pre-game advice

Thalur

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 4, 2008
Messages
21
Location
England
Hi all,

For my next game I thought I'd try posting my progress on here, as I figure having you lot pointing out my mistakes is probably the best way for me to learn and improve :) To that end, I thought I'd start asking for opinions from the very beginning.

Goals:
I want to run a specialist economy - this is probably the only "must" I have. Its also something I've read a lot about, never tried before.
I tend towards fighting rather than diplomacy in most of my games, so a warmonger approach would be good.
I'd prefer land wars to naval wars - I've just finished a game as Vikings, and I took almost every city with an amphibious assault, so you could say I'm a bit sea sick at the moment. :rolleyes:
I quite fancy playing as either English or Roman, for the UU more than anything, but if anyone can make a decent argument for any other, I'm happy to switch.
I prefer to play on the Marathon setting - it makes the wars more interesting, and your units aren't out of date by the end of each skirmish.

So, with that in mind, which initial settings should I choose?

Map size: standard or large? Standard would presumably be quicker, but perhaps less interesting? Is there a point where the map is too large for a conquest/domination victory to be plausible?

Map type: I like the look of the "hemispheres" or "big and small" maps, or anything that doesn't look too artificial.

Difficulty: My last game was on Warlord and was too easy, so Noble is a minimum. Would any advice I get from the forums be enough to justify jumping up to prince level?

Leader: Anything anyone can make a good argument for! Amenable to a specialist economy is obviously important, as is someone suitably warmongering, but neither of these place particularly strong restraints on the chosen leader. I'd quite like someone from an older era as I'd like to write up the game in the "voice" of the leader (something I've seen used very effectively in Rome:Total War write-ups), and its probably easier to get started like that with an older era leader. I suppose the real question is who are the best leaders for teaching the specialist economy?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions
 
$.02: PHI/AGG sounds like your friend. You want to try SE and like warfare. PHI/IMP might be good too. Both will help you with the SE. Agg will help with warfare, and Imp will benefit from warfare.

Oh, and welcome to CivFanatics. Enjoy your stay, improve your game.

-abs
 
Try a One city Challenge game and shoot for Domination

Pick a highlands map on Monarch with raging barbs as Bizmark. Build the Great Wall asap. While building wonders, head to education quickly and try and get cannons from liberalism....now go bash some heads.
 
You want to run a warmongering SE? It's got to be Gandhi! :king:

I kid you not. This guy may have been a lentil-eating passive-resistance monkey in real life, but in civ4 he is perfect for bashing heads, SE-style.

Philosophical means you'll have the GPs flowing like water to settle/bulb/etc. helping to power your economy while you hand down a beating or three.

Spiritual means you can switch almost at will between Caste System and Slavery, Bureaucracy and Vassalage, etc. The result is you can take full advantage of the warmongering civics, without being stuck in them (or wasting turns in anarchy) when you want to focus on your economy. Painless switching between religions for diplomatic reasons is another bonus.

Fast Workers are often said to be weaker on slower game speeds, but I still find them to be one of the best UUs on Epic (I'm not patient enough for Marathon). Although they're clearly not a warmongering unit, they are helpful in getting forests chopped earlier to produce troops, and will get everything built that little bit faster to speed your initial rush and hasten the improvement of captured cities.

The UB, while it doesn't come early, replaces a warmonger's building anyway (the Jail), and gives a very welcome bonus to Happiness to further offset all the war weariness you'll be generating.

He even starts with Mining, to speed up that first axerush. :worship:
 
Why not try Suleiman of the Ottomans? He is philosophical and imperialistic, getting you lots great persons points as well as quick settlers and many great generals.

The Ottomans also come with this wonderful little aqueduct called the Hamman that gives you +2 :) as well as the health benefit. That allows big cities early in the game, which means more production and more specialists. If you also manage to find stone you can go for the Pyramids/Hanging Gardens combination, making them even bigger with representation and more health. Their UB is the Janissary, which is draftable and suited for your big cities.
 
Thanks for the replies. It sounds like the philosophical trait is key in choosing a leader. Suleiman and Alexander both sound like good choices, with Suleiman taking the lead with a better UU and UB (for this game at least). Frederik of Germany is also tempting, though the UU and UB are both very late-game. I'm less sure about warmongering with Gandhi - it doesn't seem quite right to me, though that might pass: I wasn't particularly bothered about nuking the US into oblivion in my last game once I got started.

Any thoughts on the map and difficulty settings?
 
I agree on Gandhi being an excellent choice. Lincoln is another that hasn't been mentioned so far. Philosophical/Charismatic is a killer trait combination for the kind of game you're looking for with Charismatic providing both increased happiness for more specialists and better promoted units for wars.
 
Just on more thought. To me, the best warmongering trait is charismatic. The cheap promotions and the extra early happiness are huge benefits. Charismatic only gets better the longer the game progresses. With the right civivs and perhaps a settled general here and there you'll be pumping out highly promoted units like there's no tomorrow. So perhaps you could consider Lincoln as well. I mean, you did nuke him into oblivion after all.

Edit: crossposted with Gilese 581.
 
You don't necessarily have to be philo, but it sure helps. I'm fairly new to SE, but the way I see it is you either need Philo or the 'mids for an effective SE. Both is amazing, but not necessary. Ghandi is a SE monster, it's scary, but Alex (Agg/Philo), Lincoln (Cha/Philo), and Sulieman (Imp/Philo) all sound like they'd suit you just fine. My favourite Philo leader has to be Liz, though. Financial and Philo might sound counter intuitive, but it's really the best of both worlds. If you manage it right, you can make a monstrous hybrid economy with her that is unstoppable. That, and the Redcoat is awesome (although with Liz you can easily tech so fast that you'll be fighting obsolete units with them :lol: ).
 
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