Condensed tips for beginners?

[Silu]

Barb spawns aren't scaled at all (it's simply turn-based), so on Marathon you do get a lot more barbs. It's not exactly 3 times more as there are diminishing returns on barb spawns (barbs also spawnbust other barbs) but still it can get ridiculous on higher levels. Personal best without raging barbs: 37 barb kills at 1500BC (Immortal).

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Oh... thank you for the info!

It's kind of bad for me, but... there's a good side to it at least: it makes me feel a lot less guilty about playing marathon. (which seems to me a bit easier than the other speeds)

 

[Deathstar]

Can someone list the culture requirement for legendary culture victory for quick, normal, epic, and marathon speeds?

 

[Sisiutil]

Can someone list the culture requirement for legendary culture victory for quick, normal, epic, and marathon speeds?

• Quick: 25,000
• Normal: 50,000
• Epic: 75,000
• Marathon: 150,000

 

[jetha]

Thanks for this excellent informative thread, guys. It's really helping my performance.

 

[ForGreatJustice]

Hey guys, couldn't find this via searching but I've been wondering, how does everyone make dot maps? I'm not talking about MS paint made ones, I'm talking about the dot maps that looks like the game itself makes (the borders that show whenever you highlight a settler, but shows a BFC instead of the 3x3).

 

[Ghpstage]

Hey guys, couldn't find this via searching but I've been wondering, how does everyone make dot maps? I'm not talking about MS paint made ones, I'm talking about the dot maps that looks like the game itself makes (the borders that show whenever you highlight a settler, but shows a BFC instead of the 3x3).

Its a tool that comes with the BTS Unaltered Gameplay mod (BUG mod).
Its a great mod to use that has heaps of useful features that takes the info the game gives you and makes it much easier to access and put to use (i.e. tells you when an AI goes WHEOOHRN, or when they settle a new city)

It can help cut down micromanagement time a great deal and doesn't add things like new units/buildings/leaders or whatever (Purely a UI mod) but can quite easily be merged with most mods if you play them

 

[ForGreatJustice]

Its a tool that comes with the BTS Unaltered Gameplay mod (BUG mod).

Yeah I figured, I also have BUG but I don't know how to see the dot maps. It's already checked on in options. So I guess I'm wondering now is how does the dotmapping work within BUG? Is it something the game auto-generates for you, like make suggestions for city placements? Or is it something that I have to manually input.

 

[chegel]

Yeah I figured, I also have BUG but I don't know how to see the dot maps. It's already checked on in options. So I guess I'm wondering now is how does the dotmapping work within BUG? Is it something the game auto-generates for you, like make suggestions for city placements? Or is it something that I have to manually input.

With BUG press ALT+X to place the dots. Then you can switch between the dotmap and the standard map with CTRL+X.

 

[ForGreatJustice]

With BUG press ALT+X to place the dots. Then you can switch between the dotmap and the standard map with CTRL+X.

Wow thanks a lot!

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Quick question:
Is settling 1 off coast acceptable if there is no sea food resource near the coast and if this offer 4 more grassland tiles for a city you intend to use as a money maker/science city?

This is for an isolated start, so there's no pressure on me to settle a spot or another.
I guess "yes" should be the answer here, but I've gotten a prejudice about not settling 1 off coast, so I would appreciate knowing another view on this.

 

[Silu]

It's very easy to blindly think about "rules" such as "don't settle 1 off coast" and end up making the suboptimal play. Trust your wits instead of those rules and do what you think is best. All those rules are only good for teaching the principles and motivations behind them - when you learn those you can forget about the rules completely.

So, in a word, yes.

 

[duckstab]

Quick question:
Is settling 1 off coast acceptable if there is no sea food resource near the coast and if this offer 4 more grassland tiles for a city you intend to use as a money maker/science city?

This is for an isolated start, so there's no pressure on me to settle a spot or another.
I guess "yes" should be the answer here, but I've gotten a prejudice about not settling 1 off coast, so I would appreciate knowing another view on this.

One thing I've learned here is that you'll eventually encounter a situation that calls for breaking one of the basic rules of good Civ IV play.

In the situation you've described, it would largely depend on how many water tiles would still be in the BFC, because those can never be developed. If it were more than one or two I probably wouldn't do it.

 

[Sisiutil]

The other consideration for not-quite-coastal cities is trade routes. Coastal cities benefit quite a bit from trade routes, whereas inland cities, while they still have trade routes, have less lucrative ones. Since you intend this to be a money-multiplier city, settling it 1 tile from the coast would give me pause.

But that's the general principle. Silu is right--there are no hard and fast rules, just guidelines. Every decision you make in the game (as in life) inevitably involves gaining something while simultaneously giving something else up. As in all such situations, you have to weigh the pros and cons of each decision and go with the one that will give you the most benefit.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Thank you all!

I ended up settling the city 1 off coast, meaning 2 useless water tiles in the BFC, but 4 extra green tiles for cottages. Unfortunately, when I took the decision I only considered the pros and cons of the tiles themselves, but... yeah... 1 off coast means no harbours, and even for an expansive leader such as Suryavarman (whom I was playing as), sooner or later, health cap kicks in, so harbours would have been nice for health and added some trade route benefits.

Nevertheless... I think this was a better choice. (Though the fact that I managed to build the colossus adds a bit more doubt to it )

Thank you for your replies!

 

[psifaktor7]

I don't know if this is the right place to post the question, but it's about a strategic tip, so here's the save, and the question is whether to vassalize Pericles or to conquer him completely. What do you people do in this specific case?

pro vassal:
-I'll be relatively safe from invasion, and Joao is always good for it
-I'll have someone to help me with teching

con:
-'we yearn' unhappiness
-Pericles' remaining cities are well placed and would be very useful
-Joao invasion possible so I'll have to keep a bigger military

I really need some other experiences with this because I might be missing something. Or is this tough call?

In any case I'll go for China (conquering, I don't need the buffer here) soon but the rest of the game is open.

Emperor level.

 

[Silu]

Looks like a no-brainer extermination situation for me. You'll get some foreign culture encroachment but that can't really be helped - in the meantime you gain a great city site or two (mainly Athens with full BFC). You'd gain next to nothing from vassalization.

I see you use the Viking 'Iron Man' approach to medieval warfare (no siege)

 

[CivilizedTiger]

I would like to ask another set of questions. The thing is, Pericles is one of my favourite leaders, mostly because I like the ancient Greek civilization and Pericles is the better leader of the two, imo. However, I always feel bad when I see "Philosophical" in a leader I play as, because SE always rings in my mind and I realize that I don't know how to play SE. And another, rather serious obstacle, is my irrational preference for cottages, when I see a floodplain city spot, I can't imagine farming it, it feels bad.

Anyway, I've rolled another isolated start, I have both marble and stone, so I can go with wonders here to seriously boost GPP, and food looks good enough that I might actually be able to have a lot of specialist cities. The main problems are that I don't see any obvious production cities, other than the Moai city (I see two spots where it would go well), and that at least some of the spots on the map look good for cottage cities. (To be honest, I think all of the maps I've seen so far which allowed for SE, also offered great sites for CE, so my bias always kicks in)

On this map, would you go with a SE? If you would, would you build at least one commerce city to support all the specialist cities, maybe to host Oxford University at some point? And... would you tech monarchy here, or would you rather get writing as early as possible to run scientists, go for CoL, then either monarchy for more specialists or optics to meet the world? (with the later having part of the techs bulbable if meditation is not researched)

In case anyone is interested, I've attached a WB save for the start. It's monarch, speed agnostic, no huts, no events, choose religions on.
View attachment LonelyPericles.zip

 

[psifaktor7]

Looks like a no-brainer extermination situation for me. You'll get some foreign culture encroachment but that can't really be helped - in the meantime you gain a great city site or two (mainly Athens with full BFC). You'd gain next to nothing from vassalization.

I see you use the Viking 'Iron Man' approach to medieval warfare (no siege)

I had to use all of them on the hilly capital, and for those flat terrain cities beserkers with CR and cover promotion did a good job without having to wait for siege.

I'll do what you said, but then I might have to deal militairly with the game's biggest soab (at least in my experience), Joao.

 

[psifaktor7]

@CivilizedTiger

Very clear production city imo would be 1NW of that elephant source.