Reading these descriptions is fun, but I think I might prefer to see more discussion of starting strategies.
I hope that a "Very Strong Player" will start a new thread with an evaluation of a few of these opening play descriptions. I'm not strong enough to offer that service, but surely someone who was excellent at Civ3 and played a dozen games or so of Civ4 before this GOTM, as I did, would be strong enough to offer some advice. I certainly wouldn't mind anyone's comments on this opening.
I considered my strengths before starting. I always play better when I plan. I wanted to emphasize growth and go for a cultural victory. I planned to mine the gems early for a science boost (and we have mining). Our unique unit requires Iron, so Iron working and Iron should be early priorities because we usually have neighbors on a continents map, and my growth always seems stifled by neighbors.
After a little thinking about building, I decided on this build order:
Warrior - partial, 8 hammers in 8 turns until city hits size 2
Worker - complete in 12 turns, I think
Warrior - finish the first warrior (4 turns)
Warrior - start a second warrior, but switch in 3 more turns when we hit size3
Settler - complete in <# of turns not recorded>
On Noble, it seemed to me that animals and barbs wouldn't destroy me quite this early, so the warrior I started the game with was out exploring.
You save 3 turns on worker construction if you wait 8 turns to first grow to size 2 (15 turns vs 12), but save only 2 more turns if you wait for size 3, and unless you have two 3-food-producing tiles, which we don't here, this growth takes 15 more turns or so.
Given our river terrain you're earning 1 more commerce per unit of city size during worker construction.
So, I built my worker at size 2 and settler at size 3. This enabled me to found my first city in 2440 - which, later viewing the replay, is the first year the AI was able to found a civ. I thought I might beat them by a turn or two, but did not.
My science plan:
Mysticism 7 turns
Polytheism 12 (reduced to 11 due to growth)
Agriculture 7 or 6
Bronze Work. 12
<Plan was...>
Wheel 5
Pottery 4
Iron 12-ish
<Changed to....>
Masonry
Monotheism
Pottery
<received Iron Working from a hut - lucky>
I got Hinduism. I needed Agriculture to farm our corn - I still believe food is power. Then I wanted Bronze Working to chop key forests. (My worker was done earlier than agriculture, as I planned, but since we had mining I went and mined the gems first.). I intended to chop a forest to help with settler production, but am not sure I completed Bronze Working in time.
It's nice that rivers connect resources - I didn't need to road to connect the gems to rome.
I still like to found a religion, but I'm beginning to think I overdid it this game. I like to found many religions on the easier difficulty levels to try to deny them to the computer, but another nation was able to found Buddhism early because they had mysticism. I managed to deny the computer 5 of the remaining 6 religions, but it didn't appear to hold them back. Buddhism spread a lot and I think it actually served to unite my opponents.
Later I took the time to plant Hinduism in every city of one opponent, but they still would not convert, despite their own religion not covering their empire. There seem to be a lot more absolutes in Civ4 - some civs will essentially never trade maps, others refuse to ever trade recent techs, etc. I read a post that someone else did convert this opponent empire, but to their real-life historically-favored religion, so I guess that counts.
I didn't want to lose turns early on and did not convert to Hinduism or slavery immediately. I think there's an argument to be made for converting immediately - when you're only losing a few hammers and commerce in your capital for one turn - but overall it seemed to me that losing a turn now to obtain a happiness bonus I did not yet need would slow research, settler production, the founding of a new city, etc. Perhaps I have an irrational fear of being beaten to a religion or key city space by one turn...
I was going for a cultural victory, so obsessing about religions might be slightly less irrational. Their +50% cultural buildings were important later.
I figured Greece would be aggressive, and I wanted to own my continent anyway, so I allowed Iron Working to change the placement of my 3rd city to a less-than-optimal one. I then connected it, cranked out Praetorians and hit the Greeks. The first battle didn't go so well, but I'd built enough that I was able to take Sparta and it was all down hill from there.
The war lasted from about 475 to 75 BC, but I then gave Greece a 10-turn reprieve in order to obtain a few techs he had that I had not stopped to pick up (archery, etc.) That seemed like a good trade. (I wonder if there were any hidden modifiers to other civs attitude toward me since I attacked another civ without provocation, razed 1 city (though I think it was barb), and destroyed their civilization. I presume not, particularly since they never met the Greeks.)
I then tried to balance growth on my continent with maintaining my economy to keep science rates high. I occassionally had to dip to 70%, as I recall, but spent most of my time at 80%. It's interesting how this doesn't really mean the same thing as in Civ3 - It doesn't take long to get a city to produce more commerce than it costs in city maintenance, but that city maintenance must be paid in gold, so while a bunch of new cities may be a "net profit" in total commerce, what you're really doing is paying gold in order to receive more science than you otherwise would without that additional city. I think finding the balance points - the rate at which you should be draining your saved gold and the rate at which you should found new cities - is tricky.
At one point, for example, near the end of my war with Greece, I had 8 cities - 4 of mine and 4 of his (1 was resisting after conquering and so is not contributing). He had one left. My finances:
Total Base Commerce 56
Science 52 (Rome has a library providing the additional 5)
Gold 9
Unit Costs 3
Unit Supply 2
City Maintenance 20 (!!!)
Civic Upkeep 4
Inflation 0
Total costs 29
Total budget shortfall -20 per turn
With 279 gold, mostly obtained when capturing Greek cities, I obviously couldn't maintain that for long and had to focus on my economy and couldn't found any new cities for a while.
Other notes:
I had several early warriors destroyed by barbs and this was annoying and limited exploration, but was to be expected I suppose.
I built Stonehenge. It delayed my war, and I'm not sure it was the right thing to do. I was going after a culture victory, and I love the early Great Person points - especially having founded 1 or more world religions. But I think it might have held me back.
I emphasized population growth and mostly non-overlapping city placement.
I produced more workers than in the past and was able to do a reasoanble job of being sure each city was working improved tiles. However, "When to chop forests," still troubles me. And I think workshops are essentially useless in most circumstances until techs increase their output. -1 food for +1 shield (oops, hammer) is not generally a trade I want to make - particularly not if I have to spend worker turns doing it, or have to cut a forest that is already producing +1 hammer. (Unless, of course I really need those shields to speed production.)
The city governor underemphasizes food, imho, especially in the early game. I found myself frequently clicking "emphasize food" on to get the city to grow faster, then switching to, "Ack! Prevent Growth!" once I reached happiness limits. I like these buttons much better than trying to micro-manage food production in every city on my own, though.
I won my cultural victory in 1945 - slower than I think I should have been. (Final Score around 18,000). I fought one later war, but didn't feel like trying to conquer the world - though I'm convinced it would have been faster and produced a higher score. I'm tempted to replay the game from the beginning targeting a conquest victory.
Anybody notice you can mouse-over yourself in the list of players on the bottom right and get a "score if you win this turn." That score drops FAST in my games in later turns - presumably because you're no longer founding new cities and growing fast enough to offset it. I've seen the score explanation and people are the only thing that could possibly do it - discovering techs at a fast pace and building lots of wonders is NOT enough to slow it's decent. I need to start paying more attention during my games to try to see if there's a pattern to the "inflection point" where it starts going down instead of up.
Although, come to think of it, I never look at it in the early game, maybe it NEVER goes up, no matter how fast you grow, which would seem to indicate that fastest finish should always be a priority in terms of score. Well, it can go up, I just checked some saves
2000 BC 19,000
475 BC 30,000
1 AD 43,000
580 AD 43,000
740 AD 42,500
1070 AD 50,500
1550 AD 38,000
So that's interesting. It is possible to grow fast enough to drive that score up, but I guess maintaining that growth is hard. I had no wars between 580 and 1550.
Anyway, as I said, I'm interested in comments and feedback.
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. Once Bronze Working was finished I started on Agriculture, and then Pottery (for those nice cheap granaries). By this time I'd met Alexander, and had already decided those Praetorians were just begging to be used. Even more so after I'd finished scouting and found it was only us 2 on a big continent. So once I finished Pottery I started researching Iron Working, and my research was really starting to speed up with the commerce from the Gems east of Rome.
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