A few numbers (maintenance costs for # of cities)

[Arrian]

The AI often will not trade techs if they have a decisive advantage, and you cannot buy techs for GPT (or sell techs for GPT), so the middleman techwhoring strategy to catchup is gone.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Velociryx
And btw, I HEARTILY support the notion of patch notifying the AI, cos frankly, it was a cheesy way to play....

-=Vel=-

That's already in, they called it monarch (because I admit, it might even be possible on Prince too)

DeepO

[Velociryx]

Ahhh, well, still just experimenting, but I expect I'll go up a difficulty level or two in the next couple days.

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

you should be able to beat prince rather easily, and possibly monarch to. But please don't win on deity within the week, I would feel dwarfed

DeepO

[Velociryx]

Decided to say "screw it" and bump up to Prince this evening....starting now...standard everything, random civ (I don't WANT to develope a favorite yet). Drew Saladin....having a go at it right now...first city founded...3240 BC right now...just lost a warrior to a lion, half way finished with my first settler, founded Hinduism....we'll see how she goes....

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Saladin is fun. Played him in my current game. Everybody is Hindu, baby (except the Russians, and I recently put them outta my misery ).

-Arrian

[The diplomat]

Vel, as the strategy connoisseur, how do you rate the amount of strategy in civ4?

[Velociryx]

That'll be a part of the review I'm preparing for Dan and Markos, but early indications are something along the lines of:



-=Vel=-

[realpolitic]

Sounds to me like 4 cities is ideal, until they're well developed, or a spot looks execeptionally good, or conquring a large city.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Yeah, Noble is a pretty low difficulty level for major strategic analysis. It's only used in MP to play in an environment where humans are only battling humans, not the game.

What do you think is the most balanced difficulty level where eg upkeep costs for civics are just right and all options are as viable?

I assume on the higher difficulty levels it would be unprofitable to run civics with high upkeep such as organized religion, thus unbalancing the game.

[Fried-Psitalon]

You know what happens when you assume, right?

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Velociryx
That'll be a part of the review I'm preparing for Dan and Markos, but early indications are something along the lines of:



-=Vel=-

Vel, I'm playing Civ IV really less than expected, (for real life knocking on my door and eating my spare time ).

So far, I'm playing my first game (prince/continent map), learning the hard way (lions can kill early warrior escort *and* your lovely second settler: unlucky start).
I'm not experimenting ICS nor REX (in fact I'm ignoring all the advisor nonsense about building more settler and worker on a already filled continent).
I'm wondering if the strategy I've just used can help a better strategist: I'm not attacking well defended cities, but pillaging the enemy cottage and others improvement to the grund using mounted units (more movement). I've found that trick is a well needed cash income and a bad sidekick to my enemy economic. I've got some fight back by single unit leaving the city to kill some of my mounted archer, but not a counterattack by large force (e.g. half of the garrison of the enemy capitol could be quite a reaction force to fend me off the border, but A.I. seems not ready to do so).

Anyway, mine is a single -not scientific- test, but please consider pillaging income as a part of your strategic study.

Very well explained approach, by the way.

You really seem working as a collegue of the Kathy Reichs' books main character= forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan!

[Velociryx]

Thanks, Admiral! And I'll *definitely* be exploring the virtues of pillaging in future experiments!

*looks at watch* Oh good! Only 5 more hours til Civ-Time! WhoooHooooo!

-=Vel=-

[BigWilly1974]

I posted on another thread about conquest an hour ago or so about how incredibly effective I found pillaging improvements to be based on doing it in a game last night.

You need to be patient enough to let the effects of an enemy's ruined economy to bring them to their knees...but if you can stand to wait a while for the actual conquering, I'm sure pillaging their countryside is a VERY efficient way of eliminating enemy AIs in the long run as you gain gold in doing it, but more importantly, they can no longer keep up in Tech so you go back later in the game vastly outclassing them with units rather than bust your balls (and units) at a disadvantage due to fortifications and roughly equivalent units.

[upsidedown]

Someone really needs to make a 'megathread' with all these gems.

One thing I'm starting to think could really work is rushing two or more workers, getting bronze working for the ability to cut forests down, and then set those two or more workers chopping down forests. Then build a small force to destroy improvements. Could work really well on a heavily forested/close corridors map. It seems you cannot have too many workers chopping excess forests down, as long as you can defend them.

Oh and scouts seem extremely competent against animals. I've leveled most scouts two times by the time I bring them home, and the only reason I haven't got a third promotion is because that's the cap. Warrior barbs can be defeated by a scout with woodsman II in a forest/hills tile. Leaves you with .1 hp though.