All Leaders Challenge

Sisiutil

All Leader Challenger
Joined
Feb 19, 2006
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I've gotten to the point where I am winning handily on Prince level using either of my two favourite leaders: Caesar and Elizabeth. As with Warlord and Noble, I was about to move up to the next level...when I realized I still haven't even tried playing a game with more than half of the other civs and leaders.

I recalled Sun Tzu's maxim:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

I still don't know much about the "enemies", and as a corollary, that means I don't know much about myself either. So I've set a challenge for myself: play a game of Civ IV, at Prince level, through to victory or defeat at least once with every leader before moving on to Monarch level. This isn't quite the "Random Leader" option, as I'm systematically (okay, alphabetically) working through all the Civs except the ones I've won with in the past. (Which means I'm skipping Washington and Catherine too.) All the games are on standard maps and speed, Continents. Yeah, I need to get around to experimenting with those settings too. One spanner in the works at a time, okay?

Obviously it's taking awhile, but it's been VERY educational. I thought I'd share the on-going results in a thread here. (I thought of posting this in "Stories & Tales", but as my main purpose is to learn strategy and relate/discuss it, I thought this would be a more appropriate forum for it.)

One of the first things I've noticed is how important it is to adjust your strategy and tactics to each leader's traits, unique unit, and starting techs. It's just as important as your starting position and other Civs, and in fact, you have to weave them all together in your approach to the game. (I know this sounds obvious, but if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that it's one thing to "know" something on a purely intellectual level, and quite another to experience its veracity first-hand.)

Arabs (Saladin)

(Okay, I skipped Roosevelt for a couple of games, but came back to him. More on that later.)

This was my first game playing with a Spiritual civ, and that was the biggest eye-opener: it was heavenly, if you'll excuse the pun, to skip that annoying and potentially-costly anarchy as a result of civics changes. The impact is psychological as well: I realized that with a non-spiritual civ, I'll often delay or even avoid civics changes. Usually it's because one or two turns of Anarchy might mean someone beats me to a tech or Wonder, but even when I'm well ahead I have a resistance to making a change even if it might be advantageous in the long run.

It was also interesting to start with the Wheel--it gave my first Worker something to do while I researched Bronze Working. It also gave me a leg up on getting Pottery, which is more important for a Civ without obvious financial advantages (like the Financial or Organizational traits). I fought a successful early war and took out Monty, which is always satisfying.

Then I ran into trouble.

I think my main mistake was in not taking full advantage of the Mysticism tech to found religions. Looking back, I probably should have founded as many as possible to keep them out of the hands of my rivals, then focused on spreading my state religion to my remaining neighbours (Kublai and Caesar) to convert them and ensure good relations. Obviously it didn't work out that way.

I was doing quite well tech-wise, but without any clear financial advantages I had to devote most of my commerce to it, making me very cash-poor. Yes, spreading my religion would have helped with that to--especially as I could have had shrines galore, thanks to the Philosophical trait helping me pump out Great Prophets. Instead, by mid-game, I was struggling to find the funds to upgrade the obsolete units protecting my cities, especially those bordering Kublai and Caesar. Bad. Very bad. I also hadn't gained that much territory by conquering Monty, so I lacked a number of resources for health and happiness.

My relations with Kublai were up and down; I was trading with him for several of the resources I needed when he cancelled all our deals. I was sure he was going to invade, but a few turns later, he came back and offered me the same deals again like nothing had happened. I took him up on it. Then a few turns after that, he declared war.

I can't help thinking there are some clever sub-routines built into the AI--it was as though Kublai cancelled the trade deals to see just how badly it affected my border cities, then re-stablished them to ensure my cities grew but became even more dependent on those trades. After he cancelled the second time, the sudden increase in unhappiness and unhealthiness in most of my cities made it very difficult to produce units or money to upgrade my veterans. Clever boy, that Kublai--diabolical, but clever.

The war was on, and Caesar joined in. Dogpile! It got ugly fast--my Axemen and Swordsmen versus stacks of Catapults, Macemen, Knights, and Crossbows. I had bee-lined to Guilds to get Saladin's UU, the Camel Archer, but with its only bonus being a +25% withdrawal chance, this is a pillaging unit, without much defensive use. No sense pillaging a rival's territory when you're fighting a war for survival in your own. When I was down to only my Capitol and two other cities (from the dozen I had after the war with Monty), the writing was on the wall and I packed it in.

Lesson learned: adjust your strategy to take full advantage of your Civ's traits and starting techs. In addition, it's probably my own fault, but I came away unimpressed with Saladin; I notice very few people report favouring him as a leader/civ choice. That UU is pretty unimpressive--I'm not big on pillaging to begin with--and his traits are better for culture than fighting wars or managing big empires. I think he'd stand a better chance of a cultural victory on a continent by himself, or on an archipeligo map.

Next up: Montezuma! What's it like to play as Civ IV's resident psycho?
 
Not bad. In Civ 3, there were a series of articles analysing each Civ in detail. Perhaps that could be started for Civ IV to for each leader...
 
Yes, that spiritual trait is very nice indeed. Mansa Musa is another one to try if you like a spiritual leader. Mansa is spiritual/financial and the unique unit is skirmisher (replaces archer). Not bad for very early wars, and kicking the crud out of barbarians.

I've only played a handful of leaders myself, and my favorite is probably Bismark. I normally only fight defensive wars until I get tanks, so his unique unit fits in great with the way I play. I also played Tokugawa quite often, and a few games with Mansa Musa, Saladin, and Roosevelt. Tried Asoka once, but I think that's about all I've played so far. :D
 
What you're attempting is a really interesting idea... I'm in about the same boat as you I believe (I'm comfortable on Prince, but Monarch can be shaky, especially with random leaders...) Maybe you'd like to post when you're starting with a new leader so some other folks could give it a run as well? :)

One thing I noticed going through my hall of fame recently is that when I had Saladin I always tended to have relatively strong wins. I think the reason is that I always leveraged the Philosphical trait along with Spiritual (and Mysticism) for a strong religious strategy.

Here's something to consider: if you found Hinduism or Buddhism, you can then grab some worker techs and go for Priesthood. With Priesthood, you can build a quick (and cheap) temple and set a priest specialist to generate a Great Prophet in 17 turns. If you don't research Masonry, you can research the other base religious tech in that time while building the Oracle, and have a very easy CS slingshot when you get Moses to discover Code of Laws. You can do the same thing with Stonehenge, though it will be a bit slower (but still very doable on Monarch, even.)

Then, with your Oracle and priest (or two, since you founded Confucianism) working, you'll get a second Great Prophet soon as well, who you can use to either discover Monarchy for lots of happiness in your cities or build a shrine. Keep working those priests along with Oracle and possibly Stonehenge, and you'll get a couple of shrines set up to let you keep a large empire going... and being spiritual, you can swap between religions at will for good diplomacy and scouting.

It's somewhat slow to develop, but I do think Saladin makes the best religion-oriented leader... even if you skip the CS slingshot, the fact that you can get your shrine before anyone else makes it very strong combination of traits.

So, Monty's next? That will be interesting... :)
 
Excellent idea, Sisiutil. I've probably played about 3/4 of the leaders in the game, but have never had the others come up as a random leader. You're right. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each leader will definitely strengthen one's play, whether you're playing that leader or playing against him/her. Now you've got me fired up. I'm going to have to put my current game on hold and follow in your footsteps. Play each leader, in order so I don't miss anyone, and take notes. A while back I had considered making a collection of observations about the different leaders as the AI plays them, but I think this is a better way to get an in-depth understanding of each one.

Edit: A suggestion -- if you pre-announce when you're about to start a new leader, not only could others do the same around the same time, as Armstrong suggested, but you could also start a separate thread (to keep this one uncluttered) for pre-game brainstorming. Let everyone contribute strategies that they have learned for that leader so we don't all have to re-invent the wheel each time. That would allow for separate one-stop strategy threads for each leader, and allow everyone to tweak the suggested strategies instead of discovering them for the first time during their games (i.e. the result would be more advanced strategies).
 
i agree with the tyrant : if you play one time each leader without pre-game discussions , you'll end up with a lots of losses, and so so strategies(not saying you can't play well enough, just pointing to unnecessary novelty).

as for saladin, you could have used sulla's walkthrough as a basis, you would have thought harder about religions ;)

My opinion on Saladin is, he's the best for cultural victories.
You can build those cheap temples en masse, and get those precious GA in bigger numbers.
 
Thanks everyone. I like the idea of a leader-specific "pre-game warm-up" beforehand. Cabert, you made an excellent point--as soon as you select (or are assigned, if playing random) your leader, you have to make some decisions about opening strategy right off the bat. That, as I said, is the first lesson I've already learned from this nascent experiment: what works for one leader will not necessarily work for another.

On another note, I have to give Firaxis credit for going out of their way to make each civ and leader unique. As much as I loved Civ II, aside from the city names, there weren't that many differences when playing as one Civ versus another. Even the opposing AI civs were, to a great extent, very similar. It's been very refreshing in Civ IV to see that each leader has a distinct personality.

Speaking of a distinct personality, there is none more distinct than Monty, is there? I'm off to create that leader-specific pre-game thread. See you there!
 
It will never die. I can't wait to see how you get harassed come civ V haha.

Indeed, it was fun chasing behind you as a rookie player, but don't expect it so easy in the next iteration, I don't intend to wait several years before playing it this time ;).
 
Next up: Montezuma! What's it like to play as Civ IV's resident psycho?

Monty is heaven! :crazyeye: Since I am a warmonger by nature, he's awesome. His UB is way too strong (that's why there is a bad event just for Monty for supposedly balancing its power.) With Monty I could conquer half of the world in BC. The consequences in one of my games: I used liberalism free tech for Assembly line on Emperor level, so imagine the permanent scars remnant AI suffered so as to be slow in teching.
 
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