I think I suck at Civ 4. The AI is my equal apparently.

[Sovereign]

Hiyas guys.

I'm really floored by Civ 4 so far as opposed to Civ 3. I'm currently playing Civ 4 at Warlord level because I couldn't handle Noble level. However, in Civ 3, I was able to play Noble and King levels of difficulty. What gives?

I'm playing a game with Germany with the following settings:

1. 7 rival civilizations
2. 6 Continents map
3. Tropical, low sea level, and Huge map
4. No Tech Trading and No Barbarians enabled.
5. All victory conditions disabled except Conquest

I'm barely keeping ahead of the enemy. I was able to garner a slight tech lead, then by the time I get my first couple of tech's in modern age, the 7 rival civ's catch up to modern era. The only reason why I'm able to stay ahead is that I have 20 cities, and able to produce just enough Panzers and Battleships to keep the enemy at bay.

The current year is 2019, and I finally launched my own invasion with 6 battleships, 2 carriers, 6 transports, and 24 Panzers aganist the Russians. I captured a major Russian city, Vladivotosk, size 19, and about 6 or 7 Panzers died trying to capture it before I successfully wiped out the defenders. I managed to airlift a couple of Mechanized Infantry in there.

Now the Russians are sending Modern Armor aganist me, but thankfully I have 8 bombers already based in Vladivotosk, ready to bomb the **** out of the enemy Modern Armor.

I hadn't experienced this intense war stuff in Civ 3, even on Noble or King difficulty levels, but on Civ 4 Warlord difficulty level, the AI is much tougher than in Civ 3.

What gives?

Anyways, I'm open for any strategies how to keep parity with the AI in my next game. I try to do the early city rush, with bronze working and chopping trees, and getting settlers from the goody huts.

[alva]

Start with default games, let there be some trade ( tech), it's nothing like it was in Civ3, really.

Are trying to expand too fast, that's a major change from c3 to C4, build up, not out.


City spamming just doesn't work anymore ( though it should more or less on warlord).

[QuestGAV]

What promotions are you giving the Panzers? If not collateral damage then start your assaults with an artillery barrage. If you're not using artillery/cannons/catapults consistently in your offensive maneuvers you're going to be terribly inefficient.

[Senethro]

You should be able to outbuild the Warlord CPUs with 6 well placed cities, assuming you can trade for resources. Take the Mali and you should have a fair chance of claiming all religions except maybe 1 of Budd/Hinduism. Make lots of coastal cities, build the Colossus for many trade routes and infect everyone else with your primary religion and make them sweet to you. Easy trading, easy building, easy win if somewhat boring.

[Sovereign]

Here what I did in my German game (now up to 2021 AD).

I got a few settlers from goody huts and spread them out on the continent. I share the continent with the Romans, but I luckily placed a city right next to the Romans in 3120 BC (one of these goody hut settlers) then expanded there, blocking out the Romans. The Romans were only able to build 4 cities, and 2 of them culture flipped to me around 1500 AD or so.

Everybody else is on their own continent, more or less. I'm facing the Americans, Russians, English, Chinese, Spanish, Egyptians, and Romans. I'm at war with the Americans and Russians (who share the same continent). I'm getting ready to take a 2nd Russian city after shipping another 24 Panzers to the Russian city I captured (Vladivotosk).

I have the Pentagon and Theology civic going and barracks in most of my cities, so I should have 2 free promotions for my Panzers. I usually give them Combat I and II, then on their 3rd promotion, I give them Pincer promotion which should give them 25% aganist the Russian Mech Infantry.

A couple other things.

First, I sent my bombers out to attack Russian units approaching my city, and I noticed that my bombers *can* bomb the enemy gunships. Who ever thought of aircraft bombing other aircraft in mid-air (not counting missiles)?

Second, I saw the AI just upgrade their propeller fighters and bombers to Jet Fighters and Stealth Bombers (he must have an upgrade option as he had 2 of each and upgraded them all in 1 turn). How can I upgrade my units like that? In Civ 3, I recall there was a command to upgrade, say, a musketman to a rifleman, or a Tank to a Modern Armor- I think it was SHIFT+U or ALT+U something.

[xxFlukexx]

Me too, I regularly beat Civ2 and Civ3 on Deity levels, but in Civ4 I've only been able to beat monarch a few times and those have been real close games.

The thing is that they fixed a lot of the things we used to exploit so much in previous civ games, ICS, early tech/map/gold trading, blitzkrieging, floodplains + sacrificing pop, cavalry withdrawing, etc, etc

I think there is a hotkey, sovereign, can't remember off the top of my head, but I think if you hover your mouse over the upgrade button it will tell you. If you select an entire stack, then hit upgrade, it will upgrade everything in that stack if you have the necessary cash, that's what I do, I don't really upgrade my defenders until I see the enemy coming 'round the mountain.

[Senethro]

Seriously, why are you still playing in 2021? You should have SpaceRaced by now. Are you building cottages?

[Bhruic]

5. All victory conditions disabled except Conquest

Maybe because of that? Not everyone likes to go 'spacerace'.

Bh

[Senethro]

Haha, that'll teach me to skim posts.

Mmmph. Disabling other victory conditions on larger maps isn't really a good idea. Its damn hard to project military power in this game. (Relative to other games I've played.)

[Bhruic]

It can work, but I think that waiting until the end stage to try and mass your attack is a bad idea. You want to own at least 1/3rd of the land by that point, if you expect to have a real chance at victory.

I find that an early push for Knights and/or Cavalry can give me enough of an advantage to do some serious conquering.

Bh

[Sovereign]

I wanted to go for a challenge, besides I didn't think winning would be *that* hard even on Warlord difficulty level.

But if I can take out the Russians with the 50+ panzers I've amassed, or at least a few more Russian cities, then I can start airlifting a good number of units into there. After that, I plan on wiping out the Russians and Americans and wait for the next enemy to declare war on me, then wipe him or her out.

According to the diplomacy screen and possible trades with Russia / Catherine before she declared war on me, she only has 9 cities to trade besides her capital so that means she only has 10 cities. I took 1 of them, Vladivotosk, and within striking distance of 2 more (Smolensk and Yaroslav). I sent my max of 4 spies to scout out all the Russian and American cities, and I'm surprised.

The Americans only have 1 or 2 Mechanized Infantry and 2 - 3 SAM Infantry in each of their cities, along with 1 or 2 fighters. The Russians have a similiar number of units per city. Apparently I captured the Russian's only heavily fortified city, Vladivotosk, as that city had a battleship, a couple of destroyers, several transports, a gunship, 4 tanks, 3 Mechanized Infantry, and an handful of SAM Infantry. I think I destroyed the Russian's amassing invasion force or something.

However, I haven't explored the other 1/2 of Russia and America yet though. But from what I've seen, if I can overwhelm their cities that I did find with their relatively light garrisons opposed to Vladivotosk, then I can have a pretty solid beach-head to finish off Washington and Catherine.

By the way, I noticed Catherine is *A LOT* sexier and hot than the old fat peasant looking one from Civ 3.

[Dis]

I can do noble. But I actually prefer warlord during my conquest games . Noble I can only win via spaceship race (or points).

I feel like I suck as well. I won't even think about going above noble for a while.