Civilization IV convert (from Civ3)

[Mike Hussey]

Hi guys.

My hand was forced recently when I decided to purchase CIV: Complete as EB games had sold out of Civ III Conquests. So yesterday I loaded up booted the game and found that Firaxis had made dramatic improvements to the game. I just have a few questions now?

Will I be able to play CIV the same way I used to play C3C e.g. fast initial expansion, quick buildup to war etc (I was quite decent regularly winning on Emperor difficulty)?

What happened to the irrigation and mining? All I see now are cottages and farms?!

What's with the new combat model? Does this mean a unit of 2 strength has 50/50 chance of beating a unit with 2 strength, all other things being equal?

Do I still need to micromanage workers and governors or can I automate?

I hear in some threads that fast initial expansion is bad? Why? What's with the maintainence cost?

That's all for now.
Thanks

 

[ChristofferC]

Will I be able to play CIV the same way I used to play C3C e.g. fast initial expansion, quick buildup to war etc (I was quite decent regularly winning on Emperor difficulty)?

You can't do the fast early expansion. If you expand too fast in Civ 4, the maintainence cost of your cities will drain your economy since each city costs money, and the cost for every city increases for each city you build. A rule of thumb for new players is to not expand more if your gold income is negative with the science slider at 60-70 %. To get money for expansion, build cottages early on! Cottages suck, but they will develop into hamlets, vilagges and towns if you work them, which will give you a fair amount of commerce after a while. Having the financial and/or organized traits also helps.

What happened to the irrigation and mining? All I see now are cottages and farms?!

You have to research agriculture for farms and mining for mines.

What's with the new combat model? Does this mean a unit of 2 strength has 50/50 chance of beating a unit with 2 strength, all other things being equal?

Yes. By the way, you can see the combat odds in the lower left corner of the screen if you select one of your military units and click and hold the right mouse button on an enemy unit.

Do I still need to micromanage workers and governors or can I automate?

It's always much better to manage everything yourself, but I guess the game is beatable with some automation on the lower levels.

I hear in some threads that fast initial expansion is bad? Why? What's with the maintainence cost?

See the answer for the first question.

Hope that helps.

 

[MyOtherName]

Will I be able to play CIV the same way I used to play C3C e.g. fast initial expansion, quick buildup to war etc (I was quite decent regularly winning on Emperor difficulty)?

Fast expansion to a limited extent -- you'll probably only want to build 2-4 cities before you start mass producing military, and you will only be able to afford to capture the best of your opponent's cities. (You'll just raze the others to the ground)

What happened to the irrigation and mining? All I see now are cottages and farms?!

Irrigation is now farming. Mines can only be placed on hills. (Or certain bonus resources)

Roads no longer give you commerce; if you want to make money, you have to build cottages. This is one of the biggest strategic changes in Civ4.

Do I still need to micromanage workers and governors or can I automate?

The city governor is okay. You can usually get him to manage your citizens the way you want them managed, but you occasionally have to intervene.

I hear in some threads that fast initial expansion is bad? Why? What's with the maintainence cost?

Think of it this way...

In Civ 3, corruption only applied to cities -- the effect of corruption in a city
could never be greater than the amount of production/commerce the city makes. Therefore, it always improved your empire (even if only a tiny bit) to found more cities.

In Civ 4, maintenance applies to your empire -- each city you found drains money from your empire's coffers. If your city isn't well developed, its mainenance will actually be more than the commerce it makes!

If you really focus on commerce (build lots of cottages and settle near commerce-rich bonus resources), most city cites will start to turn a profit after a few dozen turns, so you could rapidly expand if you really wanted to... but it quickly becomes better to start investing in new technology instead of new cities.

 

[oyzar]

It actually work to rex eventually... But you have to do it controled to keep up your economy... At first people have no idea how to control their economy and as such it is pretty much impossible to rex. Civ3 and CIV are pretty different.

 

[Airefuego]

Welcome to the forums Mike (Mr Cricket)

Sounds like you need the War Academy...
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

I recommend the article entitled: "Tips for People who Hate Civ 4" - it deals nicely with the differences between Civ IV and Civ III.

 

[Mike Hussey]

Ok, so opening strategy would be just to pump out 4-5 cities really quickly and specialise them. Then produce heaps of military units and invade a neighbour?

And about worker management, just a specific question about roads do you road tile your worker improves or do you only have a skeleton of roads connecting cities. My reasoning behind this is that roads take time to build and don't give you that +1 commerce they did in Civ3.

Finally how does maintainence actually work? Is it the more number of cities you have the more expensive or does each city cost remain the same?

Airefuego your article looks interesting, I guess Civ4 is just gonna take some time to get used to as I was so familiar with the fun concepts of Civ3 like fast expansion and formula play.

 

[Hawaiian]

And about worker management, just a specific question about roads do you road tile your worker improves or do you only have a skeleton of roads connecting cities. My reasoning behind this is that roads take time to build and don't give you that +1 commerce they did in Civ3.

I'm not quite sure I understand your question, but if I'm guessing right you're asking if it's always necessary to build roads. In Civ3, you spam the roads because of the bonus. But you are right, you don't have to spam roads at all in Civ4. In fact, early game, there are several times you will have improved tiles (farms and mines) being worked with no roads on them. This is fine as you may be utilizing your workers elsewhere.

The times you will need roads are when you need to enable quick military defense (Say to protect a mine on the border) and other unit movement (like moving missionaries or settlers faster). Also, you will need roads to connect resources to your trade network so your whole nation can benefit from and trade them.

Later in the game, building a railroad on a mine or lumbermill will actually increase its output, so then it will be beneficial to build railroads on all such improved tiles.

Generally speaking, though, you will only have roads where you need to travel, making the map a lot easier on the eyes.

Finally how does maintainence actually work? Is it the more number of cities you have the more expensive or does each city cost remain the same?

Generally speaking there are two factors to city maintenance for each and every city. The first is its distance from your capital. The farther the city is from the capital, the higher the maint. cost. (The national wonder Forbidden Palace acts as a capital to decrease the cost of nearby cities "Distance from the Capital" maintenance cost. Also, the Versailles world wonder does the same.)

The second factor is total number of cities. As your whole nation grows with more and more cities, each and every city will have a rise in this second part of the maintenance cost.

You can build a courthouse in a city to effectively cut in half the total maintenance cost of a city.

So in summation, each city will have the following maintenance cost:

Distance from capital + Total Number of Cities = Total Maintenance.
With a courthouse built, the Total Maintenance will be cut in half 50%.

There is a very detailed thread on this somewhere if you search for it.