Tech Race in Civ4

[ElConejo]

Hello all, after a long slumber in the depths of 'not good enough computer' land I will be quickly returning to 'poly to resume my Civness with IV.

I remember in CivIII that one of two instances would occur in regards to the tech race against the AI, 1) the human player would be many many techs ahead of any AI player, or 2) the AI would be many many techs ahead of the human player.

So my question is this: do you find this is the case in CivIV? or do you find that the human and AI are more neck and neck? I would love to play a game where we are pretty much equal tech, I mean not too far ahead to make it boreing and not too far behind to make it ridiculous.

Please, comment and thoughts very much welcome.

[trev]

Unless you play the lower levels, it is difficult to get well ahead on tech as AI - AI trading keeps them close, but on higher levels unless you are careful in your tech selection, you will get well behind.
Prioritise Alphabet at the higher levels and trade immediately at Immortal or higher, on Emperor reserve alphabet for a while and trade other techs, trading alphabet maybe 20 - 40 turns later. This will help you with tech parity, Paper, Printing Press are good techs to beeline for as you can always beat AI to them and trade themfor a number of other techs.

[Loader2k]

What i enjoyed with cIV is that the AI researches really fast during end game. Of course if you're big enough the game is practically over, but in civ3 it was more like, if you were in par with the AI after some time it was rather easy. In cIV you better have a good lead before entering the modern ages.

In several games eventhough i was tech leader for most of the time the AI overtook me at the end.
I think it is because with biology the AI's farm heavy strategy gets more powerful (they're pumping a GP every few turns).

[chiqss]

Originally posted by Loader2k
What i enjoyed with cIV is that the AI researches really fast during end game.

IMHO it depends on the AI leader. In the games I played , Washington or Victoria were very good challengers in the tech race , but even large AI civ tend to be a lot slower in late game research ( reaching 15-20 turns in marathon vs my 5-10 ) .

With cIV , a tech race thread should mention the Internet wonder which offers the human player ( never seen the AI build it ) an opportunity to go for a spaceship victory that would be impossible otherwise. Had a game with gandhi looking for cultural victory so way behind in tech and power and manage to win the game by doing so