What C3/PTW/C3C strategies need to be unlearned in C4?

[planetfall]

Curious, what are the main changes in play that need to be made for C4 from the C3 series?

Only one I know of so far is lone settlers are vulnerable to animal attacks.

What about the biggies?

-- optimal number and density of cities?

-- how does shorter game effect play?

-- best initial tech paths?

-- difficulty levels similar to C3 or different scale?

-- most dangerous civs?

-- other changes we need to consider?

thanks

PF

 

[Ravellion]

You no longer want to just let some barbarians into your city so they will pillage and disappear, then move your defenders back in. Thankfully, I was aware of this fact before it happened to me.

 

[planetfall]

ok, thanks. I usually play with barbs off because barbs on accelerates tech race and I've enjoyed a slower tech race.

 

[Renata]

I don't think you can turn barbs off in Civ4.

-- optimal number and density of cities?

Fewer, better, and further apart. Maintenance costs will cripple your research if you expand too fast. Only in the later game, once some specialized options become available, does the spamming of cruddy cities start to be a positive for the treasury. As for placement, you want above all else to lock up good resources. That means controlling a lot of territory is more important than avoiding wasted tiles. Fortunately, cultural borders expand pretty easily, so you can fill in gaps without too much trouble.

-- how does shorter game effect play?

I'm not entirely sure yet. The pace of the whole game is radically different than Civ3. It might just be something you have to find out for yourself.

-- best initial tech paths?

Too many options to list. An early religion is nice but not essential (and you absolutely will not get Buddhism above the lowest levels). Worker techs are essential -- get the ones most useful in your starting position first. Writing and alphabet for open borders and tech trading can be nice early goals. Archery and/or bronze-working for military needs.

-- difficulty levels similar to C3 or different scale?

I'm not sure. I won my second game on Noble pretty easily (after pure carelessness got me clobbered in the first one). That's the all-equal level. I'm not sure I could have done as well in Civ3. It's hard to be sure, though.

-- most dangerous civs?

All of the aggressive ones.

-- other changes we need to consider?

Again, too many to list.

 

[Arathorn]

This really belongs in Strategy & Tips as it's not an article.

-- optimal number and density of cities?

Fewer numbers, as cities cost but improvements don't. I'm finding 8-10 to be about right fairly early in the game on a standar map. As opposed to 15-20 and always wanting more from C3 (any version). But as you improve your cities, that number grows. So, over time, adding cities is worthwhile -- almost any city will EVENTUALLY be valuable...but the payback window may be long.

-- how does shorter game effect play?

Shorter game? What do you mean? Lower max turns? I never reach 2050 in either game. Total non-issue. Nothing to unlearn/relearn here. Maybe if you're a score-monger, but I don't know that game at all.

-- best initial tech paths?

MUCH more variable. MANY good options. Researching worker techs based on what's around. Big question of going for a religion or not. You HAVE to research tech, as you can't trade techs nearly as easily and buying them is essentially a joke. The lack of need to spam cities means Pottery is much less important. This is still an issue of much debate, too. At this point, I don't see a clear winner.

-- difficulty levels similar to C3 or different scale?

Hard to say. Not as many people are playing the really high difficulty levels, but strategies are all in their infancy. Give it time. I think the scale is different, but the game is very different. There are more of them, that's for sure.

-- most dangerous civs?

Unknown. And dangerous in what way? Heck, I'm not sure how I'd answer that for C3 even -- depends on the goal. That "depends on the goal" fact is probably even more true in Civ4, but it's still not clear what traits work best for what strategy.

-- other changes we need to consider?

Who's "we"? Combat is much slower. In general, it appears all wins come a fair bit later. The SOD of artillery is significantly curtailed. The days of 50:1 kill ratios appear gone for good (thank goodness). Combat, on the whole, is quite a bit different. And I think it's for the better, but it takes some getting used to.

Wonders build MUCH faster now. I built the GL from scratch in a SG, so in less than 10 turns. And, no, it wasn't obsolete. They are fairly different in scope and effect, too. I'm still getting a grasp on them. They're quite different.

The whole specialist/great person thing. A whole different type of (micro)management. Very different stuff. New dimension of gameplay. Not something to unlearn, per se, as much as something to learn. And I'm still learning.

Religion is like a mini-game (to steal from the wise Sullla). You can play or not. If you play, you can get significant benefits. If you don't play, you can do other things differently/better. Nothing to unlearn so much as learn.

Culture flips are quite different. They still happen, but you can see them coming. And they don't kill the army stationed in the city. Raze'n'replace still is viable, but it's more the exception than the rule, in my experience. Capturing an isolated (or soon to be isolated) city is probably better than razing.

And I'm sure I'm missing stuff.

(Hmm...maybe this is an article -- nah, dh_epic covers a lot of this more eloquently than I just did).

Arathorn

 

[planetfall]

This really belongs in Strategy & Tips as it's not an article.
Arathorn

Sorry, my bad. I thought there were new strategy subforums for single player vs multiplayer. I missed the article flag.

Interesting information. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to see if I can even play it or not. I suspect I'll need a new graphic card, but good surprises are always welcome.

Artillery SOD's killed C3, so this is not a big loss.

Again, thanks.

 

[planetfall]

Quite a few changes I see, others can supplement

Catapults
-- 100% effective hits, no misses
-- impact reduced to 10%
-- 0 effect on units in cities. Major change!!!

Tech research
-- can switch research target without immediate penalty
-- if wait too long to return to research, forgetfulness sets in and cost increases

GA
-- 8 turns instead of 20
-- multiple possible

GW
-- if lose GW race, you get back x gold
-- culture continues past obsolescence

Natl wonder
-- limit of 2 / city

Settlers
-- no longer reduce cities population

Maintenance
-- now variable formula
-- # of cities
-- civ population
-- current gov/legal/labor/econ/rel civics

Corruption
-- distance corruption stays
-- ONC corruption replaced by variable maintenance formula


PF

 

[Thunderfall]

Thread moved to the main strategy forum.

 

[MikeH]

Corruption
-- distance corruption stays
-- ONC corruption replaced by variable maintenance formula

Not quite, corruption has wholly been replaced by maintenance, which depends partially on the the number of cities and partially on the distance of the city from the palace. See Gato Loco's article in the Stratefy Artilces section for more details:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138473

 

[Heroes]

About city placement. The huge difference from civ 3 is now a city must be far from any other city by at least 2 tiles. So no more cxc ICS!

You still get the choice: cxxc ("tight packing"), cxxxc ("loose packing"), and cxxxxc ("OCP"). Same as in civ 3, I still prefer loose packing. The ideal is to use every good tile (or waste as few as possible), catch as many resources as possible (but avoid settling on resource like a sin), and overlap as few tiles as possible. And, every city should have the potential to at least feed itself (a shame for civ, how does Las Vagas exist?).

There are often some water resources which can be reached only from 1 tile, or it's so in practice (the only other option is another resource, for example). Therefore you determine some cities' locations. From these, applying the above rules, you can in most cases determine where to put your cities, -- and where to raze enemy cities.

 

[Gato Loco]

Changes I've noticed so far, in no paricular order:

Cow/wheat settler pump is replaced with forest chop settler pump. You want bronze working soon. Then you want to chop your first couple settlers to get a leg up in the expansion race.

CxxC city placement is no longer ideal. Most tiles are less productive than Civ3, most bonuses are more productive. Combined with the inability to mine flatlands, the absence of despotism penalties, and the introduction of city upkeep, this leads to a situation where you don't want to work every tile even if you could. You're really claiming bonuses and strategic chokepoints in the early game, not tiles for the sake of tiles. I guess when people calim that Civ4 is more RTS-like this is what they're talking about.

No Republic slingshot. No Republic for that matter. Civics aren't as all-important as government was in Civ3. You can delay getting better civics if you have another early-game priority, something that could not be said for despotism in civ3.

Civ traits seem much more specific. They're all pretty much worthless unless you play to their strengths, in which case they're very powerful. So you should go into a game with a strategy planned out from turn zero. Industrious and philosophical still make me uneasy, and I have yet to decide what do with expansive.

Specialsits and GP-farming - It goes counter to the work-every-tile-and-max-out-production mentality of Civ3. And it involves gambling on wonders that could end up losing you lots of wasted hammers. Very hard on the nerves.

Closed borders - You stand a realisatic chance of closing off certain areas to AI colonization. This is the strength of the creative trait - creative civs are uniquely able to gobble up lots of land in the initial grab phase.

Pillaging - it's not just for barbarians anymore. Some cities just can't be taken without catapults. Other cities just aren't worth taking. And some are filled with so many high-tech upgraded unts that they're just not beatable at this point in time. If you pillage, you can at least get some gold for your efforts.

Demise of attack/defense values - Previous civ combat was a cat and mouse game, with the AI as the mouse. Whoever struck first usually won. And whoever had artillery could make the other side's life a living hell. This let a small human-controlled force shread hordes of AI units by using superior tactics. Now AI units are much less vulnerable to exploitative tactics, though I do see them stupidly send out archer after archer to be swordsman bait.

Jungles can be chopped by one worker in a few turns. Don't underestimate how this changes how you think about city placement.

No more lux slider in the early game. You need to discover drama first. Given that use of the lux slider instead of temples and military police was one of the central doctrines of high-level civ3 play, this changes things quite a bit.

Actually, most luxuries can't be accessed until calendar. And military police don't exist until you get hereditary rule. So depending on your tech path you could spend a lot of time with no way to increase happiness other than temples. If you're going for shrine income or GP-farming, temples aren't worthless anymore.

No more tech-for-gpt. It is common in civ3 to run 100% science and fund all upkeep from tech-for-gpt deals. In civ4 you need to make your own income.

No more early tech trading. You actually want a research rate above 10% in hte ancient era.

No more armies. In C3C an army can fix any problem. Four cavalry headed for your undefended city? Blitz them with your army. Elite infantry guarding a hill city? Send in an army. Perhaps the biggest human advantage in C3C.

No more prebuilds. I don't think wonders are worth it anymore unless you're GP-farming or have a great engineer to rush it for you.

No more all-purpose insane economy government (republic). The financial trait's the closest you come and even that won't do you any good unless you deliberately sacrifice growth and production by building cottages instead of farmes and mines. If you want money you've got to work for it, buster.

No more despotism penalty. You actually want to mine those hills right off the bat.

The AI is much more generous with resource trades. Trading for a luxury is now more profitable than going to war over it.

Roads give double instead of triple moveemnt. Another small change that has great implications for how you defend your empire.

Pre-industrial bombardment uits aren't useless.

No more suicude galleys. In fact, no venturing into deep water period, even if you end your turn in safety. Instead you get the cross-channel culture push.

If you don't have metal or horses, you don't have offensive units. No more compensating with an archer rush. Archers can't rush in this game. On the other hand, I have yet to see a start without iron and horses. The only way you'll lack these resources is if they get pillaged.


That's all I can think of for now. I hope I didn't just confuse you more.

 

[Heroes]

If you don't have metal or horses, you don't have offensive units. No more compensating with an archer rush. Archers can't rush in this game. On the other hand, I have yet to see a start without iron and horses. The only way you'll lack these resources is if they get pillaged.

Interesting list! Just a minor point: without horse nor metal, there is still one resource which can save you: ivory for war elephant! That's for offense, and longbow for defense needs no resource.

 

[snepp]

Cow/wheat settler pump is replaced with forest chop settler pump. You want bronze working soon. Then you want to chop your first couple settlers to get a leg up in the expansion race.

Excellent list. This is the only one I have issue with. Not the strategy, but the wording, as you make it sound like this is the only way to start the game. Maybe on the higher difficulty levels it's beneficial/needed, but Monarch and lower it's hardly necessary (and dare I say it's a bit cheesy, imo).

 

[Gato Loco]

Excellent list. This is the only one I have issue with. Not the strategy, but the wording, as you make it sound like this is the only way to start the game. Maybe on the higher difficulty levels it's beneficial/needed, but Monarch and lower it's hardly necessary (and dare I say it's a bit cheesy, imo).

No, it's not the only way to start. In Civ3 you could still do well without a food bonus settler pump, by archer rushing or strategically placing cities to block AI expansion. And in Civ4 you can do without chopping for settlers if you'd rather beeline for religions or tech trading. It's just one opening straegy amony many. In any case, you can only get a few settlers out the door before running out of easily accessable forests, something not true of Civ3 settler pumps. As for the cheesy part, I personally expect that something will be done about it in a patch or expansion, such as only giving a chop bonus for forests inside a city's production radius.