Tips for People Who Hate Civ 4

[dh_epic]

So how do you know when you're ready to build more cities without choking on maintainance?

It's hard to know. But a good rule of thumb to start with is to watch your science meter:

100%: EXPAND!!! (You should only really have 100% science at the start of the game.)

80-90%: Build another city. Couldn't hurt you too much.

60-70%: Slow down. Only build another city if it's the only way to get iron/copper/horses.

40-50%: STOP! No more expansion. You need to build up.

Play with this rule of thumb at first. It will give you a good idea of how much to expand. Once you get more skilled, you might try more daring things, like driving yourself to the point of 20% research, or conquesting your first cities instead of building them, or running with 3 cities for most of the game.

(Remember, your research meter isn't an indicator of how much research you're actually doing. A huge civ at 40% might be doing more than a small civ at 100%. For some reason, it just makes a good indicator of how much extra funding your empire needs to break even.)

I'm also glad to hear about science overflow, I don't juggle tiles but I have adjusted my slider. Does overflow apply to buildings and units as well in Civ4?

Overflow happens on both science and production. So there's very little value to switching your tiles around or coordinating your building strategy to have no remainders. Remainders are never lost in Civ 4!

 

[a4phantom]

Overflow happens on both science and production. So there's very little value to switching your tiles around or coordinating your building strategy to have no remainders. Remainders are never lost in Civ 4!

What a great change, I hated having my most productive cities be almost able to produce 2 units a turn and having all the excess wasted. Thanks also for the expansion tips, will AIs do the same or does being responsible leave you very little territory to colonize?

 

[Jarrod32]

The AI doesn't seem to expand very fast...besides, even if they do, you should then be able to expand militarily against them when you are ready to expand.

After military expansion, you will also need to stop to 'take a breather'...to let your economy recover from the comparatively rapid growth.

 

[dh_epic]

Thanks also for the expansion tips, will AIs do the same or does being responsible leave you very little territory to colonize?

At the noble level, the AI won't have any expansion advantage. So if you expand slow, the AI should be too. If they're expanding faster, you're either being too cautious, or they're being too reckless and you may have a good opportunity to take them down.

But at the higher levels, it gets more challenging. Come back when you find that your economy collapses when you try to out-expand the AI, or that the AI just expands too quickly to keep up. I'll have a whole new set of advice.

 

[fed1943]

In my opinion,all civ games(civ 1/2,smac,3 and 4)are very good;3 is the weakest and 4 the best.
Because civ4 is such a good game,it seems that a sure win strategy doesn´t exist.One can win or lose against another good strategy,which is well and good.
So far,I think the bigest strategic problem,is about the dilema:maintainig the economy/research - grabing the minimum of necessary resources while they are free.And that as fast as possible.
Best regards,

 

[TabascoBob]

The article is well-done, with thoughtful comments and replies. I'm sure people have had time to check out other articles, like Wounded Knight's strategy and some of the other chop-rush pointers. My gripes with 4, other than the huge system requirements, are with the pace of the game and with diplomacy.

GAME PACE: I've played 5 games, finishing one, and am shocked sometimes at where I am chronologically compared with my development. I may have code of laws or machinery, but not sailing or some other ancient tech and a) I can't pry it away from other civs or b) it's AD something. I don't understand how some folks are getting cultural or space victories in 1790.

DIPLOMACY: I'm really frustrated with being unable to trade gold per turn or resources for techs. I also have not been able to nail down the value of religion or civic changes, other than "buying off" a neighboring potential enemy for a few turns.

Some other observations:
GOLD- I too have found myself sitting on a pile of cash that appears to have no immediate use, but I have eventually been able to upgrage a load of crossbowmen to infantry.
GREAT PEOPLE- I have not figured out how to cultivate GP in the same way others have (see the article on the cultural bomb win) and never had much success generating them in III or IV so far. However, I have not seen any discussion on what people think of using them for a golden age. In my brief IV experience, I have exercised my first golden age via GP (always a prophet as one of the two) in 3 out of 5 games and found it to be extremely beneficial. I otherwise try to use the Prophets for unique religous holy buildings, Artists for border/captured cities (or to stretch my boundaries to a newly discovered resources), engineers for buildings, scientists for either a tech not on my list or an academy, and merchants for trade missions (I love dropping a Great Merchant and a couple of missionaries on the capital of the civ that I know I will be duking it out with in the endgame).

As I write, I'm psyching myself up for IV, so I think I'll turn this beautiful Saturday into a marathon session.


P.S. Although this is my first post, I've been lurking for a couple of years. I'm impressed with the decorum and grace that posters exercise, and I'm glad to be part of the community.

 

[drjones]

This is just a side note, but I rolled back my Ati driver to the previous version, and haven't had a crash since. Its been so wonderful, because like you i was putting up with it cause I like playing the game. But man, no more reboots. I'm in heaven!

Yeah ATI 4.10 fixed my crippling shutdowns. Of course it broke most other games I play so it's a real piece of $@*^ fix that should NOT be necessary but at least I can play juicy huge maps now.

That said I learned that small/tiny maps have much more appeal in Civ IV than In III where in my limited experience they were only good for folks who liked to see ginormous score numbers for a 1000bc domination victory. A small Highlands with lots of mountans and seas is fun fun fun. The only dissapointment is when you ask for 7 ai opponents and it only gives you 4, I assume due to lask of starting positions.

-drjones

 

[A+ombomb]

Expansion is just as powerful as any other civ, if not moreso because it is more difficult to do effectively. The only difference is knowing HOW to expand - its not quite as intuitive as it was in earlier civs (build settlers nonstop).

 

[krazyhades]

Also, here's another tip that I like (and keep in mind that this is only one, or a part of one, strategy. there are thousands of strategies!). I was playing as the Arabs (the spiritual/philisophical leader) and I found (at least given my starting things, like leader attributes and position) that one great way to be able to be getting +30 and sometimes more on reasearch is to found lots (in my case, all of them ) of religions w/ the help of Great Prophets, and w/ more great prophets make the holy building of each one, then missionary spam all over the place!

As soon as I could I switched over to getting Great Artists and the Representation, Free Speech, Caste System (for tons of artists and prophets), State Property (to help deal with these far-flung culture-conquered cities) and Pacificism civic to a) keep the science at an insane rate and b)to culture-conquer all of your neighbors. I ended up winning the game, not through a culture city, b/c I focused my culture on the border cities which needed to conquer enemy (and allied!) ones, but by controlled enough of the map. It was awesome! By the end of the game, between civics, leader powers, and wonders, I was getting enourmous amounts of culture and great people points per turn.

Using this tactic I was able to culture-steal all of the cities of 2 neighbors, with the help of high cuture from artists and culture bombs from Great Artists . The high profit from the holy structures dealt w/ the matinence of the cities (I was still getting like +34gold/turn) and then I controlled an ENTIRE CONTINENT! Haha! I barely had to worry about land units, and I sent missionaries accross the seas to convert even more peoples, further raising my profits. Eventually, I did a quick invasion to take a city, and then made peace, and used that as a base to take over more cities culturally.

As a note to those who do not know, the holy buildings give you +1 gold/turn for each city which has the holy building's religion (yours and your neighbors). Think about it. 8 religions x only 10 cities is 80 GOLD PER TURN!

BTW, I am now going to post this in the strategy section.

 

[a4phantom]

I don't think Great Prophets help you found religions, just build the shrines. Also, on a higher level you're unlikely to get all the religions. I'm lucky to get four playing at noble, it's probably almost impossible to get both Hinduism and Buddism.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I don't think Great Prophets help you found religions, just build the shrines.

You can use the GP to discover a religious technology that then gives you a new religion. If you really have enough of them.

 

[a4phantom]

Hadn't thought of that. Is there a consensus forming as to what is generally the most efficient uses of Great People (obviously subject to circumstances), or (hopefully) not?

 

[krazyhades]

I don't think Great Prophets help you found religions, just build the shrines. Also, on a higher level you're unlikely to get all the religions. I'm lucky to get four playing at noble, it's probably almost impossible to get both Hinduism and Buddism.

I know they don't directly found religions, but they get you religious technologies that help you get them faster. And yes, you can get both, it's just hard. Anyways, I usually just go for the polytheism, and everything from there.

 

[a4phantom]

I know they don't directly found religions, but they get you religious technologies that help you get them faster. And yes, you can get both, it's just hard. Anyways, I usually just go for the polytheism, and everything from there.

Me too, it leads naturally to Monotheism. How do you get both? Play against just one or two opponents?

 

[A_Mere_Icon]

Does anybody miss Military leaders (Armies)?

 

[a4phantom]

Does anybody miss Military leaders (Armies)?

Yes I do, although armies were pretty rough on game balance (too weak before Conquests and too strong ((but oh how I loved them!)) with it). It's absurd to have Great Everything But Generals, I'm paranoid enough to wonder if they left stuff out on purpose to justify an expansion.

 

[Zeusophobia]

on civ3, i just used to expand and expand, making the biggest civ possibly imagined, on civ 4, i realised you cant do this (as i realised when my uits went on strike )
now i build a few cities at the start and cultrally expand them like mad. Once they are nice an' big, i start conquering. this avoids getting the units on strike and still get the nice big land i also like

 

[a4phantom]

Yeah, in Civ3 early expansion determined everything, because so much of the map was claimed even before iron was visible. A large early empire almost guarenteed needed resources, while a small but well developed and defended empire would be easy meat if they didn't happen to get lucky. It was also easy to claim far away resources with a settler and a few soldiers - who cares if the city is permanently corrupt, it claims horses and it doesn't cost damage your core. Although the current system is much better (harder to exploit), I do wish they would tell us (or have they?) what the cost/city is at every number of cities.

 

[Yelt Narb]

I'm really going from CivII to Civ IV and have learned that pumping out settlers early on to do the land grap strategy hurts. Reading here, I think I might just have to wait on my first city built settler.

I was in the habit of building a new settler as soon as my city reached size 2 or 3. Then that new city would build a settler when it reached 2 or 3 WHILE my first city pumped another 2 cities out. Only then would my first city start improving itself. Thereafter, each new city would generate atleast 2 more cities before turning to city improvements.

Talk about hurting, both cash and research!

thanks again for the post!!

 

[Blahness]

I keep wanting to mass-road everything for gold... ;_;