Where's the First X?

[egavactip]

Civ4 is supposed to be a 4X game, but I have noticed that the first X (and some of the 2nd, for that matter) is pretty truncated.

In a lot of 4X games, you can do a fair amount of exploring before you run into another civilization. This gives you time to build up your own civilization, embark on certain development strategies, etc.

I spent 10 years playing Alpha Centauri, mostly on the largest map size. In that game, encountering the first other civilization was often a big deal.

In Civ4, however, the default is so many players that most of the time you immediately encounter multiple civilizations. It is like starting to explore a crowded elevator. Often you don't have much flexibility about exploring and expanding because there will be three civs starting right next to you. Even on the largest sized maps, people find each other really quickly.

Because of this, the explore aspect of CivIV is over quickly. It seems to me that you explore your continent, then later send out some ships to encounter other civs, and eventually trade a map with someone to have a map of the whole world.

Ironically, the expand aspect of CivIV is over quickly too, or at least very slowed down, because of the draconian penalties for expansion (far greater than Alpha Centauri). Geez, going for that 6th city (6th!!! Not 15th, but 6th!) might come close to putting you in bankruptcy. So you develop and expand slowly (I don't understand it, but computer civs seem to be able to create far more cities, even in marginal areas, without suffering in tech from upkeep penalties).

In the meantime, everybody else is expanding (and trading techs because they all are in contact with each other).

I thought I would try an archipelago map, thinking that would reduce contact chances until later, but no, people find each other even faster that way.

Lately, I have been playing on the largest map size but eliminating 2 computer players, just so that I can have a chance at playing without everybody immediately contacting each other. Even there, people seem to find each other right away....

[MyOlde]

In Custom Game you can reduce the number of AI civs.

[DaveV]

Try a Highlands map. Customize to seas and dense peaks, and maybe even reduce the number of AIs if you really want that sense of isolation.

[snoopy369]

If your sixth city is putting you into bankruptcy, you're not spending enough time working on your ecoonmy. Expansion speed is IMO one of the things they got right - previous games the only way to win was by expanding instantly and rapidly; now you actually have to put some thought into it. However, I can easily hit ten or twelve cities without going bankrupt or really feeling much of a tech hit (of course I'm running a 20% tech rate, but because I have ten or twelve cities, it's 20% of a much larger number). You probably need to build more windmills and possibly more cottages, or else go specialist (or both!); two scientists in every city gets you a very reasonable tech rate even at 10% slider.

If you want contact pushed off, play on a larger map, at a slower speed (Epic or Marathon), and Continents or one of the variants thereof. That means some civs will contact early, and some will contact much later (Renaissance or later generally, with Astronomy). Or just play on a larger map (you can go bigger than huge, you know, with custom maps).

[egavactip]

I already said I play the largest non-custom map (at epic speed, usually fractal map).

I was not being literal about the 6th city, I was making a general point.

I want the game to separate civs more widely at the start of the game.

I also might want a tech based limitation on how far a unit can move from a home city (or city of an ally). In primitive times, you can't have warrior units moving 2,000 miles away from your civ. As tech increases, the limit would increase.

[egavactip]

Part of the problem is that expansion is so slow, the game seems to want to crowd people together at the beginning as a cheap fix.

[wodan11]

Egavactip, sounds like you should play around with creating your own mapscript.

As for the range limitation, that would be a full blown mod, methinks.

Wodan

[Supr49er]

You can always use a huge custom continents map with 1-2 civs per continent. This will spread out the civs. Play marathon speed.

[MoonWolf]

What is a 4X game? 4 phases that you must get through?

[snoopy369]

4X means Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate - it is the genre of games that Civ4 belongs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by egavactip
I already said I play the largest non-custom map (at epic speed, usually fractal map).

I was not being literal about the 6th city, I was making a general point.

I want the game to separate civs more widely at the start of the game.

I also might want a tech based limitation on how far a unit can move from a home city (or city of an ally). In primitive times, you can't have warrior units moving 2,000 miles away from your civ. As tech increases, the limit would increase.

You can, through mapscripts, increase that size (and other elements such as starting distance). Talk to LDICesare and others who have done so themselves (I only very limitedly modified mapscripts, so I'm not the expert here). Again, you can also do things to separate civs, from having a larger map and fewer civs, to playing on maps that involve a wider separation or more difficulty connecting (continents is usually the best compromise).

You should be able to hit nearly as many cities as the AI; not as many, because that's part of the handicap (the AI doesn't use its cities as well, so it needs to be able to have slightly more than you) but not 10:6 ratio. Again, if you're not able to have a reasonably sized nation, then you aren't focusing on the economy adequately; either you need more commerce production, or less maintenance. Do you get Currency and Code of Laws fairly early on? Do you build marketplaces and courthouses in appropriate cities fairly early on? Do you build cottages and use specialists? Do you build filler cities close to your capital that are not particularly good cities, but produce lots of commerce without costing much to help pay for your better, further out cities?

All of these things factor into how much you can expand. There's no reason the AI should be able to out-expand you significantly, once you've learned sound economic gameplay. You certainly will have a tech disadvantage at times (usually mid-game) because, again, the AI needs a bit of an advantage here in order to be competitive; but there's no reason that should be substantial, or long-term, and by the industrial age you should be caught up.

[johnmcd]

I agree with the original poster, constrain the military to your own borders (or half their health every turn they are away) and allowing only settlers (give them a defence only of 3 or something) to explore would really make the start more exciting!

Open up naval and land exploration with various techs, but keep it tight at the start.

[Ari]

Originally posted by egavactip
I also might want a tech based limitation on how far a unit can move from a home city (or city of an ally). In primitive times, you can't have warrior units moving 2,000 miles away from your civ. As tech increases, the limit would increase.

I like that idea! Both Master of Orion II and Galactic Civilizations II (and probably their predecessors, though I haven't played them) featured similar "range" limitations that hobbled early exploration. In both cases, units couldn't travel more than n distance from a base (technically, MOO2 allowed travel between 2 bases, regardless of how far apart they were, but you couldn't go to any planets if you were outside the range of either one). Gradually, technology increased range limitations, and expansion made them less important anyway. I can't recall GalCiv2, but MOO2 eventually featured a tech that did away with limitations altogether.

How to do it in-game would be harder, though. As you say, getting somebody to explore hundreds or thousands of miles away requires a certain amount of sophistication that pre-literate societies probably didn't have (counterexamples, anyone?). Certainly by Roman times, you could send someone out exploring much of their known world, though much of that was still within range of their "bases". I seem to recall that the Portugese were still exploring Africa in the 1400's, if not later.

In game terms, that would imply that good *mapping* expeditions wouldn't really be available until extraordinarily later in the game by civ standards. The whole "Dr livingston, I presume" episode (British exploration of Africa) takes place in the late *1800's*, which would be unheard of in a game of civ, not to mention altering gameplay dramatically.

To have this still play out with civ-like gameplay, perhaps you'd simplify by simply factoring in distance. Perhaps units would be able to travel n tiles from your (or allied) territory for free, double that distance for 500% support cost, triple it for 1000% support cost, and NO further under any circumstances. If n started at, say, 5 tiles, that would keep you close to home initially, while forcing you to seriously think about how you went exploring (4 warriors out at 12 tiles would be eating a LOT of support, and god help you if you sprung an extra warrior while your supply was already stretched to the max).

Techs that started to raise n could include pottery, horseback riding, writing, and compass. Perhaps optics would do away with range limitations altogether, though normal civ unit support costs would still aply. One fringe benefit of this is that it would do away with (unrealistic) ancient-era wars against non-adjacent civs - they'd simply be far too expensive, since support costs would be insane. Are there really any pre-Greek real life examples of a country being invaded by a country on the other side of a continent? And until you got at least a few "n-raising" techs (or had a ton of countries you were on good terms with), there's no way you'd be able to do bust all of the fog on your continent until at least the swordsman/crossbow era.

Of course, neat as this is, there's probably no easy way to code it, not to mention that even coded, you'd need to then train the AI to alter its own exploration/military strategies to take this into account. Pity, though.

[EternalSpark]

Maybe it was just me, but I really didn't like the range-based crap in GC2. I suppose that was because, like a lot of stuff in GC2, it was its own seperate tech tree line with its own seperate Thing That Needed To Be Placed On Your Ships.

That said, though, it makes more sense for a range-based thing to be in a space game than a Civ game. I've always figured each game square in Civ to be fairly large, so I could see a "troup" of warriors going on long-term exploring in the world.

[joncnunn]

Basically on a normal size map with normal number of oppents, the first round of X is just as short as ever been.

What's different compared to Civ I / Civ II / SMAC(X) vs Civ III & Civ IV are how the larger maps and especally huge are handeled.

In previous versions there were usually the same number of oppoents on all map sizes. Starting with Civ III the standard number of opponents scaled with the maps. This has the effect of substantly equalizing the length of explore in Civ III/IV across all map levels to about what normal map used to be.

On the change game speed to Epic or Marathon to change the length of explore: In terms of # of turns it may somewhat increase the length but in terms of years it will actually decrease it particularly marathon. Movement speed is not slowed down along with the scale so it is effectively faster. Marathon also has faster military production vs buildings.

On the second X what Civ IV did wasn't so much as truncate it as cause a need for cycles. Before if you weren't planning a rush you could often just have one expansion round. In Civ IV, there are instead usally several expansion rounds. First is inital expansion, but then you need to use the 3rd X on your cities to get the economy up to the level where it will support another round of second X.
Key items that increase the size of your empire:
1. Relgious shrines.
2. Market Places, especally in the shrines
3. Courthouses, especally in production cites
4. In addition, several civics while excelent for small empires start becoming determential to your empire once it becomes too big.