Looking for Earth 18 Civs Tips/Strategies

[bovinespy]

Hello all. For me, one of the funnest parts of Civ2 was trying out each and every civ on the Real World map, and taking them to victory. I was very disappointed with Civ3 vanilla, what with the random starting locations. But now, with Rhye's excellent work on the Earth map included standard with Civ4, I find myself foreswearing random maps until I win with every civ on the Earth map. I usually play on Noble, and I'm a decent, though by no means great, player. With that said:

1) Anyone else love playing Earth? I come to these fora on a daily basis (mostly lurking), and I see very few mentions of Earth strategies

2) It seems like starting positions and neighbors are VERY important in Civ4 (moreso than in Civ2 or Civ3). To wit, I've had great success conquering Europe with Rome, but when I took Phil/Cre Germany on a rampage, even without the fabulous Legion.. er... Praetorians, the results were similar. Conversely, I've tried two of my formerly favorite Civs on random maps, Inca and Mali, with headbanging frustration, as their starting positions and isolation foretold of doom. The Inca, in particular, are screwed by that impenetrable wall of rock to the East. What do you guys think?

3) For the different Victory Conditions, what do you think are the strongest/weakest civs?

Any and all discussion of Earth-map-play is greatly appreciated.

 

[zHunter]

I'm exactly the same as you - all I played on civ 2 was the world map, it's much more fun.

The AI seems to be harder to beat on the Earth18Civs maps, especially Egypt - you'll find Hatsesphut sits at the top of the scores pretty much every time. A good choice of civ is India - the start place has tons of special resources and is protected by the himilayas. Your cultural influence protecting the other way can mean you control the area. Build your first city slightly to the west of where you start. This will block off the persians. The city site where your settler starts looks amazing, but on higher difficulties you can't handle the unhealthiness from the jungles - rush to iron working so you can hack them down ASAP. You can still build your 2nd city there - just make sure you put a farm on the corn before you build, to cancel out the food loss from the unhealthiness. Refuse any open border agreements with civs west of you - they'll run through your land and build in the tibet area if you don't; this is where you want to expand. If you can get to it first, there is an amazing site south of the chinese start place. Has about 9 or 10 special resources in the radius. Grab that and you're laughing.

If you choose to start as China make sure you eliminate the mongols straight away. Send your warrior north west to their start place straight away, grab their worker (when you play it on emperor level) then capture the city - their warrior usually isn't defending it. Your first war after that will be with Japan probably, as they'll try and take some spots on the mainland. Try and take their cities out as they land, they're not usually very powerful as they don't have contact with many civs for tech trading.

If you start as Russia, make sure to build cities in a vertical line outside Europe, and refuse all open borders from European civs. You can totally block off 6 civs in a tiny bit of land because of your cultural trait, resulting in them eliminating each other.

The American civs usually don't do very well, they tend to pick on each other and don't have as many civs to trade with. Your primary threats are nearly always Egypt and Russia.

As for starting as the other civs - Incan are impossible because of the mountains blocking you. Aztecs and Americans start very close and don't have as good land as the Asian civs, but are playable, though you'll miss out on all the tech trading. The European Civs are difficult because they are very tightly packed. Japan and England have the island starts so are slower to expand. Arabs start in a desert. Mali's start place is rubbish. Your best bets are Egypt, Persia, India, Russia, China or Mongolia.

 

[Bast]

I've played two games on Civ IV Earth map 18 civs. Well actually I'm on my second game.

The first I played as Catherine of the Russians. My expansion was eastward. First conquering Mongolia and then China. Later I expanded to Australia, South Africa and eventually South America. I won that as a Diplomatic victory. God knows how (possibly because on an easier level) because I made so many enemies!

My current and second game I'm playing as Isabella of the Spanish. Very early in the game I developed my army very quickly and conquered Rome (because I knew I wouldn't have any space to expand) and I needed a city with a port. This was luckily successful and so I took that advantage to expand to an empty North West Africa and have eliminated the Malinese (I find Mansa Musa annoying). And now have just began settling in South America. Watch out Capac and Montezuma!

 

[Astax]

I've played tyhis also few times. Don't play japanese omg its so boring and weak :/ Play Greek for early fun :O Take out Romans ASAP. Then you can take out spanish and their one city then the Europe is your Oyster. Beware of Russians thou :/

Starting in Europe is best cause those civs will have one city in Europe and like maybe 2 or 3 cities very far away if they get open borders with someone. So you can take their capitals then declare peace maybe.

 

[jafink]

I was meaning to start a earth game and never got around to it. I'll probably start one soon.

 

[Padmewan]

Do the Incas have any hope of a cultural victory (they are financial, after all)? If so, it would be an interesting challenge to try.

 

[Taelis]

I've never played the standard Earth map, but I played the Incans in the Earth 1000AD scenario. The mountains aren't a big problem, you can skip around them with galleys. Then you have to clear out the rain forest, but under that is the best terrain on the planet, almost every square is grassland on a river.

At least in the 1000AD scenario the AI doesn't settle South America, so the Incans are very playable.

 

[Padmewan]

aha.... Incans are in the Earth 1000AD map. I went home excited to try my hand at Incans last night but didn't get Incans as an option! I chugged along as Indians for a while before the game started frizzing... It's unpredictable when the game will start going unstable.

 

[Mmmm Butter]

1) Anyone else love playing Earth? I come to these fora on a daily basis (mostly lurking), and I see very few mentions of Earth strategies

2) It seems like starting positions and neighbors are VERY important in Civ4 (moreso than in Civ2 or Civ3). To wit, I've had great success conquering Europe with Rome, but when I took Phil/Cre Germany on a rampage, even without the fabulous Legion.. er... Praetorians, the results were similar. Conversely, I've tried two of my formerly favorite Civs on random maps, Inca and Mali, with headbanging frustration, as their starting positions and isolation foretold of doom. The Inca, in particular, are screwed by that impenetrable wall of rock to the East. What do you guys think?

3) For the different Victory Conditions, what do you think are the strongest/weakest civs?

Any and all discussion of Earth-map-play is greatly appreciated.

Awesome! I'm right in the middle of my second game on the Earth map that shipped with the game, and I was just about to start a thread on strategies for the Earth map, just trying to decide if it should go under "Strategies and Tips" or "Stories and Tales". Looks like you beat me to it.

My first game on the Earth map was as the Romans, and I wiped out Alexander and Fredrick super quick with praetorians, but then for some reason when I tried to load it much later the map was all screwed up, so I haven't touched it since.

The one I'm playing right now is on noble, epic, and I'm playing as Fredrick. He's worked out really well, I'm at 1600 ad and wiped out every civ except China, Japan, and India (Persia has one city on an island though). Planning on going for a conquest win. I downloaded the 1.52 patch today, hopefully that helps the graphics, and doesn't totally screw up my strategy.

So far my strategy has been almost total war-mongering. Since I knew the starting positions from my first game, I knew Greece and Rome would start right next to me, so as soon as I got copper I declared war on Rome. With axes and swords I went west-to-east and wiped out Rome, Greece, and all of Persia but that one distant island city. For a while after that I focused on research, and buildings in my cities instead of military. I used a combination of great merchant and turning research to 0 for a few turns to upgrade all my units, then wiped out Egypt with mostly grenadiers. Had another, much shorter, "building" session, got another great merchant, and wiped out Mongolia with grenadiers/riflemen/cavalry. Right now all those troops are healing up, and getting ready to go into China.

Somewhere late in my first 3 wars, I settled all of Great Britain, 3 cities, and mostly made buildings/wonders in them.

Both stone and marble are super close to the German starting point, so I built every early wonder except the Great Lighthouse, I think. That gave me plenty of great people points, to use with Fredrick's philosophical trait. His creative trait helps expand the borders of every captured city.

The only low-point about this game is that I probably won't get to use the Panzer as much as I would have liked.

For civics, I used representation from the start, since I had the Pyramids, and used specialists a lot for their GP points. For military buildup/war I used police state. I've used caste system for practically the entire game, I apparently got that tech early. Always on mercantilism, though I got it late, for the free specialist. And I never adopted a state religion until after my war with Egypt, so I wouldn't make other civs too angry and have them invade my lightly defended cities. Almost all my military was focused on attacking cities, and ending wars quickly, except for a few units that stayed home to ward off barbarians.

At some point I sent a couple of explorers out on caravels, dumped em in the Americas and left to circumnavigate the globe. The barbs got to both of them eventually. Later I sent a couple cavalry over, barbs managed to do them in too. I know it's basically pointless to settle the Americas the way my game is going right now, but just in case Japan or someone gets a city over there, I've got some galleons and a bunch of cavalry getting ready to take some barb cities. I'll make an edit or post again once the game is finished.

I hope some other folks post their stories and strategies with different civs, and how it's worked out for them. Earth map adds a kind of "reality element" that I don't experience on random maps. I'll be playing my next one on a harder difficulty, so hopefully settling the Americas will be more important.

And thanks, Rhye, for the primo maps.

 

[p dandy]

I love the realistic global scale that the game takes on when you play on a Earth map. My issues with that is that my computer can barely handle 8 civs let alone 18. Plus the size of the map would be killer.

 

[eiseike]

yep , my computer can hardly handle 8 civs let alone the huge map too , so what I do is just open up the world builder at the start , create a lion on their cities and get rid of 10 civs instantly (otherwise it takes 10 minutes to wait for the next turn by the time I get to the medieval era!) ..... still with 8 civs my PC still drags along.

 

[Bast]

yep , my computer can hardly handle 8 civs let alone the huge map too , so what I do is just open up the world builder at the start , create a lion on their cities and get rid of 10 civs instantly (otherwise it takes 10 minutes to wait for the next turn by the time I get to the medieval era!) ..... still with 8 civs my PC still drags along.

Isn't it easier to just start the game with only 8 civs?