Mistfit's Introduction to cIV HoF

[Mistfit]

ok.. after a long leave of absence from Civ in general I have recently become interested in cIV. This is largely due to my ties with the HoF community and HoF staff.. yes I am blaming it on you..

I am going to start trying to improve my skills and techniques in hopes of becoming competent at this game..

History:
I have played cIV for about 2 months now.. I just got myself a computer that will run the dang game properly. Mostly, I have been playing the ancient era and then losing interest or losing focus (trying to see all of the wonder splashes) and then quitting and starting over.

Now it is time to move on to bigger and better things.

Plan:
It seems that cIV is similar to C3C in that almost all victory conditions are achieved through getting to the domination limit quickly and efficiently and playing it out from there.

So, my plan involves becoming competent at that goal first.

I will start by playing towards Domination Victories on small maps first starting at the Noble level as I am comfortable with this level.

What I need:
I need your help with ideas settings and plans (the War Academy is a bit out dated as many of the articles were written before the patches that changed the chopping hammers and typically rely heavily on that)

My first attempts will be:

Map: Pangaea - solid edges - normal sea level (I think the crampt spaces caused by high will adversely effect the outcome more than the benefit of smaller domination limits)

Civ:
Russia - Cat (I like the financial and creative combo to give me expanded borders and extra cash - I can also skip building Stonehenge)

Opponents:
This is where I am asking for help..

I have not played all of the Civs so I am not familiar with them.. the only one I know I like to play against is Huayna Capac (he is to me what ghengis was to ss - I just love whacking on him)

Please look this info over and feel free to comment and give suggestions. I am open and willing to hear opposing views.

In later posts I will give other theories I have as I play a few of these out.

Cheers (and damn you all of sucking me back in )

 

[dutchfire]

What version are you playing? Vanilla (1.74) I suppose?

Opponents:
Try non-creative opponents to prevent them from getting extra cultural defense in their small cities.
Non-Aggresive means worse gunpowder and melee units.
Don't pick Montezuma or Tokugawa (there are probably others), as they're likely to have a lot of units.

Early game, you normally want to research worker techs, so your workers can improve your cities' tiles. Chose Agriculture, Animal Husbandry or Bronze Working/Mining as your first techs, depending on your surroundings. You will want Bronze Working anyway, since slavery and chopping are the best methods for producing units.

Try using melee units for your attacks, they can get the very powerful City Raider promotions. Make sure to have a barracks in your unit producing towns, for extra experience. You will want swordsmen, some axemen (if opponent has copper/iron, be sure to check before attacking) and some spearmen (if opponent has horses). Your next technological objective will be construction for catapults. Catapults are very strong since they can reduce city defenses, and deal collateral damage. When attacking a city, bombard it first, and then attack with your cheap expendable catapults. Your elite swordsmen will fight high % battles only.

By the way, Conquest might be better for practise, since domination on noble should be pretty easy. If you do try domination, be sure not to ruin your economy! Don't keep all cities, you can backfill later. You will also want Currency and Code of Laws to help salvage your economy. Alphabet is also a good tech, to trade for the techs you're missing.


The best thing to do is to post a game here, so we can help you, of course

 

[Mistfit]

Vanilla (1.74) is indeed what I am playing.

Do you think the game can be accomplished without getting to Macemen? At a good date anyway.

 

[dutchfire]

Do you think the game can be accomplished without getting to Macemen? At a good date anyway.

Yes, although I suppose it depends on speed and map size. I'd try non-marathon speeds first, they're slightly harder, but will give you higher scores (since they're rare), and take less time so you get more practise. If you want a top-date, you're probably going to need Praetorians (Rome), Immortals (Persia) or War Chariots (Egypt).

And besides, catapults can kill anything, as long as you bring enough of them

 

[Mistfit]

hmm.. ok.. at first I will try Cat of Russia but will maybe try others later..

My thoughts on opponents for small (4) will be

George Wash - Financial/Organized - Navy Seal
Asoka - Organized/Spiritual - Fast worker (If captured are they still fast?)
Mansa Mansu - Financial/Spiritual - Skirmisher
Mao Zedong - Philo/Organized - Cho-Ku_Nu

My Theory on these choices are:
1.) No Industrial - Agressive - Creative
2.) Mostly useless (warring) UU's
3.) I only typically need to rid myself of 3 of 4 opponents to get Dom (Mansu can stay if needed)

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Captured fast workers lose their super speed and their turbans I'm afraid. On the other hand, if you play as India and capture workers they get the speediness.

 

[dutchfire]

(If captured are they still fast?)

Sadly, no

Mansa Mansu - Financial/Spiritual - Skirmisher

Skirmisher , you don't want to be facing better archers

Mao Zedong - Philo/Organized - Cho-Ku_Nu

I wouldn't take the risk of facing a Cho Ku nu

I suggest George Washington - Asoka - Elizabeth - Victoria. Industrious isn't too bad either.

 

[shyuhe]

If you're playing on noble, I'd recommend Cyrus or Hatty for starters. On a small map, you can turn off research after AH + BW and just go to town on the AI. You can also master the art of the settler spam Note that if you're going to use chariots, you'll want BTS so that you can take out both archers and axes. As for spears... just dogpile them and cut off their metal ASAP.

I would also remove Mansa. Skirmishers are a pain if you're going for early military conquests.

 

[Mistfit]

ok.. I have tried a few games now (to limited success) and have got some more questions/comments

First game I played was a random (did not use map finder) map with me being Cat of Russia.

This went fairly well but..

I need to work on early rush better/more efficiently

So I switched up to me being Julius Caesar.. The first game I played with him I did not have iron so I built axemen and took iron from Asoka next door.. This game was going well (cleared out Asoka very quick) and whacked a bit on Elizabeth but ran into a snag..

It seems I cannot settler spam like in C3C.. I kind of knew this from reading here in the forum and War Academy but never realized how crippling over expansion would be.. so now I have to figure out a way around it..

What happened in this game is that I had settled 2 extra cities of my own... forcefully taken 2 of Asoka'a (he's dead now) and taken 2 from Liz.. so now pretty quickly I have 7 cities.. I can't research anymore... and I do not have CoL yet to stop and whip some courthouses so I need to find that happy medium.. expanding while the AI is still weak but still have some economy available to research.

Is there a rule of thumb? how to make this work..

It seems like I need to research the following techs (if using Rome)

BW
IW
Worker Techs
Alphabet
Writing
Math
Currency
CoL (I think this allows courthouses)
and maybe Drama to load up on Culture near the end of the game to bump borders...

so now I just need to figure out how to get there the best and I am thinking...

1.) settle 2 cities of my own 1st to get bronze 2nd to get iron
2.) make an early rush on neighbor (gain 2 more cities here)
3.) stop warring until courthouses become available (whip the heck out of my current cities)
4.) make cats and Prets and conquer the rest of the world

does this sound like a logical progression or am I missing something basic?

 

[Denniz]

Build cottages. Especially next to rivers for the +1 .

 

[Mistfit]

that is a good suggestion but it is difficult to balance the money making with the need for hammers for more units.. some more playtesting is in order

 

[Ozbenno]

Cottages are definately the way to go. Get them going early, they do mean a lessening of production but can get techs researched quicker and let you expand more. Don't expand once you've hit 30% research. If you want to go warring still, pillage and raze.

Prioritise Code of Laws more in your tech tree. For Rome I would go BW, 1 food worker tech (ie Agriculture or AH), Pottery, IW, other worker techs, Writing, Code of Laws, Alphabet, Maths, Currency,

 

[superslug]

Ask a former staff member for some new HOF graphics and he winds up actually coming back to the community, albeit IV instead of III.

Nice one Denniz.

 

[Mistfit]

"Writing, Code of Laws, Alphabet, Maths, Currency,"

I guess I had not realized that I could skip CoL into the mix this early.. for some reason I thought I needed Writing, Math and Currency to get it.

Could I go Priesthood direct to CoL?

Also I need to work on my starting moves.. I need to figure a good basis for the very first turns of the game.. Worker, worker, settler? Worker, settler, warrior? I just don't quite know what is the most efficient.. I need to settle 2 of my own cities max near the beginning of the game.. one for bronze and one for IW (if playing rome)

 

[dutchfire]

For your starting build order, I'd suggest worker - warrior (to allow growth) - settler. This allows a quick second city to grab a strategic resource, and it gets a worker first to start improving your countryside. Make sure you grow to size 2 (or 3) before you start your settler, so it's production can go faster. Chopping settlers is also a good idea.

If you're going for conquest, all you need if you want to go all out warring is 2-3 cities of your own, and 1 or 2 AI capitals. The biggest difference between III and IV is that you need to be picky with keeping cities.

Another difference between 3 and 4, there now is overflow handling, so you don't need to micromanage your cities for exactly the right amount of hammers. Just so you don't waste hours micromanaging

 

[Mistfit]

well I am actually going for dominations so.. I do need to keep cities.. I think

 

[dutchfire]

well I am actually going for dominations so.. I do need to keep cities.. I think

There's nothing stopping you from building a lot of settlers, moving them to the right positions, and then settling 20+ cities at the same time

 

[Mistfit]

hmm.. interesting thought.. I will have to think more on that idea as it might allow me to research faster without the huge civic cost...

Is there such a thing in cIV as a settler pump? maybe a high food city with a little production that could whip a settler every 10 turns or so..

 

[Methos]

Ask a former staff member for some new HOF graphics and he winds up actually coming back to the community, albeit IV instead of III.

Nice one Denniz.

While you're here, could you take a look in Staff at a few things for us?

I'm not much of a warmonger, but once you get CoL (Caste System), assigning merchant specialist to them help with costs.

 

[Mistfit]

I'm not much of a warmonger

hmm.. with a avatar like that I never would have guessed