Cropper
Dec 02, 2005, 10:57 AM
This thread is a post about my first full game of civ 4 I have finished, if that bores you, then feel free to not continue reading. ;) It is long, and just describes my experience playing.
I have played Civ 4 probably 20 times, but only until the early AD time frame. This is because I didn't like the way I played and wanted to restart using all the ideas I had learned from both my own game play, and these forums. I finally had a game where everything I have learned came together and I wanted to play it all the way through to the end for the first time.
Background. I was playing as Gandhi on Noble level. Epic timeframe on huge map (the biggest one), and it was continents.
I started out with my capital city right on a river with floodplains. Pretty sweet location so I built it and set to pop out a worker. My warrior started circling my city clearing out the darkness. I find out I am very close to the ocean on my south. Also, I am incredibly lucky and have a stone about 5 tiles away. Can't find any marble nearby though.
I start researching for Buddhism right away to get my religion for the game. Once I get that I switch to Bronze Working to carry out the worker chop strategy.
I get Buddhism first and switch to it. Then I select bronze working and achieve that. I get my worker and start chopping trees. The units I get from chopping are : warrior, warrior, worker, settler.
I go found my second city and use the second worker near the second city to chop trees. I set the second city to build a worker and pop him out quick because of the tree chopping.
My warrior does quite well against the roaming animals as he is exploring. He finds some goody huts with tech, gold, and 1 with a scout! He increases his experience and I give him the forest and jungle double movement bonus.
I continue to expand in a similar way, popping out workers and settlers quick using the chop strategy and soon have 4 cities. I have also managed to get Pyramids, Stonehenge and Oracle through chopping. I have managed to hook up the stone quarry to my capital city making stone wonders half price.
My scout finally finds some marble quite a distance away and I rush my 5th settler over there to plop down on it before someone else does. I haven't met anyone else yet.
More expanding, more exploring, I finally meet the English to the North of me and the Greeks to the West. I discover that my continent is L shaped and I am in the corner of the L in between the English and the Greeks. I make Open Borders with both and all seems well.
The greeks and I seem to get along well as the game progresses, he apparently didn't manage to discover a religion, so as soon as my Buddhism hits one of his cities, he switches to it. Our relations improve drastically.
The English however manage to get their own religion, and begin disliking me intensely, but do not declare war.
I continue expanding, I'm not sure yet which method I am going to try to win by, although I would like to try conquest. I decide to wait to see how it plays out.
Expansion phase finishes around just after AD hits, and the whole continent is occupied by cities. I have managed to get all but 1 wonder, and I have specialized my cities, so that one is building Science wonders, 1 Merchant, 1 prophet etc. I use my prophets to culture bomb my cities nearest the English.
So far I am in first place as far as I know, and ahead on techs, army, and culture.
I notice there is 1 little space in between the english cities that hasn't been settled in the middle of a jungle so I decide to drop a settler in there. I'm hoping I can culture bomb it, have it grow, and the have his cities around it flip. I have already improved all of my cities at this point so I send my army and all my workers up to the new city to clear out the jungles and protect it.
This was my biggest mistake of the game. I do not have Open borders with the English by this point, so I can't travel through his territory. But theres a tiny 1 square aisle I can send all my troops and workers through to get to the new city. Unfortunately, 2 turns later, the english city's culture expands and now my new city is completely cut off, surrounded by the english, and my entire army and workers is trapped!! The English are angry at me and won't negotiate an open borders treaty.
So, with nothing left to do, I clear out all the land around the city and start thjinking about declaring war on the English to make a land bridge to my trapped city. I also have a Great Prophet standing by to make a culture bomb once he can get there.
Just as I'm abuot to declare war on the English, they decide to declare it on me instead! No problem. I take my army and smash 4 English cities in 8 turns. I now have freed my stuck city and taken 4 of the English cities to boot! I sue for peace and She accepts.
I finally meet all the other players in the game. I discover that I am first place, with almost all the wonders, huge culture, but only the 7th largest army in the game. Also, Mansa Musa is ahead of me in technology by about 2 techs. Fortunately, he likes me, so we don't go to war.
I am worried now about Mansa beating me to a space race victory so I decide to specialize my tech's instead of balancing it like I am. I head for the specific techs that give me SS parts. This gives Mansa an advantage since he starts building wonders that I have stopped building. Our score is about 200 points apart with me in the lead. Mansa realizes what I'm doing and starts popping out the SS parts too. Elizabeth decides she still hates me and declares war on me along with the Romans. But my army is much better than hers and I fend off her initial rush easily.
With about 97 years left in the game (1950 AD approx), Me and Mansa are almost neck in neck on building the spaceship. I convince the next highest civ to declare war on Mansa to try to slow him down.
With 93 years left in the game, the message I've been waiting for pops up on the screen : Cropper wins with Space Race Victory!!!
I was dumbfounded that it happened so suddenly, but there it is. I beat Mansa to the space race and won the game for my first time ever. I was rated at the same level as Herbert Hoover in terms of leadership, not bad but not great.
I should mention that I had a great time playing this game and was lost in one-more-turn mode more than once. The whole game took 15 hours to complete.
As the game became modern (around tanks), it started bogging down on me to the point of unplayability. I started doing some research on the forums and managed to fix the issue. I had to revert to the 4.12 catalyst drivers, and switch to the blue marble tileset. I also cleared the cache. After that, everything returned to normal and I was able to complete the game.
So that's it. I think I will bump up the difficulty one level next time. I don't anticipate any future tech issues. I had tons of fun, and it was a heck of an exciting game at the end since I was so neck in neck with Mansa.
Happy Civing All!
I have played Civ 4 probably 20 times, but only until the early AD time frame. This is because I didn't like the way I played and wanted to restart using all the ideas I had learned from both my own game play, and these forums. I finally had a game where everything I have learned came together and I wanted to play it all the way through to the end for the first time.
Background. I was playing as Gandhi on Noble level. Epic timeframe on huge map (the biggest one), and it was continents.
I started out with my capital city right on a river with floodplains. Pretty sweet location so I built it and set to pop out a worker. My warrior started circling my city clearing out the darkness. I find out I am very close to the ocean on my south. Also, I am incredibly lucky and have a stone about 5 tiles away. Can't find any marble nearby though.
I start researching for Buddhism right away to get my religion for the game. Once I get that I switch to Bronze Working to carry out the worker chop strategy.
I get Buddhism first and switch to it. Then I select bronze working and achieve that. I get my worker and start chopping trees. The units I get from chopping are : warrior, warrior, worker, settler.
I go found my second city and use the second worker near the second city to chop trees. I set the second city to build a worker and pop him out quick because of the tree chopping.
My warrior does quite well against the roaming animals as he is exploring. He finds some goody huts with tech, gold, and 1 with a scout! He increases his experience and I give him the forest and jungle double movement bonus.
I continue to expand in a similar way, popping out workers and settlers quick using the chop strategy and soon have 4 cities. I have also managed to get Pyramids, Stonehenge and Oracle through chopping. I have managed to hook up the stone quarry to my capital city making stone wonders half price.
My scout finally finds some marble quite a distance away and I rush my 5th settler over there to plop down on it before someone else does. I haven't met anyone else yet.
More expanding, more exploring, I finally meet the English to the North of me and the Greeks to the West. I discover that my continent is L shaped and I am in the corner of the L in between the English and the Greeks. I make Open Borders with both and all seems well.
The greeks and I seem to get along well as the game progresses, he apparently didn't manage to discover a religion, so as soon as my Buddhism hits one of his cities, he switches to it. Our relations improve drastically.
The English however manage to get their own religion, and begin disliking me intensely, but do not declare war.
I continue expanding, I'm not sure yet which method I am going to try to win by, although I would like to try conquest. I decide to wait to see how it plays out.
Expansion phase finishes around just after AD hits, and the whole continent is occupied by cities. I have managed to get all but 1 wonder, and I have specialized my cities, so that one is building Science wonders, 1 Merchant, 1 prophet etc. I use my prophets to culture bomb my cities nearest the English.
So far I am in first place as far as I know, and ahead on techs, army, and culture.
I notice there is 1 little space in between the english cities that hasn't been settled in the middle of a jungle so I decide to drop a settler in there. I'm hoping I can culture bomb it, have it grow, and the have his cities around it flip. I have already improved all of my cities at this point so I send my army and all my workers up to the new city to clear out the jungles and protect it.
This was my biggest mistake of the game. I do not have Open borders with the English by this point, so I can't travel through his territory. But theres a tiny 1 square aisle I can send all my troops and workers through to get to the new city. Unfortunately, 2 turns later, the english city's culture expands and now my new city is completely cut off, surrounded by the english, and my entire army and workers is trapped!! The English are angry at me and won't negotiate an open borders treaty.
So, with nothing left to do, I clear out all the land around the city and start thjinking about declaring war on the English to make a land bridge to my trapped city. I also have a Great Prophet standing by to make a culture bomb once he can get there.
Just as I'm abuot to declare war on the English, they decide to declare it on me instead! No problem. I take my army and smash 4 English cities in 8 turns. I now have freed my stuck city and taken 4 of the English cities to boot! I sue for peace and She accepts.
I finally meet all the other players in the game. I discover that I am first place, with almost all the wonders, huge culture, but only the 7th largest army in the game. Also, Mansa Musa is ahead of me in technology by about 2 techs. Fortunately, he likes me, so we don't go to war.
I am worried now about Mansa beating me to a space race victory so I decide to specialize my tech's instead of balancing it like I am. I head for the specific techs that give me SS parts. This gives Mansa an advantage since he starts building wonders that I have stopped building. Our score is about 200 points apart with me in the lead. Mansa realizes what I'm doing and starts popping out the SS parts too. Elizabeth decides she still hates me and declares war on me along with the Romans. But my army is much better than hers and I fend off her initial rush easily.
With about 97 years left in the game (1950 AD approx), Me and Mansa are almost neck in neck on building the spaceship. I convince the next highest civ to declare war on Mansa to try to slow him down.
With 93 years left in the game, the message I've been waiting for pops up on the screen : Cropper wins with Space Race Victory!!!
I was dumbfounded that it happened so suddenly, but there it is. I beat Mansa to the space race and won the game for my first time ever. I was rated at the same level as Herbert Hoover in terms of leadership, not bad but not great.
I should mention that I had a great time playing this game and was lost in one-more-turn mode more than once. The whole game took 15 hours to complete.
As the game became modern (around tanks), it started bogging down on me to the point of unplayability. I started doing some research on the forums and managed to fix the issue. I had to revert to the 4.12 catalyst drivers, and switch to the blue marble tileset. I also cleared the cache. After that, everything returned to normal and I was able to complete the game.
So that's it. I think I will bump up the difficulty one level next time. I don't anticipate any future tech issues. I had tons of fun, and it was a heck of an exciting game at the end since I was so neck in neck with Mansa.
Happy Civing All!