What rules do you like to play with?

[user330977]

A beauty of Civ IV is that we can tailor the game to how we want to play it. I enjoy playing with preferred religions as it makes a change from seeing Buddhism and Hinduism all the time (plus it seems to result in a fairer spread of religions, though it obviously shouldn't...) and I often like to add an extra civ to a map to stoke a bit of friction. How do you like your Civ IV?

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Tecumseh1]

I play the boring/standard game. Standard map, 7 civs, no nuts/no events, and usually fractal or pangaea maps. Sometimes play hemispheres map for variety. I will throw in tropical/arid/cold climate for some variety (don't really like rocky climate and the maps it generates). Kind of weird as "rocky" is not a climate type anyways.

 

[Nick723]

The main ‘unusual’ option I play with the most nowadays is no tech trading. I play more than 50% of games with this on, generally find it more satisfying and more varied games than with it on.

I also mainly play high sea levels these days - makes things a bit easier normally but increases the chance of me actually finishing the game

 

[6K Man]

I play the LoR modpack, but with revolutions turned off. So it's basically Civ4 with an enlarged tech tree and some extra units. And overlarge maps. Makes for long games.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I don't request help from AI players anymore. Whenever they agree to help you, they cannot attack you for 10 turns. It feels like a game design flaw.

This self-imposed limitation makes the game much harder.

 

[danjuno]

No Vassals/Huts/Events. Usually stick to stock scripts/scenarios like Archipelago, Continents, Fractal, Pangaea, Rhye's Earth Map.

 

[lymond]

No Huts/No Suckvents, Choose Religions, Standard everything, Usually Fractal or Pangaea

 

[bssth]

Huge map and revolutions support. Especially fun moment in the game is when the MAF error occurs and the save becomes unplayable

 

[prloko]

I like aggresive ai, random personalities, no diplo win (I loathe AP), no worldbuilder and no reroll (can’t remember what its actually called). And like OP, I like to add extra civs to create land scarcity and earlier wars.

 

[Quintillus]

No vassals.

Sometimes no tech trading, as often as not aggressive AI, sometimes no spy points a la Vanilla. No events if it's multiplayer, otherwise I'll leave them on.

I like the idea of not always having Buddhism and Hinduism first, but rarely choose that option in practice. More likely if I play religious I'll just try to instead found Judaism/Confucianism/Christianity or occasionally Taoism for an extra challenge. Islam comes to late in the game, if I'm going to play a religious game I'll have founded a religion prior to that (although sometimes I found Islam as well, often to prevent someone else from doing so).

 

[MilesBeyond]

A self-imposed "Late Victories Only" rule. It can be any victory condition, minus Religious obviously, I just try to avoid actively pursuing it until the Modern era and put off attaining it until the Future era. A while back I got tired of most games ending with either Cuirstomp Dominations or Free Speech Culture - there's so much of the tech tree left, and a lot of the late game stuff is cool. So I normally commit to seeing a game all the way through.

This does sometimes mean kind of artificial playing (i.e. conquering enough territory to set myself in a good spot, but trying to avoid conquering so much that my position is indomitable) but it's worth it, I find it a lot of fun, and using AdvCiv has cured a lot of that artificiality.

 

[Core Imposter]

I use house rules that chop off the last of the four Xs. Military momentum games are neither historically plausible nor fun(after the xth time). It just boils it down to the most efficient rush. Who did that? Khan? How long did that last? Momentum play excludes so much of the game, is made challenging only by adding handicaps (deity, etcetera), and you just quickly reach the point where you are just trying to push a won game with no really interesting decisions looming.

I play something like:

Casus Belli: No war declaration unless a just cause exists, as defined by:
A. If attacked by AI civ.
B. If AI diplomatically attached to attacking AI.
C. If AI detonates first use nuclear weapon.
D. If valid imminent victory by AI.
E. If barbarian.
F. Raids xxxxx
G. Fleet interventions xxxxxx

Vengeance: All wrongs must be put right.

War Gains:
A. Limited to three distinct periods of war.
B. Limited to capture of 0-3 AI cities per period of hostility.
C. Limited to capture of no more than 6 AI cities per Casus Belli.

Those are not all of my rules, I have them jotted down on various scraps of paper. This is just the basic stuff.

So, if you start on a land mass in a multi-continent game and none of your neighbor AI wants to attack you, what do you do? I play with aggressive AI and raging barbs for the action, however, even getting a war from neighbors I can only take 6 cities. Playing huge, marathon, multi-continent maps 6 cities isn't a lot given that you can't just wipe out the AI. So, you have to deal with their culture (I play flip back too). So, it gets complicated, you really don't always know how a game will unfold or how you can win.

One thing you realize with self-limiting rules like these is just how often we simply bulldoze through real world type issues by just declaring war and burning cities to the ground (which not allowed to raze in my version). I enjoy playing the game for enjoyments sake, not just for score or comparison with others. Some of the most fun games playing like this are lost games in which I played well but events just conspired.

 

[Countmonte8242]

Fractal or Terra (like to settle the new world), 14 or 15 Civs, no tech trading to prolong early eras and because I find it tedious to always have to check what other civs have to maximize tech trading, espionage off because I find it tedious. Sometimes unrestricted leaders or founders choose religion.

 

[antimony]

I haven't tried it yet but one interesting variation I thought of is that you have to civic switch whenever you unlock a new civic via research, and you can't switch otherwise (in particular you act as if Pyramids/S.Paya do nothing). I think that's a more interesting challenge than just e.g. banning slavery outright which I also tried.

 

[Zusk]

I like to play a lot of Master of Mana as of late.

1. I don't like playing with victory conditions. I like the freedom to be able to leave the game when I want to after I have gotten enjoyment out of it. It helps me pace my experience easier.
2. I don't like being too overly aggressive at the start. I like those really complicated, esoteric late game boards that you sort of have to untangle. I try to avoid rushing early war or doing strategies too 'cheesy'. I like to end games around future tec!
3. I like to play on epic speed. Marathon's just a bit too slow for me. I would prefer bigger maps, but given I like to play into the late game it's easier if I dial back the map size a few notches.

 

[mycophobia]

I'm a weirdo that plays Warlords lol. All defaults including random leader, with the exception of No Vassals. I can win at Noble but I'm just getting back into it so I'm not moving up yet.

 

[mycophobia]

Actually now I'm back on BTS, with these mods:

[MODCOMP] - Nimoy Tech BTS Voicepack

I always found the Sid Meier tech narrations really jarring, so I created a voicepack to replace them with the OG voice actor. Just unzip to \Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Assets\Sounds\Tech and enjoy.

forums.civfanatics.com

End of Espionage

End of Espionage Mod:ar15::espionage: --------------------- For BtS 3.19 Download here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=13540 Written by PieceOfMind 28/10/09 Description: I was tempted to call this "Better No Espionage"...:mischief: This is a mod which changes the game...

forums.civfanatics.com

otherwise as above, with no random events and no espionage of course.

 

[phillip1882]

i never go for slavery and try to avoid war as much as possible. as for setting i tend to set no barbs, they make sense but i find them way too annoying. i sometime go for only peace. as you may guess i generally try for space race.

 

[Core Imposter]

Can someone point me to the simplest way to scale the tech costs? I want to increase tech costs as the game proceeds to enable as much play with as many units as possible. I have in the back of my head that someone might have made a utility to things like this.

 

[mycophobia]

that sounds like something you'd have to go into the DLL for to do in a not-super hacky way, and in any case you'd need to be a lot more specific about how you'd want that to work