Post one (or more) thing you think people should know.

[Pragmatic]

I'm hiding in here to get away from the "my order didn't ship yet" and "it doesn't work on my system" and "I got it, yay!" posts in the General Discussion forum. I thought it'd be nice to have a thread where those who have the game can post one (or more) thing you think people should know.

So, what do you want to post about the game? Want to post the effects of a particular building? How about a wonder? Maybe a unit? Or a resource?

Maybe even a little tip on what to look for?

Basically, a poor man's FAQ.

 

[Pragmatic]

Okay, I'm going to get the ball rolling, since no-one has posted their tips/hints/explanations yet. Bear in mind: I'm about two to five days away from getting the game (if I don't break down and hit Walmart tomorrow night... only to find they're sold out...).

Speculation: Multiple religions can be beneficial.

If you found more than one religion, each gets a holy city (with possible overlaps?). Each religion can then build a shrine. Shrines get you money and culture (and possibly great prophets?). If you spread each of the religions to all your cities and to all foreign cities, the benefits of the religious shrines applies to each city for each religion. (Founded three religions, and have three shrines? Get those three religions in ten cities, and you're reaping the benefits as if you had one religion in thirty cities.)

I do not believe that there is unhappiness from having multiple religions in one town, only if the state religion is not in the town (?). And if you get freedom of religion, that's good for you, too.

What are the costs? Well, it takes a great prophet to build a shrine, which means you've got to put in the work to coax a great prophet to be born for each religion. (Each great person increases the cost of the next great person.) That means a lot of religious buildings in each of your holy cities. You've also got to build missionaries of each religion, and spam all your cities multiple times over. You've also probably had to focus research on religious techs, at the expense of absolutely required other techs (e.g., techs to build farms, roads, mines, and so on).

Also, you can only have one state religion, so even if you spread two or three religions to neighboring countries, they might choose the wrong religion. And switching back and forth between religions could have diplomatic consequences, since I believe the computer remembers your past actions.

 

[Khaim]

It's a good idea to build a worker or settler right after you grow, so you're getting the increased production. If you wait until you only have a few turns left, it's probably better to start pre-building something else, switch when you grow, and switch back when you finish. You'll most likely end up with the same or fewer time, and you'll have production saved for whatever else you're building (a warrior if nothing else).

 

[erfael2]

It's a good idea to build a worker or settler right after you grow, so you're getting the increased production. If you wait until you only have a few turns left, it's probably better to start pre-building something else, switch when you grow, and switch back when you finish. You'll most likely end up with the same or fewer time, and you'll have production saved for whatever else you're building (a warrior if nothing else).

Just don't forget to go back there to change to a settler or worker as soon as you grow. I keep doing this and then forgetting until I'm halfway through the next growth.

I'm really liking how the production stays on something...so you can bank up for later things in the cracks between earlier ones.

 

[DaEezT]

For warmongers: get a state religion asap and have the civics "Vassalage" and "Theocracy".
In a city that has your state religion and a barrack your new units then get 6xp when being build, that means two promotions
It's really nice to have a steady flow of lvl3 units as your support

For everyone: love your Longbow men!
They need no resources, are cheaper than macemen, start out with +25% city defense, first strike and can be upgraded with the garisson promotion.
Combined with what I stated above you get a unit with +70% city defense (2x garrison), fortify that unit in a city with walls and watch it kill everything the enemy can throw at you
And they upgrade all the way to infantry.

Tip 3: warriors are nice because they now can upgrade to either spearman or axeman, so you can use your early leftover produktion (in case you just wanna do something useful while waiting for the city to grow to a size that makes settler building worthwile) to build some warriors that later upgrade to whatever you need.
Of course that costs gold

Oh, and just in case ppl don'T know yet: units keep their promotions after upgrading!

 

[CitizenCain]

Make sure you found a religion. The sooner, the better. You'll be glad you did.

 

[Uty]

If you are going for a cultural victory, research Drama as soon as possible. This will add culture to the "slider." (Taxes/Luxury/Science rating) After this discovery I had a fairly large treasury so I set Culture to 30%. It made a huge difference in my growth and I made a lot of progress towards my goal.

 

[Eyemaze]

found a religion!

If you get a great prophet construct their religion building right away, especially if you have founded that religion.

If you get a great artist, send them to a city on one of your borders and get them make a great work +4000 culture. Your borders explode! I ate large portion of Rome's border like this and it converted a barbarian town to me.

Don't underestimate the power of unit promotions!

 

[protista]

Use your mouse wheel to zoom in on your cities. This feature really accentuates the depth of field, topography, and brings out minute detail which opens a whole new microcosm!

 

[bugmenot17]

You can convince other countries to declare war on people without you yourself declaring war. Adds a fun little political tool to pick apart compitition. I'm pretty sure that you had to declare war as well in CIV3 when you asked trade partners to declare war. I convinced #3 america and #4 persia to attack #1 russia During their little war, I was able to take Russia's #1 spot away, and watch them crumple under the might of my partners, while I sat in peace, booming my economy.

Well, peace for 15 turns, then I launched a few nukes at russia to allow my allies to finish them off, muahahahah

 

[Ephor]

1. Build a warrior before a settler.
The game often reccomends you build a settler even when you don't have military units to spare - don't listen! Barbarians are much more dangerous in civ 3 and they will demolish your cities if you aren't careful.

2. Multiple religions ARE beneficial
Having lost the race to Hinduism and not all that smitten with Judaism, I decided to power tech to pacifism and Taosim. At first I was pretty unhappy with the result, there were so many combating religions in my empire (mainly, Judaism, Confuciansim, and Taoism) that I had to send missionaries to my own cities to spread the state religion and many cities still demanded Jewish temples above anything else. However, As the religions started to catch on, I realized I had the top two religions in the world (with holy cities to boot) and that half the believers in the world were sending money into my coffers! This got even better later in the game when the free religion civic allowed gave me a huge boost to happiness.

So while you wana stick with one religion (at least until the modern era) its very good to found as many religions as possible. This is another instance of civ reflecting reality: the middle east is predominantly Muslim, but the value the territory there is greatly increased by the fact that 3 major world religions reguard it as their holy land.

 

[Ruffin]

You can change the city name by going into the city view and clicking on it. Didn't see it anywhere in the book, so.... Now if I can figure out how to name units I'll be good.

 

[erfael2]

You can change the city name by going into the city view and clicking on it. Didn't see it anywhere in the book, so.... Now if I can figure out how to name units I'll be good.

I think if you select a unit, the name of the unit is in the lower left info block. I think if you click it there you can change it.


Something Else It Might Help People To Know:
I've seen some complaints about lack of lines in the tech tree from things that seem to be required. Rather than typing it out, I'll refer people here. It really sort of makes sense if you know what you're looking for....could be better, but sort of makes sense....if I keep telling myself that, it may become true.

 

[elderotter]

my hints are: if you have multiple holy cities choose theocracy and dont allow missionaries from the other religions - Free religion works better in the later parts of the game.
Also as was stated above BARBARIANS are tough in the early game. These little buggers can whip your expletive deleted. And they build cities that produce upgraded barbarians...and those cites are not easy to take. Noticed that they build them near vital resources too, like Iron or copper!
Balance is something I am going to work on in the next game - along with fewer cities - heck the game tells you from time to time bigger cities are better.

 

[DarkSchneider]

Fresh water is key. It give health bonuses, as well as allows irrigation. Unlike previous Civs, you can't build a chain of irrigation right away, so when selecting a city site, it is imperative it is near a source of freshwater.

And yes, the Barbarians are tougher, you can't get away with building undefended cities for very long.

 

[GDI]

The Free Religion civic can actually be a nifty diplomatic tool. In one game, I started on my own little continent with Hinduism. Many centuries later, I met all other civs and they were naturally formed into two blocs baseed on Christianity and Taoism. Naturally, they all hated my heathen religion (-4 modifier). However, that was pretty much the only thing they hated me for. I swapped to Free Religion as a defensive measure and it removed by state religion, thereby removing the -4 diplomatic modifier. That allowed me to stay completely out of war for the remainder of the game.

 

[CivAlby]

I remember I saw this somewhere before but I can't find any words about it in the manual...

How do I set a rally point for a city? (i.e. all the unit produced there will automatically move to the target tile)

Thanks!

 

[Whomp]

I remember I saw this somewhere before but I can't find any words about it in the manual...

How do I set a rally point for a city? (i.e. all the unit produced there will automatically move to the target tile)

Thanks!

It took me 1/2 an hour to figure out how to stop a unit heading towards a rally point(mistakenly rallied). I tried right clicking, city screens etc.

If you left click once on that unit and send it in another direction it will stop heading towards the rally point.

 

[CivAlby]

It took me 1/2 an hour to figure out how to stop a unit heading towards a rally point(mistakenly rallied). I tried right clicking, city screens etc.

If you left click once on that unit and send it in another direction it will stop heading towards the rally point.

But how do you set up that rally point in the first place?

 

[fauteuil7]

Religion and Culture are great tools in this version of the game. If you try to make nice with your neighbors while expanding your cultural borders, you can engulf their cities. In my one win (a time victory, which is lame, but I'm not all that good a gamer) I built a couple of cities in less-than-ideal territory close to an opponent's borders, built them up slowly, then late in the game built improvements like Hollywood in one city, Rock and Roll in another, and just ate my rival's cities whole. I don't like wargames at all, so it's nice that there are more ways not just to win, but also more ways to conquer other cities in Civ IV. Plus, I was playing as Germany and it was kind of cool to see the Egyptians and Mongols digging Kraftwerk and Werner Herzog movies so much that they revolted and decided to join us.