Finally got Civ4

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by DaveV


You can't do Civ2-style ICS where you build garbage cities with no improvements, but it's still possible to expand throughout the game and win via conquest/domination. It helps a lot to have the Organized trait, and courthouses help a lot with faraway cities. I usually keep an eye on my science slider; if it gets much below 50%, it's time to regroup, consolidate, and bring your new cities online.

Civ4 places a lot of emphasis on specialized cities; your empire should have a bunch of commerce cities with lots of cottages and commerce specials (or even just a lot of water), several barracks cities with lots of mines and enough food to let you work them, and a few great person cities with lots of extra food so you can run specialists.

I never really went all-out ICS in Civ2. My cities were all well-placed, but I liked to expand asap. So I would build a lot of cities, but take care of all of them.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by rah
The closest version to ICS in IV is building your cities close together since distance from cap is a big component of the original cost for the extra city. If you keep the close it's cheaper.

But not so close that they encroach on each other's potential resources right? Are cities in Civ4 more flexible in how much of the surrounding land they can use than in Civ2?

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by VJ

I don't think anyone has invented one yet. I think it's important for you to keep in mind whether you're going to spend the next portion of the game building up your civilization or conquering the top dogs of the game when you're checking out how much money you're making. When you start having deficits at 60% research, it's time to reconsider your new-city building or conquering spree and think can you really stay in the tech race if you have some competition in the map which you can't immediately affect with your costly expansion.

I know it won't work the same as in Civ2, but can you still expand early and suffer the costs in order to get a late-game payoff?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Caligastia


Well, seeing as I'm so new to Civ4, I'm not sure if I need it to be enhanced already. It looks great to me so far. I'll consider getting Warlords when I've played a bit more.

That's the best time to go out and get it, before you develop habits that you'll need to change while playing Warlords. My overall strategy has changed drastically since vanilla Civ 4, I've pretty much had to relearn the game.

As for advice, don't play at too high of a level until you get the hang of the game. Coming from Civ 3, which had at least some of the present elements in it, I had to dump all my old habits before I started getting any good at it. If you're coming from Civ 2, you're going to have even more of a learning curve.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Caligastia
What is a good rule of thumb for expansion in Civ4?

If your research level is down to 30% of your budget, you've overexpanded. Myself, I build until I hit 40%, then take the time to develop my cities before I build anymore. Even then I can be losing money from my treasury. Once I get back up to 50 - 60% and I'm back in the green, then it's safe to add more cities.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Caligastia


But not so close that they encroach on each other's potential resources right? Are cities in Civ4 more flexible in how much of the surrounding land they can use than in Civ2?

Yes, you can get away with having them only 3 squares away from each other if you have some good food resources within their radius.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Caligastia


I like continents on a meduim size map with an average climate.

You should try the fractal map, you get some interesting configurations with it. Continents can get rather predictable after awhile.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Caligastia


I know it won't work the same as in Civ2, but can you still expand early and suffer the costs in order to get a late-game payoff?

No, if you expand too quickly at the early part of the game, you will cripple yourself by the end. The other civs are going to sail past you in tech and military, and you'll never be able to catch up to them. That's the time when you have to be the most careful about overexpansion. Once you get going, with techs like Currency under your belt, then you can think about having a fairly large empire. Of course by then much of the land will be taken by the other civs, so you'll have to fight for it if you still intend to ICS.

[Harovan]

You can get great fun out of Civ4 without Warlords. I didn't find it such a great step up. It makes Civ4 different, but not necessarily better (it's hard to top anyway).

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Willem
You should try the fractal map, you get some interesting configurations with it. Continents can get rather predictable after awhile.

Pretty much all scripts except fractal get predictable after a while. Map randomness is one of the few weak spots of Civ4. Fractal is a great script if you don't want to know before, what you get, i.e. if exploration plays a big role for you. If you insist on continents of about equal size, you'd better choose continents, as with fractal you might end up on a quasi-pangea or a bunch of islands.

But other map types are great fun too, take Highlands for example. And who's into a real world map, the World, 18 Civs scenario is really great.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Willem


If your research level is down to 30% of your budget, you've overexpanded. Myself, I build until I hit 40%, then take the time to develop my cities before I build anymore. Even then I can be losing money from my treasury. Once I get back up to 50 - 60% and I'm back in the green, then it's safe to add more cities.

Maybe it's because I'm playing at only warlord difficulty level, but it seems that I can expand at a pace I like without the research level going down too far.

[Blaupanzer]

Sounds good so far. Keep your eyes open for the "Renaissance Rush," as I call it. The AI civs will focus on military, science, or culture somewhere in that period. Each civ will try to outrun you in one of those things. The combination can be daunting. Do you push your borders and assure you keep what you capture thru culture; build a big army and conquer; or get a big tech lead for military or spaceship ambitions? Only rarely can you do all three.

[Caligastia]

I played some more yesterday, and was having trouble figuring out how to rushbuild stuff. There didn't seem to be an obvious place to do this in the city screen. I imagine there must be some govt type I have to get first.

[Thedrin]

Slavery to pop rush. Universal Sufferage to rush buy. The buttons are the top two buttons of a group of buttons located just to the right of the list of possible builds.

[Caligastia]

I see. So I guess there isn't much I can spend my gold on till then?