How has your gameplay evolved?

[Theov]

Gotta admit it would be exciting to live in an ICS civ. Everyone's a kid, living fast, dying young... we mate constantly and pack the brats off into settler units.

Big FAT wow!
It's not often that something gets funnier with every word.
I don't laugh easily at things I read (I dunno, that's me) but that was funny as hell.

 

[Godwynn]

Gotta admit it would be exciting to live in an ICS civ. Everyone's a kid, living fast, dying young... we mate constantly and pack the brats off into settler units.

That's a good one.

 

[Bratmon]

That explains distance corruption: each city packs off it's worst people to found a new one, so the farther away from the capitol you are, the worse the people.

 

[Dandenoth]

That explains distance corruption: each city packs off it's worst people to found a new one, so the farther away from the capitol you are, the worse the people.

And then they switched to Democracy...

Can you imagine a 21 year-old being old? Like, middle aged is 10 or 11? Hmmm...

 

[Bratmon]

I'm in my golden years

 

[cheungsu]

After playing a few games on Emperor, I found the following strategies works for me to win the game (either by spaceship or by eliminations)

Strategy for Emperor

- build a militia
- build a settler
- try to develop the wheel as quickly as possible. This will allow you to build a few chariots to explore and eliminate neighbouring civs quickly to get you the geographical advantage. This is very important.
- Build cities on strategic areas relative to the enemy location (such as a narrow junction) to block off access from other civs.
- For most cities, you need only 1 militia/phalanx. You'll need 2 or 3 for those near the ocean (against barbarian ships), and 3+ with a chariot/catalpult on critical cities closest to other civs.
- Keep building settlers and militaries to attack until you get about 20 cities. You will probably need this many cities to catch up with over civs scientifically.
- If your landmass is too small, build triemes to build more cities on other islands.
- Don't build Granary, or else you get too much civil disorders b/c of growing too fast. Build temples as your first development, then cathedral (i.e. once your city is militarily secure).
- If you get a civil disorder, try converting a square to an entertainer to maintain productivity in the city.
- once your treasury is about $250 or so, put tax/lux rate to 0% so that you develop fast scientifically. Your objective is to get about 5 to 6 discoveries per turn before 1AD.
- Increase your tax rate to "break even" financially if you are getting below $100.
- once your cities finish building temples, (and cathedrals for cities > size of 5 or 6), then you can build caravans to help build wonders.
- wonders that are good to have: JS Bach Cathedral, Great Library.
- Try to aim to develop Railroad pretty fast, so that your city can grow easier by needing not many squares.
- You should be able to get the 20 cities by 1AD. Switch government to Monachy. If you have Republic, switch to Republic. Once do so, you should get < 10 turns per discovery.
- Your kingdom is pretty much set from this point. build more caravans for wonders. Get the SETI program, and Apollo for Space ships
- Switch to communism if you want to eliminate other civs by war.

There are a lot of minor tricks, but this should at least get your civ to survive or even win well in Emperor mode.

 

[tuga2112]

tbh i started to play civ when i was 8... i didnt even had a clue what was written on the game since im not born english speaker.

i used to just grab chariots and atack everything in sight. used to work fine... but i always plaied chieftan dificulty.

i got used to easy chieftan games so i never bothered to play harder dificulties.

later on i realised that somehow when i had republic government my science got bossted and woman surfrage solved the problem of the unhappy people. by this time i used to make up to 3 cityes and be the worst military... then suddenly i had bombers at 1AD and i could kill everyone easily...

then i found out that "we love the president" gave me +1 pop every turn.... well that was AMASING the baby booms i used to do got me to the point of rocketry before crist XD

then i found out that there was corruption... and democracy DIDNT HAD CORRUPTION AND ALSO INCLUDES BABY BOOMS... soo now i always play as democracy with baby booms when the time is right.

i still never use monarchy and/or comunism i dont know the bonuses of those 2 governements. i know comunism have a set amount of corruption on all cityes.. i never checked out what is that "set amount" but the trade of of not having military unhapinnes doesnt tenpt me enough. since in democracy i end up with exactly the same. i set my tax to 20% luxury (in fact is 40% when you got bank+market in all cities) and i dont have any civil disorder.

so now.. im 20yo and started a couple of games in higher dificulties. i got to prince and managed it very well.. i started yesterday a game as king and struggled a bit at start, i got a bad position with loads of "frozen" terrotiry on my starting island and cities couldnt grow as good as i wanted but i didnt had any neibors so that bought me some time. i was worst in the powergraph untill i made the first "baby boom" and after that i kept a reasonable advantage to the other civs, got my fair part of sweat with battling (seems like the random generation its more "generous" to the AI when you play prince/king somehow... loads of armors of mine have been killed by musketeers)

but to be honest... i still enjoy more the easy chieftan game. were i simply try to beat my last record.

i do know caravans are great in the game but i tend not to use then as early as i want... there is always something more important for me to build... like a market or an extra settler. although i understand the earliest you make a trade route the more you will get from it. after all getting +1 trade (free of corruption) at early stage will refreck on +50 in 50 turns. (not to mention that the grown of the cities will make it probably 150 or more)

--EDIT--
BTW tristan how did you got that information ? i remember when i was 8 there was an advisor that used to say that but i cant find it now :S

 

[Valen]

BTW tristan how did you got that information ? i remember when i was 8 there was an advisor that used to say that but i cant find it now :S

That's the Demographics display. Alt+w d

 

[void]

tbh i started to play civ when i was 8... i didnt even had a clue what was written on the game since im not born english speaker.

...

later on i realised that somehow when i had republic government my science got bossted and woman surfrage solved the problem of the unhappy people.

...

then i found out that "we love the president" gave me +1 pop every turn....

...

then i found out that there was corruption... and democracy DIDNT HAD CORRUPTION AND ALSO INCLUDES BABY BOOMS...

...

One of the awesome things about Civ is that you can play the game for years as a newbie, and then discover more and more things as you go along, and the game is challenging and fun even with vastly different levels of knowledge.

BTW welcome to the Civ1 board Tuga!

so now.. im 20yo and started a couple of games in higher dificulties. i got to prince and managed it very well..

...

(seems like the random generation its more "generous" to the AI when you play prince/king somehow... loads of armors of mine have been killed by musketeers)

Nope, the A/(A+D) battle system is not affected by the difficulty level, when battling against an AI civ. However, it is affected when battling against barbarians. See http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/difficultychart for more.

 

[tuga2112]

there is still some stuff for me to find out cus i never "researched" about monarchy and comunism governments, i also have no idea what are the effects of the "we love the king" and "we love the commrad" (i sopose is commrad but i never used it lol) so there is still to learn.

i do have a question to put at the moment tho. is courthouse any usefull in a democracy ? ive read the civipedia and it cuts down corruption by 50%... but in democracy theere is no corruption... so i wonder if it has some "hidden" effect under democracy

 

[Tristan_C]

there is still some stuff for me to find out cus i never "researched" about monarchy and comunism governments, i also have no idea what are the effects of the "we love the king" and "we love the commrad" (i sopose is commrad but i never used it lol) so there is still to learn.

i do have a question to put at the moment tho. is courthouse any usefull in a democracy ? ive read the civipedia and it cuts down corruption by 50%... but in democracy theere is no corruption... so i wonder if it has some "hidden" effect under democracy

Monarchy is a rather bad intermediate government... only useful for a space race civ that is beset by enemies. The food bonuses are only apparent in improved tiles, whereas your productive output always gets sunk into army maintenance regardless. Despotism is far better for a warmonger civ, and if they have at least a marginal level of safety, players will beeline for republic or democracy to do their space race. Communism has a better niche as a modern warmonger, since the representative governments are unrealistic for playing the aggressor.

In later Civ releases, Sid was careful to rebalance the middle governments to discourage people from just leaping from despot to democracy.

CH's have no effect. If you manage cities carefully you will not need courthouses in a democracy. If your democracy collapses from multi-turn civil disorders and you have no courthouses (or you need to switch to commie), you might be in hot water.

 

[banson]

ive played every civ game out there for a long time now, started with snes civ 1. but i can tell u, i never did cachb on to haveing all that maintinance tieing up my money. i just never relised it.. but man, civ 1 sure where good memories. the sound and the way gahndi looks when he is begging for peace can melt any ones heart to stop a catapult driven war. i remember i couldnt look at war the same way again for a while after seeing him that way.

 

[weevil]

After playing a few games on Emperor, I found the following strategies works for me to win the game (either by spaceship or by eliminations)

Strategy for Emperor

- build a militia
- build a settler
- try to develop the wheel as quickly as possible. This will allow you to build a few chariots to explore and eliminate neighbouring civs quickly to get you the geographical advantage. This is very important.
- Build cities on strategic areas relative to the enemy location (such as a narrow junction) to block off access from other civs.
- For most cities, you need only 1 militia/phalanx. You'll need 2 or 3 for those near the ocean (against barbarian ships), and 3+ with a chariot/catalpult on critical cities closest to other civs.
- Keep building settlers and militaries to attack until you get about 20 cities. You will probably need this many cities to catch up with over civs scientifically.
- If your landmass is too small, build triemes to build more cities on other islands.
- Don't build Granary, or else you get too much civil disorders b/c of growing too fast. Build temples as your first development, then cathedral (i.e. once your city is militarily secure).
- If you get a civil disorder, try converting a square to an entertainer to maintain productivity in the city.
- once your treasury is about $250 or so, put tax/lux rate to 0% so that you develop fast scientifically. Your objective is to get about 5 to 6 discoveries per turn before 1AD.
- Increase your tax rate to "break even" financially if you are getting below $100.
- once your cities finish building temples, (and cathedrals for cities > size of 5 or 6), then you can build caravans to help build wonders.
- wonders that are good to have: JS Bach Cathedral, Great Library.
- Try to aim to develop Railroad pretty fast, so that your city can grow easier by needing not many squares.
- You should be able to get the 20 cities by 1AD. Switch government to Monachy. If you have Republic, switch to Republic. Once do so, you should get < 10 turns per discovery.
- Your kingdom is pretty much set from this point. build more caravans for wonders. Get the SETI program, and Apollo for Space ships
- Switch to communism if you want to eliminate other civs by war.

There are a lot of minor tricks, but this should at least get your civ to survive or even win well in Emperor mode.

This is just awful advice tbh

For one thing one should never consider any government outside of republic and democracy. It is perfectly fine to wage war under democracy even without womens suffrage. It's just a matter of micro managing your luxurie tax and the home city of your offensive units. All the extra commerce from republic/democracy can be used for luxuries, which will more than outweigh the benefits of monarchy or communism.

And no you don't need more than one defensive unit along the coast and at the borders. What you need is some offensive units and the critical points. The best defense is a good offense! In civ1 you typically have better odds with offensive units than you do with defensive.

Also why would you build your treasury to $250 only to let it decay into $100. It makes no sense!! Having a bank roll only has negative effects (Enemies will take a fixed portion of your treasury when taking your cities for instance). What you need to do is to generally tweak your tax so your break even, unless there is some reason to have a treasury. This could be to complete important wonders (if you have just discovered religion and want cathedrals in your major cities.) or if you want to revolt some well defended enemy cities.

Couldn't keep quite sorry

 

[tuga2112]

well at least you agree with my opinion that the extra you get from trade in democracy turned into luxuryes makes it worth it compared to comunism. even in war times.

about the treasury i usually just get as much money as i can for the same time comsumed for science, and i always try to boost the science as much as possible. usually i end up using a relation of 20% luxury + the minimum amount possible of tax to pay the maintenance.

 

[Whelkman]

weevil, are you sure your strategy actually works on Emperor? Unhappiness spikes so quickly that it's pretty much impossible to wage war under Democracy without building massive luxury infrastructure or swarming with mass amounts of level 1-2 cities, and the CPU's aggression doesn't exactly make either of those a picnic. When dealing with cities of this size it's impossible to manage military unhappiness under Democracy due to needing at least 4 citizens to balance out unit unhappiness with luxuries, which at 100% still won't do the trick. Besides, unit maintenance costs will eat cities of that size alive by stripping them of their ability to create more unless you're building around a bunch of forests or something. Finally, Democracy's benefit to cities that can't grow beyond level 2 without heavy luxury infrastructure is naturally minimal; as you move up in difficulty, switching to Democracy naturally gets pushed further ahead, which is part of the challenge. So, basically, without resorting to tactics commonly seen as cheating, it doesn't get much better than first rushing to Wheel and then to Monarchy.

 

[cheungsu]

weevil, there are somethings I do agree with you, such as using more offensive units as defense at critical locations against enemies. However, at emperor, you still want ~2 defensive units (+ many offense units) because you don't want attack units to leave your city. This will create civil disorder, and we want to avoid that because of # of turns in technology. We may want the enemy knights/chariots to attack you first before you use an offensive unit to strike it down, then no units will be need to leave the city under republic.

I think depending how the game and strength of the enemy, we need to switch to Republic even before 1AD at times to catch up technologically. So I agree with you there when you say we cannot use govt other than republic/democracy. Otherwise, by <1050AD, you'll have an armor coming your way, and your catulpults just won't destroy them. However, we will need to give time to use chariots to expand your kingdom before turning to republic, that's why you'll need 10+ cities before switching to republic (ideally 20+ to keep up the technology).

Keeping the tresuary low is a "stragety" at emperor to give you faster turns at technology. Money won't give you technology. Republic will a low tax with large/many cities will give you technology.

 

[Valen]

i do have a question to put at the moment tho. is courthouse any usefull in a democracy ? ive read the civipedia and it cuts down corruption by 50%... but in democracy theere is no corruption... so i wonder if it has some "hidden" effect under democracy

The courthouse does nothing for a democracy, but I always thought there should be a reason to keep it. The game does have hidden reasons for keeping other buildings you may be tempted to sell and stop paying upkeep for.
A city at max population for its food supply no longer needs a granary or aqueduct. But watch out for famine, fire and plague!
If you are at peace, you may be tempted to sell your barracks and city walls, but you keep them to stave off pirates and floods.

The perfect reason for a democracy to build courthouses would be if a city with a courthouse could go into disorder and not crash the government.
This seems consistent with other reasons for keeping buildings that you may think are no longer useful. Unfortunately, I think Sid overlooked this one.