GOTM - 01: A New Beginning. Pre-Game Discussion

[remconius]

The reasoning is that you can adopt a religion which gives happiness and culture in all cities with that religion. The Religious civics give more benefits to cities with state religion. So the best religion is the one in most of your cities.

The other factor is foreign relations. It could happen that a majority of powerful nations adopt another religion. You can do two things, convert yourself or others. Build lots of missionaries to introduce your religion with them and once there is a fair share in the rival nation, you can ask them to convert or they might convert by themselves. Or you can build a monastery in one of your cities with the global majority religion and convert your own cities to the rival religion, adopt it as state religion and see your foreign affairs skyrocket.


If you have more than 1 religion in your cities you could convert from one religion to the next depending on who you want something from. Especially with spiritual trait, otherwise you find yourself in anarchy.

 

[remconius]

By the way, any word on the patch?

Personally, I wouldnt mind starting this game without the patch if it's going to take weeks before it is released. We can have a common agreement not to use the peace exploit, I guess the end game movie would reveal this anyway, or not?

 

[LeSphinx]

remconius I agree with you. Let's play C4OTM!

What is the peace exploit you talk about ?


LeSphinx

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

Is continued expansion a viable strat?

Although I've only played one game (which I did on noble), I'd say absolutely. I went for domination as quickly as I could. After I conqured my continent (2 others) with War Elephants and Catapults I was down to 20-30% science, but by the time I met all the other civs I was still in the tech lead. Courthouses, the Forbidden Palace and developing these cities returned me to 80-90% science as my cavalry was wiping up the rest of the world. At the very end I had tanks against longbowmen.

 

[remconius]

remconius I agree with you. Let's play C4OTM!

What is the peace exploit you talk about ?


LeSphinx

I think it is a the main exploit that needs to be patched. Havent experienced it myself, but from what I've read you can get a civ to hand over a lot of his cities on negciating for peace.

 

[LeSphinx]

Thanks remconius.
I never had. When I was at war, the AI nevers want to giveme his cites in order to make peace.
LeSphinx

 

[RoddyVR]

i encountered it. didnt realize it was a bug untill way later when i read that there was a peace treaty bug.

not quite sure i SHOULD explain it here (its not against some rules or something is it?), but just so people dont accidentaly use it like i did.
edit put it in a spoiler tag just in case:

Spoiler :

basicaly, when you propose peace, only one side can "pay" for the peace. you cant trade tech at the same time as declaring peace for example. one side pays the other for peace, and for peace only, not peace and a resourse or something.
and when you TRY to do a trade along with the peace treaty then the game pops up a message box explaining that.
the bug, is that after it explains that to you, the ai for some reason starts thing that what is currently shown on the trade screen is a strait peace deal (as aposed to one where its peace and they give you all but one of their cities and all their techs) so they will accept it.
it may actualy be thinking that it (the ai) is proposing the current deal.
so you can get anythign and everything from them that way.

in my game, i was trying to get monarchy from the english for stopping the slaughter i was bringing to their empire. she wouldnt give it when i demanded it. but then when i figured, ok, fine, i'll give you peace and literacy and you give me peace and monarchy?
tried adding literacy to the deal on my side, got the message "only one side can pay for peace", clicked "ok" but then the options were "we accept your proposal" or something, but monarchy was still on her side of hte table. so i took the offer, and got the monarchy and peace.
10 turns later when the peace deal ran out i attacked again with fresh troops. lol.
anyway, the AI was not going anywhere near giving me anything for peace. she was willing to take a straight peace treaty, but when i wanted her to pay even one gold, she wouldnt have it. but with the bug thing, she gave me a great tech that only she had, and i realy needed (had wine next to biggest city)

 

[Glock30]

I think you were right to post it. I thought about asking for a city to make an inevitable conquer happen quicker. Now I won't do it.

 

[Yushal]

Im thinking (or rather finding) it useful to center Rome on wonder production after settling a couple/few decent city sites, rather than having her pump out praetorians. The army can come from my secondary and tertiary cities.

If I get the wonder, Im happy, and if I dont, I get loads of cash which enables me to keep my science slider at 100% or near to it. Im also thinking the parthenon can give me a good edge in my warmongering strategy.

Since praetorian seem to be able to handle just about anything thrown its way when properly cared for, I dont find the gobs of units my capital can produce to be strictly necessary for military victory.

 

[Xerol]

I'm playing a game under the same conditions right now, and that strategy seems to be ideal. As the capital, Rome is too productive to not be building buildings to enhance its tremendous hammer/beaker production. My second, third, and fourth cities were more than enough to pump out enough swords to roll over (most of) Japan. The AI HEAVILY defends capitals, and I think you'd need more of a combined arms strategy to take them, but I severely crippled them at least.

On this level, happiness becomes a problem at size 8, and there's no lux slider to use either, so getting luxes early is important if you don't want Rome to be crippled. (In my game, we had Wines and Gems on our continent, and all the Gems were in Japan, so Rome went through a few growth/starvation cycles due to WW.) I was one turn short of getting Monotheism, and that's because I detoured to get Pottery, so it's entirely possible to get that, or possibly even an earlier religion. (All the religions were founded on the other continent through the early ADs in my game, so there wasn't any to spread here, unfortunately.)

This game is most likely going to be the first Civ4 game I play through to the end, since I barely have any time to play at all. (It took me 3 days to get into the ADs in my current game.) Is this first game going to have an extended or a shortened deadline? If it isn't due at the end of a month, is something going to be done to synchronise the game schedules to the months?

 

[Silverblade]

About the Forrest discussion, forrests have sometimes given me up to 100 shields, but usually its around 50. And you can even rush wonders with them. (Which you can with wealth/pop rush too as long as its not a project, but a building style wonder).

And as someone said, saving the forrest for its +Health (+0.4 per forrest or +1 for 3, +2 for 5 forrest tiles) and the possibility to build a Lumbermill on it increasing production, is a good idea.

 

[RonnieSoak]

Long time lurker, long time civ player (hooked on Civ I), first time poster coming out of the woodwork to sign up for this game of the month (may I suggest IVOTM?)

Forum ate my first post, here's the short version.

I'm torn between settling in place or 1E. 1E would lose one silk and the hill def bonus, but pick up a bunch more river tiles (which would likely be had to get 2nd a city to work without compromising its location) and result in a more rounded city.

The amount of commerce in the screen is excessive. Founding in place and making a quick move on calender would make Rome a commerce dynamo, perfect for a charge down the tech tree. It's almost too good, enough to make me want to ask "Do we have iron?" With iron nearby a better strat would be to go 1E, get iron working early and unleash the pain. IF we have iron. I may have to flip a coin.

To clear up the discussion of forested hills: early game mining it is better, both for the point of production and the point of commerce if by a river. Once you have machinery you can stick a lumber mill in the forest, making up the point of production and the river commerce making the two identical (excepting the forest's health). Once you railroad the tile, you gain an extra
point of production from the lumbermill, making it superior to the mine late game. It's a question of short term vs long term benefit.

 

[DaveMcW]

Mines can also be railroaded, so the only lategame advantage is +0.4 health.

 

[RonnieSoak]

Didn't realise that, I may have to rethink my strategy.
So it comes down to early production (and the 30 chop bonus) vs health and (if you switch to ecology) happiness

 

[TLHeart]

Forest give you 0.4 health all the time, just as jungles cost you 0.4 health all the time. Ecology has nothing to do with the benefits of health from the forests.

Chopping all the forests can be a mistake, leave a few close, and just maybe they will regrow, but not on an improved tile. You can chop outside of the city radius, and inside your culture border and still recieve the hammers.

Time to go and practice up on my !V skills, and play this one.

Started many CivIII GOTM's but never finished.

Never really got into III

 

[LeSphinx]

I played last night a small game on a tiny map. I've played the Romans.
Just to experiment again me first production...

At size 2, I produced a worker. Meanwhile, I research animal husbary and agriculture (I had whealt and horses near Rome). Rome had a consider boost in food/Production and commerce after I improved the 2 tiles!!!!!
I was better the develop my city instead of building a settler.
I will try to experiment myself the choping strategy of the forest in order to improve the city production for specific important thing...

LeSphinx

 

[remconius]

As it's noble you can get away with a worker first. Improving the tile from 3F to 5F has a huge effect. Do a chop or two can still get you a warrior/settler out pretty quickly. But even without chops you'll come out ahead with worker first.

 

[Carboni]

Opening Move/Strategy/Thoughts

I would send my settler E.
I would move my warrior SW.

By going E with the settler, I would have access to 12 river tiles.

5 hills [2 plain, 2 grass, 1 unknown]
6 forests (with 3 silks) [1 plains/forest, 5 grass/forest]
5 grasslands (with 1 gem source and 1 corn)
2 unknown tiles, probably more grasslands.

This would give me a good jolt of food, a lot of commerce and a lot of production capacity.

By going SW with the warrior, I would be scouting the location for my second city. Unless someplace blows me away, the second city would be on the same river as Rome. 2W from the warrior is plains and directly SW is a hills/plain which can generate 2 hammers in the city itself. I also like this area because it would anchor down the abundant silk and give it at least one tile of grassland and silk. The north end of the river has cons, for my concern it would be a wall of jungle, which the northeast/north suggests.

 

[Mike Lemmer]

Founding a religion can also provide great recon. Here's how it works:

1. Found a religion.
2. Crank out missionaries to convert nearby empires.
3. Develop a great prophet and build your religion's special building at your religion's holy city. (The city it was founded.)

The building generates 1 gold per turn per city that has your religion. You also get to view each city with your religion and its surrounding areas. Religions also spread on their own; convert another civilization's two largest cities to your religion and it will spread to their trade partners like the plague. I managed to convince 4 civilizations to convert to Hinduism with just 5 strategically-placed missionaries.

With the Romans, I think it'd be easier just to conquer another religion's holy city early and use that instead.

 

[Mike Lemmer]

Someone mentioned it looked like deserts to the south. I'll point out the jungles to the north. That means Rome's in the southern hemisphere. Now most of the temperate terrain will be to the east & west (drifting a bit south), but if the world has northern & southern continents instead of western & eastern ones, a port in the jungles to the north may be useful.