The return to CIV 4

So I recently re-installed CIV 4 after I got it in a humble bundle (I tried CIV 5 from the same bundle - not a fan) and can still regularly beat the AI on lower levels. When I used to play it (I still have the original game boxes and really thick manual that came with vanilla and the expansions, but I didn't play much BTS back in the day). But it seems that in the intervening years I've got worse at the game.

A big tactic I used with Vanilla was playing as India & stockpiling religions which was IIRC good for spying before espionage was introduced in BTS and also rendered you less likely to AI attack. Being able to switch civics quickly and a unique unit that never obsoletes meant I could always get ahead in tech, become friends with everyone and almost always win a diplomatic, cultural or space-race victory (for me, space-race is the whole point of Civ).

Coming back to the game after so long, I'm finding that variations on this seem to work at low difficulties, but the AI is now more prone than it was to attack on higher ones. In an attempt to find out what I've been doing wrong, I stumbled across this forum and have read loads about all sorts of economies, city specialisation and lots I never knew about before, so thanks to everyone for those threads\articles but my question is this - I've seen the religious economy referred to a couple of times, but I've not managed to find good thread or article on it. Can someone explain it, or point me to one please?

The only mod I'm using is BAT (i wish I'd known about it all those years ago, it's so useful!)

Religious economy is usually not a good strategy. At least not to aim to found the religions yourself. It is much better to let the AI found the religion and once they have built the shrine, you capture the holy city from them. This way the AI wastes a GP on building the shrine, and usually the AI also takes care of spreading the religion for you with missionaries. Instead of using a GP for a shrine, you get to use your own Great People for something better, and instead of building missionaries to spread the religion yourself, you can for example build an army to conquer the shrine.

A long time ago founding all the religions seems to have been a popular strategy (and I know I liked to play like that also when I was new to the game), but over time this have proved to be a bad strategy in so many ways. Founding religions is a tech diversion that doesn't give you anything useful at all. Early on you want worker techs first, then something to get your economy going. Having a religion early is of no use at all, except the +1 happy and some free culture. Religion gets useful by the time you can use the better religious civics. If you let the AI found the religions and head for writing yourself for open borders, the AI will spread the religion to you by the time you have access to strong religious civics. Owning the holy city is of no use at all until it has a shrine, and building a shrine costs a Great Person. As mentioned, let the AI do this for you.

In addition, religion causes the most diplomatic tension in the game. If you hoard most of the religions yourself, it is likely that a lot of AI end up having the same religion. This keeps them pleased or friendly towards each other, meaning they don't fight and they trade techs between them a lot. If they instead all found their own religions, they will usually stick to the religion they founded themselves, leading to a lot more tension and AI on AI wars. Those wars are extremely useful for you, as they keep the AI backwards. You yourself should pick your religion based on which AIs you want to be friends with.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. So if not religion any tips on the best ways to play early-game peacemonger for eventual cultural, diplomatic or space-race? Trying for a cultural victory in particular seems to be one of the harder challenges to pull off, even on low difficulties.

First of all, I should preface this by stressing this is a game. You should definitely play to have fun. Guides, threads and articles, however, tend to focus on what is efficient. And, sadly for you, 'religious economy' isn't very good, compared to other things you could be doing. But here goes.

Let us first distinguish between two types of religious economies:
1. Stockpiling religions.
2. Wonder based strategy around one religion. Revolves around AP, University of Sankhore, Spiral Minarets and in case of a culture victory Sixtine chapel.

1. This seems to be what you are trying to do. I've never tried it myself, but I've seen it tried, and I'll be honest, it looks absolutely awful. IIRC the whole point was to not found any cities for a long while, and then make your capital the seat of something like 3-4 religions. Then you use an influx of great priest to both found these religions and build the shrines. The idea is that you have one city with a massive amount of bonus money from these shrines. This makes markets, grocers and banks super efficient in your one city and allows you to keep your research slider high, making in return libraries in all your cities more efficient. You also have more influence over the political situation, both by switching yourself and by influencing the religions of the AI, especially with the later religions that come with a free missionary.
Sounds good so far? Well sadly, this is all the ideal scenario. In reality, I expect the following problems:
1. You need a good position for this to even be viable. Essentially a gold start. At least, at higher difficulties. Gold starts are good in general a tactic for winning games that can be won in any number of ways is suspect at best.
2. One city. Early expansion is often paramount and this tactic more or less forbids you from doing so. I suppose it is possible to do this with exactly two cities, but then you must found all religions between the founding of your second and third cities, forgoing buddhism/hinduism in most cases.
3. Cost of Great People. This strategy requires the use of a whole slew of Great Priest. Great People are a valuable resource. Instead of those Great Priest, you could have had a bunch of great scientist, bulbing you to liberalism instead, without the need to jump to anywhere near as many hoops.
4. Hammer costs. In order for your shrines to do something, you need to spread religions. The AI will do some work for you, but often not enough. You have to build missionaries, both for the shrines and possibly for playing the diplo game.
5. It will only start working late. Investments that pay of in the long term are generally bad in Civ4. The game is figured out to the extent that the most optimal line is often to get advantage as fast as possible, so you can use that advantage to increase your advantage: snowball if you will. Setting up to benefit 50-100-150 turns later is not as good.

2. This one is a lot more viable in my mind. It is focused on one religion, instead of many, and you soup up that one religion with stacking bonuses. Essentially, you use the AP, university of sankhore and spiral minnarets to make temples and monasteries 'good'(ish). Each of these will provide a nice bit of resource, money and hammers if you control UoS and SM and the AP is in your main religion. With a spiritual leader that will cut down on the cost of temples, this actually works out somewhat.
However:
1. It comes online late. Games could be almost over, or at least decided by the time that many of the wonders you'll need become available and many of the religious buildings are build.
2. It costs a ton of hammers. You need to build wonders and religious building to get this rolling. I suppose you could get lucky or sneaky with the AP, but the others you will have to build yourself. Those hammers could have been troops to conquer the world, often much more efficient. Even building money is often better in the short term.

I prefer to use this tactic only in games that are going to be culture victories. You are going to need temples anyway to build cathedrals, and the wonders ad to culture as well. In which case, you are also going to want the SChapel.
This will make the UoS and SM essentially buildings that make lots of money, since you were going to need the religious buildings anyway.
As an economy to fuel research for later conquest or space, it is not as good, though certainly doable at lower difficulties.

Rameses is the best leader for this, with cheap temples on top of the usual spiritual goodness as well as cheaper wonders. Then again Ram is excellent regardless.

TLDR:
Type 2 economy to win culture: ok.
Type 2 economy to do something else: eh, bad, but could work
Type 1 economy: pretty bad.

However, do what you find fun. No use in playing the game optimally if you are not going to be having fun.

Thanks for that - very informative I can't remember what I used to do, but recently I've been doing something of a mix between those two, - beelining religious techs rather than using GPs to found religions. Then using religious buildings & wonders to churn out culture for an eventual cultural or diplomatic victory.
Either way, I now see why it only reliably works on lower difficulty settings. It looks like I'm going to have to change my style for higher difficulties.

VJ. said:

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. So if not religion any tips on the best ways to play early-game peacemonger for eventual cultural, diplomatic or space-race? Trying for a cultural victory in particular seems to be one of the harder challenges to pull off, even on low difficulties.

Click to expand...

Early game the cultural games don't differ much from other games. You will want to set up your economy for strong teching, since you need to reach at least Liberalism for Free Speech. Start by researching the techs you need to improve the food resources around your capital, then pottery/writing, or Bronze Working, depending on the start you get. Build worker first, then a couple of warriors, then settler. You want to expand quickly to 9 cities (assuming standard size map), so that you can get enough temples for cathedrals in all three legendary cities. Cities with a lot of food are most useful in cultural victories.

Finding marble is very useful. Once your initial expansion is on the way, you want to build the wonders that give Great Artist points. Parthenon, Mausoleum of Mausollos and Sistine Chapel are the most important ones. Later on you also want Taj Mahal. If you have extra resources, you might as well also build Statue of Zeus, but this is not that important. All of those wonders also provide +10/turn (which doubles 1000 years after the wonder is built to 20/turn).

Religions you can found yourself are Confucianism and/or Taoism. Then you should probably get one or two of the three early religions spread to you by whoever founded it. Spread the religions to all your cities, build lots of temples and as many cathedrals as you have time for in your legendary cities. It is also a good idea to cottage one or two of the legendary cities early, as you will later be turning all that commerce to culture. During this stage, also try to grow your cities big.

Once you reach Liberalism (pick Printing Press as your free technology if you have a lot of villages/towns), you can stop teching, switch to Free Speech and run culture slider at 100%. At the same time, switch to Caste System and Pacifism and run as many artists as you can in your cities. From this point to the end, it's only a matter of pumping out as many Great Artists as you can, and when you have enough to make your cities legendary, you divide them among your cities as needed for culture bombs (create great work for 4000, or whatever it is called). You can even starve your cities to be able to run more artists for more Great Artists.

Gandhi is arguably the best leader for cultural victories because of SPI (cheap temples) and PHI (+100% Great People production = more great artists). Note that you also get an additional +100% Great People production from Pacifism, +50% from Parthenon and yet another +100% if you are in a golden age, which is why you want Taj Mahal. (The bonuses are additive, so 100%+100%+100%+50% = +350% Great people production.) Any Great People you produce that are not artists should probably be used for golden ages when you get to the later stages of the game, except early on you can produce a great scientist to build an Academy in your capital.

That's a rough outline of the efficient way to win a cultural victory. But as Confused Counsel said, play for fun, and if streamlining the victory date isn't fun to you, you can try other strategies as well.

Thanks for the tips and explanations - now off to try some of them!

If I am not friendly with all the border Civs, I like to tech to rifling before switching to full on culture. It gives me something to build while I am hunkered down waiting for the cultural Ascension

I find the best way to peace is tech lead. You can then trade techs to a lot of AIs and they'll love you for it. You do have to pick a side in AI disputes sometimes though, as they say you cant please all of the people all of the time.

To do this you usually have to stay small and cottage well your capital and run burocracy. Strategic tech bulbs early/mid game will help help you get and maintain tech lead and allow you to maximise benefit from tech trades.

How you win from this position is up to you although conventional wisdom is to tech hard for currs->cavs or rifles/cannons and go nuts. There are other ways though depending on whats fun.

Some more cunning plans thanks Keep them coming - I need them because it turns out I'm not as good at this game as I remember...

Choose Egypt (I like Hatty cos she's hawt).
Go pottery first and lay down some early cottages (def prefer flood plains) so you have some commerce later.
Settle a few production / food (slavery) cities
Get horses and build/whip war chariots (constantly)
Target the AI nearby cities with high commerce luxuries (Gold, Gems, Silver, even Ivory)
You need to be selective as to which cities you capture at first or maintenance will kill you
Once captured cities come on line and boost your commerce start targeting high pop or high food AI cities.
Whip the living daylights out of these cities to produce more War Chariots
Continue to abuse the AIs until they get Longbows
At this point you should have quite a few high food cities and you have delayed your GPs so you can produce a few very quickly
Consolidate what you have and plan your win strategy

The skills and techniques in Civ4 are perishable. Regular use keeps them sharp. I've been away the last six months playing an Arpg game, just came back today and it feels like a life time playing civ4 last. I need to spend a couple games honing my skills to feel safe in my game play. The longer you spend away from the game the more rusty your skills become.

Even worse if you're coming back from playing colonization where if you have expended some of your movement points on a road and attacked, you were attacking at less than full strength. It took me a few turns to remember it didn't matter in CIV IV.

As previous writers already mentioned, a form of religious economy can/should be used to get a cultural win. I've experimented with other possibilities a bit and here are the main problems that I've encountered.

1. Priests. They are just bad. 1 and 1 is just awful compared to ANY other specialists. Ofc one could build the Angkor Wat (unlocked by phil) but that's an expensive wonder and at that point of the game you're usually better of just working scientists to get to lib anyway.
2. Great prophets. In the early game they can be good for bulbing techs that give religions (mainly Phil of Theo but other techs - meh). Other use is building shrines and THAT'S IT. If you get them in the late game you'll be kicking yourself because you can only settle them in your cities or use for Golden Ages.

The possibilities that I've been experimenting with are mainly to build a culturally strong empire for when you're surrounded and need to fight for your tiles but Civ IV isn't really slow-paced enough for this kind of strategy to pay off since usually its just way more cost-efficient (in short AND long term) to invest those hammers you use to build temples, monasteris and cathedrals into military to take out those pesky civs near you

civfanchambers said:

The skills and techniques in Civ4 are perishable. Regular use keeps them sharp. I've been away the last six months playing an Arpg game, just came back today and it feels like a life time playing civ4 last. I need to spend a couple games honing my skills to feel safe in my game play. The longer you spend away from the game the more rusty your skills become.

Click to expand...

Yep, I've certainly found this out the hard way!

Saru said:

usually its just way more cost-efficient (in short AND long term) to invest those hammers you use to build temples, monasteris and cathedrals into military to take out those pesky civs near you

Click to expand...

I think my problem is that I don't really have as much fun playing military games as I do playing peacemonger. I know it's not efficient, but unless I'm forced into a fight, i try and avoid them; usually only building up a defensive military + nuclear deterrent later on.

VJ. said:

Yep, I've certainly found this out the hard way!


I think my problem is that I don't really have as much fun playing military games as I do playing peacemonger. I know it's not efficient, but unless I'm forced into a fight, i try and avoid them; usually only building up a defensive military + nuclear deterrent later on.

Click to expand...

I use to play as a peace monger as well. From civ2-4, it was my preferred play style. Would focus on empire building and management till late game then go to war once the game got a little boring. I enjoyed late game warfare, especially overseas invasion. However, not long after getting bts I began warring earlier and earlier. Now I thoroughly enjoy early rushes. Early and midgame wars are much different than those you fight in the industrial and modern eras. As a player I have evolved from a peace monger to warmonger and I love my blade dripping with my enemies blood. Now lets go kick some a$$.

civfanchambers said:

I use to play as a peace monger as well. From civ2-4, it was my preferred play style. Would focus on empire building and management till late game then go to war once the game got a little boring. I enjoyed late game warfare, especially overseas invasion. However, not long after getting bts I began warring earlier and earlier. Now I thoroughly enjoy early rushes. Early and midgame wars are much different than those you fight in the industrial and modern eras. As a player I have evolved from a peace monger to warmonger and I love my blade dripping with my enemies blood. Now lets go kick some a$$.

Click to expand...

I'll be honest - part of it is just that I'm a cowardly player. I've always found early wars to risky for my liking; if I don't win comprehensively, I'm basically in a state of war or cold war for the rest of the game - but by industrial and modern eras, I usually have a big enough tech advantage to ensure victory. I think that if I was more confident in my strategy I'd be willing to war early on.

One of the most important things in the game is learning how to whip properly. I've set up a game which showcases how to 2 pop whip with overflow so you get 2 units back to back. If you have 30h chops from Math you can continue back to back 1T units. If you have zero forest you can still get 6 units in 11t with nothing but 2 pop whips. You'd be stuck at 2 or 3 pop due to whip anger after 6 units w/out more happiness or HR.

In the example city all I have is a granary, 1 improvement which is a farmed food plain, and 2 workers. That's it. Nothing special. In an extreme bare minimum you could forgoe the granary, still have the farm and only use 1 worker. This would let you get out 4 units back to back to back. Anyways, looking at the screen shots you'll see how a city with a granary and a single farm can make 8 Axe in 12 turns. I show a few more screen shots at the very end showcasing a better city doing similar things with Swords.

This can work with Catapults too. Just put in the necessary "initial" 1 turn before you grow to 4 pop and then 2 pop whip (12-15 overflow is normal). Then use 2 workers to chop 3 forest and that puts you at 15 overflow + 90 + the additional you accumulated why growing back towards 3 pop. This gives you 1 initial Catapult, 2 more back to back from the chops, and then in 1-3 more turns you should be at 20+ and can 1 pop whip your 4th Cata.

So with good whipping each city you have can easily get out 6-8 Axe/spear or 3-4 Catapults in 10-12t. So if you open with a total of 4 cities this means your Capital can still focus primarily on economy (I'd still use a few chops and 1 or 2 whips for units) while you make a scary amount of units.

Thanks cseanny!

Most useful. Especially the initial 1 hammer tip.

You're welcome. Don't forget, you can use these same 2 pop whip w/ overflow into Wonders, Libraries, Settlers, Workers, and other buildings. You can que up multiple whipped items too, i.e., whip an Axe and then add a Spear for another 2 pop whip then move another item ahead of the two. Once you're at you're desired tech, multiplier, or Build, simply let the Axe and Spear finish.

Markets or Forges after reaching CS and Bureau (org religion + 50% Capital) finish super quick. Oxford w/ Stone and forge, Bureau, Org Rel with 2 qued pre-whipped items and then 2 chops the turn after (if they were 35 Hammer items otherwise chopping the same turn will give you gold overflow instead of hammer overflow) the 2nd pre-chopped unit finishes makes for 3T Oxford. Etc etc.