E and make the 2nd city on the coast.

Just a thought : can you see from the screenshot whether the river is running east-west or west-east ? That would tell you in which direction to find the ocean.
In any case we'll know once we start up the game (sine the river is animated).

Just a thought : can you see from the screenshot whether the river is running east-west or west-east ? That would tell you in which direction to find the ocean.
In any case we'll know once we start up the game (sine the river is animated).

You might be able to see if you zoom in once the game starts. This will be my first GOTM =) However, I just "feel" that the ocean is to the south and west. It wouldn't look right if the river was flowing the other way.

I don't have any particular inclinations right now, it all depends on the surrounding terrain but it looks like eastward expansion will be the best thing to do.

Just a thought : can you see from the screenshot whether the river is running east-west or west-east ? That would tell you in which direction to find the ocean.
In any case we'll know once we start up the game (sine the river is animated).

Well looking at the erosion pattern of the river it looks like it is flowing west to east, but I don't know if that actually means anything in civ, I'll have to check when I get home.

I see people mentioning letting their city grow a little before making a settler and/or worker to help with technology. Well that's not really the case anymore like it was in civ3. The palace now gives you 8 commerce right off the bat. So even if you were to work a commerce tile with your extra pop it would only have a slight effect on your research rate. I will probably build a warrior before a worker. Unlike what someone else said, I think exploration is even more important in civ4 than it was in civ3. Sure you can't trade techs right away, but you really need to find the perfect city locations. Civ3 was all about packing cities tightly around your capital using every tile possible. Civ4 is nothing like that. It's about having little to no overlap and claiming as many resources as possible. So you really need to know what's around you.

I will move my warrior to the hill first. I almost always move the initial warrior/scout to a hill if there's one in range on the first turn just to see the most tiles possible, even though my settler won't be using the tiles down there. I agree with the assessment of there being desert south of the hills, so moving south would be a bad idea, unless by some stroke of luck they turned out to be flood plains. So the choice is either to move the settler east or northeast. If I move NE I'd lose one of the silks but I'd probably pick up some more grasslands and lose some hills. My idea is to make it a super research facility with the silks, gems, and putting towns on all the 2 food grasslands. So I'm not sure if moving E or NE would work best to accomplish that goal.

I'll also make sure to found a religion early before my 2nd town is built to ensure that Rome becomes the holy city. Then I can build the shrine and spread the religion to make it an even better super research city. Add in the +8 commerce from the palace and then take the bureaucracy/representation civics and build the Oxford University/Great Library. I could see Rome pulling in more beakers than the rest of my cities combined. That's the plan anyway.

I'll also make sure to found a religion early before my 2nd town is built to ensure that Rome becomes the holy city. Then I can build the shrine and spread the religion to make it an even better super research city. Add in the +8 commerce from the palace and then take the bureaucracy/representation civics and build the Oxford University/Great Library. I could see Rome pulling in more beakers than the rest of my cities combined. That's the plan anyway.Plus getting a library early, appointing a scientist and going for a great scientist to build an academy.

Aw man. When is the patch coming out? I really want to play this GOTM. It sounds like fun.

Ok guys, I made the screenshot in the map editor and ran a few scenario's. Worker from the start, or wait till size three. Worker first wins it hands down, check the thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137386

I built my first warriors after about 19 turns instead of normal 15 due to worker forest chop. So I had 4 warrior very soon to explore.

I tried a settler first game and REX to 4 cities, then started pumping praetorians. I kicked a$$ all over the place as they can easily handle fully fortified archers. But as you can imagine my economy was run into the ground; losing lots of gold. This kind of strat can only work if you build lots of cottages early on to support the war effort and science. You do need iron though, and as it is gotm we could very well be without.

I agree with Remconius on the fact that praetorians sweep out everything in the classical era. You'd better get ready for early warmongering...
So I consider getting iron working very quickly, maybe say agriculture ( to farm wheat), bronze working, iron working...
As for the starting position, moving 1 tile East doesn't make you lose a turn and settling in grassland worth the try...

I played a bunch last night; similar setup but random civ, and I got the Germans. Had a somewhat comparable starting area to this 4otm. (Actually most starts seem to be on river with a mix of grass, plains, hills and resources.) In that game I turned out to be on a rather small continent with one other civ, so I panicked and went for an all-out land grab. I felt like I was playing catch-up most of the game but definitely won the power game on my continent and was #2 of the civs I met after getting caravels.

After that game I see that a REX strategy is still viable, although not in the same form as Civ3. Maybe it's a SEX strategy: Strategic EXpansion. Given a high food start with the possibility of high commerce (river and/or plenty of grassland for cottages) such as this 4otm start I think I'll start trying harder to grab more area earlier. To do that I will place a priority on farming river grass tiles and putting cottages on other grass tiles. The river plains tiles will probably get farmed, too. I'll still want one city with some high hammer tiles available to make military; Rome can be that city or maybe city 2 depending on the location.

I'm beginning to see that food is flexibility in Civ4 much more so than in Civ3.

@remconius thanks loads for the comparison! Given that Caesar starts with roads (I think) and mining the worker will have something to do right away, but even if he didn't it might still be worth starting with a worker. And good catch on the 8c for the palace and early pop effect on research! You're right, there's not really a reason to wait on the worker. Thanks!

In that game I turned out to be on a rather small continent with one other civ

So do I!
With the same setup, I got a 3 continent's world: 2 smalls and one bigger containing 4 civs. I took romans and did the same as you .
Did your practice game also had 3 continents?

I have yet to complete a game of civ4, I've been trying to work out strategies. So I've been playing a few turns, loading from a save, trying something new, till I figure out what the right movers are.

I've learned a lot, including what works for one leader doesn't work for another. I found city sprawl doesn't work very well for most leaders, but for Rome (which I've been playing since the 4otm was announced) city sprawl does't hurt you. City placement is still key, building junk cities don't help, but distant cities (especially if they are on the coast) don't cripple you financially.

I've gotten the best results from doing like reconius said. Build a worker and clear-cut the capitol. Like I said I haven't played the game to absolute victory, I may be hurting myself later, but the early boost I think justifies it. To me the 30 hammers in the first few turns mean a lot more than the mid-late game advantage. My second city (probably), gets to keep their forest.

As far a technologies I'm going to speculate a little. Since we start on a river, I think I'll go agriculture, bronze working, iron working. Not getting wheel feels weird, but if you can build the second city on the same river (hopefully where the river meets the ocean), then roads don't seem crucial. The other games I started I went for Hinduism, but not starting with mysticism, I think foregoing religion early is probably best. Hopefully one of my next door neighbors will found Hinduism or buddism, and we can just take it over with Praetorians.

Right now, I'm planning on founding Rome on the hill I'm on (I plan on going to war early and think the def. bonus will be important), I'll start building a worker and then warriors till Rome hits 3, then a settler, clear cutting with the worker (once I get bronze working). I really wish that corn was on the river :(.

I'll take a warrior along the river in each direction and hopefully find some goody huts, and a mystic civ. If I don't have iron near me, and if I don't have a religious founding neighbor, I think I'll have a very less than impressive game and end up founding a bunch of cities on the coast (wherever that is).

I'm not an expert, and have only been playing a little over a week on civ4 and really never got into civ 3, I played civ1 in high school and civ2 in college. So I probably made some errors in my post (feel free to correct me), but I feel I'm picking up the game pretty quick and am looking forward to the "4otm".

-hendu

I haven't bought the game yet, but this GOTM looks like a lot of fun. I have to wait until this semester ends since I don't want to buy CIV IV too close to finals. I might not get good grades and my wife will probably not be too happy if I don't sleep for a week.

It would be fun though to get in on the first GOTM in the new series. Puts everybody on sort of an equal footing so the end results will be interesting.

I think that starting postion looks great- better than most that I've come up with. Good defensive postion, health bonus, plenty of capacity for growth, production, and commerce, and in range of all visible resources. Too bad Rome doesn't start with a scout- that'd be my first move, then a worker.

when is the savegame going to be released??

Don't worry about the late-game effects of clear cutting. You can build Workshops to restore the shields if you really need them.

In a core city with plenty of food, building cottages on top of forest is probably the best long-term investment.

when is the savegame going to be released??
When there's a patch to deal with the game-breakers. I suggest you read the thread!

Don't worry about the late-game effects of clear cutting. You can build Workshops to restore the shields if you really need them.


With a loss of food in the early-mid game and a loss of shields in the late game. Workshops are inferior to forests.

Looking at this I can see more strategy than I used to use. Cookie cutter doesn't work as well as it used to, though I think each leader has his strengths which can be a little cookie cutter for them. Have to see with time.

So, try for religion, go straight to IW or get Pottery and get those cheap granaries going. I think I'll forgo the religion for now, but the debate between finding where the iron is vs. early granaries is tough. Both have strong merit.

Start worker right away or get to size 2. With the barbarians in Civ4 it isn't as easy a choice. In the only game I've played so far my first warrior saved my first worker from barbarians. Don't know how odd that is. I'm thinking worker first, then lots of warriors until I hit size 3-5. Have no idea when to build that first settler, but I think it isn't earlier than size 3.

For initial moves, my warrior will go to the hill. I rather see more than see close as it wouldn't affect my settler move anyway. I don't like 1S as there might be desert down there, but I think 1E is prudent for the extra shields Rome will generate from the mined hills. If it were a plains/hill instead of the grassland/hills I'd consider settling in place for the extra hammer to start. Of course, there will be 3 squares we get that we can't see, but they don't look bad and may be useful.

I'd definately like to consolidate my continent. I did that my one game (with Saladin) on this level and though I was poor, I was able to recover and maintain the tech lead. By the time I started fighting other continents I was so advanced they rolled easily. I like the fact that captured cities can build culture. I found this useful to get to 10 culture quickly for expansion. Great for domination and could be skipped for conquest while still capturing LOTS of cities.

Oh, where, oh, where could our little patch be. :) Oh, where, oh, where could it be. :)

For those coming directly to the forums, there is a report on the CFC main page that a patch will be released next week.

In my test game I found all civs to be on one single continent. :)
There is still room on the map for another continent. I can't yet leave the coast though. The game may get finished before I can.
One of my cities has access to no less than 4 gold hills on plains and one iron source, but for the lack of food it can't work them all. A possibility to trade food between cities would be nice!

With a low level and a killer UU, there's little question what were supposed to do here. I'm thinking 4 farmed grasslands and 4 mined hills, for 13 base hammers at size 8, 17 or so with organized religion. Then pump out praetorians until you own the continent. Hopefully there will be a few more city spots like this for additional unit pumps.

As for tech, I'd beeline to iron, then beeline to feudalism/theocracy, stopping just enough to pick up the neccesary tile-improvement techs. The trick will be to get the war machine going before the neighbors get lots of culture. Let's hope we aren't surrounded by creative civs.

@Gato Loco: Organized reiligions only helps when you're on buildings, not units though.

Well just found out part of my strategy will not work. Holy shrines only generate tax revenue, it does not get converted into research. The game seems to use the same icon whether it's adding commerce or adding tax revenue which is what made it confusing. So given that and the fact that Rome doesn't start with mysticism I will not grab an early religion.

Well just found out part of my strategy will not work. Holy shrines only generate tax revenue, it does not get converted into research. The game seems to use the same icon whether it's adding commerce or adding tax revenue which is what made it confusing. So given that and the fact that Rome doesn't start with mysticism I will not grab an early religion.
Yes, but the extra tax revenue allows you to support more maintenance == more cities == more research (or simply a higher tax rate for longer). I have had success grabbing hinduism or buddhism in this manner.

With Rome on Noble, you will always get Hinduism if you beeline for it. The happiness and culture bonus is a great compliment to Rome's natural health and aggression.

The question is, how much does the delay to Farms/Chopping/Iron cost you?

With Rome on Noble, you will always get Hinduism if you beeline for it. The happiness and culture bonus is a great compliment to Rome's natural health and aggression.

The question is, how much does the delay to Farms/Chopping/Iron cost you? I've found that if I go for a religion, missing those techs early doesn't hurt me if I delay the worker by waiting for pop 3 or 4 to build it.

edit: I won't be going for early religion in this game, though.

I've played 3 test starts with the Romans on standard continents map. Every time Hinduism and Buddhism were taken in the first 10 turns of the game, always by spiritual civs. Now I don't think that's likely to happen every time, but it's definitely not an uncommon thing to happen. I think what you sacrifice in improving your cities is not worth the early religion. Hopefully one of the other civs on our continent will found a religion and I can conquer them and use theirs.

My latest test game with Rome I started on a continent with the Germans. I went with an aggressive settle approach, getting 6-7 cities before my neighbor had 4. I did not found a religion. I instead went with city improvement techs followed by iron working and then towards construction. I built primarily military early on. Lucky for me the Germans founded Confuscianism a few turns before I declared war on them. I took all his cities with only losing a single spearman. The catapults weren't even necessary. Anyway that game ended with a 1715AD diplomatic victory scoring 30k+ points. (edit: I built the UN in around 1580AD, but it's a lot harder to get civs to vote for you in civ4 than it was in civ3.).

I'm definitely going to use a similar approach in the GOTM except I won't bother getting catapults before going to war next time.

Oh yeah and if you claim the entire continent to yourself...be ready to deal with barbs for ages and ages before you can fill in all the cities.

Re an early religion, I agree that happiness isn't actually going to be a problem - and the religion on its own is not the main issue - its getting a priest and a great prophet that's the key - I don't think happiness will be a problem for quite a while (especially with the gems mineable and on the trade-route from the start).

I'll probably go agriculture first, then bronze working. Whether I go for iron working or maybe go towards writing and perhaps to alphabet will depend on what is nearby, including what other civs are around. If we're isolated, or have lots of room to expand, then iron working is a low(er) priority - I'll try to get research up and running instead via writing. If we have (really) close neighbours, then I'll be looking for iron working or perhaps horse-archers (again, depending on the resources) to make sure we can claim some decent land!

I tried a few non-religion starts with Romans.

Build worker, settler with 1-2 chops. Expand to 4 cities and start Building Praetorians to roll over the nearest/juiciest or religious opponent. You then have 7-8 cities, which is a great production bsae. The war revenue allows you to keep science at 100% for quite a while. Meanwhile you need to focus several high food cities on commerce with cottages to keep up with maintenance and your in good shape.

Seems very viable with Romans on Noble. I will probably go for that.

I'll move east to settle Rome. NE may cut down on the river tiles available for your second/third city.

Are we sure this save is going to be playable after the patch?

I am doing an interesting test on being aggressive.

Playing the Persians now on a huge map at Prince level. Using a very aggressive start. Rolled over neighbours quickly with immortals. Barbarian cities and missed resources forced me to get a few more cities. Looking at 12 cities around 750 AD, finance-wise is tough to manage. Building lots of cottages, markets and courthouses for money. People asked me to join wars but I really cant afford to get more cities. Science-wise I am keeping up, only one civ on my continent (13 out of 18 are on my continent) is more advanced. I missed out on pyramids which landed 500g and a few trades gave me gold to keep tech up. Only at 80% now, though.

I also am noticing it's difficult to dedicate cities to GP production. Need all people working to grow to my happiness limits, which expand slowly, and earn commerce. I have a few good-food cities so I should be able to catch up GP production and I think my 12 city base will allow me to get a decisive lead eventually.

Based on the outcome of this game I'll decide whether to go aggressive on the Romans in Gotm 1

Only at 80% now, though.

I think a lot of people are misled by the science slider. If you have a lot of cities of course your slider is going to be lower. But that does not mean you're losing out on science. I'll give you an example. Let's say you have 1 city that generates 20 commerce per turn. Let's say that 1 city has 1 maintenance cost. You can turn science to 100% and make 20 beakers per turn at -1gpt. Now let's say you found a second city. This city has 2 maintenance cost, so you have a total of 3 maintenance. But it also generates 20 commerce per turn. Turn science to 100% and you're making 40 beakers per turn at -3gpt. Well let's say -3gpt isn't good so you turn the slider down to 90%. Well even at 90% you're still making 36 beakers per turn at +1gpt. So sure your science slider is set lower, but you're making 16 more beakers per turn and 2 more gold per turn as well. It is actually a good thing to not be able to turn your science slider to 100%. If you can turn it to 100% and still make a profit then you're not optimizing your civ. Getting more cities will increase your research rate.

The only time founding more cities is a bad thing is when the amount of maintenance that city has to pay exceeds the commerce it pulls in after it grows. Sure a new city will set you back initially almost always, but it usually does not take long to make that city produce more commerce than it's costing you.

You have a point Shillen. But does that mean we should go aggressive and conquer cities continuously as long as you take breathers to build them up a bit?

Is continued expansion a viable strat?

Yeah I think continued steady expansion is optimal. Expanding too quickly equals a lot of cities at once that can't pay for themselves and could cripple your research in the short term. But then again it will get them up faster leading to really fast research once they're fully developed. So it could be worth crippling your research for a little while. There will come a point where your empire is big enough and it's not worth the trouble getting more cities. But in my experience you can grow quite large before you reach that point. Also you must factor in the cost of the war on your infrastructure. If you're building a lot of military then you're not building universities and stuff.

I played my practice game as the Romans. (Exact same settings as the upcoming GOTM.) If I can pull off my strategy twice in a row I think I will have a competitive score! :)

It seems the Romans are ideal for building coastal cities. Building granaries and lighthouses twice as fast really sets them up. Actually, I think Expansive is a great trait.

Going for the later religions seemed to work out well for me. I spent the beginning of my game focusing on infastructure and military, which didn't leave much room for religion. However about the time I discovered taoism I had a few cities that were ready to build monastaries, temples, and missionaries.

What my practice game taught me most of all is the value of going to war early. I was on a continent with two other civs - destroyed the Chinese in the medieval period and the Persians during industrial times. (That will teach those vile Persians to trade with me and adopt my state religion.) My empire was so big I was 50 votes short of passing UN resoutions by myself.

I'll move east to settle Rome. NE may cut down on the river tiles available for your second/third city.

Are we sure this save is going to be playable after the patch?We certainly hope so. As I understand it, the patches will be backwards-compatable, so the next version should load an earlier save.

If not - absolutely worst-case, we'll generate a save with the same map parameters and edit it to have a land area identicla to the starting area in it.

Plains hill is the only 2-hammer city tile in Civ4 (similar to Civ3's plains fur).

I will start by moving the warrior SW to the plains hill. If the tiles revealed are as good as the ones at the start, I will spend 2 turns moving my settler there.

I will start by moving the warrior SW to the plains hill.

I will do the same to get a look around, but I'm very unhappy about the lack of +food tiles and about not being on the coast. If the revealed tiles from the plains hill don't include more +food (flood plains would work), I'm going to walk the settler down river for a turn or two (NE?) and hope to find the coast with a +food water tile, then start on workboats right away.

StanNP :cool:

looking forward to this. It will be my first GOTM ever. And if you found a religon you wouold never have to change it when you learn another one right? Since the effects of all religons are the same. The only problem would be if someone converted you somehow

The reasoning is that you can adopt a religion which gives happiness and culture in all cities with that religion. The Religious civics give more benefits to cities with state religion. So the best religion is the one in most of your cities.

The other factor is foreign relations. It could happen that a majority of powerful nations adopt another religion. You can do two things, convert yourself or others. Build lots of missionaries to introduce your religion with them and once there is a fair share in the rival nation, you can ask them to convert or they might convert by themselves. Or you can build a monastery in one of your cities with the global majority religion and convert your own cities to the rival religion, adopt it as state religion and see your foreign affairs skyrocket.


If you have more than 1 religion in your cities you could convert from one religion to the next depending on who you want something from. Especially with spiritual trait, otherwise you find yourself in anarchy.

By the way, any word on the patch?

Personally, I wouldnt mind starting this game without the patch if it's going to take weeks before it is released. We can have a common agreement not to use the peace exploit, I guess the end game movie would reveal this anyway, or not?

remconius I agree with you. Let's play C4OTM!

What is the peace exploit you talk about ?


LeSphinx

Is continued expansion a viable strat?

Although I've only played one game (which I did on noble), I'd say absolutely. I went for domination as quickly as I could. After I conqured my continent (2 others) with War Elephants and Catapults I was down to 20-30% science, but by the time I met all the other civs I was still in the tech lead. Courthouses, the Forbidden Palace and developing these cities returned me to 80-90% science as my cavalry was wiping up the rest of the world. At the very end I had tanks against longbowmen.

remconius I agree with you. Let's play C4OTM!

What is the peace exploit you talk about ?


LeSphinx

I think it is a the main exploit that needs to be patched. Havent experienced it myself, but from what I've read you can get a civ to hand over a lot of his cities on negciating for peace.

Thanks remconius.
I never had. When I was at war, the AI nevers want to giveme his cites in order to make peace.
LeSphinx

i encountered it. didnt realize it was a bug untill way later when i read that there was a peace treaty bug.

not quite sure i SHOULD explain it here (its not against some rules or something is it?), but just so people dont accidentaly use it like i did.
edit put it in a spoiler tag just in case:

basicaly, when you propose peace, only one side can "pay" for the peace. you cant trade tech at the same time as declaring peace for example. one side pays the other for peace, and for peace only, not peace and a resourse or something.
and when you TRY to do a trade along with the peace treaty then the game pops up a message box explaining that.
the bug, is that after it explains that to you, the ai for some reason starts thing that what is currently shown on the trade screen is a strait peace deal (as aposed to one where its peace and they give you all but one of their cities and all their techs) so they will accept it.
it may actualy be thinking that it (the ai) is proposing the current deal.
so you can get anythign and everything from them that way.

in my game, i was trying to get monarchy from the english for stopping the slaughter i was bringing to their empire. she wouldnt give it when i demanded it. but then when i figured, ok, fine, i'll give you peace and literacy and you give me peace and monarchy?
tried adding literacy to the deal on my side, got the message "only one side can pay for peace", clicked "ok" but then the options were "we accept your proposal" or something, but monarchy was still on her side of hte table. so i took the offer, and got the monarchy and peace.
10 turns later when the peace deal ran out i attacked again with fresh troops. lol.
anyway, the AI was not going anywhere near giving me anything for peace. she was willing to take a straight peace treaty, but when i wanted her to pay even one gold, she wouldnt have it. but with the bug thing, she gave me a great tech that only she had, and i realy needed (had wine next to biggest city)

I think you were right to post it. I thought about asking for a city to make an inevitable conquer happen quicker. Now I won't do it.

Im thinking (or rather finding) it useful to center Rome on wonder production after settling a couple/few decent city sites, rather than having her pump out praetorians. The army can come from my secondary and tertiary cities.

If I get the wonder, Im happy, and if I dont, I get loads of cash which enables me to keep my science slider at 100% or near to it. Im also thinking the parthenon can give me a good edge in my warmongering strategy.

Since praetorian seem to be able to handle just about anything thrown its way when properly cared for, I dont find the gobs of units my capital can produce to be strictly necessary for military victory.

I'm playing a game under the same conditions right now, and that strategy seems to be ideal. As the capital, Rome is too productive to not be building buildings to enhance its tremendous hammer/beaker production. My second, third, and fourth cities were more than enough to pump out enough swords to roll over (most of) Japan. The AI HEAVILY defends capitals, and I think you'd need more of a combined arms strategy to take them, but I severely crippled them at least.

On this level, happiness becomes a problem at size 8, and there's no lux slider to use either, so getting luxes early is important if you don't want Rome to be crippled. (In my game, we had Wines and Gems on our continent, and all the Gems were in Japan, so Rome went through a few growth/starvation cycles due to WW.) I was one turn short of getting Monotheism, and that's because I detoured to get Pottery, so it's entirely possible to get that, or possibly even an earlier religion. (All the religions were founded on the other continent through the early ADs in my game, so there wasn't any to spread here, unfortunately.)

This game is most likely going to be the first Civ4 game I play through to the end, since I barely have any time to play at all. (It took me 3 days to get into the ADs in my current game.) Is this first game going to have an extended or a shortened deadline? If it isn't due at the end of a month, is something going to be done to synchronise the game schedules to the months?

About the Forrest discussion, forrests have sometimes given me up to 100 shields, but usually its around 50. And you can even rush wonders with them. (Which you can with wealth/pop rush too as long as its not a project, but a building style wonder).

And as someone said, saving the forrest for its +Health (+0.4 per forrest or +1 for 3, +2 for 5 forrest tiles) and the possibility to build a Lumbermill on it increasing production, is a good idea.

Long time lurker, long time civ player (hooked on Civ I), first time poster coming out of the woodwork to sign up for this game of the month (may I suggest IVOTM?)

Forum ate my first post, here's the short version.

I'm torn between settling in place or 1E. 1E would lose one silk and the hill def bonus, but pick up a bunch more river tiles (which would likely be had to get 2nd a city to work without compromising its location) and result in a more rounded city.

The amount of commerce in the screen is excessive. Founding in place and making a quick move on calender would make Rome a commerce dynamo, perfect for a charge down the tech tree. It's almost too good, enough to make me want to ask "Do we have iron?" With iron nearby a better strat would be to go 1E, get iron working early and unleash the pain. IF we have iron. I may have to flip a coin.

To clear up the discussion of forested hills: early game mining it is better, both for the point of production and the point of commerce if by a river. Once you have machinery you can stick a lumber mill in the forest, making up the point of production and the river commerce making the two identical (excepting the forest's health). Once you railroad the tile, you gain an extra
point of production from the lumbermill, making it superior to the mine late game. It's a question of short term vs long term benefit.

Mines can also be railroaded, so the only lategame advantage is +0.4 health.

Didn't realise that, I may have to rethink my strategy.
So it comes down to early production (and the 30 chop bonus) vs health and (if you switch to ecology) happiness

Forest give you 0.4 health all the time, just as jungles cost you 0.4 health all the time. Ecology has nothing to do with the benefits of health from the forests.

Chopping all the forests can be a mistake, leave a few close, and just maybe they will regrow, but not on an improved tile. You can chop outside of the city radius, and inside your culture border and still recieve the hammers.

Time to go and practice up on my !V skills, and play this one.

Started many CivIII GOTM's but never finished.

Never really got into III

I played last night a small game on a tiny map. I've played the Romans.
Just to experiment again me first production...

At size 2, I produced a worker. Meanwhile, I research animal husbary and agriculture (I had whealt and horses near Rome). Rome had a consider boost in food/Production and commerce after I improved the 2 tiles!!!!!
I was better the develop my city instead of building a settler.
I will try to experiment myself the choping strategy of the forest in order to improve the city production for specific important thing...

LeSphinx

As it's noble you can get away with a worker first. Improving the tile from 3F to 5F has a huge effect. Do a chop or two can still get you a warrior/settler out pretty quickly. But even without chops you'll come out ahead with worker first.

Opening Move/Strategy/Thoughts

I would send my settler E.
I would move my warrior SW.

By going E with the settler, I would have access to 12 river tiles.

5 hills [2 plain, 2 grass, 1 unknown]
6 forests (with 3 silks) [1 plains/forest, 5 grass/forest]
5 grasslands (with 1 gem source and 1 corn)
2 unknown tiles, probably more grasslands.

This would give me a good jolt of food, a lot of commerce and a lot of production capacity.

By going SW with the warrior, I would be scouting the location for my second city. Unless someplace blows me away, the second city would be on the same river as Rome. 2W from the warrior is plains and directly SW is a hills/plain which can generate 2 hammers in the city itself. I also like this area because it would anchor down the abundant silk and give it at least one tile of grassland and silk. The north end of the river has cons, for my concern it would be a wall of jungle, which the northeast/north suggests.

Founding a religion can also provide great recon. Here's how it works:

1. Found a religion.
2. Crank out missionaries to convert nearby empires.
3. Develop a great prophet and build your religion's special building at your religion's holy city. (The city it was founded.)

The building generates 1 gold per turn per city that has your religion. You also get to view each city with your religion and its surrounding areas. Religions also spread on their own; convert another civilization's two largest cities to your religion and it will spread to their trade partners like the plague. I managed to convince 4 civilizations to convert to Hinduism with just 5 strategically-placed missionaries.

With the Romans, I think it'd be easier just to conquer another religion's holy city early and use that instead.

Someone mentioned it looked like deserts to the south. I'll point out the jungles to the north. That means Rome's in the southern hemisphere. Now most of the temperate terrain will be to the east & west (drifting a bit south), but if the world has northern & southern continents instead of western & eastern ones, a port in the jungles to the north may be useful.

Jungles aren't so bad in civ4 as civ3. It doesn't take long to chop them down at all. The health concern sucks on higher difficulties but it's hardly noticeable on noble. And the great thing is once you chop them down that's all fertile grasslands underneath. The city will start a little slow but will be a great city later on.

Anyone considered moving southwards to get one of the plain hills for a 2food 2 hammer 1 commerce starting city ? (plain hills add a hammer to starting city) Then just mass out warriors and get the first close nation :) Works as a charm on noble. Especially if you go straight for bronze and chop barracks then warrior then either axemen or go for archery if you dont have copper nearby. (or chariots if horses nearby.)

And after you have ruined your economy that way? :)

Thats easy. Connect every city with roads. (for trade rutes) Try and attack cities on rivers. Make open border for more lucrative rutes with other nations. and BUILD roads to theyre cities.. it pays off.. Go for harbour or commerce. Organized trait will help a lot also. if you ever get down to 20% or lower stop expanding asap and focus on getting your economy up..when its good to go again expand again :)

One of the reasons i love civ4 is that you have to think all the way and not madly expand etc with no spesific purpose.

Another trick to keep your early economy going is to worker chop a wonder and not let it finish..let the computer have it and you get a lot of gold for it :) Keeps you going at 50-80% research slider a lot longer :)

In my test game I found all civs to be on one single continent. :)


I did a test game last night. Rushing for Iron Working only to discover I was the only one on my island. Praets did take a Barb city for me, though, which ended the game as my largest city. Lost a space race to the Russians. :sad:

(Note: I hope the following isn't considered cheating or spoiling - one could easily calculate my results without simulating the starting location; there are only 7 more or less common tiles that matter, so the results apply to most situations and not only gotm1)

I recreated the exact starting location on a duel map for testing purposes, and played the first 50 turns over and over again to get a definite answer on when to build the worker.

There are differences in the outcome, but not as big as you might suspect.

It's obvious that settler first is bad, since it takes 25 turns, and there's no way to get a total population of 7 in the following 25 turns, at which time your capital otherwise can pump out settlers at rate 8-9.

So I started with worker or warrior, built granary, then barracks, finally a settler, and always did one cop. I didn't change gov or religion to get comparable numbers of turns. The results are as follows:

Worker first: Everything finished after 53 turns. Total science value 1090, improvement value 33 turns (5 were lost due to movement and waiting for techs)

Worker at size 3: Also exactly 53 turns. Science 990, improvements 25. A small production bonus (obelisk prebuild).

Worker at size 3, but chop to rush granary before irrigating the corn (my worker even waited 2(road)+2 turns on the silk for bronze working): Took 1 turn more (54), but 1 additional warrior was built. Rest exactly as above, 990/25.

Worker at size 4: 54 turns, science 930, no additional warrior.

Conclusion:
It doesn't matter much if you build your worker first or at size 3. Building it first looks slightly better due to science (100 equals about 4-5 turns at this state of the game) and 2 more improvements, but waiting until size 3 might give you the extra early commerce to grab a religion - plus, you don't have to fear to lose your city immediately to barbarians ;). It might even pay off to wait until size 4 if you deliberately focus on founding an early religion.

What about worker at size 2?

These calculations seem wrong to me.
There is no reason for the early worker to have idle turns.

What about worker at size 2?
Just checked it: Finished one turn earlier, with 2 warriors built, 990 science and 29 effective worker turns. It doesn't beat the science output of "worker first", but otherwise it seems to be the best option! At first warrior prebuild, but switch to worker at size 2. Move worker on silk, buid road, then chop. It's possible to finish the warrior and get pottery before chopping is finished. Then irrigate corn. Tech order: Road, Bronze Working, Pottery, Farms.

@Ribannah:
Certainly there's no need for idle worker turns (except when moving into forests and hills), but my goal was to get 7 pop + barracks + settler at the earliest possible date.

That confirms my (untested) suspicions that worker at size 2 is often the best choice. Very nice test.

I have a bad feeling that there is some trick here; everything seems too good to be true. We must either have no iron or be stuck on a small island and have no enemy civs to kill with our prats until after astronomy when they are no longer any good.

Anyway, as most are saying I let the warrior go up to the hill and take a look around, then most likely settle on the hill or potentially 1E. If the projected growth is less than the time it takes to build a warrior, I build the warrior then worker. Otherwise build a worker and get to chopping.

As for tech, go for things relevant to infrastructure first. Agriculture is obvious so you can get the food bonus from the farm. After basic infrastructure can be built I might go for Archery to defend against barbs but then I make a beeline for Iron Working so I know where to settle. Early religions are unimportant to me at this point. I might go for CoL for Courthouse if my empire is growing too large (by way of prats of course) and Confuciansim would be a nice bonus there. Either way, on noble this shouldn't be too bad for a first game.

Don't make it out to be worse than it is. If you expect the worst to happen, you'll be too cowardly to risk anything. What I'd expect is a twist, not a punishment.

Take the Roman leader for example: straight Conquest/Domination, right? My basic instinct is to wipe every civilization off the map. But we have not one, not two, but three silk trees next to our starting position. That screams trade goods to me.

I'd predict a partial Conquest game: you have to choose your allies and enemies carefully. Make pals with two or three mostly harmless civilizations, adopt their religions, open trade routes and exchange technologies. Since Continent games usually have multiple civilizations on both continents, this is my plan:
1. Find technology/religion-oriented civilization on my continent. Make friends with them; seal the deal with silk.
2. Quickly wipe out any nearby aggressive civilizations before they become a problem.
3. Expand throughout my continent while leaning towards Astronomy. Build a fleet of caravels, fill them up with missionaries. Send them to the other continent and find a medium-strength civilization. Offer them something for Open Borders and quickly convert their entire civilization to my religion, building an alliance.
4. Use their land as a base for my invasions into enemy territory, because invading by sea sucks.

My goal is to win via Domination while making allies with two civilizations: one on my continent and one on the other.

I have a bad feeling that there is some trick here; everything seems too good to be true. We must either have no iron or be stuck on a small island and have no enemy civs to kill with our prats until after astronomy when they are no longer any good.


I doubt they would do that, especially on the first gotm for civ4. Adding challenging situations (like starting on a continent by yourself sometimes) is great. But doing it when you have a civ with one of the best UU's and it's in the classical age would be wrong. It would just make the game less fun. More challenge=good. Less fun=bad.

These calculations seem wrong to me.
There is no reason for the early worker to have idle turns.

I just checked. I can have Rome maxed out in 40 turns (2400 BC), and build the first settler in 46 (2160 BC).

I just checked. I can have Rome maxed out in 40 turns (2400 BC), and build the first settler in 46 (2160 BC).
With how many chops and which buildings?

For me 2160BC means turn 47. In your counting, with 1 chop I get everything at turn 52, settler taking the last 9 turns. At size 7, one chop to rush settler equals 2-3 turns. So I guess with 2 chops for granary and 1 for settler I could achieve the same results.

However, it might even make sense to build worker at size 2, then rush a settler with 2 forests. That will take exactly 8 turns, so you'll get your first settler at 8+12+8=28(27). What will you lose compared to the 46 deal? The production value of the maxed out city times roughly [40/5 - 40/12 = 4.7] turns...which are about 40 shields. You'll also lose a total commerce value, which can be very roughly estimated to 100-200 science, depending on when using the mined gems.
Your second city should make up for the 40 shields within the 20-30 extra turns, but more importantly it will be much more productive in the following 20-50 turns.
The only downside I see is that it will be practically impossible to grab an early religion this way.

3. Expand throughout my continent while leaning towards Astronomy. Build a fleet of caravels, fill them up with missionaries. Send them to the other continent and find a medium-strength civilization. Offer them something for Open Borders and quickly convert their entire civilization to my religion, building an alliance.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to convert your civ to their religion?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to convert your civ to their religion?
You can't if you don't have at least one city with their religion, and you won't want to if not the majority of your cities already got this religion: For every other town you'd lose one happy face and 20% production if in Thecracy.

With how many chops and which buildings?
Just one chop for the Settler, and only the granary finished of course.

However, it might even make sense to build worker at size 2, then rush a settler with 2 forests. That will take exactly 8 turns, so you'll get your first settler at 8+12+8=28(27). What will you lose compared to the 46 deal? The production value of the maxed out city times roughly [40/5 - 40/12 = 4.7] turns...which are about 40 shields.
Since you don't produce if you are to build the settler at the end of the city's growth, you just lose the two forests.

A valid alternative is to build a second worker at size 3, because that allows you to chop for the granary which reduces lost time to 4 turns to max out. That may well be worth it.

4. Use their land as a base for my invasions into enemy territory, because invading by sea sucks.


Ah, now there's a gold nugget if I ever saw one. I can't believe I never even thought of doing that. I guess since I couldn't do that in civ3. That makes overseas wars much more manageable.

I learned that my second game. I was playing the Japanese on a Continents map and going for a Conquest victory. I ran into Hapshetut early in the game and made an alliance with her. Technically I should've wiped her off the map, but I got a lot of bonuses for it and doubled the amount of tech I got. I decided to make up for it by immediately declaring war on the other continent. Stupid, stupid idea.

First, I declared war when I didn't have many units ready to go. I spent 10 turns preparing for war and by the time I got them over there (another 10 turns) and started blowing **** up, my populace was already getting war weary. In addition, France had enough time to build up a defense. I was fighting them on their home turf and the only reinforcements were 9 units every 20 turns from my galleons. By the time we signed a peace treaty, I had only captured one useless banana port. I should have feigned peace, waited until I had 5 fully-loaded war galleons right outside his borders, and then declared war by blitzing straight into his first city.

Second, I should have made a deal with one of the continent's other civilizations. Not only would I have been able to use their land to store my troops, but I could've convinced them to help me declare war on France. They would keep them occupied for a dozen turns or so, and I'd even want them to capture a couple cities themselves as well. Their captured cities' culture would plummet to 0 & relieve the pressure on my conquests. I wasn't thinking of that, though. I was being a dumb brute.

Anyway, if you want to have a quick Domination victory on Continents, you need to get familiar with galleons. Circumnavigate the globe first to get the +1 Naval movement bonus. Invest in missionaries to start fragmenting the other civilizations; odds are they all have the same religion and you don't want an entire continent hating your guts. Having a couple friends (you can keep in line) makes all the difference.

Given the facts that:

1) There's no patch in sight and it's already the 11th,
2) In the United States, there's a big holiday coming up (Thanksgiving) which will send a lot of people on the road for long weekends, and
3) The game doesn't work on most laptops

With that in mind, I wonder if it makes sense to extend the deadline on this GOTM. I guess I see a few options for the GOTM to consider:
1) Extend the deadline to December 31, and we get a long first "month" mfor the GOTM.
2) Extend the deadline to December 15 or so, start the next GOTM with a January 31 due date, and thereafter, we're down to one month/one game.
3) Move the GOTM off the calendar month (so the GOTM would run from the 15th to the 15th, for example)
4) Say "To hell with you Americans with your silly holidays" and if people can't make the deadline, then so be it.
5) Start the game now without waiting for the patch.

Probably there are other options I didn't think of.

Wait for the patch and then make a decision after we know for sure when it is. Hell it could be weeks away for all we know. I know there was that little news clip on the main page, but that was a tech support email to a user. I doubt the guy expected his email to reach the civfanatics main page or he wouldn't have said it. Likely firaxis is finding several other important issues to patch in and doesn't want to do them separately and could push the patch back farther and farther.

We will give you a month (30 days) to play the game regardless of when we start it. We'll sort-out the schedule for the second GOTM once we have the first one up-and-running. Probably start it on the first of the month anyway.

We will give you a month (30 days) to play the game regardless of when we start it. We'll sort-out the schedule for the second GOTM once we have the first one up-and-running. Probably start it on the first of the month anyway.

:goodjob: Cool! That's great to know. I figured you guys had probably thought about this.

Any word on the patch? I would really like to get this game going.

Maybe we can just start this as a learner game. For fun more than for rank and to learn from each other's experiences.

We'll call this IVOTM 0, and start with 1 when the patch is released..

I'm looking forward to this gotm. I played afew conquest gotm's and generally got burnt out on civ 3.
I picked up IV last week, and I have contracted one more turn syndrome yet again.

well after a 2 year hiatis from civ I found out that civ iv was out and went straight to the shops and bought it. I think that the last time I played a GOTM It was when ainwood was just starting out as the GOTM creator. is Cracker still around?

4. Use their land as a base for my invasions into enemy territory, because invading by sea sucks.


This will help a lot if it works, but there's a hidden gotcha! If the civ you have open borders with to use as a land base cancels the open borders, your units move instantly to somewhere outside their borders. This is actually worth play testing to see where they teleport to. What if every plot on the continent is inside someone's borders, and you have closed borders with everyone else? Do your units appear on a deserted island somewhere? :eek: If you're already at war with the target do they land inside enemy territory?

This will help a lot if it works, but there's a hidden gotcha! If the civ you have open borders with to use as a land base cancels the open borders, your units move instantly to somewhere outside their borders. This is actually worth play testing to see where they teleport to. What if every plot on the continent is inside someone's borders, and you have closed borders with everyone else? Do your units appear on a deserted island somewhere? :eek: If you're already at war with the target do they land inside enemy territory?

Good point. So make sure you have good relations with them. If your relations are borderline it's probably not worth it. But I've never had a civ that was pleased with me cancel open borders.

Another contribution to the forest discussion: unless you need the health benefits, in the late game workshop + state property is better than forest. I would almost say that state property is unbalanced, especially if you manage to get it early with the pyramids.

Pyramids only gives you the 5 government civics (first column). You still have to research the other 20, including State Property.

Any word on the patch? I would really like to get this game going.

Maybe we can just start this as a learner game. For fun more than for rank and to learn from each other's experiences.

We'll call this IVOTM 0, and start with 1 when the patch is released..
i whole hartedly second this proposal.

i'm having a difficult time finishing my games (have left 3 already at the point where its prety clear i'll win, but not actualy won it). playing the IVOTM would make me finaly finish a game, which i realy should do. got far enough in this game to realize that i should have been using workshops much more then i do (i HATE them early on), and there's probably other things like this that i would learn from finishing a game.
Pyramids only gives you the 5 government civics (first column). You still have to research the other 20, including State Property.
which is why i've completely stopped building them.

It's really nice to have Police State in a warmonger game, so I tend to target the civ that built the Pyramids. I will try to build them if I have stone connected.

Pyramids are great because you can access Representation or Universal Sufferage early. I prefer the happy-face/science bonus of Representation myself. Especially in the early game, where the population is capped by happiness.

It's really nice to have Police State in a warmonger game, so I tend to target the civ that built the Pyramids. I will try to build them if I have stone connected.I did something similar in my last game. Built the Pyramids myself and became a police state around the time of catapults and macemen up until I got a domination victory.

Can someone who has created the opening scene in world builder upload the file?

Any word on the patch? I would really like to get this game going.

Maybe we can just start this as a learner game. For fun more than for rank and to learn from each other's experiences.

We'll call this IVOTM 0, and start with 1 when the patch is released..
I'm with you. We can use this one to test the mechanics of the IVOTM.

Looking at starting position, I think I may try the initial spot. The defensive properties will make this pretty tough with river on two sides and the hill. The initial production will be ok as well.

I can't see the opening screenshot from work or home (fast connects at both and no network security nonsense at home to deal with). :-/

The gotm site is down at the moment, so the image is not available. (has been for several hours)

Pyramids only gives you the 5 government civics (first column). You still have to research the other 20, including State Property.

Oh. Oops. :blush:

Worker first: Everything finished after 53 turns. Total science value 1090, improvement value 33 turns (5 were lost due to movement and waiting for techs)

Worker at size 3: Also exactly 53 turns. Science 990, improvements 25. A small production bonus (obelisk prebuild).

Worker at size 3, but chop to rush granary before irrigating the corn (my worker even waited 2(road)+2 turns on the silk for bronze working): Took 1 turn more (54), but 1 additional warrior was built. Rest exactly as above, 990/25.



How are you averaging 20 research over the 53 turns? The most you can get for the first 15 is 10, leaving you to average 25 the rest of the way...

Also, why build a road on the silk early on? Seems like a waste of worker productivity.

Am I the only one that runs for Alpha right off the bat? With a monopoly on Alpha and a bunch of contacts, you can dominate the early tech tree. Eventually someone will research Alpha too, but if you don't trade Alpha you will be able to be the sole civ with tech trading ability.

I find this strategy to be quite useful. One downside to it is that the largest opponent will stop trading with you eventually because "We fear you are becoming too advanced." You also lose out on the early religions which IMO are more valuable do to the passive spread than the later religions which you have to "force" onto your neighbors.

Going for alpha right away speeds up the tech pace for everyone. Which is probably not a good thing if you're going for a military or cultural victory. But it can be a good idea for a fast space/diplo victory.

If anyone wants to play in a SG game with the same settings, you can sign up at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141072

I'm tired of waiting for the patch. :)

Just wondering, if you were to settle on the hill without moving, and later discover iron on that hill, would you be able to use it, or would it be inaccessible because there is no mine?

If anyone wants to play in a SG game with the same settings, you can sign up at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141072

I'm tired of waiting for the patch. :)
hope the starting location is as interesting as the one here.
i joined... i'm tired of waiting for patch and IVOTM's beggining too.

Just wondering, if you were to settle on the hill without moving, and later discover iron on that hill, would you be able to use it, or would it be inaccessible because there is no mine?
you can use the iron if it appears under your city. same for any resourse.
the only thing you lose is the bonus hammers that working a tile with iron would give its city.

Am I the only one that runs for Alpha right off the bat? With a monopoly on Alpha and a bunch of contacts, you can dominate the early tech tree.
Only if they are willing to trade with you. In my test games it was never worth the trouble.

Am I the only one that runs for Alpha right off the bat? With a monopoly on Alpha and a bunch of contacts, you can dominate the early tech tree. Eventually someone will research Alpha too, but if you don't trade Alpha you will be able to be the sole civ with tech trading ability.

I haven't beelined for Alpha, but after a certain point I've gone for it to try to pick up my skipped techs in trade. I've found it very difficult to trade, though. From my experience I suspect the AI protects certain branches of tech, especially the religious branch even if all the religions down it are founded and all the wonders built.

My tech strategy has been to get the techs I feel I need: usually certain worker actions at first depending on terrain, then I like techs that enable existing resources (farm for rice, corn, pastures for pigs or fishing for seafood) and copper and iron working to reveal. That keeps me busy for a while--especially if I also decided to go for an early religion--then when I'm not sure what I need next I'll go for Alpha.

I'm surprised that you guys are having trouble trading.... I've played like that in 2 games and haven't had trouble. I've also had contact with 5-7 civs. I wonder if that makes a difference.

Like I said though there is always one civ that won't trade you for anything. I've played as Ghengis Khan and Mansa Musa on Noble and both times it worked out. They don't have any traits in common so that's not the issue. :hmm:

I often find (on noble) that AI civs refuse to tech trade if they have a monoply on that tech, especially if the tech give acess to a wonder or military unit. Once a few other civs have also researched it it becomes avaliable, though I've had civs still refusing to trade a tech with me while their neighbours will.

I have the same thing as you RonnieSoak! Even is the tech is an old one!
LeSphinx

If you get an early religion expect to have trouble trading techs until you can convert your neighbors. If you don't go for an early religion they're generally willing to trade most of the time. That's been my experience anyway. Sure there are some monopoly techs the AI is very reluctant to give up (usually military and wonder techs), but most of them they are willing to give up. It's mostly about your relations with them. If you sign open borders right off the bat and don't trade with their enemies and don't use a different religion than they have then you should be able to trade for most techs.

They tend to refuse all tech trade even if my relations are +5 or more ...

Well I just found out you're right in my game tonight. I was playing a custom continents game with 6 continents and 7 civs. So almost 1 continent per civ (the 1 per team option doesn't seem to work or I'm using it wrong). Anyway, I made early contact with one civ because we were connected by coastal squares. She would not trade me a single tech ever. Until the turn that another civ sailed into view with his caravel. Then all of a sudden the first civ would trade all the techs she had that the other AI also had. It seems they will not trade a monopoly tech no matter what. I had like +12 relations with her.

I noticed that in a game too. It seems to be a bit of a flaw in the AI - assuming that the only players in the game are the ones it already knows. In a game where only 2 civs share a continent it's a disastrous strategy because it prevents tech trading between those 2 civs until Optics, giving the remaining undiscovered civs an enormous advantage.

The first patch is In Process. Here's the link (http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/firaxis_note_01.htm)

A Note from Firaxis Concerning the Civilization IV Patch
November 16, 2005

Hello everyone!
I've heard from many of you via the Firaxis website Contact Us form (many thanks for all the dxdiag files and savegames) and wanted to say thanks for all the feedback and detailed bug reports that were sent up.

I just wanted to let everyone know that as of Monday afternoon, the patch was sent to 2K for final testing, so barring any problems in QA, we will be releasing it shortly.

Some of the highlights include multiple AI improvements and tweaks, worker behavior tweaks, MANY game play improvements (ex Animal Husbandry reveals horses), promotion tweaks, a softer pillage sound (requested by many, many people), fixed diplomatic exploits (gold for gold, peace treaty exploit), multiplayer tweaks (Hot seat, Lobby, etc.), memory, caching and performance improvements, etc. There were also a number of video card specific fixes.

To those of you having problems, thanks for your patience. Our guys were working around the clock with your detailed feedback to produce this patch. For those of you having no problems, it's only going to get better. =)

Dennis Shirk
Firaxis Games

That should get this GOTM started very soon!

what programs are people using for logs? I find alt-tabbing to be a lot slower in CIV than in C3C, so I am trying to not use Excel, but Notepad instead (for my current SG's, i've switched from Word to Notepad). However, it still takes a long time to alt-tab back and forth.

I've been just dealing with it for SG's but for this I prolly won't keep a log. At the end I might try to glean highlights out of the ctrl-tab log that civ4 creates. I wonder if there is a way to export that.

Has anyone seen an explanation of the format of the save. It's prolly in there somewhere...

btw, love the avvie gram :)

thanks tubs :)

i definitely need to log my moves, as I want to achieve better optimization, and it helps for game reports.

I think I'll try windowed mode tonight to see if the alt-tabbing is better. however, I'm not sure I'll like it as it won't have that "immersive" feel. perhaps there's a way to use the in-game log file? is there a way to dump the log file to a text document that can then be accessed by word or whatever?

There is a new post in the forum about the Patch...
We will start now sooner this first GOTMM!!!!!!

LeSphinx

is there a way to dump the log file to a text document that can then be accessed by word or whatever?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141164

This mod was inspired by a post I made. I haven't tried it yet, but it's supposed to log more info and allow you to type in your log as you go in-game. (Perfect for SGs and other turnlog-style publishing.) I'm not sure how to export the log yet.

thanks!

@ eotinb and methos: have you guys used this yet in an sg? if so, which one (didn't see it in eo1, and eo2's screenshots from 11/16 don't show up)?

thanks tubs :)

i definitely need to log my moves, as I want to achieve better optimization, and it helps for game reports.

I think I'll try windowed mode tonight to see if the alt-tabbing is better. however, I'm not sure I'll like it as it won't have that "immersive" feel. perhaps there's a way to use the in-game log file? is there a way to dump the log file to a text document that can then be accessed by word or whatever?
I will write a small program to dump the events to a text file later today since several people seems to want something like that

I will write a small program to dump the events to a text file later today since several people seems to want something like that :goodjob: many thanks!

Is there something somewhere that will give us info to extract info out of the saves to get a CivAssist type program together? Or is that info strictly private and only the mods are privy to?

Is there something somewhere that will give us info to extract info out of the saves to get a CivAssist type program together? Or is that info strictly private and only the mods are privy to?
I presume an external program will be unnecessary. A python mod should be able to replicate CivAssist's equivalent functions in-game. As I deduce it, the logic of keeping spoiler info away from the player won't need to be coded by the mod.

I think there are going to be some killer (and all non-spoiler) mods after a while. Somebody already did a great job of improving the F1 city screen.

FWIW, eotinb has a good start on an auto-logger (something that was dreamed about and drooled over in [c3c]). I'd suggest that everyone who plays for QSC or SG's check it out.

Just want to throw something different for everyone to think over while we wait for the patch and game. I hear lots about military strats, but I think we can take good advantage of our civ traits in other ways...


What about a run on religions? Oh yeah, I know we're playing Rome. Which means we start with fishing and mining. Anyone remember what mined gems get you? 2 food, 1 shield, and six commerce. That's seis for you spanish speakers and six for the frenchies out there. ;)

So first of all, settle one tile east. (One tile south has been mentioned a lot in this thread, and I think that may be the better over-all starting position. But I'm playing with hypotheticals here, so don't deny me my fun yet! :lol: ) Settling one tile east keeps us on the river to help us with trade routes, and it also puts us right beside the mines. This is important as it saves us a turn in getting the gems mined.

First tech to research is mysticism. Of course. We want religions here. What it also will do is show us where the other civs start. If we see hinduism fall while we research, we know there probably is 1-2 spiritual civs out there. If we see both hinduism and buddhism fall early :eek: ... well, time to find a new strat.

First unit to produce is a worker. This I haven't even tested, but I've crunched some numbers on. Of course we want to push that worker out as fast as possible, and the silks on forested grassland by a river will give us 3 food-shields towards production with even a nice +1 commerce bonus. The worker will take 15 turns. By this time we should have Mysticism researched and be well into our next tech. Since we're playing hypotheticals here, let's assume we're going for all three and have picked up Meditation next.

Once the worker is out, have it immediately mine the gems. During the four turns that the worker is mining the gems, work the corn for the extra food. After the mine is finished, switch over to the gems for the +6 commerce for the next 5 turns until city growth. Upon growth the new citizen should work the corn and subsequent new citizens can work the dye tiles for their commerce. The bonus is that your city will have addition growth potential, as the gems are already hooked up! Benefits of the river. Who needs roads? :cool:

Running this will net you right about 400 beakers by turn 35.

With random opponents we have 5 out of 20 possible opposing leaders starting with Mysticism. I'm okay with math, but probability kills me, yet I know enough to figure the odds are good (over half) there will be at least one. So don't expect to monopolize the religions. I sure wouldn't.

If anything, I hope this gives people different ideas than the expand-and-dominate-with-praetorians approach. Who knows? Maybe when the save is out I'll feel nutty enough to try it myself :crazyeye:

The problem with dominating all 7 religions (besides getting them!) is you can't possibly use them all. The biggest benefits of a religion - happiness, good relations, religion civics, line of sight - only work for one religion at a time.

You can still build temples and get shrine income from multiple religions, but the missionary failure rate prevents you from having 7 in every city.

this may have been said in the first 9 pages but i see edges of nasty desert to the South and South East

oh, there's plenty of reasons not to do it. I was just thinking of other strategies with what we are given. I wouldn't want all 7 religions anyway. Or maybe I would for a perverse culture win... :lol:

Anyone remember what mined gems get you? 2 food, 1 shield, and six commerce. That's seis for you spanish speakers and six for the frenchies out there. ;)

I wonder how much that would be in dutch? :hmm:

@grahamiam: I used the older version of my log mod twice in SGs: In LK108 (where the screenshot of the in-game event log is almost impossible to read) and eo2 (better, but still sub-optimal).

FYI, now I've got a new version (link in sig) that creates a text file log as you go. I'd prefer to dump the log from the save file, but one of the problems with that is TMI. Early in the game, it makes sense to document all combat results and city builds, but later on that just gets annoying. I tried to get around this by allowing the user to turn on and off which events are logged in the text file, and I'm not sure you could do the same thing with a save file dump (I guess you could filter the entries somehow, but that may be tricky). Anyway, the current version is a decent start, but it still has a way to go. I figured better to get something out and get some feedback than wait for perfection.

@Puppeteer: One of the things I tried very hard to do was preent spoilers. The way the events are set up in CvEventManager.py, I found it harder to hide spoilers than to show them. Everything that gets logged in my mod could be shown to the player for every AI (cities founded, city builds, techs researched, etc.). But you are right that there will be killer mods out there. You're also right that a lot of the CAII functionality can be implemented right in the game via mods. For example, it wouldn't be very hard to warn you when a city is about to become unhappy or unhealthy, or to alert you when there is a new trade opportunity. Those two, in fact, are my next project(s) once this autolog thing is closer to really done.

I'm probably missing something obvious, but ... how can we have a savegame and a screenshot already when we plan to start the GOTM after (and with) the patch? Isn't this presupposing that the patch will preserve savegame compatibility - which we can't really be sure of? *scratches head*

@Psyringe: See this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3282146&postcount=77).

Ah, thanks. I browsed the thread but missed that post, sorry.

you think you can easyly success in a cultural victory with the Romans as they are not philosophical?
LeSphinx

With random opponents we have 5 out of 20 possible opposing leaders starting with Mysticism. I'm okay with math, but probability kills me, yet I know enough to figure the odds are good (over half) there will be at least one. So don't expect to monopolize the religions. I sure wouldn't.

Assuming it's truly random and assuming 6 opponents, there's a roughly 87% chance someone will start with Mysticism.

Here is a good article on cultural victory. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138647

Traits don't matter much if you use the correct strategy . Philosophical will get you 2-3 more great artists, but when you are at 800+ cpt in 3 cities they only cut a few turns off your finish date.

Well, Philosophical isn't as useful as Creative, (+2 culture) which can be replicated by building 3 extra Wonders (only 3 cities need to exceed 50k Culture to win), so Industrious would be useful as well. I think the real kicker comes from Spiritual, though, as you can get obscene modifiers for the uber-temples: You can build one for each 3 temples of a certain religion you have, and they provide a +50% culture bonus.

I'd say Creative/Industrial or Industrial/Spiritual would be the perfect cultural victory traits.

Anyway, the Romans aren't well-suited to a cultural victory. Cultural victories concentrate on a few key cities and a massive, sprawling empire can actually harm it. (More money spent on upkeep, for example.) Everything about the Romans screams massive empire.

In the few games I've played, its been the automated workers that have killed me. They aren't bright. The tend to build for food and coin and I ended up with large cities producing 1, 2 or 3 hammers. I'm trying to be more careful now. I don't let workers go full-auto. I queue up several orders for workers as I see areas that need improvement. I think there may be better automation, but I haven't discovered that technology yet. RTFM? Bah.

The other interesting thing is that military units are easily countered by other units from a tech that is just-about to be discovered. So, if you have an advantage, you must press it quickly in small increments. A sweeping conquest may be a thing of the past.

The other interesting thing is that military units are easily countered by other units from a tech that is just-about to be discovered.

The exception is praetorians. :D

The exception is praetorians. :D
I'll need to play as Rome and find out.

Immortals are nice. :) That's where I am now. I used them to overwhelm my neighbor, but the last two cities are thick with archers. Those cities are in prime locations. With them I'll have just enough empire to develop and take to any victory condition. But, I've sent the immortals on barb duty, and then they'll be on guard duty until the empire is ready to take the last two cities.

Its nice to upgrade units without worrying about barracks.:cool:

It would be nice to make upgrades cheaper. Is there a building or wonder for that?

Idea.

Civ4 needs Great Farmers and farming specialists. Food is the only thing that can't be tweeked in a city. You can use specialists, Great Leaders and resources to get more gold, more hammers, more culture, more health, more happiness in cities that need them. How do you get more food in a city that needs it?

I think that I saw somewhere that upgrades are 25G + 3 gold per hammer. So a massive upgrade from a warrior to a marine would be cheaper than upgrading that same warrior gradually throughout the game

The patch 1.08 is out !!!

So when do we start the c-iv GOTM ?

LeSphinx

The patch 1.08 is out !!!

So when do we start the c-iv GOTM ?

LeSphinx
But it got withdrawn. :(

ainwoord, thanks for your reply.
Do you means, the patch is not working correctly ?

What does "it got withdrawn" means ? (my english is poor) Sorry

LeSphinx

The patch was available, but there were bugs in it, so Firaxis stopped people from downloading it.

BTW -
ton anglais c'est tres bien, ma francais est mauvais

Excellent ainwood!
great ainwood. Your french is good too.


So we will have to wait for the release of the c-iv GOTM ?
LeSphinx

Yes - I think the patch must be fairly close now - friday perhaps?

Yes - I think the patch must be fairly close now - friday perhaps?
It's Thanksgiving week. So, it's unlikely that we see the patched patch this week.

The patch has arrived on Wednesday 1.09...I have it installed now....
lets play

Am I right in thinking that patch 1.09 is out now?
(I've hated that 'black map' problem since the game was released)

If so, could anyone link me to it?
(sorry, if I appear to be a dumbass)

And if that's the case, are we up and running now, Ainwood, for GOTM#01?
I can't wait...I can't wait...I can't wait! :D

TLHeart - great minds think alike, huh?

1.09 is out!!

:beer: C'MON LETS GET THIS PARTY STARTED !!! :beer:

If so, could anyone link me to it?
(sorry, if I appear to be a dumbass)
Civ IV Main Menu -- Advanced -- Check For Updates.

And if that's the case, are we up and running now, Ainwood, for GOTM#01?
I can't wait...I can't wait...I can't wait! :D

Well, we'll have to do a couple of quick things to get started - regenerate the save in v109 etc. Presumably we can kick-off the game in 24 hours or so. :)

It's Thanksgiving week. So, it's unlikely that we see the patched patch this week.
I gladly take back what I said.

I gladly take back what I said.

No sweat....logic only dictates that you do not release a patch the day before a 4-day weekend. Hopefully patch will work this time, otherwise Firaxis/Take2 staff might be enjoying their turkey with their "work" family...:sad:

Well, we'll have to do a couple of quick things to get started - regenerate the save in v109 etc. Presumably we can kick-off the game in 24 hours or so. :)

With the first spoiler thread in 25 hours? :D

If the download keeps sputtering and stopping for you all from the Civ advanced menu, then go to this mirror site and download quickly,
Okay, finished uploading. Get it here:

http://rapidshare.de/files/8071986/v...CHREL.exe.html

Scroll down and click the button that says 'Free'. On the next page, you will need to wait ~30 seconds and then the download link will appear. I tested it and was downloading at ~150k/sec (my max).

Worked great for me.

So when will the deadline for this first GOTM be?

Probably the end of the year - although these games tend to be faster than Civ3... Maybe we should run epic games. :hmm:

Probably the end of the year - although these games tend to be faster than Civ3... Maybe we should run epic games. :hmm:Good idea if this is the only game running between now through Jan 1. That's plenty of time to finish.

The patch 1.09 is out....
ah! We will soon start the GOTM !!!!!!


LeSphinx

Gimme Gimme Gimme!!! :p

-- Roland

Good idea if this is the only game running between now through Jan 1. That's plenty of time to finish.

For you, but maybe not for me.
How much longer are epic games ?
At least let's start with normal speed, and see how it turns out for most of us.
Maybe have a poll after the first game.

I hope we will play standard.
The game at standard seems to last around 15 hours!
I's quite a good timing.
How long Epic takes ?
Or maybe, we will have various game in One month: like for CIV3 : classic GOTM and C3C GOTM !!!!

LeSphinx

In my experience epic games hardly take any longer than normal games. This is because all costs are +50%. You will press "end turn" more often, but the amount of decisions, like city placement, build queues, terrain improvements, chopping etc. practically stays the same (btw forests are also worth +50% hammers, and terrain improvements take 50% longer). You'll move your units around more, true, but on the other hand this can make war even shorter because compared to production speed your blitz wars are 50% quicker.

So: Players who do everything the AI proposes, don't think much and finish a standard game in 2 hours might need indeed 50% more time for an standard sized epic game - but everyone who already needs 10+ hours for a normal game won't notice a big increase in consumed real time on epic speed.

I'd go so far as to say the only actual difference between normal and epic speed is 50% faster unit movement on epic.

How much do you guys that have trouble finishing play? I can finish epic games in under 10 hours of playtime. Over a course of a month that's 2.5 hours a week . If you can manage to play twice a week it's only a little over an hour each session. I think that's extremely casual...

I bought Civ4 the day it came out (in Belgium : Oct 28th or something like that) and played two standard games since, for a total of about 25 hours.

Maybe finishing a game in time is not a problem and maybe it is. I'm just trying to get a view on what I'm signing up for.
(Karmina's view is also quite interesting, btw).

In my experience epic games hardly take any longer than normal games. This is because all costs are +50%. You will press "end turn" more often, but the amount of decisions, like city placement, build queues, terrain improvements, chopping etc. practically stays the same (btw forests are also worth +50% hammers, and terrain improvements take 50% longer). You'll move your units around more, true, but on the other hand this can make war even shorter because compared to production speed your blitz wars are 50% quicker.

There's a lot of stuff that I do every turn, like opening the foreign advisor to see if any of the other civs have new techs or resources to trade, and that's going to take more time if there are more turns.

I think epic should just be another consideration in the IVOTM arsenal. Epic has been observed to be more beneficial to military victory-types.

One of the big excitements for me in the IVOTM series is the amount of in-game parameters that Firaxis gave us for Civ4. Before playing an OCC or Always-War *OTM was a personal variant. Now it can be what everybody has to play! There are a lot more possibilities here than in Civ3, and I hope that the GOTM staff flexes their creative muscle from time to time to give us some atypical sceneries for us to play.

I cannot wait to play the first one!

Probably the end of the year - although these games tend to be faster than Civ3... Maybe we should run epic games. :hmm:

We're not???

I'm surprised you would even consider running anything other than an epic game. I find the game's pace waaaaaay to quick on normal, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one. Any way to change your mind on this one? It's not too late... ;)

Edit: reading a few more comments, I realize that several folks with limited time would prefer Standard. I can go along with that too.

Standard certainly suits me better, with work and home commitments its sometimes hard to find time to play that much...

I think I have only managed to completely finish ~3 games of Civ4 as it is...played a lot of starts though :)

I think this competition will evolve over the first month or three, including things like the scoring system, QSC, epic vs normal (and maybe even 'quick' - "Quick Games" could have a whole new meaning)

Aeson has patched the save to v109 - we'll start in time for the weekend (for most of you at least). Although seeing as its thanksgiving, will your families thank you? Perhaps we should wait until tuesday as a public service? :p

Perhaps we should wait until tuesday as a public service? :p

Awww ;( I'm celebrating my Thanksgiving starting Monday...stuck working over the turkey day holiday. Seeing as it's quiet I was hoping this would be out to give me something to do while at work :P

Although seeing as its thanksgiving, will your families thank you? Perhaps we should wait until tuesday as a public service? :p

What? And see people get fired for missing work on Wed. ;)

Although seeing as its thanksgiving, will your families thank you? Perhaps we should wait until tuesday as a public service? :p

Naaaah... think of us, non-Americans. Give us something to do over the week-end, while you guys are still stuffing yourselves with turkey left-overs... ;)

post it. if its converted already, post it. those who can play it now, will. those who cant, will play it on tuesday or wednesday, or in two weeks, its up to them. no reason to make us wait any longer......
please!!!!!

Great and thanks, especially the tips which is very helpful.
And waiting for the path. Hope i have enough time to enjoy this game!

I'm looking forward to playing this chaps as it's kinda unchartered territory for most of us - especially after only just being able to see where we are going (black map bug).

So whenever you're ready, Ainwood. (no pressure)

Incidentally, I'm still getting a problem where the game locks up and forces the PC to reboot, despite the black map bug being fixed. How will we counter this with the GOTM? I ask, as it may look like there is some cheating going on (i.e. shutting off and back on again). It's a royal pain for sure though! I'm having to save every turn just in case it's that 'turn' to hang up.
:cry:

deadloss, there is an autosave feature that you can utilize. The admins don't mind you loading from the most recent save (or autosave) to recover from a crash. Just that if it is happening say 50 times a game.... you might want to look more into fixing the problem.

Let's start today! It's Black Friday in the US so no sane person ventures out of the house anyway.

I was going to play paintball today but my friend that was going with me got drug out by his spouse to fight off the crowds :lol:.. poor soul :suicide:...

I'm planning on staying in my pajama pants all day and goofing off. :D I could start this game if it was posted but ... :mischief:

I'm at work, doing absolutely nothing. What a stupid company to pay me for nothing instead of giving us today off...

Was kind of expecting a new thread now the patch is out.... ;-)

Today would be a wonderful time to post this game! Please!:) :crazyeye: :)

Give the man a break! Ainwood lives in New Zealand, and is probably fast asleep right now.

Sorry, I had no idea. I wasn't trying to offend. It seems like I always say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Today would be a wonderful time to post this game! Please!:) :crazyeye: :)

I don't think javajeff2 was out of line with his friendly, enthousiastic request... Without meaning to put undue pressure on Ainwood (who is, after all, doing this for fun and for free), can I second that thought? :)

deadloss, there is an autosave feature that you can utilize. The admins don't mind you loading from the most recent save (or autosave) to recover from a crash. Just that if it is happening say 50 times a game.... you might want to look more into fixing the problem.

Thanks Tubby...yeah, that's what I've had to use so far in the games that I've been playing but I wasn't sure if that was allowed in GOTMs unless absolutely necessary.

I'm not sure that I can do anything about the reboots - it's the game itself that decides when it can't cope with something, hangs, spews and then gets up out of the gutter!?! I'm still not fully confident that the problems have been cured with the patch - but at least I can see where I'm going now!

Thanks for helping!

Give the man a break! Ainwood lives in New Zealand, and is probably fast asleep right now.
Ainwood in New Zealand, soundly snores away
As posters pine for the game today;
The file on his hard drive nicely sits,
A troublesome scenario in bytes and bits;
We're all waiting to play Rome
He's tucked in bed and at home;
The impatient masses all gather round
Waiting for his keyboard's clicking sound;
Wake his ass, its time I say;
We're at the gate and poised to play.
:mischief:

Wow that's great Jaguar (BJ just didn't sount right :hmm: )

I don't think javajeff2 was out of line with his friendly, enthousiastic request... Without meaning to put undue pressure on Ainwood (who is, after all, doing this for fun and for free), can I second that thought? :)
Certainly no offence taken. You can blame a cat fight outside my window for getting me up early. :ack:

Saves are available here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=143342).

Certainly no offence taken. You can blame a cat fight outside my window for getting me up early. :ack:
At dawn's first light
The silence breaks: a cat fight!
Helen tried to turn Shiela's trick
So she beat her hard with a hickory stick.

Great news, I'm off to play!

Thanks Tubby...yeah, that's what I've had to use so far in the games that I've been playing but I wasn't sure if that was allowed in GOTMs unless absolutely necessary.


I'm no authority on the matter, but I would think that using an autosave to keep playing after a crash would qualify as "absolutely necessary". You should make every effort to play the same moves you played before, all the way up to the crash (hoping that those specific moves didn't cause the crash).

BTW, I hope everybody knows that there's a setting in the .ini file to force autosaves to occur every turn, instead of every 4 turns as it is by default. Having to replay up to 4 turns exactly like you did before could be rather difficult.

Setting the default to every 4 turns says a lot about how optimistic the devs were being about the stability of their game. ;)

Reminds me, I should reset my autosaves to 1 before starting 4otMs.

And what's the official acronym, Ainwood? C4GOTM? 4OTM? IVOTM? C4OTM?

GOTM - 01: Pre Game Discussion

Welcome to the first pre-game discussion thread for the Civ4 GOTM.

This starting save was generated by Aeson. :)

Game settings:
Civilization: Rome (Leader: Caesar; Traits: Expansionist & organised)
Rivals: 6 (Random)
Difficulty: Noble ("even" level - the AI gets no bonuses, but neither do you!)
Map: Continents
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Waterlevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal

Victory Conditions: all enabled
Other options: all disabled (Raging barbs would be fun... but not the first game. ;) )
...

I was misled by this all disabled. First, there are animals out there. Secod, my warrior was destroyed when collecting the hut ended up popping out 3 barbs.

I was misled by this all disabled. First, there are animals out there.
I guess he meant all special options were disabled (meaning everything at default values). But I can certainly see how you could read it the way you did.

Secod, my warrior was destroyed when...
This is venturing into spoiler territory. We didn't need to know that in advance...

Well, I hope that just because the saves are out doesn't mean that we won't get any more poems from BJag....his material is just too good!!! :goodjob:

Must have been Karma that started that catfight!

I guess he meant all special options were disabled (meaning everything at default values). But I can certainly see how you could read it the way you did.

This is venturing into spoiler territory. We didn't need to know that in advance...

OK, I'm waiting for the spoiler.

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet: In Civ IV, cities spread irrigation, even without Civil Service, but not if they are on hills. And, you can build farms on resources that need farms, even without irrigation, but you don't get the +1 food for the farm until you irrigate the tile.

So, if you settle on the hill, then a farm on the corn SE will only be +2 food, until Civil Service. But, if you settle 1E or 1S, then a farm on the corn will be +3 food as soon as you build it. Right?

Woot nice tip David :)
You should post this in the strategy forum imho

So, if you settle on the hill, then a farm on the corn SE will only be +2 food, until Civil Service. But, if you settle 1E or 1S, then a farm on the corn will be +3 food as soon as you build it. Right?

Maybe this isn't true. I tried some test games and irrigation through cities doesn't seem to be working. But I'm sure I saw it working before. Now I'm very confused.

(I still haven't started the GOTM so I am not posting any spoilers.)

Hi ainwood. I have a proposal to make.

I would like to see the starting screenshot with the options "see resources" and "see yield" turned on.

I can't really see anything without them. What I do is to open the game just to look it all, save, close, and then come here to give my ideas on the pre-game discussion. But that make feel anxious:
- am I breaking the rules by talking here when I have already opened the save?
- am I damaging my saves count, or my sessions count?

If people are happy with the current starting screenshot, may I suggest including a link to a second screenshot that have the options turned on?

Thank you very much.

Hi. Since Ainwood is credited with one of the tips that ship with the game, concerning "see resources", maybe he'll be sympathetic to your suggestions.

Short answers to your questions are 'Yes, it's against the rules', and 'Yes, you are adding (unnecessarily) to your reload/sessions count'.

1. You should not post in the pre-game and Saves Available threads at all once you have opened the starting save. This game has been difficult to police from that point of view because of the problems players have had in getting the game to play and the sheer numbers of players new to the GOTM. But you should only discuss the starting situation using information that was provided in the pre-game thread. Once you have opened the save you can clearly have more information. Please keep it to yourself until the first spoiler thread is opened.

2, I see no reason to save the game before you have made any moves. That will simply put your reload level up by one notch, but otherwise the new save will be identical to the starting save.