After years of playing, what new things have you found in Civ 4?

blitzkrieg1980 said:

There are some isolated starts I've gotten on Immortal that might not be winnable on the first go round (second time you know the whole map and probably could tailor playstyle to it). But I get what you mean.

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Doshin already won Deity isolated without using chopping!

And thx a lot for the compliment cseanny, but dont forget WastinTime and Kaitzilla are also on these forums, and as it looks, both are going to beat me in the current Gauntlet, partly because I didn't get a good start to make a 2nd try at it 'til now, but mostly, because they're just very good players .

Thx again though .

@ Sera

Fine! Doshin, Sera, WastinTime and Kaitzilla. Muahahahaha.

cseanny said:

@ Sera

Fine! Doshin, Sera, WastinTime and Kaitzilla. Muahahahaha.

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That comment really made my day, thx for it .

Some things I found out over the last 2 months:

1. If one is shortly before any tech, and then gets a random Event that gives towards the tech, this can finish the tech, allowing to research more than 1 tech at that turn.

I found out, because I stopped 1T away from Liberalism, research Replaceable Parts, but 1T before finishing, I got the event and accidentally researched Liberalism by it, which destroyed my plan to Lib -> Rifling.

2. If you want to win Domination / Conquest very fast, try to peacevassal some opponents. There are many AIs in the game that will peace-vassal at pleased or even cautious, peace-vassaling requires to have 1.5 times the power of the AI and twice the land if being a land target (8 tiles shared borders or 3 cities on same continent) and one must have 3 times the power if one is not a land-target.

Credits for this go to WastinTime and cseanny .

3. On maps with many hills, the Guerrilla promotion line is stronger than one would suspect, because Guerrilla III not only gives 50% retreat chance, but also 25% hills attack!

4. Elepult is so strong, that one can conquer complete maps with it sometimes. This allows for interesting options, because one can stop research after Construction basically, allowing i. e. tons of Spy-revolts or also Gold-rushed units when having the Mids.

5. Having 1 or 2 Golds helps a lot, but in the long run, it's not even that much stronger than having i. e. 4-5 times food in the capital + sufficient food in the arbitary cities, because Library-hired-Scientists are amazingly strong, because they not only give good amounts of research (3 feels like it's not much, but let's say you got 5 cities and hired 2 scientists in all, that's 30 + Trade-routes = 40 + some Cottages = 50-60 which is about as much as one easily gets with 2 Golds) but also !

6. On large maps, Maths is a very good target instead of Alpha. Don't beeline Alpha on large / huge maps, because 1 AI always will and you can trade for it, also, don't take Monarchy or Aesthetics, because the first is again often researched by the AI, while the 2nd gives nothing of use.
Maths however gives big chops and can often be traded against Monotheism, and Maths + Monotheism almost get's one Alpha!

Seraiel

Seraiel said:

6. On large maps, Maths is a very good target instead of Alpha. Don't beeline Alpha on large / huge maps, because 1 AI always will and you can trade for it, also, don't take Monarchy or Aesthetics, because the first is again often researched by the AI, while the 2nd gives nothing of use.
Maths however gives big chops and can often be traded against Monotheism, and Maths + Monotheism almost get's one Alpha!

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Do you think this would work on standard maps? I like the theory behind it and would rather go to Maths than Aesthetics.

blitzkrieg1980 said:

Do you think this would work on standard maps? I like the theory behind it and would rather go to Maths than Aesthetics.

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I don't know, I haven't tested it on normal sized maps. I assume yes, and on normal sized maps with only 6 opponents, one could also try for Oracle Currency, because Oracle doesn't necessarily go at 2000 BC or earlier.

A good way on smaller maps is, to be aware of AIs offering Open Borders before onesself has Writing, because that means that they got Writing, and AI usually go for Alphabet afterwards. If one reaches Writing before any AI has it, Alpha-beeline is probably better.

Thanks, man. I've been gaining ground in my Immortal games but I'm looking for more diverse ways of playing. I've done the Oracle>Currency move on Monarch/Emperor but haven't tried it yet on Immortal. I'm going to implement this in my next game and see how it goes. Thanks again.

I dont know.. sitting bull is a bad guy to play with.. Other civilizations often gang up on him when hes alive. He cant even power up that much without having expensive units.. I tried and failed on prince many times.. Even pacal or montezuma were able to do better.

IMO Sitting Bull was one of those leaders that was made for the AI. PRO in general is an AI favoring trait not to mention the early resource-less UU and UB combo favor big defense and make early rushes against him extremely difficult. For a human player, the opening techs and PHI aren't half bad and make him mid-tier IMO.

Pacal can be a monster of a leader both in human hands and as an AI. FIN/EXP is a fine combo and the Ball Court is a strong UB. The Holkan, while not impressive on paper, is resource-less and decent for barb defense/AI worker stealing & choking. I rarely lose with him.

I prefer to BE Monty than to SEE Monty start next to me

blitzkrieg1980 said:

I prefer to BE Monty than to SEE Monty start next to me

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I'd call this Monty's most attractive feature.

I like when he is on a map and I can use him as an attack dog. But when he's right next to me I am sort of cornered into an early war. Generally I have to attack him. I prefer to have choices but I guess that's my preference.

If you don't build Stonehenge nor research calendar, the map will be centered by the first civ to circumnavigate the globe. In my current game Stonehenge was built by someone else, no one with calendar, yet Freddy circled the globe in 400bc and my map got centered. I believe this is the first time it has occurred in one of my games.

civfanchambers said:

If you don't build Stonehenge nor research calendar, the map will be centered by the first civ to circumnavigate the globe. In my current game Stonehenge was built by someone else, no one with calendar, yet Freddy circled the globe in 400bc and my map got centered. I believe this is the first time it has occurred in one of my games.

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I've had that happen. Turned out there was a planet girdling continent and I guessed that the circumnavigation was done by a scout.

Hemispheres map + low sea level has a good chance to circumnavigate the globe very early in the game.
And if you are isolated that means very bad news, because those civs will research so much faster through tech trading and the extra commerce income from oversea trade routes.

Did I already mention that I only recently discovered how super stronk Cyrus amd Victoria are?

I found changing units' names. For example: Making your 5 ranked archer's name "Captain". For doing that you should just select the archer, then click the "Archer" text (in bottom left).

I only recently started doing cottage economy and thus I discovered how powerful Financial is!

Few days ago, I finally got an explanation by Sampsa and know now, how the Granary exactly works.

Maybe 2 weaks ago, I learned from WastinTime that cylindrical maps have 1.5 times the maintenance of flat maps, and that tororidal maps even have twice the maintenance! Don't know how many games I made artificially harder for myself by not choosing flat worldwrap.

What I'll learn next is gonna be whether the "self-closeness" of a CIV is still active in BtS 3.19, or if that bug was fixed, so that the AIs now consider the distance from them to their target.

When you have a stack of units selected ctrl+h will group together only the wounded units. Saw this tip on the loading screen a few weeks ago. Has been very useful the last few games.