Per-game tactics/theories!

[ThePersian]

I think it would be nice to specualte the playing styles in the CIV IV.

One tactic would be to go all out on getting teh first religon, hope for a religous leader and start converting. This tactic would be a mix of culural and espionage playing styles, possibily fighting to convert cities.

A secound style would be to fight for a control of many luxuries and resourses (food...) and establish a rich trading network, and buy your way out of war. This tactic would be commicial/cultural.

The deplomat. I read that you could start wars between two nations without being in it your self. This would be great for a deplomatic state (i can see Chirchill as the perfect sute already, lol.) which starts wars in and acts as the peace maker. This tactic would be well, deplomatic and espionage. I loved doing this in CIV III, i would be a hard core resercher and get people to fight my wars, one of them would become weaker while both in great finacial distress, i would eat the little guy (or whats left of him) and wait for my big war partner to fall in finacial truble. I would then cause war between all the CIVS and the big guy and gather resources from weakend cities) In the upcomming CIV IV it looks like the art of deplomecy is really comming together.

The specilized unit civ. Imagion a CIV that has a whole army of thoes specilized units and attributes. Possibily creat an efficiant killing machine. I would be thinking Militristic and expansive. (question? how badly do you think the expansious civ will be damaged?)

The fast pace resercher. Since perqusits are no longer needed for advancement, its likely to be a stratigy for someone to go all out to get ahead for some advanced government in an early age. This would be reserch and commerce.

Well these are the tactics i could think of with the information we have. I love the way the producers have divercified the game, hope it still has the balenced elements of the CIV III and all this new game play is aplicable!
I would love to hear some CIV Fanatics veterns suggest ideas.

 

[Meleager]

It would certianly be interesting to speculate. (maybe we can master the game before it comes out )

PS. Option 2 would be miliaristic as well, as you need mil. might to get the rescources

 

[ThePersian]

I was thinking we might be getting to buy citiies now in the devaloper interview, it was said that when a city becomes too much to handle a civilization would give it up. Now this is a major change from CIV III becuse when it came to trading Cities the AI was unnegotiable, for example i tested i would give up all my cities and tech and money for a small little city of another civ, and he would refues. Trading cities would be intristing like Napolian selling large parts of land (now the U.s, cities like New Orlians) inorder to support his military back in France. This would bring up an intristing part to the game. I was simply speculating from that little comment in the interview that we can finaly get down to the issues of trading land in CIV IV through trade .

 

[general_kill]

get as much artillery units as possible and win the game is what civ 4 will come down to.

 

[vbraun]

I plan to win my first game.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'll build a spearman, wait till the modern age, and then kill off all the enemy tanks, leaving me as the only military power on the planet.

 

[Jaybe]

Escort my early artillery with 1 or 2 spears or pikes to fend off enemy horse. Add a unit to counter whatever the counter to spears is (swords?).

 

[remconius]

I think you can go for winning the science race. Trading those to be powerful. In order to do this you will need to spend lots in science, which will probably mean keeping maintenance costs low. Perhaps you could even win the tech race with few low maintenance cities.

Alternatively, you could have lots of cities to build units. With almost no science spending all your cash can be used to cover maintenance of additional cities. As they would produce as normal, you could quicky produce a large army. You will have to choose some government options with low unit maintenance.

 

[Leprechaune]

1st - Choose a scientific path that I've already got a start in and stick to it exclusively... Trading techs will pick up the stuff I leave behind, or building the Great Library will fix anything at a later point (Assuming it operates the same)

2nd - Begin building defensive units and search out nearby resources.

3rd - Focus on the development and expansion of cultural borders so that the beginning city or cities can access the most needed nearby resources.

4th - Build a reliable infrastructure so that defensive units can effectively defend any important area that is in threat of an attack.

5th - When stability permits, expand by building cities at greater distances.

6th - Focus on the military growth of the nation as more and more competition is revealed.

7th - Pick on the weakest neighbor through stealth type attacks or embargos. Swallow them whole when ripe for the picking.

8th - Rinse and repeat step 7...

 

[Atrebates]

Sticking to the tried and tested (for me anyway) blitz your nearest neighbour as soon as possible with archers to remove competition and double your powerbase quickly.
From here research and expand peacefully as quickly as you can

EDIT: actually with the changes to how you make money it might be necessary to change city layout (corruption has gone too, hasn't it?) with a big advantage in working with you neighbours

 

[ThePersian]

I agree with the Blitz on a tight area, if your playing on a large map the Blitz would be useless concidering the changes in Civ IV.

I am most intristed in the deplomatic element of the game, it should be a very intristing add on. I was also thinking imagion capturing a nabours capital and establishing a holy city there, haha it would bound to take over the other cities in time.

Another theory could be to build cities farther away now, for example have your main empire and little colonies for military advantage and so on. In Civ III building cities far away in stratigic areas was a mess becuse of all the corruption cost. I hope now there will be some possibilities to having stratigic cities far away from the empire.

 

[Jaybe]

... (corruption has gone too, hasn't it?)

No, it is just manifested differently. Highly-corrupted cities will cost greater maintenance, but it seems you won't lose any hammers.

 

[Albow]

The core to all Civ games and civ type games: expand like mad ... I know there has been a lot of info about how expanding like mad won't be as powerful, but I still think expanding like mad at the start will be a winning strat.

Oh, and I'd make sure to kill all those evil barbarian lions so that they don't eat my settlers ...

 

[remconius]

The core to all Civ games and civ type games: expand like mad ... I know there has been a lot of info about how expanding like mad won't be as powerful, but I still think expanding like mad at the start will be a winning strat.

Oh, and I'd make sure to kill all those evil barbarian lions so that they don't eat my settlers ...

Without knowing for sure, from what I read I doubt this will work. Each city will be more expensive than the previous one, either in step change (like "you can support X cities for free") or in continuous increase. This means your first couple of cities will make you money, then a few will break even. Any cities after that will cost more money then they earn. You can compensate by reducing culture and science sliders and building improvements that make you money (Marketplaces, courthouses). If you expand too fast you will probably come to a point where the cities making money are less then the cities costing money and you're whole balance will go negative. If by that time you can build improvements needed to counter this (difficult as you've had low science spending), you will have a wide base to make up for lost time.

The faster you expand, the more growth potential and production base you will have, but you will have lower science, culture and cash. It will be an interesting decision to make.

 

[Atrebates]

Looks like we'll need to wait for the game to decide .
Sounds like civ is itroducing the 'Boom or Bust' dilemma of RTS, I'd guess fast expansion will pay off in some form in exchange for immediate weakness

 

[doronron]

I plan to win my first game.

I plan to lose my first game 'cause I'll be too busy looking at all the neat new stuff.

 

[gun powder man]

With religion added, we can recreate one of the ultamite types of war

THE RELIGIOUS WAR!

With the relgious war, you can justify a lot of wars. That will probably create a good Middle Ages Scenario too.
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Also, the tech tree, while you can form your own way of researching, as I can tell, the problem is that while you COULD try to research the Tank, you have to research several other technologies to make that work first. But, that doesn't mean you have to research everything. You can ignore technologies. This will probably play a role with some civilizations becoming "behind" compared to others. While some civs research technology (military and production stuff) the most (with everything else minimum, like you don't want to have riflemen and not a decent government to control them), another civilization can research social, government, and religion advances (with everything else minimum, like you don't want to have the perfect religion and not be able to defend yourself). When the technology advanced civilzation finds the socialy advanced civilization, it is most likely that the socially advanced civilization will lack in fighting units that can measure up to the technology advanced civilization, and the S.A civ will have a hard time fighting the T.A. civ (but the S.A. civ will have a better fighting effort).
Historical examples of this include:
-When Europe discovered the American natives. The Indians had trouble fighting against advanced civilizations, but the indians were still hard to beat with their fighting effort and religious backings.
-Today, with fighting against the terrorists. The terrorists want to die, and will commit suicide to kill U.S. and other enemies. Normal combat is hard also due to they will still attack, even if they can't compare in war materials to their enemies.

 

[Andrew_Jay]

Escort my early artillery with 1 or 2 spears or pikes to fend off enemy horse. Add a unit to counter whatever the counter to spears is (swords?).

Archers, I believe.

Horses > Archers > Infantry > Horses?

With the new tech tree, it would be very tempting to jump towards infrastructure-related techs, coming back to others when I have markets, libraries, universities, etc. etc. in my cities, giving me a jump on them (I suppose).

 

[Yusaku Jon III]

From what I've read up to date, this version of Civilization may favor the gameplay style that I prefer: going through a simultaneous exploration/expansion while also trying to keep ahead of my rivals in the tech race, adding a wonder or two early on to give myself an advantage where I need it most. If the new game limits empire growth through some means or another (the city maintenance cost replacing corruption, etc), then I may have to consider city improvements at some point to cover the cost of expansion prior to popping out another group of settlers.