Its alll about the start isnt it?

[FLUKE]

I've been playing CIV4 for about 9 months and while I'm no expert (I play at Noble) I consider myself fairly competent.

So I noticed that my games were still quite variable in outcome even though I tend to play the game in the same way everytime, and as an experiment I completed a series of random games at Noble level just to test my ability.

To cut a long story short, if I had a good start with some decent resources (food, bronze, iron, coal and oil) I nearly always won, if I started on a poor location (lots of tundra, desert and fewer food tiles) I sometimes even came near last - even war mongering was difficult as poor starts mean bronze is too far away or already on a AI civ.

I'm sure many people already know this and maybe the better players can overcome poor starts but really it is the start that has the biggest single effect on the success of your campaign, doesnt it?

 

[Jazzmail]

Yes.

Any turn advantage you get, magnifies to alot of turns worth of more national production later on and therfore even more turn advantage.
You want your bonusses early. The earlier the better. It can make the difference between winning and losing or winning 100 turns earlier.

Civ4 does have some brakes in place, which are gradually removed as you gain techs (think monarchy for MPs or laws for courthouses), but this only partially helps aluviate the problem.
Atleast Civ4 is better in this respect than civ3, where corruption just meant having science/tax farms further from the capital and so size and early growth was everything.
Civ4 maintenance atleast forces the player to divert more production to projects other than early land grab.

I'm considering making a mod, where once any one civ gets significantly bigger than the rest, all the warring AI civs will gradually start to ignore weaker civs and instead ally against the one mega evil empire.

 

[Still_Asleep]

I'm considering making a mod, where once any one civ gets significantly bigger than the rest, all the warring AI civs will gradually start to ignore weaker civs and instead ally against the one mega evil empire.

Just do it!

This is something the game really needs, as once you have the biggest empire you cannot lose the game whatsoever. The AIs will seek a weak target for their own war, and you will be left out.

If an AI gets much stronger than any other like in my last immortal game, all other AIs will become voluntary vassals and make things even worse. Annoying to play against.