How can you catch up in the score ?

[Profette]

Hi, I've been searching the forums for some time now and haven't found an answer to my problem : I play against my husband on multiplayer mode and since we've been playing Civ for ages, we both go for the same techs and wonders... The problem is that when one of us gets the lead, it seems ever so difficult to "catch up" for the other : the wonders you failed to get (one turn before you complete) will give even more points to your "enemy" , while you will have lost 20 turns for "nothing" but gold... And you can't trade with the AI because you are much more advanced than them : I even tried to give/exchange all my techs, so that they would threaten us but it didn't work...
Thing is, we try not to start waging wars on each other because we are much more interested in the cultural victory, so I'd really like to avoid this solution...
Any idea how to tremendously improve my score when I'm second ??

 

[Gyspsysmoke]

Hmmm...I'd say take him out but that could cause problems on the homefront soooo....

Take out the A.I.? You could go for a domination victory this way, without attacking your husband's AI...but you said you like to focus on cultural so...

I think that expansion would be the only way to do it, and this would envolve taking out some AI civ's. Raze their medicore cities to fill your coffers (so you can run in the red for a signficant period of time), and then take the good ones (usually the starting cities). This will increase your capacity for beaker/hammer/culture output. I don't know any other solution to your problem but then again I'm just a warmonger...your cultural victories frighten and confuse me...

 

[thordk]

the obvious solution is: ignore the early wonders. get a huge chunk of land by early expansion. 6-8 cities before 2000 BC are possible. this will most certainly drop your research rate to 10% or even 0%. at this time get some cottages set and let most of your cities produce them. ignore the temptation to work this nice improved cow and wheat tiles, work the cottages. get back to 50-60% research by 500 BC and you'll start to outtech any AI (and your husband for that matter )

while recovering from this early expansion churn out some units. you most certainly will have access to bronze or iron due to your rapid expansion.
declare war on one (or some) of your neighbours and pillage their lands. raze some of their pity 1 pop cites, aim for holy cities and capitals.

you will be the leader in land and tech by then. no one can stop you. if you want, go for kremlin by then and buy yourself some nice wonders. or go peaceful and just start on getting some of your cities production centers.

through your expansion and wars you will have bronze, stones and marble. the wonders are yours

 

[Matthevv]

If you are going for cultural victory, ignoring the early wonders wouldn't be the right way to go.

Missing out on a wonder isn't too bad, as you have a big pile of cash. Set your research rate to 100% even if that leaves you losing money each turn and head for the next tech that allows a wonder, so you get there first, because your husband doesn't have the money, and can't afford to run in the red. Religion is the other big thing for a cultural victory. Make trades with the AI, anything at all, even if it isn't a good deal, so that their religions will spread in your lands along the trade routes. Then spread them in your Civ with missionaries, and get those Cathedrals build ASAP.

 

[thordk]

early wonders aren't that nescessary for cultural victories. some achieved them without one single wonder. you just need tons of artists (and great artists).

switching to 100% culture pretty late, at 1600-1700 AD and adding 3 cathedrals to each city (9 cities in total needed for this) seems enough.

 

[Matthevv]

early wonders aren't that nescessary for cultural victories. some achieved them without one single wonder. you just need tons of artists (and great artists).

switching to 100% culture pretty late, at 1600-1700 AD and adding 3 cathedrals to each city (9 cities in total needed for this) seems enough.

Its a second-best strategy though. You would get the early wonders if you could. Once you have a couple of early wonders in a city, your culture growth there is assured.

 

[Mulholland]

My course of action would be to outtech him. Get liberalism. Build libraries, observatories, labs, universities in all cities but those designated for homeland defences and military campaigns. Get a tech lead and beat him to the first ability to build wonders. Trade some of your useful techs to AI even get them to declre war on him if you can. The game of civ is anything but civilized.

 

[Roibeárd]

Population, land and technology all count towards your score. Surprisingly, culture does not. My advice would be if you find yourself falling behind in the score, set your cities into growth mode and grab some more land which you can get via limited wars with the AI. You might not make it to a cultural victory condition - 3 cities with "legendary culture" - but if the game turns into a points race you can get ahead and win on points.

Winning a cultural victory means sinking a lot of hammers into wonders, temples, cathedrals, etc. If you shift your production into growth mode, you'll be focusing on granaries, food resources, grocers, etc., plus some military to beat up on the AI.

I echo others in this thread in my opinion that a well-timed war against the hubby is the most effective. You don't have to take him out, just severely weaken him. (Hey -- it's just a game).

You probably know this, but you can see your current score breakdown, just by hovering the mouse over the score.

I'm intruiged that you play MP against your husband. My wife once tried Civ, mostly because she was curious about this strange game that was taking up so much of my time. After about 45 minutes she declared it "boring" and never played again.

 

[ShaLouZa]

If you're "much more advanced" than the AI every game, you should play higher levels. The AIs will start to be nice to interact with and that can balance the game. For now that looks like a duel between you two.

 

[B1sh0p]

I'm thinking what Matt said. If you lose the race for a wonder, it's not always a bad thing. Heck, if one of my cities doesn't have anything else they could build, I'll sometimes start a wonder I know it'll never complete just for the gold. Ya never know, you might get it, you might not. If you don't, you can dump all that cash into 100% science for a while, and pull ahead in tech.

 

[mnf]

Actually is the score that important if you're going for a cultural victory? I thought cultural victories are basically the cathedrals, artist bombs and the 100% cultural slider?

Last time I tried for it I failed to get cultural, though. The one AI that had twice my production went for the space ship, and I had to start bribing the whole world to get in a quick diplomatic victory.

Back on to topic, how about buying off some AIs to declare war on the husband? I suppose that's also out?

I actually think ShaLouZa has the solution: play on a higher difficulty. Maybe even switch on Raging Barbarians?

 

[chewbaccad]

you could always just build spies and start razing his improvements

 

[Profette]

Thanks for all this helpful advice !!
Here are my reactions to some of your ideas :
- gypsysmoke : good idea, to declare war on the AIs, so that I can gain points there...
- thordk : I'm confused, I clearly read (and found out myself) that contrary to Civ 3, it was much better to build less cities and to take time building them... Do the cottages just "do the trick" ? Also you said "build 3 cathedrals" in your city and that just puzzled me : can't you build only one ? Or do you mean "shrines" ? You see English is not my first language so I may also have misunderstood what you meant, sorry...
- mulholland : I DO love Civilization, it even was my Xmas present this year and a great surprise it was too since I didn't know it had been released... In fact, we started playing with Civilization 2, back in 1997, on a very old computer : we had to wait for ages between each turn (those were the days...) and we had to "negociate" a schedule to both play. Needless to say there were many sleepless nights involved... just playing at the computer... Now we've started our second game on MP and we've realized it's just like shalouza said : even though we're about 8 players, it is more like a duel than anything else... We're playing at Regent level, feeling we're quite new at Civ 4 yet...

The problem is that my research rate has been at 100 % for ages now even though I'm losing money which is not a problem since he completed Pyramids and Oracle one turn before I did, so I have plenty of money... Still, he is far much advanced that I, thanks to the free tech from Oracle, then he managed to get the free Great Artist from Music just before I did... Now I'm aiming for Liberalism, but I'm frightened he'll get there first...

Haven't you noticed this trend in all the games you play, that once you get the lead, it's much harder to beat you ?
Anyhow, thanks for your help and kind welcome, I'll try some of your tactics and tell you how it went. Wish me luck !

 

[Storm Crow]

Can somebody tell me how to get my score better than 3000 (my game score gets to 9000, but score isn't higher than 2900)? I always get the note "During this game you have displayed the leadership abilities of Dan Quayle" at the end of the game.

 

[TCGTRF]

Thanks for all this helpful advice !!
Here are my reactions to some of your ideas :
- gypsysmoke : good idea, to declare war on the AIs, so that I can gain points there...
- thordk : I'm confused, I clearly read (and found out myself) that contrary to Civ 3, it was much better to build less cities and to take time building them... Do the cottages just "do the trick" ? Also you said "build 3 cathedrals" in your city and that just puzzled me : can't you build only one ? Or do you mean "shrines" ? You see English is not my first language so I may also have misunderstood what you meant, sorry...
- mulholland : I DO love Civilization, it even was my Xmas present this year and a great surprise it was too since I didn't know it had been released... In fact, we started playing with Civilization 2, back in 1997, on a very old computer : we had to wait for ages between each turn (those were the days...) and we had to "negociate" a schedule to both play. Needless to say there were many sleepless nights involved... just playing at the computer... Now we've started our second game on MP and we've realized it's just like shalouza said : even though we're about 8 players, it is more like a duel than anything else... We're playing at Regent level, feeling we're quite new at Civ 4 yet...

The problem is that my research rate has been at 100 % for ages now even though I'm losing money which is not a problem since he completed Pyramids and Oracle one turn before I did, so I have plenty of money... Still, he is far much advanced that I, thanks to the free tech from Oracle, then he managed to get the free Great Artist from Music just before I did... Now I'm aiming for Liberalism, but I'm frightened he'll get there first...

Haven't you noticed this trend in all the games you play, that once you get the lead, it's much harder to beat you ?
Anyhow, thanks for your help and kind welcome, I'll try some of your tactics and tell you how it went. Wish me luck !

Profette, one thing you might try, since your opponent is racing slightly ahead of you.....

Try going down a totally different road in technology instead of racing him. If he's researching Liberalism, try beelining for Assembly Line, Combustion and Industrialization and take him out with Tanks while he's working on the Kremlin.

Tom

 

[Innawerkz]

A lot of the advice here is quite good, but I find myself agreeing with mnf.

I thought cultural victories are basically the cathedrals, artist bombs and the 100% cultural slider?

If this is truly the case I can direct you to two quality threads on Cultural Victories at all levels. First one is by walkerjks who wrote a great comprehensive guide on Cultural victories. The second one I recommend was scribed by spiceant who offers many poignant tips on how to achieve cultural victories.

Hope this heps!

 

[Profette]

Great articles, thanks a lot !!

 

[thordk]

- thordk : I'm confused, I clearly read (and found out myself) that contrary to Civ 3, it was much better to build less cities and to take time building them... Do the cottages just "do the trick" ? Also you said "build 3 cathedrals" in your city and that just puzzled me : can't you build only one ? Or do you mean "shrines" ? You see English is not my first language so I may also have misunderstood what you meant, sorry...

english isn't my primary language either, maybe it's been my fault

you get along with fewer cities in civ4 much better than in civ3. that's true.
but it's still true, that more cities are better than few cities. you just have to take care not to overexpand and leaving your land in a crippled state it can't get out.
those cottages are for maintaining your empire. they need a couple of turns to grow to their full potential. so get them set early, within your expansion phase. they will grow and bring in more commerce while doing so.
the "trick" is to balance expansion with cottage growth. your earlier cities need to pay upkeep for your later cities as long as they can't pay for themselves.

with three cathedrals i ment those 50% culture buildings. hindu mandir etc.
you need 3 temples of the according religion to build one. so to build three you need 9 temples.
with 9 cities in total theoretically you can get 7 cathedrals in every of your cities. that would be a 350% boost to culture.

 

[demetrious]

I would think about this.

If Score is a pretty good marker of "success" and his score is slightly higher and he is getting to the wonder one turn prior then it makes sense that if you don't alter the gameplan or head in some new direction that he will continue to be slightly better. Maybe his starting location is a slightly better or he is using his leader abilities a little better.

Whatever led to the initial gap is still present.

The only way this will change is if you head down a different path OR your long term city development is superior. It is similiar to sailing and why the boat in second often tries to get away from the leader to find good wind. If they sit where they are, the boat in front stays in front because it was able to get there in the first place.

So somewhere, somehow you have to explore a different path to gain some advantage. Really it makes sense and I see it as a testiment to the balance of the game.

:: Rambling aside over - I just thought it was interesting ::

 

[Azash]

Also remember you will not notice change immediately - the score is, AFAIK, the average for all turns that have passed.