13thMonkey
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2006
- Messages
- 4
I've been playing Civ4 for a couple of weeks. I never played Civ3 so I've got a lot of catching up to do! I can beat the game on noble fairly easily (best score was on a duel map with only the Japanese who'd been plauged by barbs and I walked in and captured their city very early on 
)
My weak point is city and worker management (took me a while to get out of the city spamming habit!) So, in the interests of learning, I played a hub map (think it was small, but I put the default number of Civs down by one to have four opponents to start with a slighly bigger 'continent' and had four Civs, so you can work it out
) No barbs either cos I wanted to forget about building defenders.
Had a great start (on noble). Got lucky and founded all three early religions, even though I was only going for one. The AI Civs didn't seem to make an effort and I got bronze and iron early from huts giving me earlier techs. I though about going for a culture win (which I've never done before) but since a) I'm still trying to figure out specializing cites b) I'm playing marathon and don't have a huge amont of food hanging around c) it's a hub map so I can spam my religion early and try to make friends (and money!) I'll go for that, with spaceship as backup.
Since it was a peaceful game with no barbs I didn't need to worry about barracks or defence. (Jumping ahead, some of my cities were unhappy early game but I never thought of looking to see if it was because they weren't defended - I just built temps anyway - wish I'd checked now). I was playing as Fred so never had problems with unhappiness once my early cities stopped building Pyramids and Oracle (got beat to Stonehenge, but I only started on it to give my main city something to do, so the gold came in handy!)
I've got four cities and Hinduism is spreading through all the Civs thanks to my roving vicars so I'm going to be racking up the shrine gold points and I'm on Organised religion so that's all good . All the AI is Bud and Liz and Hatty look like they're going to be frineds. Monty and Alex not so much
but they're all willing to trade tech so I'm skipping ahead and trading backwards (if you see what I mean). I even used Oracle to get me Theology rather than Casting as I figured that the less religions the AI had, the easier it would be. Plus, I'd been pumping out missionaries and wonders so my base cities didn't even have the basics in place so building forges would be a few tech discoveries down the line anyway.
With my shrine income, open borders and a few wonders I was making a healthy enough profit to add a couple of cities to pick up a few resources. They'd turn into great cities eventually, but as this was a learning game I let the AI take care of them so I could concentrate on my main cities and their workers.
As it would turn out, both my new cities would have been better GP/gold/shield factories than my originals, but I've figured out why that is and I'll learn from it
Meanwhile, I'm micromanaging my older cities.
I ended up founding all the religions (not having to research military techs to defend helps!) and had shrines for all. The downside was that Berlin was my GPP factory but was also the holy city for four religions so I kept popping prophets whether I wanted to or not
Meanwhile, everybody is Buddist and I'm raking in the gold. Hatty and Liz love me and eventually sign Def Pacts (even though there's no war
) Monty and Alex aren't so pleased with me, but still trade tech and resources. Eventually Monty cancels open borders. *sigh* Luckily I've founded a city at the hub (so I can grab copper - no real use to me in no war but there were some other nice resources there too). So I can still get to all but Liz (who's so happy with me I don't need to and all my other trade is coastal, but anyway 
)
My income takes a beating as by now I've started filling in the gaps of my territory with AI controlled cities. (I hate it when some crappy Civ comes and founds a city on a spare square, steals your resources and you have to wait ages for the city to turn to you!) Since I was going for a dip victory I needed more population too given that I doubt Alex and Monty will vote for me.
I beeline for mass media to get the UN and sure enough, I'm about 40 votes short of a diplo victory. By this stage, with Monty and Alex in #2 and #3 spots in the score I'm not too surprised, so on to plan B: Space race. I switch my GPP factory (which isn't as good as it could have been - but I learnt a lot from this!) to pumping out Great Engineers so I can get Apollo and the Elevator online when I get the techs to build them. Needless to say, I end up with more Prophets with all the shrines I have in Berlin.
I get a Golden Age out of it though with the Artist I've had sitting there.
By this point, I've got a lot of cities. Plan C - might be able to catch up on the UN votes, plus my big cities will be working on SS so extra will help. Except of course, this is Civ4! I've already got all the resources in my bit of the map connected and I won't need to do anymore research. All the cities were founded within my own borders so I won't benefit from expansion. Lesson #3897 - more cities doesn't help in this case!
Anyway, my PC decided to crash (I must remember to reboot it more than once a week
) and although Alex and Liz had some parts built for the SS they don't have the techs for the others. I'll win on points so game over.
I could have won much earlier if I hadn't gone for permanent peace though. Sure, I'd have had to build defenders in my cities and it would have made meant it would have been a lot tighter for money (by the end I was losing about 10 gold/turn but I had so much cash I was even trading it for fairly useless tech to keep the AI happy).
Hatty was on the next hub from me and fairly backwards. Taking her out wouldn't have helped me in the dip stakes though. Monty was a bit further up and stronger and without even making an effort I'd got a lot better military tech than him. Just three of his cities (one of which was on the hub and close to mine - with a few culture bombs early on it would have been mine) and I'd have got the UN votes needed.
That's the fun part though - you can't just go and beat up your neighbours - you have to be nice to them! There's no way anybody would have been close to building SS parts if I hadn't given them the tech just to be nice
Anyway, the whole purpose was to learn about specializing cities and workers and I've learnt a lot, so job done
I've still got a long, long way to go though - which is why Civ is such a great game! Dammit I want my life back 
Any tips/tricks/criticisms - I'm listening!
)My weak point is city and worker management (took me a while to get out of the city spamming habit!) So, in the interests of learning, I played a hub map (think it was small, but I put the default number of Civs down by one to have four opponents to start with a slighly bigger 'continent' and had four Civs, so you can work it out
) No barbs either cos I wanted to forget about building defenders.Had a great start (on noble). Got lucky and founded all three early religions, even though I was only going for one. The AI Civs didn't seem to make an effort and I got bronze and iron early from huts giving me earlier techs. I though about going for a culture win (which I've never done before) but since a) I'm still trying to figure out specializing cites b) I'm playing marathon and don't have a huge amont of food hanging around c) it's a hub map so I can spam my religion early and try to make friends (and money!) I'll go for that, with spaceship as backup.
Since it was a peaceful game with no barbs I didn't need to worry about barracks or defence. (Jumping ahead, some of my cities were unhappy early game but I never thought of looking to see if it was because they weren't defended - I just built temps anyway - wish I'd checked now). I was playing as Fred so never had problems with unhappiness once my early cities stopped building Pyramids and Oracle (got beat to Stonehenge, but I only started on it to give my main city something to do, so the gold came in handy!)
I've got four cities and Hinduism is spreading through all the Civs thanks to my roving vicars so I'm going to be racking up the shrine gold points and I'm on Organised religion so that's all good . All the AI is Bud and Liz and Hatty look like they're going to be frineds. Monty and Alex not so much
but they're all willing to trade tech so I'm skipping ahead and trading backwards (if you see what I mean). I even used Oracle to get me Theology rather than Casting as I figured that the less religions the AI had, the easier it would be. Plus, I'd been pumping out missionaries and wonders so my base cities didn't even have the basics in place so building forges would be a few tech discoveries down the line anyway.With my shrine income, open borders and a few wonders I was making a healthy enough profit to add a couple of cities to pick up a few resources. They'd turn into great cities eventually, but as this was a learning game I let the AI take care of them so I could concentrate on my main cities and their workers.
As it would turn out, both my new cities would have been better GP/gold/shield factories than my originals, but I've figured out why that is and I'll learn from it
Meanwhile, I'm micromanaging my older cities.I ended up founding all the religions (not having to research military techs to defend helps!) and had shrines for all. The downside was that Berlin was my GPP factory but was also the holy city for four religions so I kept popping prophets whether I wanted to or not
Meanwhile, everybody is Buddist and I'm raking in the gold. Hatty and Liz love me and eventually sign Def Pacts (even though there's no war
) Monty and Alex aren't so pleased with me, but still trade tech and resources. Eventually Monty cancels open borders. *sigh* Luckily I've founded a city at the hub (so I can grab copper - no real use to me in no war but there were some other nice resources there too). So I can still get to all but Liz (who's so happy with me I don't need to and all my other trade is coastal, but anyway )My income takes a beating as by now I've started filling in the gaps of my territory with AI controlled cities. (I hate it when some crappy Civ comes and founds a city on a spare square, steals your resources and you have to wait ages for the city to turn to you!) Since I was going for a dip victory I needed more population too given that I doubt Alex and Monty will vote for me.
I beeline for mass media to get the UN and sure enough, I'm about 40 votes short of a diplo victory. By this stage, with Monty and Alex in #2 and #3 spots in the score I'm not too surprised, so on to plan B: Space race. I switch my GPP factory (which isn't as good as it could have been - but I learnt a lot from this!) to pumping out Great Engineers so I can get Apollo and the Elevator online when I get the techs to build them. Needless to say, I end up with more Prophets with all the shrines I have in Berlin.
I get a Golden Age out of it though with the Artist I've had sitting there.By this point, I've got a lot of cities. Plan C - might be able to catch up on the UN votes, plus my big cities will be working on SS so extra will help. Except of course, this is Civ4! I've already got all the resources in my bit of the map connected and I won't need to do anymore research. All the cities were founded within my own borders so I won't benefit from expansion. Lesson #3897 - more cities doesn't help in this case!
Anyway, my PC decided to crash (I must remember to reboot it more than once a week
) and although Alex and Liz had some parts built for the SS they don't have the techs for the others. I'll win on points so game over.I could have won much earlier if I hadn't gone for permanent peace though. Sure, I'd have had to build defenders in my cities and it would have made meant it would have been a lot tighter for money (by the end I was losing about 10 gold/turn but I had so much cash I was even trading it for fairly useless tech to keep the AI happy).
Hatty was on the next hub from me and fairly backwards. Taking her out wouldn't have helped me in the dip stakes though. Monty was a bit further up and stronger and without even making an effort I'd got a lot better military tech than him. Just three of his cities (one of which was on the hub and close to mine - with a few culture bombs early on it would have been mine) and I'd have got the UN votes needed.
That's the fun part though - you can't just go and beat up your neighbours - you have to be nice to them! There's no way anybody would have been close to building SS parts if I hadn't given them the tech just to be nice
Anyway, the whole purpose was to learn about specializing cities and workers and I've learnt a lot, so job done
I've still got a long, long way to go though - which is why Civ is such a great game! Dammit I want my life back Any tips/tricks/criticisms - I'm listening!
