Sulla's Civilization IV Walkthrough

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Question Session Again
By no means do you need a religion to succeed in Civ4. Religions add happiness and culture and let you do some neat additional stuff, but a no-religion start is entirely viable, and can even have some diplomatic advantages (everyone with different religions hates you, remember). Sirian's actually been arguing that it's more advantageous to skip a religion on the higher difficulties, and while I don't agree with him on that, I can see his point. Don't think you NEED to have a religion to win. If worst comes to worst, you can adopt the religion of your neighbor too.

Thanks a lot for your reply Sulla !
Nice to know this ... and the fact that strategies are already debated ...

Regards

 

[Mujadaddy]

Let's see if I understand this re: multiple religions.

If you found more than one religion, each gets a holy city (possibly overlapping?). Each one can then build a shrine. If they spread their religions to your cities (and foreign cities), the shrines each get their revenue from the cities, even if the second and third (etc) religions are small percentages. And there is no unhappiness from multiple religions in a town?

In cost, you've just spent multiple prophets in building shrines, and you've had to set up extra missionary-producing buildings as well as extra missionaries. You've also had to devote a lot of research to the techs, at the expense of other techs and possible stunting of your empire.

Is all of this correct?

That sounds correct, but what you didn't bring up is that NO OTHER civilization can benefit from having an original religion if you found them all first.

 

[dagrims]

Stumbled upon your site today - great read! I've got it bookmarked and am eagerly awaiting further installments.

 

[Sullla]

More Questions Answered

Sorry to bombard you with religion questions, but here's another: if you found two or more religions, would there ever be any reason to have the second or third be your state religion? It seems that the first one you found would always be more widespread in your cities, and thus it makes more sense to keep that one.

Ordinarily, you wouldn't want to swap your state religion to a minority religion. However, there may occasionally be some reasons to do so; gaining diplomatic benefits with the AI civs, for example. If everyone else is Buddhist and your civ is Confucian, you may want to swap to Buddhism as well even if only a few of your cities have the religion.

Question;
If two units can co-exist on the same square. What happens if war is declared between the two while they share a square or a city? Is combat resolved or do one have to exit the square and then attack again?

I believe that if you declare war with one of your units on the same tile as a unit from another civ, your unit gets pushed out of the tile without combat taking place. I haven't ever run into this myself, but I believe that there is no instant combat from a war declaration. Any units you have in another civ's territory (via Open Borders) will be teleported out of their territory upon a declaration of war (no such thing as Right of Passage rape in Civ4).

1. Is the game reasonally balanced? Between traits/factions? Between the main core strategies conqueror/builder? Is it easy to be shafted with a poor starting location?

2. How hard is the game? What difficulty evel can you usually win at given a typical start?

Well, my goal has been to try and ensure balance, so I think we're in pretty good shape with Civ4. Some of the leaders are much better at doing some things than others, but on the whole they are pretty balanced. Certainly more so than in Civ3, where some civs were just drastically more powerful than others. Start points are normalized by the map generator in Civ4, ensuring that every start has a couple of resources near it, to try and remove some of the luck factors of the start. Now - that doesn't mean it's perfect (look at Victoria in my Walkthrough; her capital itself is a strong spot, but everything around it is junk) but there is generally speaking a fairer distribution of starts in Civ4. 2-3 resources around each start is typical (now some resources are a lot better to start with than others, but that's another story too....)

How hard is the game? Well, it all depends on the difficulty level. Settler and Chieftan should be able to ease anyone into the game. Noble will be a good challenge while learning the ropes, but with practice it should be doable in time. Monarch is where it starts getting tough; Monarch in Civ4 is roughly equivalent to Emperor in Civ3 (just my opinion, of course). Emperor and above is very, very difficult right now; I expect that to change with time as more strategies develop, but anyone who thinks they can leap right into Civ4 Emperor is going to be humbled. Civ4 Deity is about as tough as Civ3's "Sid" difficulty, so I don't anticipate much of a need to add more difficulty levels later.

I'll see if I can put together a list of what benefits/penalties adhere to each difficulty level later this week at some point.

Sulla, thank you very much for your hard work with this. Your GOTM stories is what got me to buy my third Civ game. Perhaps you or any of the lucky ones who has picked up their copy can answer a small question for me; I'm trying to figure out how good the built-in world maps are (if any). I never did find any decent world maps for civ3...somthing I missed greatly from Civ2

I have not personally played the World Maps that are shipping with Civ4; they were designed by Rhye, who made a popular world map for Civ3. I do know that you can choose to start in either 4000BC or 1000AD (there's a map for each one). How much you'll like them, I don't know, because I never got to play through them myself. I do know that the maps are pretty big - whether that's a plus or a minus for you, I don't know.

Let's see if I understand this re: multiple religions.

If you found more than one religion, each gets a holy city (possibly overlapping?). Each one can then build a shrine. If they spread their religions to your cities (and foreign cities), the shrines each get their revenue from the cities, even if the second and third (etc) religions are small percentages. And there is no unhappiness from multiple religions in a town?

In cost, you've just spent multiple prophets in building shrines, and you've had to set up extra missionary-producing buildings as well as extra missionaries. You've also had to devote a lot of research to the techs, at the expense of other techs and possible stunting of your empire.

Is all of this correct?

Yes, that's basically right. Found multiple cities, build a shrine for each one, get additional money. As long as a city has the religion present, you'll get shrine income for it (the percentage doesn't matter). There is no unhappiness from having multiple religions in a city, UNLESS you go to war with the civ that controls the holy city for that faith (that will cause additional war weariness). Otherwise, no unhappiness. And yes, the main drawback of putting a lot into religion is that you aren't putting those resources into something else. It's a tradeoff, to be sure.

By the way, are the old 'exploits' from Civ 3 still there to any degree? Can you still get a right of passage, move all your troops next to their cities, and then declare war? Even if the diplomatic consequences are very bad, this is still the most efficient way of wiping a civ out if you're the most powerful in the world.

How about the mass upgrade trick? I know most players considered this a viable strategy, but I thought it was a bit stupid. If I remember properly you can build a lot of low-tech units for less shields, but only BEFORE you research the higher tech. I mean, if this is a viable strategy, why shouldn't you be able to build low-tech units later on, just because your technology is more advanced? It just seems a very artificial way of turning gold into shields. IMO upgrading a unit should require it to sit in a city and get 'rebuilt' with shields (for a slightly lower shield cost and retaining its experience).

Right of Passage rape doesn't exist anymore. As soon as Open Borders are canceled, all your units get teleported out of the territory of another civ. That also goes for declarations of war. It's simply an impossibility in the game now, and a big improvement.

My experience is that the mass upgrade tactic doesn't work too well. Yeah, you can use it to a limited extent, but upgrades are too expensive to get a gigantic benefit from it. Upgrading a warrior to an axeman (the closest thing to Civ3's warrior -> sword upgrade) costs about 100g if I remember right, and it's rare to get more than 15 or so gold per turn income early in the game. You aren't going to be upgrading too many units at that rate! So possible yes, but I don't think we'll ever see it to the same extent as with Civ3. (Now, will we find a new cheese strategy to replace it? In all probability, yes... )

Stonehenge looks like it's centred the mini-map. Is that another of the benefits? Quite a good one considering the excellent new mini-map system.

Yes, Stonehenge does center the minimap. It's not a huge benefit, but that's another little one I didn't mention. Sharp eyes!

Part Three has been posted; I've also added links to each part from the Single-Player page, as per reader requests.

 

[Shakes]

Another awesome update, the more I read about it the more I can't wait to play the game myself.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Reading this walkthrough is a lot like masturbating. It's the only thing keeping me going between the real thing.

 

[Pragmatic]

On building the Pyramids, it says a city may only have one world wonder, correct? And I seem to recall that a city may only have two of a lesser type of wonder (sorry, don't remember which type), correct?

 

[Sullla]

There is no limit on the number of world wonders a city can build... There was a limit of two national wonder (small wonders from Civ3) per city - that being stuff like Forbidden Palace, Wall Street, etc. - which I think made it into the final game. That's probably what's causing the confusion...

EDIT: Oh, I see, you're referring to the picture. That just means that only one city in the world can build the Pyramids.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

How do Temples/monateries/cathedrals work (what do they do, and does a multi-religion city get multiple benefits from them?)

Also, a city can apparently get a religion from contact or missionaries...can it Lose a religion?


...Wondering if the lone Civ will form the Continent of Christendom or Union of the Yin and the Yang. (or be a bunch of unwashed Pagans)

 

[abqaiq93]

Lord Chambers, that was wrong on so many levels...

 

[MBison]

Hey Sulla

It goes without saying your page and contribution is awesome.

If you don't mind posting in this thread (hopefully it wasn't answered already, if so just link me to it).. could you provide a few more examples of good "leader/tech/religion etc" combinations that you allude to on the site (Industrious - wonder heavy etc). Like what would be a brief synopsis of what a full military strat would be? or full wonder strat.

Can be brief I love the options and I love your expertise. Thanks very much for helping me.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Sullla, I notice you mentioned how Caste system is your 'favourite civic', but are there any 'counterbalancing' negatives to it that sometimes means you DON'T take it. For instance, is it a costly civic to maintain (money-wise) under certain situations, or have you found times where you simply couldn't spare the production/food for it? I am curious about this because Sirrian mentioned JUST how difficult it was to balance civics, and so I wanted to know how balanced you felt the civics were!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Hmmm ... I will be probably killed for my rants ...

But isn't Pyramid wonder too powerfull ?

Regards

 

[Pragmatic]

@ AL:

Based on the Tech Tree poster (you HAVE downloaded it, right?):

Caste System is a Labor civic. Here are all the labor civics:

Tribalism (default): Low civics upkeep, no required techs, no effects
Slavery: Low civics upkeep, Bronze Working, can sacrifice pop to finish production in a city
Serfdom: Low civics upkeep, Feudalism, workers build improvements 50% faster
Caste System: Medium civics upkeep, Code of Laws, unlimited artists/scientists/merchants
Emancipation: No civics upkeep, Democracy, +100% growth for cottage/hamlet/village and unhappiness penalty to Civs who don't have emancipation

So it looks like it costs more for one of the three sources of upkeep (civics, cities, and units), and if someone else chooses Emancipation, you'll also take a hit to happiness.

 

[Snoopy]

Thanks Sullla for the walkthrough, its a great read, and exactly what I expect a 'review' to be. It's the only true way to see how great the game is.

And after reading through it all so far, I can see the game really is a lot deeper than all the Civ4 information I have gathered over the years.

I bookmarked the walkthrough, so please don't stop until the very end!! I'm dying to know what will happen.

Infact, I am going to put a wager on the 'unknown' civilization. I think they will win.

I put $100 to the unknown civilization!

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Nope, I agree that Pyramids look too powerful to me, as does the representation civic. At the very least Representation should have a medium (if not high) upkeep cost (think of all those politicians and civil servants you are paying for !) Failing that, it should have a war weariness penalty-to show the difficulty representative societies have in going to war 'on a whim'!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Pragmatic]

Keep in mind, the Pyramids allows you to change the Government civics. That's one of five categories of civics. You still have to research the other four.

 

[Pragmatic]

Government civics:
Despotism: Low upkeep, no tech required, no effects
Hereditary Rule: Medium upkeep, Monarchy, +1 happy per military unit stationed in city
Representation: Low upkeep, Constitution, +3 beakers per specialist and +3 happiness in 5 largest cities
Police State: High upkeep, Fascism, +25% military unit production and -50% war weariness
Universal Suffrage: Medium upkeep, Democracy, +1 hammer from town and can spend gold to finish production in a city

Legal civics:
Barbarism: Low upkeep, no tech required, no effects
Vassalage: High upkeep, Feudalism, New units receive +2 experience points (first promotion) and lower unit support costs (one of three upkeeps: civics, cities, and units)
Bureaucracy: Medium upkeep, Civil Service, +50% hammers/+50% gold in capital
Nationhood: Low upkeep, Nationalism, Can draft 3 units per turn and +2 happy per barracks
Free Speech: No upkeep, Liberalism, +2 gold from town and +100% culture in all cities

Economy and Religion I'll leave to someone else. I have to get up in five hours.

 

[Anima Croatorum]

Very nice update. Keep up the good work!

 

[Carver]

Thanks again Sulla, that's a spactacular site you have up there. It's a better manual than any manual could be.