CIV IV makes me sad

[ironbreaker_23]

Thank you. How do you find all of your threads you post? I want to post over here but it seems really confuseing. There isnt an option to go to last post?

[Zoid]

There´s the "go to first unread post" link at the (almost) top right. There´s also the "my threads" link at the top center (just above the "Apolyton Civilization Forums > Civilization IV > Civ4-General > CIV IV makes me sad")

But there´s no thingie to keep track of individual posts...

[Zoid]

Oh, and welcome!

[Kc7mxo]

when i first started playing civ4, i was still in the civ2 state of mind also. I had no problem with civ2 on deity, but for some reason civ4 on even lower levels seemed horrifically difficult. and i complained a great deal about the percentaes and the combat system.

what I have learned however, is that civ4 is just a different game, if you play it like civ2, you're going to lose.

1) you can not allow yourself to overexpand. after a bad game watch the replay and check out the rate of AI colonization. if you're going faster than him, you're definetly overexpanding. I like to make at most 5 cities in the begining. 3 is better. aim for strategically placed cities which can support eachother.

2) definetly set those lil city management auto bars, not using those was a hard lesson to learn. the computer is rather good at locating things with those.

3) if you're complaining about percentages, the reason is you do not have enough soldiers. civ4 isn't about small elite forces (like i often used in civ2), civ4 is about large armies. you have to expect casualties in a war, and if you dont have enough guys, you're going to focus on the ones you do way too much. if you have a 70% chance to win, it also means you have a 30% chance to lose.

just some hard lessons i learned that have made the upper levels a lot more managemable.

[Solver]

DrSpike, a warning for you, you've been spamming the Civ4 forums rampantly lately, and I have a feeling you'll be enjoying a PCR if you continue to .

In the meanwhile, some spam cleaned out of here.

[ironbreaker_23]

Wow I just found out how to get to it since i last posted here. Thank you. So anyways what is a pcr?

[Zero]

all you guys complaining about odds being rigged.

For your own sake never ****ing gamble.

u can give me ur money at texas hold em though.

[jdchambe]

i was thinking along the same lines... I'm not a great poker player or anything, but I know the game well enough. There are two kinds of people at the poker table. Those who don't understand the odds and are instead just "gambling", and those who do know the odds and just patiently wait for the people in the other group to give them their money.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by ironbreaker_23
Wow I just found out how to get to it since i last posted here. Thank you. So anyways what is a pcr?

Post Count Reduction. The mods can take away some of your posts if you´ve been naughty

[Todd Hawks]

I have another comment about the odds:

You probably don't attack unless your odds are quite high and therefore you only see this situation: You lose even though the odds are in your favor. You never see an occurance of luck since you don't "challenge" luck by attacking with low odds.

On the other hand, when the AI attacks, you don't get to see the odds beforehand and therefore you don't notice how the AI (just like you) sometimes loses even though its odds are e.g. 90%.

This, too, has a significant impact on perceived (bad) luck, I think.

Not to mention the old Civ wisdom: If you have to rely on luck in combat then you're doing something wrong.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Solver
You don't need to micromanage to overwhelm them on Noble or Prince.

As you can clearly see from the thread you link to, on Noble, AI pays the same price as you do for research, units, buildings, tile improvements and other stuff. The only bonus of any significance is cheaper upgrades, which is required to compensate for certain problems with tactical coding.

Actually, I also posted in that thread that Chitty referenced and pointed out that there does appear to be some sort of turn advantage for the AI built into the game. I went into Worldbuilder to observe this and it was clear that at minimum the AI gets a 5-turn build advantage to start the game on Noble.

Not insurmountable, of course, but it's definitely there and it explains how the AIs can have relatively large forces up so early in the game.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Thedrin
Why do you care?

The production boost discussed in the linked post is a one-time-only +8 hammers.

Is that really (really?) such a big deal? If so, you can, at noble level, just walk your warrior into the first opposing capital you come across, eliminating a close by rival and its production bonus and giving more room for early expansion.

Not exactly true. It's perhaps dependent on map size, but say you play a huge size map. Even assuming you know exactly where an enemy capital is and your first unit built is a warrior and you march it straight to the capital, by the time you actually get to that capital it will already be garrisoned by about two warriors, possibly even an archer already. It can't be taken by your warrior.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Zoid
Post Count Reduction. The mods can take away some of your posts if you´ve been naughty

Bloody liar!

PCR means Poster Champion Reward. You have to work hard on your post count to earn one.

[CarnalCanaan]

Re: Civ IV makes baby Jebus cry

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
[...] I will singlehandedly invade America and zidane Sid Meier.

Yes!!!! "Zidane" is a verb now!!!!

All is as it should be.

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by ChITty
I'm so tired of full power superior units being killed by units two notches below them only because their AI controlled units. Why even bother with the percentages? I play on Noble and when it says 70% combat odds, that seems more like 30% odds of my unit winning... just retarded. I understand that there's a good possibility of loss... but after seeing unit after unit be destroyed by a weaker unit I just want to puke.

I stopped playing CIV IV for a long while because of the crazy AI advantages (until I got warlords tonight) and again I'm reminded why it makes me want to do a zidane to my monitor after playing. Noble is balanced my ass. Somehow the AI can build up gigantico stagnant armies while remaining technically advanced. Meanwhile players are redlining their treasuries to keep their tech up to speed.

Obviously I'm going to roll the difficulty down because I'm not interested in gimmicing the game and shoe-horning the game style into a A -> B -> C rinse and repeat strat. My point is that the medium difficulty shouldn't rely on giving AI advantages, it seems very cheap to me for what tries to be such a heady game.

I agree about the AI, the obvious solution is to try multiplayer. You can also mod some of the AI advantages away.