Transitioning to IV

I'm just now trying to adapt to Civ 4 from Civ 3. What are some rules that are different in Civ 4 from Civ 3 to keep in mind so that I can properly build my empire?

 

1) Early Expansion is an economy crippler, which can usually only be supported by multiple religious shrines or continuous capturing/razing of cities via warfare.

2) Do not under estimate religion. It provides many benefits and basically shapes early diplomacy

3) Artillery are not the be all end of of combat.

Just a couple things I have noticed

 

Ive noticed that things can get pretty hectic in this one. I still play Civ 2 and love every game i play, with this one i tend to feel that things can get really confusing and the overal feel of expanding your empire with or without warfare gets lost.
But thats just my playstyle coming from Civ 2, sorta looking at 3 a bit, then coming to this edition.

 

What are the differences with food and worker actions and values? I noticed there are alot of different options than what was in previous Civ games.

Also I have a habit of trying to build almost every building in Civ 3. I noticed there is much more to build in Civ 4, so how do I know which ones to choose?

And what are differences with each governments and their effects compared to Civ 3?

I have noticed that with Civ 3 you have to worry about corruption, but have read in the war acadamy/civ info part of this website, that Civ IV does not have corruption.

What do I look at to make the combination of religoun, government, and worker methods to my liking?

 

I will give it my best shot here.

 

Don't understand this one, sorry

Specialization. One of the key-points to get good at CIV is to specialize city. A commerce city, which produces loads of wealth and science, does not always need a forge. And a military city, which produces just small bits of commerce, does not need a library, etc.
Other than that, lots of buildings have similar effects (you can solve health problems with an aqueduct, or a grocer, or a harbor...); just build the best one in the situation (if a city with health problems procudes lots of money, build a grocer more than an aqueduct)

Much more complex. You can customize 5 ways of managing your governement, compared to a single gov. system.

Exact. No city will be crippled by corrupytion. But you have maintenance. EVery city will cost you something, and the more cities you have, the more maintenance each new city will have to pay.
This is global (you pay for the maintenance of all the cities), but it means that each new city will be a burden as long as it's not productive.

f3 screen for civics, f7 for religion; don't understand the latest one

 

Yeah, this one is unclear. Please clarify.

Juju explained it fairly well. You ned to decide what the focus of the city will be and build accordingly. Quite often it will be tied to your terrain.

There are no real governments in CIV, just civics. You'd have to take a look in the civics screen to really get an understanding of those. There's too many of them and they're too situational to really get into here.

No, they've replaced corruption with city maintenance. It's much more effective that way.

It all depends at what kind of game and victory condition you're trying to play. Civ 4 is much more flexible according to player style. A warmonger will need to play it quite differently than a builder. A cultural victory is played out much differently than a space race one. Unless you specify what type of game you prefer, there's not much advice anyone can give you with that question.

 

Thanks for all the replies!

Well I noticed that the food values seem to be calculated differently in 4 than it was in 3.

But more so is all the extra options the workers have. You can build a pasteur, a farm, and many other options. Where as in Civ 3 all you did was either irrigate or mine. What is the different effects of all the various worker actions in Civ 4? For example, how do I decide between the different irrigation effects/options IE like building a farm or something else?

I'm a builder going for a cultural victory through religion (though I don't know how it works in this game yet), with the ocasional war every now and then so things don't get too boring and so I can capture a City that might be squeezing me or might have a needed recource.

Oh and one more question: I see about 4 different traits listed for each leader when picking a civilization to start the game. In Civ 3 this was only 2 or 3 traits per civ. In Civ 4 are these all traits by catagories? What do they mean?

 

Many of those improvements are resource specific. For instance you can only build a pasture if you have some sort of animal resource in your city resource like a Cow or Sheep. You can take a look in the Civilopedia to familiarize yourself with them, just look for the Improvement section. You can access the Civilopedia by pressing the F12 key, or clicking on the question mark in the top right of your screen. It would probably be a good idea to spend some time there for awhile, it covers alot of what you need to know.

That's something else you need to decide on yourself depending on what you want to do with the city. For instance, if you have a Grassland river tile, you can choose between a Farm, Watermill, Workshop, or a Cottage. If the city has alot of Hills and you want it to focus on production, then you'd probably want to put a Farm there. If you're going more for science or gold then a Cottage might be a better option. If the city has few Hills and not much in the way of Hammers, than a Watermill or a Workshop might be a good idea. All the different improvements in the game are very situational and you'll need to play the game for awhile before you can really get an idea of what's best for that city. Keep in mind that you're going to want to build a fair number of Cottages, These will generate commerce for the city and you'll need alot of that to finance your empire.

Although I'm also a builder, I've never tried for a cultural victory. I usually aim for a Space Race victory. So I can't advice you too much on waht's best for that type of game. Just have a look at the various civics and see which ones will fit best for that situation. Keep in mind that though you might want to go for that kind of game, you might have make some compromises along the way. If you find yourself with a few Aggressive neighbours, you might be force to become more of a warmonger yourself. You need to be flexible when you play Civ 4.

And make sure not to neglect your army. If your power rating gets too low, even the more peaceful civs will declare war on you as they see you as weak and easy prey. There's a graph in you Demographics screen that will show you your rating in comparison to the other civs. You want to be in at least the top third if you want to avoid alot of declarations of war. An addage that applies well for how you want to play is "Walk softly but carry a big stick."

There's only 2 traits per civ. I'm not sure where you're getting 4 from, unless you get more at lower levels. I always play on Noble myself.

 

Yeah this occured to me today when I was watching a Ronald Reagan documentary. In Civ I've often had that problem where some warmongering Civs like Rome and Germany tried to bully me with tributes and stuff. But watching that documentary I had the revelation that I could do the same thing Reagan did with the arms build up to prevent a real war from breaking out, just like he did at the end of the Cold War. And even if it did, I should be in good shape take care of things. So I'm going to try and take that lesson into my Civ game.

 

LOL well, it's a good rule for Civ -- even if it bears no relationship to what Reagan actually did or the circumstances we were in during the 80s.

Just don't take the lesson too far. In Civ, unlike in the real world, there's no way for an adversary to have an internal collapse and come apart from internal dissensions and its own organizational problems. So you can't crow like a rooster and pretend you made the sun rise. If you want to see your enemy go down, you're going to have to actually USE all that military force you've built, not just waste money on it.

 

If Reagan had not pushed the Soviets the internal breakdown never would have happened.

And the whole point of maintaining a large army in Civ is to keep the bullies away. So no you don't really have to use it. You probably will use it. It's the nature of Civ, but not as often as if you had a small military. So it's not really a waste.

 

I'm not so sure of that, I think it was inevitable sooner or later. Reagan probably just helped it to happen earlier than it would have on it's own.

 

Got to hand it to the Great Con-municator, he's spawned his own mythology. That's sheer nonsense, of course. The only way he "pushed" them was to spend a lot of money on the military, they responded to said "pushing" only with bluster (the Soviet military budget was totally unaffordable given their economy, but that was true before, during, and after Reagan without any regard to what WE were spending).

Rooster crows, sun rises, rooster takes credit. There's Reagan vis-a-vis the fall of the Soviet Union.

Again, true in Civ, true in real life, but only up to a point. The idea that the U.S. military was "weak" prior to Reagan is another myth. It was the most powerful military in the world, by far. It was perfectly adequate under Carter to deter conventional or nuclear attack (not terrorist attack, but that didn't change under Reagan), and the proof is that none occurred.

The "weak and vulnerable" U.S. military was Reagan's version of Kennedy's "missile gap" -- for those old enough to remember that one. Both were campaign lies that helped win elections. Neither was even close to true.

 

Man I thought we had the Free Speech civic in effect... Or are we still under anarchy from switching?

 

Always remeber it is always Anarchy (1) here.

It's always just one more turn away.

Building maintenance no longer exists. Took me a while to get used to that.
Also the computer isnt as fickle. They remember crap that most players dont care about for eons. The AIs are stubborn jackasses always remember that. Oh yeah, and ease up on the wonders a bit. They arent game defining as you may have already noticed.
Also as for the power thing, some techs attribute to your power score, and also population does as well. And like in 3 offensive units pretty much mean more power. Except siege I think. Its been a while, I know there is a thread somewhere around here that explains the power system but I think archers and seige count the least.

 

The end of building maintenance! I love that as much as I loved requiring individual cities to support units!

 

Very good point, let's stick to the game.

Has anyone produced leader mods for a Hillary or Obama yet?