Help an old Civ player who battles to work out Civ4 BTS

[Simo]

Played since CIv 1, used to beat Civ2 on Deity, Civ 3 on reasonable levels but Civ 4 am battling and dont do very well even on noble, warlord seems to be my level which is depressing. I once got some help on some of this before BTS but seems obsolete with BTS and all the changes in pathces. When I get home, ill try to post some images if its not clear.


Anyways any help to the following questions would be great, I know its long but if you can help me in any section that would be cool:

1 - Settlers/workers - you cant grow whilst they are being built rather than population drop when created, is that correct? I read that on here but the civilopedia doesnt mention it when I look up settlers.

2 - Explorer - What good are they? They appear to be advanced scouts yet they come at a stage when there is no land left to scout and spies can do recon on enemy terriroty.

3 - HOW THE HELL DO I ATTACK A CITY!!! - This is the biggest irritation of all from my glory days of being s fundamentalist with 20 billion Howitzers taking advantage of your railroads!!

My current warlord level game, has me, about 10 citites big, about 1000 points ahead of Gilgamesh whom I decided to take and a massive tech lead on him. He has maybe 5 cities bordering mine and is defending with Pikeman, swordsman and attacks with chariots and War elephants.

I have curasiors (12 strength cavalry type units, cant spell), catapaults, trebucets and tried macemen for a melee unit. I cannot take a city. The citys each have defense numbers of 125%! I tried to bombard them down but that would take about 10-15 goes to drop it to 0%.

My curasiors get smashed by pikeman, I tried catapaults and trebucets next, thinking I must have to take them out with siege units, they have combat odds of <1% and get beaten 100% of the time with no damage. I tried Maceman, thinking maybe I need Melee units, they have the same combat odds and do the same.

I cannot for the life of me take a city, what the hell am I missing, the game is no fun at the moment since I have the higher tech, the higher powered unit, the volume of units, I tried everything but it seems im just crap.

Am I expected to launch like 30, curasiors and loose mass casualties but eventually take them? Seems excessive and not practicle.

Anyways, obviously I need some help taking cities, how are you meant to take them in this era?

4 - Espionage - Is this effective and how do you use it? What happened to being able to steal techs, the smaller the city the easier it is like in Civ 2? That was the ultimate game balance right there, you could always claw your way back. So far the only options I see are not overly useful, sure poisoning supply was fun in Civ2 cause you could do lots of cities with just the unit, but you now gotta spend points which are bought from your treasury? Is that right?

Also can you bribe units like in Civ2 or Bribe a city like in Civ2? That was always fun when super rich to pinch some cities without the war! Plant Nuke with an alpine unit ignoring Zones of control was always a great tactic to take out the capital to stop the space race. All this fun is gone right? I know ZOC went in Civ3 but espionage was just a debarcle in that version.

5 - Civil Wars - Why on earth was this taken out? Nothing better than taking aim at the capital of those HUGE civs you could beat to split them in to and then halve your enemy. No easy feat with the Cap usually enourmously defended. Can this still happen (It didnt in Civ3) should I ever be able to take a city?

6 - Money - How do you make money? In previous Civs, crucial elemnets were, roads to produce extra commerce (best tip I ever got!), the rush to Adam Smith Trading Co., best fun competing for that since it made such a big difference, but cant find any of them in Civ4. Is it just building cottages now at the expense of production and food improvements?

7 - Production/Forests - I dont know what to do when building improvements in my early game. If I remove forests to build farms, its always -1 hammer (shields are tradition!), do you leave them around so you have some production? In Civ2, I used to Mine, hills, farm grassland and plains......I think that was all my options! Now when there is no resource on the tile what is the general way of thinking? Use forests as production, green squares/water tiles as farms, mountains as mines?

I just dont know how to get the cities booming, or do you have to decide, CITY A will be money and build ALL cottages, CITY B will be food and build all frams etc etc.

8 - Can you trade food? - If the last paragraph above is true, can you still trade food to give surplus to those that arent creating the food to grow?

9 - Changing Science level with 1 turn to go, is it easy money? AS the name suggests, from Civ 3 onwards, I noticed you can adjust the slider down, sometimes to 10% science with 1 turn til discovery and still only take 1 turn yet get a shitload of money.......is this a good trick or do the leftover beakers carry on to the next tech if you leave it at a higher rate?

10 - Where are these wonders/Techs or are there equivalents? -

a - Leonardos workshop used to upgrade all units in Civ2 and half the cost in Civ3 if I recall correctly, was just as important as Adams trading Co. and such......where is it or if gone is there equivalent? Was a bread and butter Wonder for me.

b - Adam Smith Trading co, mentioned above in Money section.

c - Philosphy - Used to give 2 free techs, was a great tech to research, is there an equiv?

d - Pyramids - used to give free granary in all cities, giving great early growth, now it does something else. Is there an equiv?

e - Great Library - Used to give any techs 2 or more other civs had making it invaluable in higher level games. Is there an Equiv? Used to avoid tech that made it obsolete when cashing in!

d - Magellans expidition - gave free movement points, is circumnaving the globe first the new way to achieve this? Also was that idea pinched from call to power?

11 - Luxuries - If I have excess, say 2 gems, does that mean I am free to trade away spare luxuries to get ones I dont have or do I get extra bonuses for multiple? I noticed each luxury give a slightly different thing, is it the aim to have 1 of as many different as you can, or do you have to micromanage the needs of every luxury and try to tailor them to your needs?

 

[Dusk]

That's alotta questions. I'll try and go by them one by one. I'm not an advanced player in any way, but then again that might help answering the questions more than somone playing on the hardest difficulty

Played since CIv 1, used to beat Civ2 on Deity, Civ 3 on reasonable levels but Civ 4 am battling and dont do very well even on noble, warlord seems to be my level which is depressing. I once got some help on some of this before BTS but seems obsolete with BTS and all the changes in pathces. When I get home, ill try to post some images if its not clear.

Your gripes are understandable. CivIV epspecially with BTS requires a different strategy than previous games.

1 - Settlers/workers - you cant grow whilst they are being built rather than population drop when created, is that correct? I read that on here but the civilopedia doesnt mention it when I look up settlers.

Correct. If you're using a newly founded city to get out a worker fast or just need a new settler to expand your empire, have another worker chop a forest nearby to get it done quickly. Ideally build an improvement (farm, pasture, mine) over a resource which provides hammers or food to speed the construction.

2 - Explorer - What good are they? They appear to be advanced scouts yet they come at a stage when there is no land left to scout and spies can do recon on enemy terriroty.

If you're playing a terra or earth map there might be undiscovered continents waiting for you, an explorer would be ideal here. I'm not sure whether they get a bigger bonus from huts over scouts though.

3 - HOW THE HELL DO I ATTACK A CITY!!! - This is the biggest irritation of all from my glory days of being s fundamentalist with 20 billion Howitzers taking advantage of your railroads!!
My current warlord level game, has me, about 10 citites big, about 1000 points ahead of Gilgamesh whom I decided to take and a massive tech lead on him. He has maybe 5 cities bordering mine and is defending with Pikeman, swordsman and attacks with chariots and War elephants.
I have curasiors (12 strength cavalry type units, cant spell), catapaults, trebucets and tried macemen for a melee unit. I cannot take a city. The citys each have defense numbers of 125%! I tried to bombard them down but that would take about 10-15 goes to drop it to 0%.
My curasiors get smashed by pikeman, I tried catapaults and trebucets next, thinking I must have to take them out with siege units, they have combat odds of <1% and get beaten 100% of the time with no damage. I tried Maceman, thinking maybe I need Melee units, they have the same combat odds and do the same.
I cannot for the life of me take a city, what the hell am I missing, the game is no fun at the moment since I have the higher tech, the higher powered unit, the volume of units, I tried everything but it seems im just crap.
Am I expected to launch like 30, curasiors and loose mass casualties but eventually take them? Seems excessive and not practicle.
Anyways, obviously I need some help taking cities, how are you meant to take them in this era?

Suicide trebuchets is an ideal way. He gets his defense from culture which can't be bombarded so having a high culture score helps in defense. I'd suggest bombarding the city defense from walls etc. to 0% then launch trebuchets (who get's a bonus vs. cities) with the collateral damage promotion to cause most damage to the defending stack of units. Trebuchets can get defeated easily, but they help soften the enemy stack so your fast units and infantry doesn't have to die. A steady stream of siege weapons is needed for invasion. They're the cannon fodder.

4 - Espionage - Is this effective and how do you use it? What happened to being able to steal techs, the smaller the city the easier it is like in Civ 2? That was the ultimate game balance right there, you could always claw your way back. So far the only options I see are not overly useful, sure poisoning supply was fun in Civ2 cause you could do lots of cities with just the unit, but you now gotta spend points which are bought from your treasury? Is that right?
Also can you bribe units like in Civ2 or Bribe a city like in Civ2? That was always fun when super rich to pinch some cities without the war! Plant Nuke with an alpine unit ignoring Zones of control was always a great tactic to take out the capital to stop the space race. All this fun is gone right? I know ZOC went in Civ3 but espionage was just a debarcle in that version.

You need to save up espionage points in order to perform actions. You do this by running a higher espionage slider. A fairly effective strategy is if you specialize a city for espionage. This means you try to build wonders/buildings giving great spy points. The Great Wall, Courthouse, The Forbidden Palace comes to mind. Building the Scotland Yard (Great Spy unique building) and settleing great spies in this city also helps.
In the espionage screen you can see how many points you have and select the enemy's cities to see which requires the least amount of points to perform an action. The less espionage points an enemy city has, the easier it will be to execute missions. It's often the most newly founded. You can also adjust how many of your espionage points should go towards certain enemy civilizations. In warfare, boost this to have sufficient points to use against this specific civilization.
Stealthing techs is expensive in espionage points, especially if it hasn't been a fous in the early ages.
In CivIV if you cannot bribe cities or units. I can recommend checking out the civilopedia for possible actions.

5 - Civil Wars - Why on earth was this taken out? Nothing better than taking aim at the capital of those HUGE civs you could beat to split them in to and then halve your enemy. No easy feat with the Cap usually enourmously defended. Can this still happen (It didnt in Civ3) should I ever be able to take a city?

If you generate enough culture points near another city it will eventually defect and join your civilization, I think this is the closest you'll get.

6 - Money - How do you make money? In previous Civs, crucial elemnets were, roads to produce extra commerce (best tip I ever got!), the rush to Adam Smith Trading Co., best fun competing for that since it made such a big difference, but cant find any of them in Civ4. Is it just building cottages now at the expense of production and food improvements?

The War Academy has great guides for economy. The most dominant ones are CE (Cottage Economy) and SE (Specialist Economy). CE is basically building cottages where available and SE requires for you to build farm etc. and making your citizens into merchants, generating gold. Like an espionage specialized city, I can recommend a currency specialized city (not to be confused with commerce). In this city you'll build farms and make as many merchants as you can. Building market, grocer, bank etc is good here. The Wall Street national wonder is also a must. If you founded a religion, try to do this in your holy city as you get 1 gold for every city in the world with your religion + multipliers from buildings. When the city generates a great merchant you can settle it in the city for even more gold and more great people points.

7 - Production/Forests - I dont know what to do when building improvements in my early game. If I remove forests to build farms, its always -1 hammer (shields are tradition!), do you leave them around so you have some production? In Civ2, I used to Mine, hills, farm grassland and plains......I think that was all my options! Now when there is no resource on the tile what is the general way of thinking? Use forests as production, green squares/water tiles as farms, mountains as mines?

This depends on the specialization of your city and what forests to chop is an often discussed topic. I personally always mine hills and chop the forests on them since building a lumbermill there (which gives the same production) won't happen till mid-game or so disovering Replaceable Parts.
I recommend searching for "forest chop" on this forum, there's numerous threads and at least one guide or two has pointers for this issue.

I just dont know how to get the cities booming, or do you have to decide, CITY A will be money and build ALL cottages, CITY B will be food and build all frams etc etc.

I believe that city specialization is the way to go.

8 - Can you trade food? - If the last paragraph above is true, can you still trade food to give surplus to those that arent creating the food to grow?

No, this isn't a standard option. I think I saw a mod that could do it however.

9 - Changing Science level with 1 turn to go, is it easy money? AS the name suggests, from Civ 3 onwards, I noticed you can adjust the slider down, sometimes to 10% science with 1 turn til discovery and still only take 1 turn yet get a shitload of money.......is this a good trick or do the leftover beakers carry on to the next tech if you leave it at a higher rate?

Beakers get carried over.

10 - Where are these wonders/Techs or are there equivalents? -
a - Leonardos workshop used to upgrade all units in Civ2 and half the cost in Civ3 if I recall correctly, was just as important as Adams trading Co. and such......where is it or if gone is there equivalent? Was a bread and butter Wonder for me.

Left out I'm afraid. I miss it aswell. I often find it cheaper to destroy units (if they're outdated and haven't got much experience) and build new ones. The new ones will benefit from all the +experience to new units you get from buildings and civics which the old ones might not have had.

b - Adam Smith Trading co, mentioned above in Money section.

I can't remember what this does, but the National Wonder Wall Street gives +100% gold income in a city.

c - Philosphy - Used to give 2 free techs, was a great tech to research, is there an equiv?

Liberalism, gives 1 free tech. Also building The Oracle gives a free tech.

d - Pyramids - used to give free granary in all cities, giving great early growth, now it does something else. Is there an equiv?

Stonehenge, gives a free monument in each city. Sadly there's no wonder for the granaries, but I do advise to build them early in your cities for optimal growth.

e - Great Library - Used to give any techs 2 or more other civs had making it invaluable in higher level games. Is there an Equiv? Used to avoid tech that made it obsolete when cashing in!

The Internet, a "project" which is essentially like a national wonder, but doesn't take up any of the 2 national wonder slots per city (on normal size map). It's only available quite late in the game.

d - Magellans expidition - gave free movement points, is circumnaving the globe first the new way to achieve this? Also was that idea pinched from call to power?

You get a free movemenet point from being around the globe first yes, but also discovering... Refrigeration I think it is. Also provides a +1 MP for water units. This goes for anyone when they discover it though.

11 - Luxuries - If I have excess, say 2 gems, does that mean I am free to trade away spare luxuries to get ones I dont have or do I get extra bonuses for multiple? I noticed each luxury give a slightly different thing, is it the aim to have 1 of as many different as you can, or do you have to micromanage the needs of every luxury and try to tailor them to your needs?

Having 1 of each luxury is enough (until you get Corporations in your civ). You can trade away the excess resources for resources you don't have. Aim for the ones which provices health or happiness early on, like providing you with health if you have a granary/harbor or happiness if you have a forge/market.

All in all I can recommend reading the civilopedia, checking out the game manual (it DOES have a few gold nuggets) and searching this site for keywords regarding questions. Oh and read the guides in the war academy, they're awesome.

 

[Simo]

Thanks Dusk, I will put some of this in to practice once I get this thing called work out of the way, which really is just an inconvenient obsticle to Civ!

 

[LegionSteve]

I don't have time to reply to everything now, but I will try to help with these:

2 - Explorer - What good are they? They appear to be advanced scouts yet they come at a stage when there is no land left to scout and spies can do recon on enemy terriroty.

3 - HOW THE HELL DO I ATTACK A CITY!!! - This is the biggest irritation of all from my glory days of being s fundamentalist with 20 billion Howitzers taking advantage of your railroads!!

My current warlord level game, has me, about 10 citites big, about 1000 points ahead of Gilgamesh whom I decided to take and a massive tech lead on him. He has maybe 5 cities bordering mine and is defending with Pikeman, swordsman and attacks with chariots and War elephants.

I have curasiors (12 strength cavalry type units, cant spell), catapaults, trebucets and tried macemen for a melee unit. I cannot take a city. The citys each have defense numbers of 125%! I tried to bombard them down but that would take about 10-15 goes to drop it to 0%.

My curasiors get smashed by pikeman, I tried catapaults and trebucets next, thinking I must have to take them out with siege units, they have combat odds of <1% and get beaten 100% of the time with no damage. I tried Maceman, thinking maybe I need Melee units, they have the same combat odds and do the same.

I cannot for the life of me take a city, what the hell am I missing, the game is no fun at the moment since I have the higher tech, the higher powered unit, the volume of units, I tried everything but it seems im just crap.

Am I expected to launch like 30, curasiors and loose mass casualties but eventually take them? Seems excessive and not practicle.

Anyways, obviously I need some help taking cities, how are you meant to take them in this era?

I don't see much use for explorers. Even if you do find a new continent after Optics, usually all the goody huts are guarded by barbarian axemen by then anyway. If they could get the Woodsman III promo they would be useful for medics, but they can't. I very rarely build one.

Attacking cities normally requires taking away the % defence, then attacking with seige to weaken the defenders (even if the first defender isn't harmed, some of the others will be) then attack

If Gilga had 125% defence I'm guessing he has walls + castle + the Chicken Itza wonder. Walls and castles reduce the bombard rate of cats and trebs as well as providing a % defence, so you either need huge numbers of them, or spend a long long time bombarding. Other alternatives are:
- Use espionage to bring the % defence down to 0 in one turn. You will need enough esp points on Gilga, and to send some spies to the city. Leave the spies in the city for 5 turns so they get a discount (some may get captured during this time which is why you send several) then 'incite revolt'. It will only last for 1 turn so you need to be ready to attack.
- Beeline Steel and get Cannons. These aren't slowed down by walls and castles and will bring the defences down much quicker.

Hope that helps

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

Just one little nitpick with Dusks advice. About defence from culture--it CAN be bombarded down. That said when a cities has 125% defence odds are it is NOT from culture. A city gets defence one of two ways from culture or from phyiscal structures as walls and then casltes. Whichever gives the highest defence is the one that takes affect. Now for a city to get 125% culture it would have to not only get 100% culture (legendary level) AND get it before it discovered rifling (the tech that obseletes the effects of Chitchen Itza) and thats tuff even for most players much less an AI hammpered by the penelties it gets on warlord difficulty.

And so with THAT said a city getting 125% --odds are it is not from culture but from walls (they give 50%), castles (another 50% that stacks with walls) and the wonder chitchen iza (or something like that, its refered to as chicken pizza by many on here and whoever controls that wonder gets another 25% defence to every city) And since walls and calstles ALSO reduce the percent each seige can bombard down its defence (I THINK the numbers work out to where a cat just drop it by 2% and trebs not much better) it can take a you-know-what-load of siege to drop 125% defence in one turn or a LOT of turns if youre not bringing that many.

Also this brings up a sitch where it can be VERY handy to have alot of espionage points against a civ. One of the spy missions is "support city revolt" when that mission is successful that cities defences drop to zero for one turn. So it is a common strat for players to use spies instead of seige. It can also make for faster paced game since spies can use enemy roads so it alows the option to just use attack stacks of two move units following the spies without having to drag any one move siege around (be warned though going ALL one type of offensive units can have draw backs of its own)

Kaytie

 

[3iff]

I sympathise with you as I'm a not-too-brilliant player who went from Civ2 to Civ4.

I play without espionage (removes a feature I don't particularly like). Taking cities is tough but as others have said, bring lots of seige weapons. Catapults (and the later variations) bombard the city to reduce the defence value without damaging your units.

Then, when the defence is 0% (or close to that) begin a new turn with your seige actually attacking the city. They'll need city raider to help them and you'll be taking losses. For a city with 5-6 defenders, you are looking at perhaps 2-3 seige being killed BUT they do significant collateral damage to the defenders. Keep going until you run out of seige to attack with or when the defenders are so damaged that seige is not allowed to attack any more.

Then, start with your axemen, swordsmen and the like. They benefit from city raider bonuses too. Check the 'success' rating...select a unit, hold down ALT and mouse over the city. Look for 90% or better if you can. Expect losses here too but if you've damaged the defenders then you should be relatively ok. Defenders heal between turns so aim to wrap up an attack quickly.

Have a medic unit with you, they are there for healing damaged units...only use them to fight if you have a 99% victory chance.

Also for your early games, experiment and don't expect to win easily.

Mounted units are easy for pikemen to kill so ensure you have non-mounted troops to deal with pikemen. Having a mix of unit types can help for most battles.

Explorers are next to useless. I think I've built one...ever.

As for wonders...I'm just getting used to world wonders (one of each per game) and national wonders (one of each per civ), and I still don't know what most of them do.

Luxuries benefit your city happiness. Once you have gems mined and roaded to your city nextwork, then ALL connected cities get +1 happiness. You can trade those gems to another civ but if that's your only gems then the happiness disappears. If you have 2 gems then you can trade one of them and keep the +1 happiness benefit with the other. Same for gold/silver etc.

A similar thing happens for health with the various food types.

Note also that you can get these benefits for neutral territory resources well away from a city as long as they're roaded and developed (either dug/mined or have a fort on them). Aim to get one of each resource if you can, trading for the ones you don't have. A surplus allows you to swap/sell them to others.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Re: the Explorer, If you can get an explorer promoted to where it can get the Medic promotion, it makes an excellent healer to include with stacks. It can keep up with your fast units and is usually the last unit to defend when the stack is attacked. And as mentioned, it's useful when you find new continents to explore. If you are a maritime nation, you are probably going to get to Compass pretty quick and there may still be lands reachable by galley that have not been explored yet, and you'll soon have caravels that can carry to continents across oceans that have been unreachable by anyone. The Scout is weak enough that it would be killed quickly by barbarians on an unexplored continent by that time, but the Explorer is much tougher.

 

[Poppis]

Remember that you can pop any guarded huts easily with spies, who can simply walk past the guarding barbarians.

 

[Raizer]

Espionage: Yes, you can steal techs, although it can be pretty expensive.

Capturing cities: I don't know how much siege you have, but a common problem (I had this problem for some time) is not enough siege. I'm not a very advanced player so I don't know the exact amount of siege to bring, but something like 50% of your attacking force should be siege. Bombard city defenses down, then suicide the siege against the defending units. As collateral damage racks up the siege will have higher and higher chance of surviving and eventually have very high odds. By then enemy units are so weak that it doesn't matter that the Pikeman has +100% against mounted; 10/100 HP makes it guaranteed win (for you).

My advice may not be 100% accurate (since I'm not a great player either).

Wonders: About the Pyramids, The Hanging Gardens increases all cities' population by 1, and gives +1 health in all cities, so it's not the same as a free Granary, but it kind of has a similar effect.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Remember that you can pop any guarded huts easily with spies, who can simply walk past the guarding barbarians.

True, but spies can't be upgraded. On a big map with a very large New World, explorers with woodsman or guerilla promotions could probably pop more huts than spies, and definitely explore quicker. They also make adequate city defenders against barbarians, so when you send your first settlers over, you can defend them with explorers until they build up their defenses.

 

[Poppis]

On a big map with a very large New World, explorers with woodsman or guerilla promotions could probably pop more huts than spies, and definitely explore quicker.

Unfortunately explorers(like scouts) can't attack, so you can't do anything with guarded huts.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Unfortunately explorers(like scouts) can't attack, so you can't do anything with guarded huts.

But unlike Spies, Explorers are guaranteed good hut pop results. Popping a guarded hut with a spy could just make more barbarians. With an explorer, just note where the hut is, and then when the settlers come put the city next to the city and pop it with your borders, automatically getting good results (and the explorer can protect your city from the barb that's guarding it).

 

[Poppis]

But unlike Spies, Explorers are guaranteed good hut pop results. Popping a guarded hut with a spy could just make more barbarians.

But you can't pop a guarded hut with an explorer.

With an explorer, just note where the hut is, and then when the settlers come put the city next to the city and pop it with your borders, automatically getting good results (and the explorer can protect your city from the barb that's guarding it).

This is true, but then you would have to wait for astronomy to get the settler in the new continent, whereas you can get the spy there already at optics.

ninjaedit: Plus the huts aren't always in places you would want to place a city.

 

[3iff]

Badtz Maru.

Fair comment about the explorer, but then again I don't play with goody huts. My medic tends to be a combat unit, either fast mounted or a 'normal' unit like an axeman or longbow.

I find they don't need to be fast if they're travelling with a slow stack. Also using a combat unit means I can give them first shot at 'guaranteed' wins (99.9%) to bump up their rating and get even more health powers.

 

[bestsss]

>>A city gets defence one of two ways from culture or from phyiscal structures as walls and then casltes. Whichever gives the highest defence is the one that takes affect.

Hmm, that's not true either. The defense multipliers are summed up: incl. culture/structures (can be bombarded to zero). hill, natural defense (like 50% archer in city, 25% for hill), fortify (25%max), promotions, etc. All bonuses, except, combat (and 1st strikes) work on the defender always

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

I wasnt talking about the overal total defense bonuses the defenders in a city gets but the % city defenses add to all that--they can be either cultural or physical but never both and its the percent you see over most cities like 20% or 40 on up to the 125% mentioned in op--things like whether its on a hill, attacks from across a river or unit promotions arent etc arent factored in to that until actual combat takes place and since none of that stuff can be bombarded down which was topic of op I didnt mention it

Kaytie

 

[jst666]

Cities:
Just as somebody earlier pointed out, in CIV4 you cannot just use massive stack of your nominally best attackers and hammer away. If you attack with cuirassiers, the enemy defends with pikemen (6 + 100% = 12). Bring a mixed stack. Also patience with bombard, then suicide your artillery (they cause collateral + have decent chance to withdraw). Besides you should have about 2-3 times the enemy's stack in order to take a city.

 

[daemon5]

... once I get this thing called work out of the way, which really is just an inconvenient obsticle to Civ!

Wise thought !!

 

[vicawoo]

Wonders aren't overwhelmingly strong in civ 4. You'd probably learn to play better if you ignore them. The really useful ones are pyramids, great library, oracle, great lighthouse.

 

[Simo]

Id just like to extend a warm thanks to all who have so far posted and continue to do so. An update:

I completely wiped out Gilgamesh (bar a lone city on a 2 tile island I found him on!), using a crap load of catapaults and trebacets I had to bombard to 0% and then laucnh at them with the siege. A big learning point for me was that I also needed to have some high defensive units to stop my stack being wiped out or decimated between turns, a few musketmen and later machine gunners made my stack untouchable.

I learnt you really need to wipe out that city % defence to ease casualties.

By the time I got to attack Hannibal who was the vassal (but far more advanced in tech + weaponry than the Ican vassal master , just only 4 cities) I had cavalry, and cannons - the cannons are a big leap ahead in the siege phase, collateral damage went through the roof along with lots of withdrawals. Machine gunners kept me safe and he fell quite easy.

Next up was the incan master of Hannibal, and he has no techs or no resources cause he is now fighting my infantry, cavalry and cannons with swordsman and pikeman. My stacks are breaking into smaller groups to speed up his downfall since he is so outdated, thought it was goint o be tough cause he is huge and the Indians wouldnt join me out of 'fear of their military might'

So thanks again, ill continue to play and post any other brain scratchers I come up with but all in all I have a much better strategy now that seems to be working. Will step up the level once im finished here!