Misc. Questions

[Rissiel]

Hey all, as you can see from my post count I am almost exclusively a lurker, but in the shower this morning (I do all my best video-game thinking in the shower *shrug*) I realized I had a handful of questions about Civ 4 that I wanted to ask that I had not yet found the answers to in other places on these forums. As such, I figured the best thing to do was to actually write a post and ask my questions to the larger community.

I am to the point that I am winning a fair amount of the time on Monarch, and am considering moving up a level. What are the biggest differences I can expect between the two difficulties? I know the AI will tech better, and the like, but do they war more often, or more intelligently? Do they build wonders earlier and more often? Are there any major strats that work on Monarch but wont work on harder levels?

Unrelated question: I have read several comments in threads here where people comment on the number of beakers being produced vis-a-vis date; as in, "you should be generating far more beakers in 1xxx AD than XXX," or, "wow, thats a lot of beakers for XXX BC." Is there some generally understood progression of beakers per date? I generally just judge my own tech progress by comparing myself in-game to the AI, but if I have a specific number and date to shoot for I might be able to improve my play, which is why I ask.

Lots of questions, I know, if you are generous enough to respond don't feel compelled to respond to all of them. I have enjoyed playing Civ much more since finding these forums, and I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

Riss'

 

[xanadux]

Which version are you playing?

For me, emperor was a bigger jump up than monarch was. You can handicap it a little for an in between level with game options. For example, if you tend to be a warmonger, choose a smaller map with a few extra civs and the AI expansion is limited by less land. Also, you can play food light maps like great plains, and the AI's advantages in happiness and health are mitigated.

But as for the differences, one of the biggest is the loss of a happy and healthy bonus. All your cities will be 1 size smaller, and this is a pretty big loss especially early game. The AI will tech faster, expand quicker, and produce more. Wonders may come significantly earlier, and many wonder gambits become much riskier if impossible. They AI isn't any more intelligent, but they will probably war more often because they are more likely to have expanded to the point of wanting your land, or will have many more units and just decide to attack you because you are weak.

It is usually still fairly easy to get to liberalism first, and lightbulbing Great People is not usually necessary to accomplish this. What I have found to be of the greatest difficulty is dealing with a group of AIs that are all friendly and trading happily with each other with huge productive cities. I'm just starting to play emperor myself, and am having trouble dealing with the later game teching of the AI.

 

[Rissiel]

Forgot to mention that, I am playing BTS.

 

[MrCynical]

I am to the point that I am winning a fair amount of the time on Monarch, and am considering moving up a level. What are the biggest differences I can expect between the two difficulties? I know the AI will tech better, and the like, but do they war more often, or more intelligently? Do they build wonders earlier and more often? Are there any major strats that work on Monarch but wont work on harder levels?

The AI receives additional bonuses to production and research (and a lot of more minor economic bonuses. They also start with an extra archer and scout compared to Monarch level. The difficulty levels aren't so widely spaced that there are strategies that catergorically won't work on one, and will on the one below. In general though you'll have more trouble getting early wonders and religions. Your tech pace will be slower. You'll have more trouble with maintenance if you go to war.

One thing the AI isn't is smarter. It plays with exactly the same level of intelligence at all settings; it merely has more economic clout to use at higher levels. This tends to mean that warfare doesn't get harder quite as much as everything else at higher levels, though the economic boost to the AI will still aid it on that front.

but as for the differences, one of the biggest is the loss of a happy and healthy bonus.

This isn't the case any more in BtS. The health and happiness bonuses only drop till Monarch level. They're the same at Monarch, Emperor, Immortal and Deity.

Unrelated question: I have read several comments in threads here where people comment on the number of beakers being produced vis-a-vis date; as in, "you should be generating far more beakers in 1xxx AD than XXX," or, "wow, thats a lot of beakers for XXX BC." Is there some generally understood progression of beakers per date? I generally just judge my own tech progress by comparing myself in-game to the AI, but if I have a specific number and date to shoot for I might be able to improve my play, which is why I ask.

There's again no hard and fast numbers, and you're right that it's how you compare to the AI in your particular game that matters. Numbers and dates don't scale well across different map sizes and game speeds anyway. Occasionally an exceptionally low (or higher) research output might be commented on (it's out of normal bounds in any game type), but there's a very wide range.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

I've recently been playing most of my games on Emporer, and I've been doing quite well mostly. The key for my advancement was just doing an empire check every 10-20 turns just to make sure my cities:

• working the right tiles
• have any buildings that will benefit them
• are protected adequately
• due for a whip
• need to halt growth
• and so on

Also I find it's more important to check the foreign advisor more often to see if there's any resource or tech trades available, with the AI teching faster it means that trades don't stick around for as long as they would have on Monarch and below.