Getting Past Dan Quayle

[agray1444]

Hello. I'm a little new to Civ 4, and I can't seem to get past a dan Quayle rating. Does anyone have any advice?

 

[The Lardossen]

All settings normal, pick difficulty level you like.

Start with a civ that has mining as starting tech. Build capitol where your settler starts. Scout your surroundings with the scout or warrior you got. Start building a worker, and research Bronze Working. That should be finished at the same time, build a settler after that and research worker techs for bonus foods nearby like fish, wheat, etc. after Pottery.

Start chopping all trees around your capitol with the worker you've just built, unless there are floodplains, in that case leave two spots of forests.

The settler you've just chopped must built a new city near copper. If there is no copper, start researching Iron Working, and settle on a nice place with hills and grassland and a river. As soon as you've finished IW it will probably be in the city radius of one of your two cities, so connect asap. If it's not a copper city, it must have good production and food. Switch to slavery civic (you MUST).

All you need to build are granaries (first) and then barracks. Whip and chop to speed up.

Once copper or iron is connected, start to build axemen, and set your research path straight to Code of Law. Lots of them. If a city reaches size four, wait until it starts to build a new axemen, and then whip. This will cause you to lose two pop, and get two axemen in max three turns. If you whip for two pop, the whipping penalty will be gone when it's back to size four again.

By chopping and whipping you'll have a axemen army of six in no time. Send the stack of six to one of the border cities of a neighbouring AI, declare war. Take the first city while whipping and chopping more axemen. Raze it if it isn't in a good spot. After the first city go to the capitol. Once you have the capitol the AI is beheaded. If another neighbouring AI is getting too big, don't kill your first target completely, otherwise just take it over, because it won't give you gold, cities or tech when surrendering.

The plunder from your conquest will fund the research for CoL. Once you have CoL whip up courthouses ASAP. Then research Currency, or Construction if you need to have catapults to take more cities from a AI that has lots of walls around it's cities. Just keep on warring AI's until they get superior units (like macemen).

Once you have beaten at least two AI and you have CH and MP in all your cities, you have to get the captured workers to build cottages everywhere on all grassland. If you've survived this phase, you are on your way to victory.

So in short:

- Get to war ASAP with axemen (or roman praetorians!)
- Use whipping and chopping to speed up productino
- Get to CoL and Currency as fast as possible to pay up for your empire

 

[catchsomezzz]

I might be wrong, but I also remember reading somewhere that if you access the WorldBuilder mode at any point in your game, you'll never get a higher rating than Dan Quayle.

 

[kaottic97]

I might be wrong, but I also remember reading somewhere that if you access the WorldBuilder mode at any point in your game, you'll never get a higher rating than Dan Quayle.

My last game of Warlords - Barbarians mod, I accessed WorldBuilder to create some land bridges, and I ended up with a higher rating than Dan Quayle, IIRC. It was somewhere in the middle. But maybe my computer's a little off, dunno?

 

[civ_king]

world builder does not affect your rating

 

[civictor]

It is hard to get above Dan Quayle if you don't win. I don't want to sound patronizing, but that would be the first suggestion. Kind of like calling the help desk and having them ask you to check if the computer is plugged in.

A problem with past versions of Civ was that you could max out the player rating scale pretty easily, so they make it progressively harder to get higher on the scale to leave a challenge for the addicted.

 

[philiej]

The original post never said he couldn't win, just that he couldn't get a higher rating that Dan Quayle. I've had similar issues (i'm very new to Civ4) and was reading the forums to solve this very issue.

I have won the time challange a few times and recently won the space race, 3 of the 4 times I have finished with a Dan Quayle rating, once I was one step above (I don't recall who that was).

The first game or two I played I just built my empire and smacked people down, I thought it was a bit easy, but I also noticed all sorts of icons (angry faces and towns in starvation); I understand why I was given a poor rating even though I won. So, I played through the tutorial and read some articals so that the last time I could play more effectivly and I did. I had celebrations all of the time in most of my towns and moral / production were high (this is when I won the space race). But I still only got a rating of Quayle.

Am I missing some major aspect of the game? Do I need to kick up the level of difficult (have a recomendations on a level that is still nice to newbies, but awards some challenge points)?

 

[napoleonbee]

If you are playing on Settler or Warlord difficulty, it is hard to get a score above Dan Quayle. Winning on Noble, I've found, nets you at least Henry VIII. Difficulty level and how quickly you win have much to do with your score.

 

[Sphinx]

If you point ur mouse at your score youll see "score by winning this turn". it goes down every turn. That means, if u win early, ull get more points. For example, u win a game before 1AD will probably get u a score of Augustus Caesar.

 

[Corporal Kindel]

I've noticed that my Victory score tends to be somewhat low as well. The best score I've gotten so far has been Neville Chamberlain. Is there someplace where one can access how the victory points are calculated? I assume more points for more population and more points for early wins. How many points, exactly, are given for these things & how else can points be obtained ( number of GP generated? ) ??

 

[CharleyS]

The earlier you win is a biggie. I also believe that your culture level and population size play into it.
I have two victories on Warlord where my final score is above 20,000 and on both of those Domination victories I was done around the 1600's.

 

[Eqqman]

Population and early victory count for so much that you can practically disregard all the other conditions. You really need to beat the 1950 'You have 100 turns left!' cutoff, too. Most of my Dan Quayle games are ones where I've finished the tech tree and built nearly every Wonder while my Caesar games leave most of the modern techs unfinished and I hardly built a single Wonder.

 

[Gazurtoid]

I highly recommend you print out and read Sisiutil's newbie guide for CivIV. I'm still so-so when it comes to winning on Noble but all my victories have been a few several steps above Dan Quayle which has been great for my morale :}

 

[Hey Joni]

If getting the score is your only concern do the following: select a duel sized map, terra or pangaea (it works on lower difficulties too) and basically follow the steps from post # 2. If you're on lower diff, you should cach the AI with only one or two cities and early victory is in your hands. Even with sufficient number of archers you can pull it off and get at least higher score than Dan Quale...

I consider this an exploit of the scoring system and in no way this can be fun but, as I said, - do it if you aim only at score!

EDIT: BTW, sorry if this looks stupid but who is Dan Quale? Can anybody tell me? Sure, I can look up for him on the net but I'm feeling lazy right now

 

[cabert]

If getting the score is your only concern do the following: select a duel sized map, terra or pangaea (it works on lower difficulties too) and basically follow the steps from post # 2. If you're on lower diff, you should cach the AI with only one or two cities and early victory is in your hands. Even with sufficient number of archers you can pull it off and get at least higher score than Dan Quale...

I consider this an exploit of the scoring system and in no way this can be fun but, as I said, - do it if you aim only at score!

an even cheaper but high scoring victory is selecting duel map, terra or pangea, taking Huyna Capac for you and a civ with hunting for the other civ.
Just send your quechua to the empty city and you've won...
Even if the other civ manages to build an archer, you still win.

 

[Hey Joni]

an even cheaper but high scoring victory is selecting duel map, terra or pangea, taking Huyna Capac for you and a civ with hunting for the other civ.
Just send your quechua to the empty city and you've won...
Even if the other civ manages to build an archer, you still win.

This maybe the ultimate game score exploit!

 

[kaottic97]

EDIT: BTW, sorry if this looks stupid but who is Dan Quale? Can anybody tell me? Sure, I can look up for him on the net but I'm feeling lazy right now

I was actually wondering if there would be people on this board who wouldn't remember who Dan Quayle was. He was vice-president under the first President Bush - and he said some dumb things (like mis-spelling tomato (with an "e" at the end, IIRC... or was it potato[e]?) and the like (I'm sure Wiki can tell you more, haha). The inclusion harkens back to the first Civ (1991), when Quayle was still VP.

 

[napoleonbee]

Adding to the above, if you're American you probably know him as the guy who was described as "no Jack Kennedy."

 

[Hey Joni]

I was actually wondering if there would be people on this board who wouldn't remember who Dan Quayle was. He was vice-president under the first President Bush - and he said some dumb things (like mis-spelling tomato (with an "e" at the end, IIRC... or was it potato[e]?) and the like (I'm sure Wiki can tell you more, haha). The inclusion harkens back to the first Civ (1991), when Quayle was still VP.

Sounds fun, he must have had some great leadership skills! I'll check the wiki sometime...

I'm not American, so don't be surprised that I haven't heard of him. After all, I was just a kid when Bush the father was in office...

Thanks for the info!

 

[bonafide11]

Yeah, he misspelled potato with an E at the end while at an elementary school spelling bee...

I was actually wondering if there would be people on this board who wouldn't remember who Dan Quayle was. He was vice-president under the first President Bush - and he said some dumb things (like mis-spelling tomato (with an "e" at the end, IIRC... or was it potato[e]?) and the like (I'm sure Wiki can tell you more, haha). The inclusion harkens back to the first Civ (1991), when Quayle was still VP.