Questions
MBison said:
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.
Well without going into too much detail, each of the civ traits tends to be best at doing certain things.
- Spiritual civs have a strong chance to found an early religion, and their lack of anarchy lets them have a huge amount of flexibility when it comes to the civics (you can swap them almost non-stop as the situation dictates).
- Philosophical civs pump out Great People like no one's business.
- Industrious civs dominate on wonder-building.
- Creative civs get culture automatically in each city, so I usually play them aggressively early on, pushing out a lot of settlers and founding cities right on the borders of other civs, knowing that I can win the culture border wars thanks to my free culture.
- Aggressive civs are the best at fighting early wars; their Melee and Gunpowder units get a free Combat I promotion. That's a huge deal, not only because it adds +10% to overal strength, but because it opens up additional promotions (like Shock, Cover, etc.) and allows their units to get THREE promotions with just a barracks + Vassalage or Theocracy civics (Aztec Jags are downright scary - no resources required and very easy to get to three promotions early on).
- Expansive civs get free health, which basically means their cities can grow to larger sizes (and remember, population still = power in Civ4) not to mention they have half-cost granaries for early expansion.
- Organized starts out slowly, but the half cost civics really start to make a huge difference in the middle of the game, and saves a gigantic amount of money towards the end of the game. You can run the most expensive civics out there and barely feel it (also plays more of a role on the higher difficulties where civics costs hurt more).
- Financial gives you an extra commerce on any tile already producing two or more commerce. It's almost like having the Civ3 Colossus in every city! I'm sure you can see the advantages of that...
You'll have to play around with these and experiment to see which are the best combos for you.
Aussie Lurker said:
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!
Personally, I like Caste System because it's a versatile civic - I wouldn't say it's overpowered. Let's look at the other choices in the Labor column. Slavery allows you to rush production with population; not going to be used all that often, but could save you from dire consequences too (especially in MP). Serfdom leads to workers build improvements +50% faster. There's the Industrious trait from Civ3 right there! I'd say that Serfdom presents a viable alternative to Caste System, certainly. Then Emancipation later on has NO civic upkeep, causes your cottages to mature faster, and causes unhappiness for other civs not running it. And Caste System is also the most expensive civic in the Labor column to run. Is it still a no brainer?
(The main reason I'm using it heavily here is because I'm Philosophical, and it combines well with a Great Person strategy).
Mitiu Ioan said:
But isn't Pyramid wonder too powerfull ?
It is indeed a powerful wonder, but keep in mind it only unlocks the Government column civics (not all of them), and it's not an easy wonder to build either. Even with stone, it took over 20 turns for me to get it in this game. I easily could have had some additional cities if I had not chosen to pursue the Pyramids. I'd agree it's strong, but I wouldn't say it's too powerful.
UKScud said:
Sullla, you appear to have 4 cities at the moment (275 BC-ish). Would you regard this as 'typical' for an average game? The maintenance thing really does seem to work, preventing lots and lots of little cities.
There is no typical number of cities to have at a certain date; in different conditions, I'll prioritize expansion to a greater or lesser degree. I wasn't really pushing it very hard in this game, to be honest; I was more interested in building up a few cities than pushing hard for a lot of small ones (which can also be a viable strategy at times). I will say, however, that the days of having 25 cities by 1AD are gone - you won't be seeing that. Still, you can definitely have more cities than I had here if you push expansion.
Egil Skallagrim said:
What happens when a holy city is captured or destroyed. If captured do you gain access to the benefits of the holy city or does it switch. And if it is destroyed does another city take over and if so how is the new one determined.
In CivIII, a recently captured city lost all culture and all cultureproducing buildings Does the same apply in CivIV.
And how many turns does anarchy last, in civIII it could last for up to 5-6 turns which made me avoid government switching entirely after I decided for one and thus fought wars as a Democracy (works as long as you are more powerful and finish things fast enough ). I think you said turn of anarchy somewhere, does that mean it is only one turn of anarchy
If you capture a holy city you can gain all of its benefits, expect that any shrine in the city will be destroyed (you'll have to use another Great Prophet to rebuild it). All cultural buildings are lost upon capturing a city (aside from world wonders, of course) as in Civ3. Culture also has to start from zero again. Razing a holy city will remove any possibility of building a shrine for that religion, but the religion itself will still exist if it is present in other cities. There is only one holy city for each religion - a new one is not created if the original one is destroyed (therefore, protect the holy city!)
Anarchy usually lasts one turn in Civ4 when swapping civics. If you change a lot of them at once (like 4 or 5 at a time), you will have additional turns of anarchy. You will not get 8 turns of anarchy from a civics swap though; I think 3 is the limit (not 100% positive of that).
Khaim said:
Question about combat: How exactly does first strike work? Does it only work on defense? Someone suggested that it does, but I might have misinterpreted that. It also seems like a decent unit with several first strike would destroy other units- Samurai with Drill promotions?
Combat in Civ4 takes place in rounds; each round the game uses the combat odds to calculate a winner and the two units keep fighting until one is destroyed. First strikes cause extra rounds to take place before the combat proper starts; with two first strikes, a samurai gets two "free" rounds of combat where if it wins the other unit gets damaged, and if it loses it suffers no damage. They are thus free hits on the other unit before it can respond. 2 first strikes is actually pretty strong; the samurai has a decent chance to kill outdated units before they even get a chance to fight back, and give it a big advantage in combat against units with equal strength. It is unfortunate that Samurai can't get Drill promotions though (the promotions are done by unit types, not individual units).
And regarding what Sirian posted, he's absolutely right. If you have two religions in a city, you can build two temples, two monasteries, etc. I didn't mention that before because I was thinking in terms of "what effect does a second non-state religion have?" and you don't get any DIRECT benefit from it beyond shrine income, but yes you can indeed build additional religious buildings from having a minority religion. And that's in truth a pretty significant benefit.
EDIT: Roland, the reason why you can't over-abuse forest chops is that workers can't plant additional ones in Civ4. Thus, no reason to have the shields not apply to wonders.
!) Failing that, it should have a war weariness penalty-to show the difficulty representative societies have in going to war 'on a whim'!
keeps me going until the European release,
One whole week left
and finish things fast enough
). I think you said turn of anarchy somewhere, does that mean it is only one turn of anarchy
Where are the Berserkers 
