When I first came to this site I was looking for strategy tips. I hoped that I'd get something to share too as those tips really improved my game. Well heres something. At least if people are willing to submit multiple future starts this is a lot better. And special thanks to Wastin Time for his diplomatic OCC (one city challenge) guide for G-major 9.

This strategy relies on getting permanent alliance (PA) with one AI and then letting him do all the work. It can be done with OCC but most likely also expanding will work. I havent yet tested if OCC is better as it gives AI more room to expand and at deity AI gets so massive bonuses that it makes game faster. Ive gotten quick win on 1625 AD on standard map with Eliz. Try to Inca rush that ;) And this is really nobrainer, just sit and watch AI going around.

SETTINGS:
No barbarians, OCC checked optionally, permanent alliances allowed. For those games I've tried out quicker speeds are easier.

Civilizations:
You really want to go mostly peacefully through the game. Best opponents are those who willingly trade techs and won't start wars. Though I usually add one non peaceful to get few wars with AIs. Good choises are in my order of preference:

Mansa, Washington, Elizabeth, Roosevelt, Victoria, Frederick, Cyrus, Hatshepsut, Asoka, Gandhi. Good agressor is at least Saladin also Isabella is a good one as both stick to religion and try to find one.

I try to avoid non financials as they usually research slower. Also gandhi goes for diplo victory and might mess the game.

For your own civ any financial will do. Good ones are Eliza, Vicy and Qin at least as mansa is really good one for AI.

MAPS:

Best maps are those that are flat with rivers. Also one continent makes life easier to meet everyone early and later when you might want to sabotage space ship. You get boxed in easily. But if you are at a corner you'll get enough resources to trade. You really don't want to be next to water as it lowers chopping squares. Inland sea fills this best but any will do it's not essential. For extra goodness opponents beside you get on flat ground extra cities and grow extra fast!

EDIT: Forgot to mention this won't work on duel map because if you pick 1 civ only you'll get conquest with PA and with 2 civs youll hit domination limit for sure. So only tiny+ maps

TECHING:

You really need only to beeline to alphabet to get techs traded. After next target in OCC is to go for university. If you happen to play with Eliz go for two scientists and pop philo if you get religion with that. Helps to get borders. Next target is to get techs that AIs dont get so fast. Astronomy is a good one after that if you can make it first to physics its a good shot but next target is state property. Also military tradition is not bad if none is going for it and sharing it at least. Democracy is needed for improved relations. After you have state prop and democracy you are done with any targets.

BUILDING ORDER:

First go for worker and start cottaging or hook resources that you can. Then go for warrior, granary and switch to library when you get to it. When lib finishes go for 2 scientists and academy. After that go for more health if needed, extra warrior or two can't hurt as early happines relies on monarchy. If city can't grow extra worker is really worth it. Relig buildings are good for keeping as much border as you can and also happy / research 10% is nice to get. When you get theatre get it and globe theathre to negate happiness and allow trading of luxuries away. Usually you have done university+oxford before that. Finally finish Scotland Yard for sabotaging. Sometimes I've pulled out Hanging gardens too which is nice icing on a cake. National epic is great for few extra great pp points and any national wonder will help towards that. Usually if you don't need GPs you can gift em away for PA partner for golden age / settling.

If you go for non OCC just try to fill as fast as many cities as you can. Terra is good map for that as you can beeline to astronomy and run for new continent before anyone else.

DIPLOMACY:

Good opponents have in vanilla mostly favored civs of universal suffrage / free religion / free market. In warlords some have free speech too. Hatty is good for early game for her monarchy. You can exploit this for relations easily. Before anyone can launch you should have +5 for favourite civics with most of them.

Peace will give +1, open borders another +1, straight trading relations +4. Additionally trading resources that do same thing is good idea for getting extra +1-2 for supplying resources. Once a while you'll get +1 for sharing techs too.

Taking religion is risky as usually you can't stand big penalties early game and later free relig rocks over anyway. But if its doable go for it.

Also remember to check that you don't trade with extensively with AIs that have multiple purple - attitudes. You get traded with worst enemy only with lowest attitude opponent so if everyone is content or just angry towards 1 civ its easy going.

If you picked aggressor civ theres lots of chances to get war bonus too if he is not beside you. Mansa at least is easy to bribe for war with almost anyone before he gets too high relations. Warring makes those two lose research and make it easier to find target of PA. If you can bribe in smaller game peaceful attack another its worth it if you are safe for that -1 brought ally penalty and attack.

When defensive pacts come they'll give you some extra +2 relations but remember to pick pact with lowest liking first (you need about +8 for def pact). As others get -1 after that. But when you get it with least one rest go easily. You don't need pacts with all just pick as many as you think are going to win the race.

When PA comes available I usually hang back until theres risk that AI signs it with someone else or is close to winning. That way I'll not pick wrong one. AI that builds Apollo first is 90% likely to win unless someone pulls out diplowin or two other AIs sign PA with eachother.

PERMANENT ALLIANCE:

After you have signed alliance with someone you just wait AI to do the work. You can send workers to change land better suiting to that or help him chop for last few pieces. If no other AI gets into PA you can just hit end turn.

If some get into PA you have to stall them. As you can't declare war to stall only way to do this are spies, lots of them. Thats why state property was priority. When you have state prop start doing Scotland Yard. With spies target all towns, that will be cheap to demolish and quite high % to succeed. Also each town destroyed drops research by 3 gold+1 hammer as they anyway run free speech. From you PA partner pump money so much that you can demolish them fast enough. In case of emergency try to sabotage ship production, but thats expensive. It helps alot if map is 1 continent only!


END!

In about 1-2 hours of easy gaming you shoulda achieved the goal at least if you computer can handle the mapsize.

Thats it! Congratulations!! And now head for that huge/deity/quick and beat crap out of those future starts. Comments and ideas are welcome. It's pretty hard to keep all here as editing screen is so small. I might have missed something.

Reserved For Future Use

For future use (damn duplicate post filter)

This strategy relies on getting permanent alliance (PA) with one AI and then letting him do all the work.
That's a damn good STRATEGY, well deserving the CAPS in the heading. To put it short, simpler OCC Diplomacy - cause you don't need most AI to love you, just the best one.

That's a damn good STRATEGY, well deserving the CAPS in the heading. To put it short, simpler OCC Diplomacy - cause you don't need most AI to love you, just the best one.

Actually not the best one but one of the best. That cottage sabotaging is REALLY useful. AI partner will easily get over 10-40k gold depending on gamespeed and spy uses 100-200 gold. That means you can with 3 spies succeed 2 times per round, leading to destruction of opposing economy very quickly.

And thank you!

-Dracandross

This is *really* clever. I'm so impressed by how resourceful you guys are! It sounds fun to play too. I'll probably give it a whirl just to see how it works and learn about sabotage, pacts, OCC etc etc.

Um, I don't particularly want to be negative or anything but ...is it really 1-2 hours of easy gaming to get an ancient age deity space victory? Do I smell more cheese? :mischief:

Um, I don't particularly want to be negative or anything but ...is it really 1-2 hours of easy gaming to get an ancient age deity space victory? Do I smell more cheese? :mischief:
Good question. Personally, I spend a lot more than 2 hours doing a cheesy future start game. ;)

Anyway, I am impressed by the strategy, and I am expecting a significant drop in my QM score as soon as the first ancient/deity/huge/quick game is submitted.

Sorry, was a bit stressed atm, didn't mean to be so harsh. Still, in my own view, PA games are not of the same difficulty level as non-PA.

Still, in my own view, PA games are not of the same difficulty level as non-PA.

Of course they are easier. At least if opponents favor this kind of tactic. I think you'd get pretty messy PA game with multiple warfarers. You can always outdiplomate AI therefore you have most likely best options to pick PA. But if you compare PA game to future one theres huge difference. You still can lose with PA its just quite easy, at least with smaller maps. Big map gives more variation.

-Dracandross

Well, I gave it a whirl on large & failed, but it was interesting. I had not tried the sabotage options much before.

I sabotaged spaceship engine production successfully in one game, but was surprised to see that it just seemed to cost the AI one turn of production. I expected them to have to start again :( Around 1800 gold seems an awful lot just to delay by one turn, particularly since the chances of success are not so great & you might have to have several tries - I expected to gain 4 turns (six turns to build the engine, and just two to go when I successfully sabotaged production). The cost of sabotage increases each turn - I assumed to reflect the increasing gain in terms of lost production but ... :confused:

I have another question too, as I've not played with permanent alliances checked before. Roughly how long does it take for the permanent alliance option to come up once you're in a defensive pact? That's been the stumbling block for me both times - the PA option still hadn't come up by the time my dear ally launched and the reason given was something like "we have not been in a defensive pact or at war for long enough". So obviously I'm just not researching anywhere near fast enough and I'll see if I can improve this, but it would be useful to know roughly how many turns the DP needs to be in place to get the PA option.

In the last game, I was actually sabotaging my pact-mate to try to buy time to get into a PA before he launched :lol: Which, ahem, is how I found out about the -1 attitude penalty when your spy is captured. Oh, and that's another question. Just out of interest, does the permanent alliance option still come up if their attitude drops below a certain level?

For Permanent Alliances, there are a number of conditions that must be filled:

1) You need to be in either a mutual war or defensive pact for around 30-40 turns...that is on epic speed, I assume it is different on different speeds.

2) Neither of you can be #1 in power. If they are #1 in power, they don't feel they need you, and if you are #1 in power, they have some problem, but I don't remember what it is.

As for their attitude...I think as long as they are happy enough with you to keep a defensive pact active, they'll be happy enough to join you in a permanent alliance, provided the two above conditions are met.

That's really helpful. Thanks Thrallia.

no prob...I'm proof that knowledge of the game doesn't necessarily translate to success at playing the game :crazyeye:

<grin> Anyway, thanks to your pointer (and Dracandross' original strategy of course, heh) I have finally succeeded in winning a game. Large, deity, space, quick in 1565. Which would be great, except that I forgot to save the final save ... :wallbash: :suicide: The Mod makes a save, so I am hoping that the save it does automatically is acceptable & that's the one I submitted. I was so pleased when I won - just! - that I immediately got paranoid about the start save, & loaded it to make sure I'd got the right one without actually saving the end. :blush: :rolleyes:

You can see, from all this, that I'm just not cut out to be a great player. No attention to detail :lol: :splat:

Have to say that it's a lot harder to do this than I thought. There are a lot of subtleties and the AI drives you mad. In one game, Gandhi had everything. The elevator, the tech lead, the production capability, the works. He just didn't bother to build the Engine. For reasons known only to himself, he preferred the Red Cross, bomb shelters, destroyers (on an inland sea map!) ... you name it, he built it. No engine.

I didn't find it as easy as Dracandross to get the approval ratings, either. I had to give up in the end because you need 40 turns of a defensive pact to get a permanent alliance option on quick setting. Which takes me, at least, perilously close to losing out altogether. So the last few games, I just took the pacts I could get.

I can never get a DP with Hattie. My attitude ratings with the others just aren't good enough to get DPs with them without Universal Suffrage. And as soon as I choose that, she is always one point below a defensive pact opportunity. Trading resources is unpredictable - I thought I had her, traded a resource with her almost from turn 1 to the end of the game, but never got any appreciation for the *many* years for which I had supplied her with resources. <gnash>

Anyway, there you go. If I can do it, I reckon it can't be that hard :)

PS It's not the case that they won't take a permanent alliance if they are number one. The leading AI consistently was willing to form a permanent alliance with me.

were they #1 in power or score? Its #1 in power I've always had issues with them refusing to sign permanent alliances for.

Ah ... I didn't check that specifically. They were all always willing to form a permanent alliance once I had got past the required number of turns, and I'm pretty sure one of them would have been #1 in power (I know Mansa was at one point) but I can't say for sure. I will check that out specifically next time I give this a whirl.

I sabotaged spaceship engine production successfully in one game, but was surprised to see that it just seemed to cost the AI one turn of production. I expected them to have to start again :( Around 1800 gold seems an awful lot just to delay by one turn, particularly since the chances of success are not so great & you might have to have several tries - I expected to gain 4 turns (six turns to build the engine, and just two to go when I successfully sabotaged production). The cost of sabotage increases each turn - I assumed to reflect the increasing gain in terms of lost production but ... :confused:

Well the point is not to sabotage ship production but sabotage cottages. AI runs on Universal and each town gives +1 hammer. Sabotaing town is only few hundred gold and 50% success or so. That means you can blow him off easily. When you find one place doing part make sure he doesnt have it elsewhere (its possible due PA's) so you dont waste spies. Its enough to stop one piece from never making it... or slowing research enough so that they will never get tech needed. Could be good idea to go for Internet so they wont get techs from you.

-Dracandross

<grin> Have to say that it's a lot harder to do this than I thought. There are a lot of subtleties and the AI drives you mad. In one game, Gandhi had everything. The elevator, the tech lead, the production capability, the works. He just didn't bother to build the Engine. For reasons known only to himself, he preferred the Red Cross, bomb shelters, destroyers (on an inland sea map!) ... you name it, he built it. No engine.

I didn't find it as easy as Dracandross to get the approval ratings, either. I had to give up in the end because you need 40 turns of a defensive pact to get a permanent alliance option on quick setting. Which takes me, at least, perilously close to losing out altogether. So the last few games, I just took the pacts I could get.


Eww Gandhi goes for diplo victory so easily you can lose beause of that. Also getting def pact early enough can be tricky to make sure add few aggressors like saladin and watch them making war (bribe em if not elseway possible) and join for early +relations. Also on smaller maps one that does war will not win (takes too much resourses). Remember that your primary aim for diplomatic relations are their favourite civics. Make sure every one has universal (maybe free speech but then you lose bureaucracy). That means you have to go vanilla on bigger maps most likely. But in the end thats about only reason Ive come close to losing that I didnt get PA early enough... Stalling research by cottage sabotaging is your friend!

-Dracandross

were they #1 in power or score? Its #1 in power I've always had issues with them refusing to sign permanent alliances for.

Hi Thrallia. OK, checked it out. Mansa was #1 in power by a *huge* margin - and I am pathetically tiny, since I only have one city and three warriors :mischief: He will give me a permanent alliance nevertheless ... so there you go. Looks like you can get it no matter what as long as they like you - or perhaps it varies if they have more than one option (ie DPs with several factions) ??

Well the point is not to sabotage ship production but sabotage cottages.

Yes, I understand that and you're quite right. I just wanted to find out what would happen, but I agree that sabotaging the towns, esp. if they're running universal suffrage, as you point out, is much more effective. Thing is, in that game I didn't get to serious sabotage until they'd pretty much researched everything, so it didn't leave me many options :(

Needless to say, that game wasn't so successful (eg of british understatement) :lol:

Eww Gandhi goes for diplo victory so easily you can lose beause of that. Also getting def pact early enough can be tricky to make sure add few aggressors like saladin and watch them making war (bribe em if not elseway possible) and join for early +relations. Also on smaller maps one that does war will not win (takes too much resourses). Remember that your primary aim for diplomatic relations are their favourite civics. Make sure every one has universal (maybe free speech but then you lose bureaucracy). That means you have to go vanilla on bigger maps most likely. But in the end thats about only reason Ive come close to losing that I didnt get PA early enough... Stalling research by cottage sabotaging is your friend!

-Dracandross

I know he likes a diplo victory, but he likes universal suffrage and is pretty peaceful so I've always included him in my games so far. Actually, to date, he has never built the UN in the games I've played, and no-one has got near a diplomatic victory. Probably because there's not too much conflict, and the second candidate is usually running universal suffrage too and has plenty of support. No doubt I'll lose out one of these times :)

I have played for two victories on large maps so far and have used vanilla both times. I just got large, normal space victory in 1570. Both times, Roosevelt was my partner - which is a bit of a surprise. I know he's industrial, but still ...

The wars aspect is an interesting point. I did try this in one game, and successfully, but still lost because I didn't have a defensive pact in place early enough. I'm going to try huge maps next, so maybe I'll include both Saladin & Isabella, which will give me plenty of opportunity to try out your suggestion.

Anyway, thanks for sharing this strategy Dracandross. It's been a lot of fun to play - and, um, it'll certainly impact future space scores :goodjob:

<pauses to reflect>

Um. Including mine. :splat:

And just as an aside ... this game more than any other has REALLY CHEESED ME OFF with the ridiculously rubbish spaceship information. Civ IV is without a doubt a beautifully crafted strategy game. Why, then, is the spaceship information not only useless, but far worse than that provided in previous versions of Civ? I thought maybe they hadn't quite finished that bit when they were forced to release the game to meet commercial deadlines. But the spaceship info hasn't been upgraded in any of the patches either. Such a pity :(

Hi Thrallia. OK, checked it out. Mansa was #1 in power by a *huge* margin - and I am pathetically tiny, since I only have one city and three warriors :mischief: He will give me a permanent alliance nevertheless ... so there you go. Looks like you can get it no matter what as long as they like you - or perhaps it varies if they have more than one option (ie DPs with several factions) ??

well, that's good to know :) Its harder to lower them from #1 than it is to lower yourself from #1 in power :crazyeye:

Here's my guide to PA's from over a year ago (has it been that long?) Maybe it needs updating with what's been going on here.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3853417

This is really interesting. I missed it first time round. Thanks for posting the link.

My first try was 1549 AD launch. Plenty of room for improvement.

When you get a PA, the setting screen says the game is invalid for HoF due to team play. I guess this is just a bug in the HoF mod since my game was accepted.

That's odd. It didn't happen to my game so it must be system/set up dependant.

Edit to add ... What game settings were you playing on your 1549 game?

When you get a PA, the setting screen says the game is invalid for HoF due to team play. I guess this is just a bug in the HoF mod since my game was accepted.

That's odd. It didn't happen to my game so it must be system/set up dependant.

Edit to add ... What game settings were you playing on your 1549 game?
I am pretty sure the HOF Mod is not checking for PA Teams which happen late in the game. At least, I don't think I fixed it. :crazyeye: Anyway, if the Team error isn't there at the beginning then it doesn't matter. ;)

That's odd. It didn't happen to my game so it must be system/set up dependant.

Edit to add ... What game settings were you playing on your 1549 game?

Let's see...It was marathon--obviously from the 1549 date.
Vicky, OCC. Inland sea. Low sea level. I'm sure that OCC is not the fastest way to go. I'm also pretty sure that Marathon is not best either (thankfully--I dislike marathon)

Thanks for this. I was wondering map size?

I played OCC too, but my games were quick and normal on a large map size. OCC probably isn't the fastest, I'm sure you're right. But I hadn't tried OCC before - it is fun (and quick to play!)

I only had one try at a huge map so far - it was a disaster, so I'll go back to it later I think.

Let's see...It was marathon--obviously from the 1549 date.
Vicky, OCC. Inland sea. Low sea level. I'm sure that OCC is not the fastest way to go. I'm also pretty sure that Marathon is not best either (thankfully--I dislike marathon)

It seems that rounds needed to get PA is not speed dependent or at least not in same amount. Therefore quick is a bit harder as AI might launch before you get PA and on marathon AI also forms PAs. Therefore normal is easiest or I think it is.

OCC is not most efficient of course but it is easiest way. You also dont lose so much as you could think because AI near you can take land you could and will therefore grow faster. One way to increase efficiency is to take enough cities for oxford build it, make PA (or do you have to do gifting before PA) and then give all but 1 city to AI as they have so much more production and science bonuses... Anyway more cities your AI partner has the faster game goes. Even if there are two friendly AIs that grow very fast it speeds game as they trade techs anyway.

-Dracandross

Your OCC point is a good one. I hadn't thought of it that way - but that of course explains why Roosevelt did so well and ended up being my choice for PA both times. He was next door to me in both games where I was successful, so he would have been able to grab a bit more territory ....