Civ IV Intermediate Tactics and Gambits

I made some minor revisions to the article in order to take account of changes to the game in the Warlords expansion pack and its patch.

The overlapped cross maneuver is also useful for having two cities benefit from the health bonus from the same forest, allowing you to chop more forests. Also, you can sell or give military resources without fear to your capitulated vassals if there's no conceivable way they'll break free.

a4phantom said:

The overlapped cross maneuver is also useful for having two cities benefit from the health bonus from the same forest, allowing you to chop more forests. Also, you can sell or give military resources without fear to your capitulated vassals if there's no conceivable way they'll break free.

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An excellent point about the forests! I've incorporated that into the article.

I'm gradually including Warlords tips as I become familiar with them.

This is the happiest day of my life!

a4phantom said:

This is the happiest day of my life!

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No offense, but if this constitutes the happiest day of your life, you need to get one.

hmm that didn't work at all

What? I met the girl of my dreams, why shouldn't it have been the happiest day of my life?

a4phantom said:

What? I met the girl of my dreams, why shouldn't it have been the happiest day of my life?

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You'd pick that over Civ 4? You're insane, dude.

Congrats.

DeafDolphin said:

You'd pick that over Civ 4? You're insane, dude.

Congrats.

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She doesn't live here, only home for the holidays, and we're both awfully independent people, so here's hoping I can have both! Of course, any woman who'd make you choose would be much too Isabelaish.

IMO, all women are Isabelish, but that's not the point. Good luck, dude.

DeafDolphin said:

IMO, all women are Isabelish, but that's not the point. Good luck, dude.

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Dude, you just called my mom Isabelish. Swords at dawn!


Hehehe I'm gonna bring a Samurai sword, so I'll have +33% strength, +50% vs melee, and a couple of first strikes. Don't tell him.

I did an interesting move in my current game to get the Pyramids for my philosophical leader.

I found stone near my starting location, but too far away from the capital. I built the second city not too far from the stone (in a good location for later on). Then i chopped Stonehenge there to expand its borders. Meanwhile, after bronze working (for chopping and slavery), i headed straight for writing and mathematics. I connected the stone as soon as i could using a few workers to speed it up.

As soon as it was connected, i started building the Pyramids in my capital. I prechopped every forest i could find around my capital. I pop rushed a library to speed up my science and my discovery of mathematics. I settled the Great Prophet from Stonehenge in my capital to increase production. As soon as i got mathematics, i finished chopping all the forests, which gave me 60 hammers a piece (30 thanks to mathematics, +100% for stone).

I got the Pyramids in no time, without costing me any Great Person, and without requiring any tech that i wouldn't normally want asap anyway. This was done at immortal difficulty.

I thought this could be relevant to this article, especially the first part which explains a trick to get Pyramids early. Using chops plus stone and mathematics seems like another good approach to me, if you've got the stone handy.

In fact, i got Pyramids so easily that i used the remaining forests to get the Hanging Gardens as well. I already had mathematics and stone, so it only took a few turns. And it made for a heck of a Great Engineer producing city. Can't wait to see what happens next. This could be a monster of a wonder city, with all the engineers i'll be able to use for building wonders. Next stop is the Great Library with a Great Engineer, then the wonder that gives +1 happy using stone again.

Cool... I hardly ever bother with the Pyramids anymore, but the next time I start near stone, I may have to give this a try. Settling the Great Prophet strikes me as a very smart, almost counter-intuitive move; I'm usually inclined to pop him for a tech or use him for a shrine and don't usually settle them unless I get one in the late game.

I disagree about copper being a resource that you should never trade. In many cases, copper is the first resource you should trade away, before health resources even. This situation is when a civ has iron and no copper. Copper will allow them nothing more than they already get from iron, and they'll still stupidly pay a hefty price for it, giving you as much as two resources or a resource and money.

Whenever i have extra copper, i always start looking for civs with iron and no copper to trade the extra. Even if i haven't discovered iron working myself, i can find out who has iron by scanning their land and looking for a mine on flatland with no seeable resource, or on a hill which seemingly produces too much. I can even know where unused iron is by finding tiles in opponent's land that produce one too many hammers.

The exception to the rule is if the copper could be used to build wonders. Be especially weary of trading away copper to an industrious civ.

About settling Great Prophets, personally that's what i do most often with them. For one thing, they're the best Great Person to settle after Great Merchants. Gold is more useful than science, because they can all be settled in one city and that city will be the only one that needs to build marketplaces, grocers and banks. Extra production is also a great boost, though not as good as the merchant's food.

Another reason i settle them is because their other uses are often no good to me. I rarely found religions, so can't build shrines (unless i conquer a holy city that doesn't have a shrine yet). Since i don't go for early religions, and play with tech trading turned off, i often don't get the early religious techs until i need them as requirements for other techs. Therefore the only tech the Great Prophet will offer is usually something like Polytheism or something else equally worthless.

Finally, i'm a big fan of settling Great People in general, especially early in the game, because the net gain from doing so is bigger the more turns there are left in the game.

Zombie69 said:

Finally, i'm a big fan of settling Great People in general, especially early in the game

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Does that hold true at a lower level (Prince for me) where it's easier to grow the city and work more tiles?

Zombie69 said:

The exception to the rule is if the copper could be used to build wonders. Be especially weary of trading away copper to an industrious civ.

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A very good point about trading copper to a civ that has iron--I'll have to try that--but obviously wonders muddy things.

There are only 2 world wonders that are built faster with copper: the Colossus and the Statue of Liberty. Neither are on my list of "must-haves", though they are on my list of "nice-to-haves". I usually only build the Colossus if I have several seafood tiles around my coastal cities. The SoL is usually most useful if I'm pursuing a space race win, for that free specialist (usually a scientist when I'm researching, later an engineer when I'm building space ship parts). Otherwise I'll build it mainly to deny its benefits to the AI.

You can easily watch for when your copper recipient gets Democracy and cancel the trade. Metal Casting is trickier, though, as I've seen the AI get it in some games before I have Alphabet to discover that fact. Assuming you want to build these two wonders, the best time to trade copper to a civ with Iron is obviously in between the completion of the Colossus and the first acquisition of Democracy.

a4phantom said:

Does that hold true at a lower level (Prince for me) where it's easier to grow the city and work more tiles?

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I apologize for pre-empting Zombie, but I think overall, your best use of GP depends on your strategy in each game.

As Zombie says above, he places a very low priority on religion. I myself don't make it the focus of my strategy, but I do find it useful for the happiness boost, culture, buildings, and civics. So I will often pop a Great Person for a tech that founds a particular religion--such as using your first Great Scientist for Philosophy and Taoism, or your first Great Prophet (in Warlords) for Theology and Christianity. Once you have a religion, it's extremely beneficial to have its shrine, so there's the next use of a Great Prophet.

If you're in a tight race for a valuable wonder, it makes sense to use a Great Engineer to guarantee that you acquire it. And in many cases, popping a tech early can be very advantageous if it gives you a significant jump on the AI, and/or unlocks your civ's unique building or unit. And the gold from a Great Merchant's trade mission can help you run research to the max, or upgrade several veteran units to the latest and greatest.

That being said, in most of my games, by mid-game (around 1300-1500) I've gone from using most of my GP for other purposes to settling them. Great Scientists invariably get settled in my science city (once the Academy is built); Great Prophets and Great Merchants get settled in the wealth city (which will build Wall Street and usually contains a shrine); Great Artists get settled in cities that are in a culture border war (which I find more effective over the long run than a culture bomb at flipping tiles); Great Engineers... well, I still tend to use them for Wonders rather than settling.

As with many things in Civ IV, the best approach is not "I do this in every game", but "what choice makes the most sense in this particular game?"

Sisiutil said:

That being said, in most of my games, by mid-game (around 1300-1500) I've gone from using most of my GP for other purposes to settling them. Great Scientists invariably get settled in my science city (once the Academy is built); Great Prophets and Great Merchants get settled in the wealth city (which will build Wall Street and usually contains a shrine); Great Artists get settled in cities that are in a culture border war (which I find more effective over the long run than a culture bomb at flipping tiles); Great Engineers... well, I still tend to use them for Wonders rather than settling.

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That's what I do with them basically from the beginning, except that I use Great Artists to culture bomb and instantly pacify important captured cities, ideally capitals. I don't build Parthenon anymore so unless I get Oracle I never get Great Prophets, which is fine since I don't found religions anymore. Thanks guys.

Very minor point on copper trading, it does speed growth of some of the Cathedral equivalents. I don't see why you'd care much unless you were in a very tight culture race with someone.

nice to see you back zombie
about settling vs lightbulbing, the key fact in the earlier post was

Another reason i settle them is because their other uses are often no good to me. I rarely found religions, so can't build shrines (unless i conquer a holy city that doesn't have a shrine yet). Since i don't go for early religions, and play with tech trading turned off, i often don't get the early religious techs until i need them as requirements for other techs.

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lightbulbing is especially strong when you can trade the tech around :
very early tech = monopoly tech = loads of trade
in a "no tech trade" game, i'd settle everyone, including engineers, up to very late in the game.