Trouble upgrading my thinking from Civ 1&2 to 4

[Adino]

Ok I have spent awhile on these forums and searching threw the basic civ fanatic web page, I am having trouble finding advice that I don't already know. I am an old pro at Civ 1, and rewired my ideas of it to work with Civ 2. I have beat both on hardest difficulty, however I have to save and load alot on Civ 2. Anyway I just got Civ 4 and after a few games I am barely able to stand up at monarch lvl. I really need help with a few of the new concepts and have the questions outlined below, make sure your advice works on Emperor and above lvls please.

1. Religion. Their hard to found, it seems mostly luck but lets assume I found a Religion, Is it worth the investment to spread it beyond my own cluture? Or is it best to just take opposing powers religion and adopt it as my own? The only real benefit seems to be diplomatic; I say that since the resources spent on missionaries could easily be spent on buildings to produce the same or better effects. Also if I have a holy city how much value is their in building the great temple?

2. Culture. Cool concept but I don’t understand what happens when the borders crash, especially in cases close to cities. Here is a simple case; there are two cities with 5 spaces between them. The first city has had its boarders expanded 5 times; the exact amount of culture seems variable. How many cultural expansions will the second city need to work all of its territory, aka 2 spaces away from the city center?

3. War. How do you profit from war? Attacking a neighbor seems a sure fire way to get behind fast in the tech race. And unlike the old Civ games you don’t get tech for taking a city, infact you get a major negative to your income for taking a city. Most wars leave me bankrupt if I go all out, and if I advance slowly I meet insane army’s which require all of my production to dominate. I can take on one civ ok. In the old Civs I would attack the strongest guy till he was relatively weak, get peace and switch to new top dog. However in Civ 4 having a good reputation with someone is HUGE and a permanent 3 really sucks especially when you get several against the same guy.

4. City Maintenance. How does this work, the manual basically says the more citys you have the more this hidden cost goes up. Now I understand that there are two income hits, one from distance to capital and another from some mysterious force. It seems that this mysterious force is based primarly on the city mere existence, as when I am ending my quick early expansion boom my last couple of settlements cause my income to plummet. They drop significantly more than the city maintenance cost claims. I read somewhere that there is some exponential increase in costs based off of number of cities. How does this work and what is a good number of cities to have?




PS I won my first monarch game while my people were on strike, . I overextended myself and the computer had a good sized tech lead but then I won by a nice new rule, domance, when the cities I took grew some culture. It is kind of cool winning without any standing army, most of my citys had no defenses because the troops quit. I loaded the autosave many times trying to stop that strike, but I was just in to bad a shape, and it turns out all I had to do was wait.

 

[Mutineer]

You question reflect your luck of general undestanding of civ 4. you need to read and think more.
Civ4 is mach more complex game then civ 1-2.

I will try to give some short unswers.
1) religion generally easy to found if you plan for it.
Religion has 3 uses.
1. to use religious civics. you will need to spead it to most of your cities for them to be usefull. This is useally inpotant.
2. To produce gold is you own shrine. Each city with this religion will give +1 gold, which could be increased by city improvements, like banks. So, the more cities (of any civ) have this religion, the more gold you get. I think this as a gravy, does not really change game mach.
3. The most impotant. Religion effect civ relationship. By adopting and spreading religion you can make friends and enamies.

2) question has no answer. It depends on how mach culture other civ pump in this ties befor. Each city pump culture in surrounded ties. Ties have memory and accumulate all culture pumped into them.

So, if there contested tie (bouth cities expand there culture so it theoretically should be in there borders if uncontested), civ with more culture in this ties will own it.

3) Rapis expancion does not work in civ 4. You need balance expancion with defelopment. You profit form war by having more land and more cities = more power and reducing power of other guy. If you can not absord this cities, raise them.

4) there some detail articles in Strategy forum, look into them. But first look on F2 screen and hover mouse on the lines (to get tips). That will give engoth explanation on start.

 

[Jet]

what Mutineer said, and
1. there's no universal rule.
2. they would fight for the tile using undocumented formulas.
3. you can raze cities. cities you keep will eventually become profitable if they're in good locations and you manage them well.
4. the formulas aren't documented but the input is distance, number of cities, and population. What's important about the number of cities is researching fast enough to keep up with your opponents. The details depend on difficulty level, map size, where your cities are and what you're doing with them, your traits, your strategy, your skill, etc. If you want a rule of thumb to start with, expand again when your research climbs to a rate such as 70%.

 

[Viperace]

You won Monarch in first few games?

I am by not a pro, but I will try to give some conventional thinking in civ4.


1. Religion. If you choose a civ that start with Mysticism, it is quite easy to found at least one early religion. If you don't start with Mysticism, you can still go for the later religion, best is by researching Code of Law and found Confuciansim. You got to plan your reseach in Civ4, thats the fun part.

The most important benefit of Religion is Gold & Diplomacy. Other than that, Vassalage (+2 exp for unit), happiness, line of sight, culture (if going for cultural victory, u need to get ur city spreaded with as many religion as you can).

If you manage to found an early Shrine (great temple) with Gpriest, by all means spread the religion! Missionary is cheap to build, you only need to dedicated a couple of city in building them; it will pay off in the long run. Later, build a Wallstreet on the Shrine city, and you 've got gold powerhouse. I would say it is worth to sacrifice a Great Priest for a Shrine , provided you work actively in spreading your religion.

2. No idea of how they calculate cultureborder

3. War
Civ4 differ from older civ because civ4 values quality over quantity. In Civ1-3 all you need to do is made as many small cities as possible. Civ4 penalyze this by chargin you with high maintainance cost. Hence, if you own alot of crap cities, you will go broke. It is better to have fewer, quality cities. When u go into war, raze those cities that r in bad location. Your war must has some purpose: usually it is to capture some good cities, capture some early workers, pillage improvement.

Early war (prior to Code of Law) - usually when ur game start very close with another neighbour(s). Chariot/Axemen/swordman rush, definitely raze those bad cities, keep their capitals though. After the war, you could sue for peace and demand some techs from the losers, this should make up ur war lost.

In the old Civs I would attack the strongest guy till he was relatively weak, get peace and switch to new top dog.

You no longer can do what u did , unless u r playing a tiny map. War don't last long in civ4, WarWeariness will bring you down. So, calculate your war period, purpose. After the war, you definitely need some turns to build up your newly conquered city and calm down the your citizen for awhile.
These period are good for declaring war (notice the best defender of that era) , I believe you have realized these :

Broze Working - Axeman (archer)
Iron Working - Swordman (archer)
construction? - Catapult (archer,longbow)
Chemistry - Grenadier (longbow)
Mil Tradition - Cavalry (longbow,musketman)
Industrialism - Tank


4. City Maintanance

Now I understand that there are two income hits, one from distance to capital and another from some mysterious force

Prior to Code of Law, you can't just have many cities, the maint. cost will bring u down. Ideally, it should be 5, but it also depends on what strategy u want to pursue. And yes, this mysterious force is what make civ4 different from previous civ. Don't get too many cities too soon, u can use the 70% Science as a guideline - Stop expanding when 70% sci give u -ve income.
So, once u got CoL , start building those Courthouses , then u r ready to expand more again.

 

[Bacon II]

The key to the harder difficulties in Civ IV (atleast for me) was to learn how to control/use/abuse the diplomacy part. Effective trading and good relation is a must for a successeful empire.* Religon is great for this, be nice to your holy-buddies and go teach them heathens a lesson. And to keep your economy alive during early wars? raze and pillage, dont capture every town in sight. They are usually bad placed anyways, and aslong as the ground is cleared you can just settle them later, when your economy affords it

Another big part of this is experence in the particular game, it takes a few runs to learn whome all of the leaders personalities are. Who will most likely backstab you even tho you are friends? Who will go insanely pissed if you choose to turn away from her (yep, it´s a she) religon? Whome will typicly always/never trade resources/techs?

And thier UU (unique unit), kinda meaningless to attack them when they have an extra edge, if you can choose. Take russia before thier cossacks, and don´t fight rome when iron-weapons is the key.


Oh, and what version do you play? Vanilla or warlords, patched or un-patched? With the "better AI" mod? Some hints/tacs goes better with some configuration of these.

*Most of the time, I know some of you manages to do it without it somehow...

 

[cabert]

Monarch is quite hard, don't think you can win deity as easily as you could win vs the highest levels in previous games.

1°what mutineer said.
+You don't need to found the religions to get the benefits.
If you think it's too much of a gamble, just let the religions spread to you.
It's the biggest part of diplomacy now.
And diplomacy is the biggest part of high level games.

2°Mutineer gave you an answer, but I'm not sure you can understand what he said .

How does it work?
each city produces culture
This culture goes into tiles that are within the borders.
When this culture reaches certain milestones (10/100/.../50 000), the border expands.
How much culture is there in each tile?
Every turn, each city which has this tile in it's border gives it it's cultural output + 20*(number of expansions+1-distance).
For example, if your city had 2 expansions (over 100 culture), and has 5 culture per turn (cpt),
- the tiles in your first ring will get 45 cpt;
- the tiles in your second ring will get 25 cpt;
- the tiles in your third ring will get 5 cpt.

All cities contributing to a civ's culture in a tile add their output.
Now you see why there is no answer to your question.

3° I assume you understood that there is a "number of cities" maintenance cost. So for making profitable wars, you must
- select cities you want to keep
- pillage and raze the others
- sue for peace at your advantage in some circumstances.

4° there are very good articles about maintenance and upkeep.
I'm too lazy to search for them, but i believe there is one in the war academy.
Anyway here is a short version :

costs come from
city maintenance :
- number of cities
- distance from capital
civic maintenance:
- civic costs
- empire size
unit upkeep
- number of units
- number of units outside your borders
- number of military units when running pacifism
There is an inflation factor multiplying all those items.
There is a level modifier multiplying all those items.

 

[DaveMcW]

Build cottages. Lots of them.

 

[Multiplicity]

For the war part, make sure to pillage a lot. Using units that can move multiple tiles per turn work best for this. Doing this will add gold coins directly to your treasure for every improvement you pillage. Pillaging the cottages/villages/town improvements will bank you the most. Some folks are able to run deficits in their economy from doing this. Plus it also has the other benefit of hurting your enemy's economy big time (towns take forever to upgrade).

 

[Adino]

Thanks for the help you have provided so far, however I have no idea how to actually implement it.

First off mysterious forces are nothing new to Civ, there are alwase lots of undocumented features. They suck at manual writing but figuring out the stuff does make the game more fun. If no one can direct me to the source of the various mysterious forces I will do some testing on my own, especially on city maintenance.

The key to the harder difficulties in Civ IV (atleast for me) was to learn how to control/use/abuse the diplomacy part.

I agree, how do you do that? I find that if I raze any of their cities they will never speak to me again. If I just take them I go bankrupt because of the bad city placement. Also any war that would finish them off would put me way behind tech wise. Is their a way to go to war that dosen’t have you drop in the ranks during the fight? If this is unavoidable what kind of target is worth such a blow? (Also I haven’t noticed the old penalty for eliminating an opponent was that removed?)

Missionary is cheap to build, you only need to dedicated a couple of city in building them; it will pay off in the long run.

Um yea, if something doesn’t payoff in the long run it would be worthless. I have to NOT build something to build missionaries. Is it worth missing a wonder, or ignoring a library to get missionaries? Currently I keep my cities so busy with internal development that I almost don’t have time to build that one military unit needed to keep them happy. In a recent game Monarch difficulty I beat the game via Space Race, during the game I built a total of 2 archers 3 fast workers and 4 settlers. The rest of the game they were upgrading themselves. I gained 2 archers via a cultural takeover of a city near the end of the game. What kind of things should I neglect to build the missionaries? No aqueducts and use specialists to limit population growth? I usually don’t build monasteries unless I need the culture so I would probably need to drop the granary as well or should I put it off for a while and neglect markets? Should I be more careful about the wonders I build? Should I build fewer cottages and instead leave trees? Missionaries are cheap but it takes a lot to have any impact.

Note I might be coming off a bit hostile in that last section, but it is a true question. I try and build to much long term stuff and have lost several games because of it. However are missionaries worth more than those other structures?


Also all my games were played on origional Civ 4 unpatched, although I plan on having the patch before my next game.

PS: On Setteler I got a city with over 3k cluture per turn, 400 science, and was producing 255 production! Then the stupid comp built lots of cities close to me and I gained them via my crazy cluture. Stupid domination victory.

 

[Adino]

And thanks Mr cabert. I wrote my reply night before, but internet was down. I just sent in the previous message before checking for new posts. That really explains cluture for me. Also I read some artical on maintnence in the war acadamy, and thats where I figured out what was killing me. Not sure if it was the same one but it didnt have any numbers. I will be looking around that area again to see if I can find the answer.

 

[Pogel]

...
I agree, how do you do that? I find that if I raze any of their cities they will never speak to me again. If I just take them I go bankrupt because of the bad city placement. Also any war that would finish them off would put me way behind tech wise. Is their a way to go to war that dosen’t have you drop in the ranks during the fight? If this is unavoidable what kind of target is worth such a blow? (Also I haven’t noticed the old penalty for eliminating an opponent was that removed?)

It's true that razing cities doesn't make you very popular with that Civ, but Civs you're warring with aren't the ones you need to keep happy. The trick is to manage the relationships with the other leaders to (a) keep trading, (b) avoid them attacking you and (c) get them to fight each other.

Generally, when you've decided to go to war you should execute it so that you significantly cripple or destroy them, so they are no longer a long-term problem - so raze away. Building relationships with other civs (or avoiding enmity) is the key to diplomacy. Religion can be hugely important in that, as can leader personalities.

There's no penalty for eliminating an opponent, though there is a penalty for declaring war on another civs' allies.

/Um yea, if something doesn’t payoff in the long run it would be worthless. I have to NOT build something to build missionaries. Is it worth missing a wonder, or ignoring a library to get missionaries? Currently I keep my cities so busy with internal development that I almost don’t have time to build that one military unit needed to keep them happy. In a recent game Monarch difficulty I beat the game via Space Race, during the game I built a total of 2 archers 3 fast workers and 4 settlers. The rest of the game they were upgrading themselves. I gained 2 archers via a cultural takeover of a city near the end of the game. What kind of things should I neglect to build the missionaries? No aqueducts and use specialists to limit population growth? I usually don’t build monasteries unless I need the culture so I would probably need to drop the granary as well or should I put it off for a while and neglect markets? Should I be more careful about the wonders I build? Should I build fewer cottages and instead leave trees? Missionaries are cheap but it takes a lot to have any impact.

Sounds like you aren't specializing your cities enough. Not every city needs a library. Based on your commerce slider (research/culture/gold %) and the tiles being worked you may be providing 25% more of peanuts.

Focus on getting up some cities dedicated to production and some cities dedicated to commerce. Also find out about GP-farms and super-science-cities.

Also, slavery can be very important in production. Make sure you're utilising that.

Note I might be coming off a bit hostile in that last section, but it is a true question. I try and build to much long term stuff and have lost several games because of it. However are missionaries worth more than those other structures?

Religion is hard to work for profit at high levels, and requires a dedicated strategy to take full advantage of it. As, such the value of missionaries is reduced except in specific circumstances.

Also all my games were played on origional Civ 4 unpatched, although I plan on having the patch before my next game.

It's worth patching - much of the advice you'll be given will be based on the patched implementation.

PS: On Setteler I got a city with over 3k cluture per turn, 400 science, and was producing 255 production! Then the stupid comp built lots of cities close to me and I gained them via my crazy cluture. Stupid domination victory.

Try playing a One City Challenge some time - can be a lot of fun.

 

[Pogel]

A couple more things:

1) check out the strategy guides section of this forum and...

2) check out aelf's Emperor's Masters' Challenge (& Immortal Challenge) threads and Sisiutil's All Leaders Challenge (ALC) threads. They are absolutely invaluable.

 

[Jet]

There is no universal answer to your missionaries question. The benefit is entirely dependent on your situation and your strategy.

Diplomatically can you afford to adopt your own religion rather than no religion or someone else's? Then maybe you want to spread your religion to your own cities so that you can use religious civics. (edit - of course this might be the right thing to do whether or not you have the holy city for that religion, but it depends on whether the religious civics are important in your strategy)

Do you want a diplomatic victory? Shared religion can be extremely helpful.

Do you want a cultural victory? The standard strategy has a missionary spam phase for cathedrals.

Do your neighbors have their own holy cities? It might be hard to convert them, and maybe anyway you'd rather just let them build the missionaries and shrines, then capture their holy cities.

Is your holy city in a location where Wall Street can benefit from other sources of wealth besides the shrine (commerce tiles, or merchants, or production and building wealth)?

Are you going to have high maintenance costs?

Is your religion already fairly well spread, but you just need a few more missionaries either internally for your own purposes or to make sure that your neighbors don't convert to something else? (See for example "the farmers shuttle" succession game being played now.)

Do you need extra happy and can't get it any other way? Maybe you have a small empire without many resources, but you want to run Universal Suffrage or something, and maybe you are Spiritual for cheap temples and/or you want to run Free Religion.

Are you going to attack your militarily superior neighbor and want to outmaneuver him by spying into his cities with religion?

Etc.

 

[Viperace]

Adino,

It is hard to judge what unit/building should you prioritize, it all depends on your situation.

For example, if my city is unhealthy but is having +3 surplus food, my aquadect can wait. If the total Beaker in a city is just 6-9, the library/univ can wait. Same with grocer/market/forge. I realize the builder urge , build everything u could.. but u got to control the urge. What others said is right, you need to specialize your city, that is more efficient.

At Monarch and above, you probably can't get many world wonders. For my strategy, I will aim for Pyramid, Great Library, I will ignore the rest (and maybe conquer them). The plan will change of course if there is no stone resource =\

Back to the missionary part, this is just an alternative. It could be that you found a religion late, or it could be that you found a religion but never get a great priest (happen many times), then you probably want to skip the missionary part. I will only usually mass missionary in the mid-game, where I got a enough cities 6-7, and their production power is strong enough to pump a missionary in 3 turns.


PS: BTW, World wonder in civ4 is not as good as the previous civ. U can live without them, keep this in mind.

 

[KMadCandy]

you may have already found this resource, but just in case ... civ4 war academy. i had trouble adjusting too. religion i figured out, the diplomacy i'm still working on, and whipping/slavery i am still so bad at it's shocking.

good luck and have fun!!

 

[Adino]

Hey guys thanks for the help. I also was able to figure out a shortcomming I had in my city planning. Now I am good overall at specialising my cities I think, however I discovered that all my cities every last one are science cities. I will look around for a good guide on making production cities, er or perhaps I will just design my own. That would explain why wars were so hard for me, no production lol. I would guess irrigated floodplains with a forge and hills. After replaceable parts trees would probibly be the best production cities because of the +1 to 2 food, but I am just thinking now need to relook at terain values. I also noticed that whiping was upgraded with the patch on my last examine of the values it was one person was 10 production (which was worthless) lets see what it is post patch, perhaps I could survive off just food.

Thanks again guys you showed me something to work on.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Specialising your cities is the key, it's true. Have a few science cities, packed with cottages, libraries, monasteries and universities, and the oxford university small wonder. Have a few military cities, farms with plenty of hills for production, perhaps one with the Heroic Epic wonder. Have a Great Person farm city, dedicated to nothing except high food output and specialists. Perhaps you might want to make one or two of your high production cities into wonder cities, as well (especially if you are Industrious, and/or have Stone and/or Marble). If you have a holy city, get a Great Prophet to build the shrine (as early as possible), and your religion will spread without the effort of any missionaries... then build the wall street, bank, market and grocer in that city later, for a high commerce city.

Do not underestimate cottages. Providing you have built enough of them, there is nothing stopping you from conquering the entire world ala Civ3 (and presumably Civ1/Civ2) style. Sure, your research slider may be lower, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Running 50% science at 1000 gold per turn is far better than running 80% science at 250 gold per turn. (And that doesn't even take into account your science boosting buildings, which will propel your advantage even further.)

I do not like keeping forests and building lumbermills, but that could be a personal thing. I much prefer chopping down those forests and building cottages, farms, windmills or mines.

Watermills are very powerful once you get the State Property civic (which also has the effect of vastly decreasing your city maintanence, so you may want to focus on getting this civic in your games). State Property comes with Communism, if I recall correctly.

Don't build everything in every city. Weigh up what you actually need, and build those things, then concentrate on a barracks and lots of units. Don't overvalue wonders either, most of them you can do without (or capture later).

Religion is powerful. The religious civics are powerful. You shouldn't avoid religion for long if you can help it. You don't necessarily need to found your own, but if you don't then you need to open your borders and allow someone else's religion to spread to you. Then spread the religion around all of your core cities. Organised Religion gives you a 25% production bonus on buildings, effectively meaning that in 4 turns you are producing the same as what you would otherwise be producing in 5. Theocracy gives 2 extra XP to all military units, which frequently allows them access to 2 promotions (and sometimes 3, when combined with Vassalage and/or Military Instructors [Warlords expansion] and/or The Pentagon wonder). These are very powerful benefits, regardless of whether you're a builder or a warmonger.

In a recent game Monarch difficulty I beat the game via Space Race, during the game I built a total of 2 archers 3 fast workers and 4 settlers. The rest of the game they were upgrading themselves. I gained 2 archers via a cultural takeover of a city near the end of the game.

I'm very surprised that no AI took advantage of your situation if you had such a tiny military force. That does not sound normal, especially on Monarch difficulty.

 

[Northern Pike]

Monarch is quite hard, don't think you can win deity as easily as you could win vs the highest levels in previous games.

Just to phrase Cabert's useful point a little more explicitly, the difficulty levels are not comparable between Civ IV and earlier versions. If you were playing unmodded Civ II deity with two settlers to start, those games probably weren't much harder than monarch Civ IV.

 

[Adino]

Just to phrase Cabert's useful point a little more explicitly, the difficulty levels are not comparable between Civ IV and earlier versions. If you were playing unmodded Civ II deity with two settlers to start, those games probably weren't much harder than monarch Civ IV.

I can beat Civ IV monarch easier than Civ II emperor. In Civ II I had about a 50% win rate at emperor, currently my success rate on monarch lvl when I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THE GAME. Overall I would say the difficulty lvls arn't far off. The main diffrence is it is harder to take advantage of stupid AI. Also my faviorite military unit, the setteler has lost all his offensive power as well as being divided into two parts. Man that settler was WAY overpowered. Had to redo my standard military stratagy