Silly Habits YOU've Made in Civilization 4.

I started renaming cities after those my girlfriend and I had visited together to get her interested in Civ.

That did not work
But she did find it cute so I often do it just to make her smile when she decides to check how I'm doing

AdamCrock said:

Hey! I'm doing the same thing with the planet icon too ! ^^

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Yup, count me in too! !!

vincentz said:

I NEVER cheat. I never go into world builder to change anything. I never reload.
I feel the game is broken and have lost its magic if I do any of the above, even if loading a couple of turns back could have saved an otherwise good game. Then I would rather quit/restart.

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I cannot say I never ever cheated, but definitely have that feeling about broken magic I rather start a new game instead of reloading. Couple of times when I reloaded in the middle of the game, I would loose the drive to finish the game...


One of the strangest and headache bringing habit I had since Civ 2, every time I play actual historical scenario, was to print chronology of events for my nation and make things happen exactly when they happen. Say, Harlan Thompson made a wonderful Mongols scenario for Civ 2 -- I was trying so hard to get to Russia by 1237 and capture Kiev in 1240. It felt like a chess game sometimes, thinking about evey turn 15-20 minutes until I finally move my Horse Archers...

For all civ games, the main city names:

Capital: Unity
Expansion for the sake of expansion: Hope
Expansion near valuable resources: Venture
Coastal: Port Hope/Freedom (depending on existing cities)
Near enemy lines or otherwise fortress/military city: Vanguard

I tend to build very small empires which is foolish in Civ IV it seems thus names beyond this are just what comes to mind.

As I play the English, captured cities might find "Anglo-" added to their name as a prefix, to you know, DRIVE the point home that the city is under new mangement!

I have one more silly Civ IV habit: When I start a new game, the civ I choose is the AI civ from my last game that has done the best among the civs I haven't played yet.

For example: In my game as Joao II, the civ that did the best amongst the AI (dominating until I nuked them) was the Khmer led by Sury. But I had already played him. The next best AI was America led by Roosevelt. So the game after that I played as Roosevelt of the Americans.

I usually start up a game, take a look at the starting position and leader I rolled (I play random), think about it a little, and then go off and do whatever I'm doing for the day. I think about the land around me and my leader/civ traits while I'm doing something mundane like PT (in the army) or whatever chores I have to do. By the time I get to actually playing the game I feel like I've been anticipating it for a while It's not really necessary now but when I was new to the game, doing this sometimes helped me think of little strategies I might not have thought of if I had just jumped right into the game.

noto2 said:

while I'm doing something mundane like PT (in the army)

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"I don't know, but I've been told: Diedre's got a network node."

(I was in the Army; noe retired from the reserves.)

Here's another few silly habits:

This one involves a mod (Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn). I play this on Marathon to fully enjoy the eras in this mod, and I find that the AI is inadequate, even a difficulty level above me.

What I like to do is start out with a civ, reach highest in score by 1AD, and then manually change my control to the civ with the lowest score, and work my way up. I feel that the switch really spices up the game, because by 1AD, I am usually one of the dominant civs, and changing my control gives me a new scenario, new issues, and an opportunity to fix what the AI has broken.

I've tried this twice.

Usually, I set up the first civ I start with so adequately to the point where the AI controlling it dominates the whole game.


I don't know if I'm the only one with this habit, but every game I feel an intense need to do some colonization. I never play Pangaea, and Terra is probably my favourite map. Sometimes I will set up a colony in a place where there's a barbarian civ that spawned, and switch to the barbarian civ and play, "Defend your civilization from the highly advanced, rifle-holding conquistadores". That's fun too.

Sanguivorant said:

Here's another few silly habits:

This one involves a mod (Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn). I play this on Marathon to fully enjoy the eras in this mod, and I find that the AI is inadequate, even a difficulty level above me.

What I like to do is start out with a civ, reach highest in score by 1AD, and then manually change my control to the civ with the lowest score, and work my way up. I feel that the switch really spices up the game, because by 1AD, I am usually one of the dominant civs, and changing my control gives me a new scenario, new issues, and an opportunity to fix what the AI has broken.

I've tried this twice.

Usually, I set up the first civ I start with so adequately to the point where the AI controlling it dominates the whole game.


I don't know if I'm the only one with this habit, but every game I feel an intense need to do some colonization. I never play Pangaea, and Terra is probably my favourite map. Sometimes I will set up a colony in a place where there's a barbarian civ that spawned, and switch to the barbarian civ and play, "Defend your civilization from the highly advanced, rifle-holding conquistadores". That's fun too.

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Wow, that sounds challenging. I have done something that is somewhat related. I played a terra map game as Portugal and colonized the crap out of the new world and then whipped the palace in one of my cities there. Since that made the new world my official home and the old world a "colony", I then granted independence to the "colony". So I was then the leader of a bunch of small, far flung cities on a wide open continent across the ocean from the world's major powers. It was almost like playing as the US in real life, except that I had a strong ally in "europe". That was a cool game, I ended up losing though, because my "colony" got invaded and conquered by another civ and I had no way to get over there and help out, and then I was eventually invaded myself :/

I have this habit to let my cities grow to round numbers (div/2) if it's 22 for example - it's okay but I can't stand 23 and I just hate 11 hehe I need to have my cities either 20, 22 or 24 etc... I know it's silly

I aslo tend to leave a forest nearby for aesthetics ^^ I like my cities to look nice ! xD

When Im waiting for my turn I zoom to my cities and roleplay like "Oh Im a great emperror en route to my royal forest to hunt some deers yaay ! (making horse riding noise following my mouse pointer) What ?! who dares to trespass on my forests hunting grounds - ooooh it's an aztec spy (usually a unit sent there by AI to check out my lands xD) !!! I shouldn't have signed open borders ! " ....

For some reason, I also have weird habits of chopping.

I don't like to eliminate all the trees in my city area. If I get rid of any trees, it would be the trees within a city's adjacent plots. Other than that, I don't like chopping trees. I do it for gameplay purposes, for the health bonus, a chopping reserve in case of emergency, and for the use of lumber camps later on.

For a while I'd name my capital city after my personal glory (like "Alexandria,") and then name all the other cities after the resources they took. "Swineville" (pigs,) "Equestria" (Horses,) "Coastallia" (coastal city,) "Cowtown," etc.

Sanguivorant said:

For some reason, I also have weird habits of chopping.

I don't like to eliminate all the trees in my city area. If I get rid of any trees, it would be the trees within a city's adjacent plots. Other than that, I don't like chopping trees. I do it for gameplay purposes, for the health bonus, a chopping reserve in case of emergency, and for the use of lumber camps later on.

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Mister Washigton ? ^^

urborror said:

For a while I'd name my capital city after my personal glory (like "Alexandria,") and then name all the other cities after the resources they took. "Swineville" (pigs,) "Equestria" (Horses,) "Coastallia" (coastal city,) "Cowtown," etc.

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*squee*

My chopping habits match yours' to a tee btw.

I've never renamed a city after my daughter, until this morning. Then I come here and read that beautiful story. My motive was much less touching however, if I would have left the city name as suggested it would have been named after my ex, and I didn't want that. The irony is that in so doing the next city I founded came with the name of my ex. How appropriate, the past haunts me. You can click it away but it just keeps coming back.

As far as habits, I always watch the game replay and I always watch it with a cup of coffee.

This was a good thread to read. I can relate to people that like to turn out all the lights while playing. My wife nags me and tells me I hurt my eyes by doing that, so I've tried to honor her request lately and leave the overhead light on while I play.

Since I have restarted playing (I took like a year off) I forgot all about renaming units and cities until I read this thread. I remember I often would like to name highly promoted units (usually axemen or macemen) to some easy to remember or cool sounding name. When they died, I felt sorry for them. Sometimes I would rename cities I took over, particularly if it was someone like the Zulus who had strange sounding city names.

I've never been much of a roleplayer at the game. I do feel a little better if Judaism or Christianity spreads throughout my empire though. It is fun to play a terra map and pretend it's the real world, but I usually find those maps don't have the type of balance that a fractal or pangea map do.

I haven't felt like preserving forests around my cities, those hammers they produce can really help with some early important production. I like it when I have a large stand of tundra forest though, that makes for a perfect National Park location later in the game. I don't like to chop tundra forests, they are less productive after they are chopped.

My weird habits are left over from Civ I & II: basically, maxing out food and production as much as possible. "Oh, but what about cottages?" you ask. I find a nice big pile (or three) of floodplains/desert and ignore the green face.

I basically have very little idea of what I'm doing. But I have a good time doing it!

When I first got the game I went through and modified much of the diplomacy text to eliminate all the cheesy/corny comments. It got overwritten when I installed one of the patches and I never redid it but the one line that absolutely must get changed is "Your head would look good on the end of a pole". That sounds extra cheesy to me so this always gets changed to "Time for WAR!".

Also Barbarian State is renamed Barbarian Rowe State after someone I used to work with. If you knew Rowe you'd understand. Had a reputation for getting into bar fights all the time whether or not it was a good idea or if there was any chance of winning. Which is exactly like the Barbarian rationale for combat in Civ IV. And no, not as endearing as naming a city after someone special but apt nonetheless.

As far as actual gameplay I sometimes hold a grudge against an AI who declares war on me. I won't throw the game because of it, but guess who I'm going after now?

I play Epic and have found myself involved in 500 turn wars that I didn't start against an AI who just won't relent. Meanwhile some peacful civ has expanded to a billion cities and a zillion points and there's no hope of winning the game. In these situations the game devolves into simply "win this war".

Ex0dus said:

I feel that I must always build the Oxford University National Wonder in Oxford, regardless of whether or not it is actually the best city for it.

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Oh good, I'm not the only one who does this. I also make sure Oxford and Cambridge are on rivers and Oxford has a cattle resource.

rah said:

I got in the habit of naming one of my better cities after my daughter...

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Add me to the list of people who think that story is just the cutest ever

I've done the putting the wonder in the correct city even if it doesn't make sense thing as well. Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza etc and once playing China I dide move my capital and build the Forbidden Palace in Beijing.

However the one I do EVERY single game is that I must have a nice round number of military units for attacking purposes. I MUST have 20 Maceman, 30 Horse Archers or whatever. I might have enough for the purpose but checking the advisor shows I have 29 so I build one more, or some die and even though they may be just about to go obsolete I must get the numbers to a nice round figure again

low-level OCD I guess.