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I bought Civ IV last friday and played it a few hours each on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. From a review perspective, I like all the additional complexity and options that have been added to the game, as well as the artwork, layout, and new animations. I haven't had a chance to fully understand the ramifications of all of the changes yet, but so far I am hopeful. There are only a couple things I don't like that have been changed. The first is the old 'advanced unit commands' from Civ3, most especially the 'go to city' command. I'm not sure if that one is gone or if it is just something I haven't figured out how to do yet. The second is the demographics display, I thought the Civ3 format was easier to read, and I always hadd fun going to look back at it after crushing a rival civilization. The third is I miss the old advisors from Civ2 still. They were fun, for a while at least, until they became repetitive. It would be nice to see them brought back with many more sayings. Overall though, I would say this is the best Civ yet at this point.
Getting into strategy, thus far I've been focusing primarily on a heavily military style of play. I started my first game on cheiftain level so I could figure out the basics of how to control the game, what the new units and buildings are, etc. Once I got the hang of controlling the game I decided to move to warlord just so I could have at least a little competition even while I'm figuring the game out.
So, my first Warlord level game I built my city on turn 1, and looked at my build options. Basically they came down to Barracks, Warrior, or Worker. I didn't even consider a Settler because I still wasn't aware that building a Settler doesn't decrease pop like it did in Civ3, and assumed I'd end up with the wasted shields, (er, hammers), while my city was growing. After noting that building the worker slowed down my city growth, I decided to start with a Warrior. Meanwhile I sent my other warrior out to explore and hopefully find some goody huts. After my warrior was built, my city still seemed to be growing slow, (by Civ3 standards it was), so I decided to wait on the worker again and build a barracks. I gave into the temptation to have my new warrior also go exploring "just a little and only closeby" while leaving my city unguarded. After a few turns, he ran into a warrior from another civ. I wanted to test out the new promotions feature and he didn't have any terrain bonuses so I attacked him. I lost. Oops. My other warrior had wandered a long ways away by now so I needed to build a warrior in my city quick. I switched to warrior and, wait a minute, I lost all my hammers! I spent a little time examining it, and figured out that the hammers that had gone to my barracks were still there, but only for when I resumed the barracks, the warrior needed to be started from scratch. My old habit of trying to build one thing when I might need something else in a few turns and just planning to switch later if I do is no longer possible. This is a very good change in my opinion, and makes my strategy in this case much more risky than it would have been in Civ3, as it should be.
So, anyway the game continued and I built two warriors right away to defend my city, meanwhile my other warrior was killed by a bear. Then I started work on a settler. Meanwhile the civ I was at war with built two cities very close to mine. I decided I had mismanaged this game enough to abandon it, even though I was fairly certain I would come back given time. After all, at this level the AI wasn't smart enough to attack my defenseless city when it had many turns of opportunity to do so.
I visited this forum to get a glimpse at what others were saying before starting my next game. One thread that I took note of was the one stickied on the top in which Vel suggests doing a settler first build. I decided to give that a go.
My next game I also started on Warlord level, again built a city on turn 1, started a settler and sent my warrior to explore a bit. 4 turns later, my warrior found a goodie hut which gave me a settler, so I changed from settler to warrior in my city build, which I thought might be the better order to get the highest total production value early on. I played this one out for a short while, got the ability to build Praetorians early, (Roman swordsman replacement, an early unit with an 8 strength), and started building them as quickly as I could, mostly in cities with barracks. I was able to give almost all of them city attack +25% before sending them to attack my neighbors cities. They easily overpowered the archers and warriors guarding them, gaining experience all the way. The promotions seem to help a lot, and so far I've chosen to have the most experienced units fight most so that they can get enough to keep gaining more promotions. Generally I've stuck with the same kind of promotion, (eg first City Raider 1, next City Raider 2, next City Raider 3), to try to make units that are extremely good at one things instead of slightly good at a lot of things. Having a group of 6 preatorians with City Raider 2, 2 with City Raider 3, and a Medic along while my opponents had up to 3 completely inexperienced units of maximum strength 6 defending made taking cities a snap. I lost only 2 units, (not counting workers and settlers who got pegged by barbarians), defeating both my neighbors and taking over the large continent.
10 things I've learned so far.
1 - Leaving cities defenseless - still a bad plan.
2 - ROP rape is no longer possible
3 - If there's a chance your city will absolutely need a unit to defend it in a few turns and you don't have one that can be moved there, start building it now.
4 - Shooting for a science that gives you a strong unit early and then building en masse to send at your enemies - still a good plan, (on warlord level at least).
5 - Everything seems to take longer to build early on. Adjust your strategy with that in mind. Also note that peace treaties only last 10 turns instead of 20. After getting my first opponent down to 1 city, I offered him a peace treaty in exchange for 3 sciences. By the time my units got close to the city and healed, it was 1 turn away from expiring.
6 - Units can heal on the battlefield. I haven't done the experiment yet to see if it takes longer than having them heal in a city, but I haven't noticed any real difference while I've been playing. I'm sure even it is a few turns faster, there are many situations where moving them to a city, healing there, and then moving them back takes up more turns than just healing them where they are.
7 - Defensive and terrain bonuses are more important than in previous games. This is because the strength numbers for each unit is than in older versions. A 50% bonus to a strength of 8 is going to have more impact than a 50% bonus to a strength of 6.
8 - Gold might not be as important as in earlier games. It takes a long time before you have the ability to gold rush production, and I believe only 1 form of government is able to do so. Focusing on science early as much as possible seems to be a good approach.
9 - Making units into specialists by giving them repeated promtions, (city raider 1, then city raider 2, then city raider 3), appears to work better than using a more diverse approach with each unit. Having the more experienced units fight as much as possible can turn them into very powerful units, which may be better than having more medium powered units.
10 - If you get a great artist, and there is an area of land which is unsuitable for building on yet not covered well by your territory, using that artist to build a great work in a small city as close to that piece of land as possible will expand the culture around that city immensely, and can greatly reduce the number of barbarians that enter your territory from that direction.
Comments would be appreciated.
Getting into strategy, thus far I've been focusing primarily on a heavily military style of play. I started my first game on cheiftain level so I could figure out the basics of how to control the game, what the new units and buildings are, etc. Once I got the hang of controlling the game I decided to move to warlord just so I could have at least a little competition even while I'm figuring the game out.
So, my first Warlord level game I built my city on turn 1, and looked at my build options. Basically they came down to Barracks, Warrior, or Worker. I didn't even consider a Settler because I still wasn't aware that building a Settler doesn't decrease pop like it did in Civ3, and assumed I'd end up with the wasted shields, (er, hammers), while my city was growing. After noting that building the worker slowed down my city growth, I decided to start with a Warrior. Meanwhile I sent my other warrior out to explore and hopefully find some goody huts. After my warrior was built, my city still seemed to be growing slow, (by Civ3 standards it was), so I decided to wait on the worker again and build a barracks. I gave into the temptation to have my new warrior also go exploring "just a little and only closeby" while leaving my city unguarded. After a few turns, he ran into a warrior from another civ. I wanted to test out the new promotions feature and he didn't have any terrain bonuses so I attacked him. I lost. Oops. My other warrior had wandered a long ways away by now so I needed to build a warrior in my city quick. I switched to warrior and, wait a minute, I lost all my hammers! I spent a little time examining it, and figured out that the hammers that had gone to my barracks were still there, but only for when I resumed the barracks, the warrior needed to be started from scratch. My old habit of trying to build one thing when I might need something else in a few turns and just planning to switch later if I do is no longer possible. This is a very good change in my opinion, and makes my strategy in this case much more risky than it would have been in Civ3, as it should be.
So, anyway the game continued and I built two warriors right away to defend my city, meanwhile my other warrior was killed by a bear. Then I started work on a settler. Meanwhile the civ I was at war with built two cities very close to mine. I decided I had mismanaged this game enough to abandon it, even though I was fairly certain I would come back given time. After all, at this level the AI wasn't smart enough to attack my defenseless city when it had many turns of opportunity to do so.
I visited this forum to get a glimpse at what others were saying before starting my next game. One thread that I took note of was the one stickied on the top in which Vel suggests doing a settler first build. I decided to give that a go.
My next game I also started on Warlord level, again built a city on turn 1, started a settler and sent my warrior to explore a bit. 4 turns later, my warrior found a goodie hut which gave me a settler, so I changed from settler to warrior in my city build, which I thought might be the better order to get the highest total production value early on. I played this one out for a short while, got the ability to build Praetorians early, (Roman swordsman replacement, an early unit with an 8 strength), and started building them as quickly as I could, mostly in cities with barracks. I was able to give almost all of them city attack +25% before sending them to attack my neighbors cities. They easily overpowered the archers and warriors guarding them, gaining experience all the way. The promotions seem to help a lot, and so far I've chosen to have the most experienced units fight most so that they can get enough to keep gaining more promotions. Generally I've stuck with the same kind of promotion, (eg first City Raider 1, next City Raider 2, next City Raider 3), to try to make units that are extremely good at one things instead of slightly good at a lot of things. Having a group of 6 preatorians with City Raider 2, 2 with City Raider 3, and a Medic along while my opponents had up to 3 completely inexperienced units of maximum strength 6 defending made taking cities a snap. I lost only 2 units, (not counting workers and settlers who got pegged by barbarians), defeating both my neighbors and taking over the large continent.
10 things I've learned so far.
1 - Leaving cities defenseless - still a bad plan.
2 - ROP rape is no longer possible
3 - If there's a chance your city will absolutely need a unit to defend it in a few turns and you don't have one that can be moved there, start building it now.
4 - Shooting for a science that gives you a strong unit early and then building en masse to send at your enemies - still a good plan, (on warlord level at least).
5 - Everything seems to take longer to build early on. Adjust your strategy with that in mind. Also note that peace treaties only last 10 turns instead of 20. After getting my first opponent down to 1 city, I offered him a peace treaty in exchange for 3 sciences. By the time my units got close to the city and healed, it was 1 turn away from expiring.
6 - Units can heal on the battlefield. I haven't done the experiment yet to see if it takes longer than having them heal in a city, but I haven't noticed any real difference while I've been playing. I'm sure even it is a few turns faster, there are many situations where moving them to a city, healing there, and then moving them back takes up more turns than just healing them where they are.
7 - Defensive and terrain bonuses are more important than in previous games. This is because the strength numbers for each unit is than in older versions. A 50% bonus to a strength of 8 is going to have more impact than a 50% bonus to a strength of 6.
8 - Gold might not be as important as in earlier games. It takes a long time before you have the ability to gold rush production, and I believe only 1 form of government is able to do so. Focusing on science early as much as possible seems to be a good approach.
9 - Making units into specialists by giving them repeated promtions, (city raider 1, then city raider 2, then city raider 3), appears to work better than using a more diverse approach with each unit. Having the more experienced units fight as much as possible can turn them into very powerful units, which may be better than having more medium powered units.
10 - If you get a great artist, and there is an area of land which is unsuitable for building on yet not covered well by your territory, using that artist to build a great work in a small city as close to that piece of land as possible will expand the culture around that city immensely, and can greatly reduce the number of barbarians that enter your territory from that direction.
Comments would be appreciated.