Getting started on Civ4 for a Civ2 vet

[ce61agg]

Originally posted by ybrevo
Well, I can´t really figure out how to do the quote thing here -

there is a little "quote" link on the top right part of each message...next to "edit"

on the archery thing, it really depends on the barbarian activity and the resources you have available.

once barbarians start showing up, unless you've already claimed horses or bronze you basically need archery...or the great wall

for religions, a very common strategy is to let the AI found the early ones...Then you can adopt the AI's religion in order to get diplo bonuses, or waiti until they build the shrine and then conquer their holy city ...

you can always claim a later religion, philosophy-taoism using a GS is a realistic option...

if you really want to found an early religion you have to go for it as soon as you start, and you will usually need mysticism as a starting tech

[ce61agg]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Well, my bafflement continues. I've now taken several runs at Prince, and they all seem to follow the same pattern. A decent start out of the gate, followed by a rapid falling behind in score, followed by the discovery that, by the medieval period, I'm way behind in the tech race (even though I'm a research fiend) AND have a neighbor on my border who has a gigantic military. How the hell does that happen? I mean, I could build fewer libraries and monastaries and more troops, but then I'd be even farther behind in techs. What the heck am I missing here?

are you running enough scientist specialists?
They will greatly boost your research early on and when a Great Person is born, you can lightbulb a tech that noone has and (if beneficial) trade it around...

Trading is crucial of course, alphabet is a key tech to aim for early on...
And the Great Library is still a great wonder to help you keep up! Nothing like its CIV2 version of course

By the way, what are your thoughts on the whole Great Person addition to CIV4? I also came to CIV 4 straight from CIV2 and i find the Great persons the worst part of the new game... I mean what exactly is the equivalent of a GP-farm in history?

I also dont ike strategies evolving around generating a GP at a specific time and doing a "slingshot"...

GP generation seems to me like a separate, rather lame game running at the same time with the proper CIV game but still having a dramatic influence on the real game....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by ce61agg


are you running enough scientist specialists?
They will greatly boost your research early on and when a Great Person is born, you can lightbulb a tech that noone has and (if beneficial) trade it around...

Probably not. Absent a great person or wonder, I need to pull someone off a city square to get a scientist, right? I guess I'm still in Civ2 mode, where working city squares was always the most important thing, especially early in the game. I guess I have to rethink that.

By the way, what are your thoughts on the whole Great Person addition to CIV4? I also came to CIV 4 straight from CIV2 and i find the Great persons the worst part of the new game... I mean what exactly is the equivalent of a GP-farm in history?

I don't dislike the Great Person feature, but I confess I find it a bit silly (the Mona Lisa gets painted in a border town and results in a land grab? Really?). I like getting a GP, of course, but I haven't even begun strategizing it in my gameplay. In fact, I've stopped playing philosophical civs because the GP bump doesn't interest me that much.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by ce61agg

I mean what exactly is the equivalent of a GP-farm in history?

er, uhm Athens? Florence? Cambridge, Mass. ?

Some places at certain times generated alot of great people - now you can argue about the game mechanics (lots of irrigated land, oh really?) but thats different.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

Well, at least that sounds like what I'm trying; now I just have to make it work. As an aside, I'm struck by how little time I spend on Wonders, or at least World Wonders, in this game; it seems like they corrected for the way wonders really unbalanced Civ2.

yup. only build the wonders you really want.

Out of curiosity: it seems like if I wait to pursue religion techs until I've researched basic improvement techs, I can kiss goodbye any hope of founding a religion. Do you find that?

Depends. You dont need to research ALL basic improvements right away, depending on the map. If the right terrain/resource isnt close by, wait. If you dont need the boost from the resource (eg health) wait. Then you can go for a religion right away. See if a given religion is on the path toward something else you want. Last winning game, I had a bunch of vineyards near my capital, so I went for monarchy early, and grabbed hinduism on the way.

Also out of curiosity: is archery worth spending early research time on? I've been going for it fairly quickly in order to get decent city defenders, but since it doesn't lead anywhere I wonder if I'm wasting precious early turns on it.

I wait to see who's nearby, though they help with barbs too of course.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Probably not. Absent a great person or wonder, I need to pull someone off a city square to get a scientist, right? I guess I'm still in Civ2 mode, where working city squares was always the most important thing, especially early in the game. I guess I have to rethink that.

You need a library first. And a temple for a priest, a market for a merchant, etc. Clever huh?

Remember the super science city? Well you don't have overpowered trade routes here, this is a different path to one.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

Out of curiosity: it seems like if I wait to pursue religion techs until I've researched basic improvement techs, I can kiss goodbye any hope of founding a religion. Do you find that?

Code of Laws > Confucianism

[joncnunn]

And if you spread Conf to all your cities quickly enough then you may be able to found Taoism with Philo in the same city.

And the if all else fails relgion is Islam with Divine Right.

[Blaupanzer]

Religion is double-edged, so be careful. If you found your own early enough (depends on your land mass), you can spread it to others, pop a Great Prophet, and make a fortune in your holy city as the other AI spread your religion in their cities. However, if another religion is spreading on your land mass, you can end up the odd person out, taking a major hit because your religion does not make you a "brother/sister of the faith" with the AIs around you. Obviously, having a state religion (even someone else's) is good for +1 happiness for religion itself, +1 for temple (plus a chance to create a priest specialist if needed), and +10% for science by building that religion's monastery. Can't build the buildings w/o the corresponding religion. Having the same state religion as your neighbors is useful for trade and positive relations.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Okay, can I get a little advice on my latest (mis)adventure?

I decided to drop back down to Noble for a while. I felt liek I was getting a handle on new strategies and breaking bad habits, but this one floored me.

In Civ2, I played as a builder and generally had the sparest possible military. having figured out that that won't work in Civ4, I've developed a strategy of turning my first or second city, whichever had greater production potential, into a unit factory. I can generally get a 1-star spearman, axeman, and swordman in every city by 1 A.D., and that (with walls and a culture bonus) seems to be enough to keep me safe. Then my unit factory turns to producing attack units.

That's what it looked like last night. I ws on an island with two other civs. Napoleon was a weak warmonger, and by the 20th century I'd taken about half his cities. Kubla Khan was neck-and-neck with me on the power graph, but I kept him at least pleased and generally friendly for teh whole game, through every diplomatic trick available.

So it's the late 20th century, and I'm in a space race with the Greeks that I think I can win. I've got 3 grenadiers in most cities (upgrades from the previous century) and some strong cav units and artillery near the French border, because they're still likely to misbehave.

And what happens? Yep, the Mongols, my bossom buddies and game-long allies, cross the border with a monsterous army out of the blue and take out my two most productive cities. They've only got Cavalry, whereas I can build panzers (though I haven't yet); I might be able to take back my cities and repel them, but only by putting every city on war footing and reducing research in favor of money for exiting unit upgrades -- but Alexander would be in space by then. Game over.

Okay, so the question is, what would have prevented the Mongol invasion? Diplomacy clearly didn't. Would a permanent alliance have done the job? Would they have stayed away if I'd upgraded my units more regularly? If I'd had more units per city than I did (and how many? 6? 9?)? Is there just no keeping them out, so that I should have a massive offensive army massed on their border no matter what?

This is a long, long way from my Civ2 turtling strategy, where a couple of riflemen behind walls could hold off the AI pretty much forever. How should I be thinking about this?

[Ming]

Never trust anybody for starters...
And if you can build better units than your neighbors, do so right away. You need to have a strong deterence. A strong "reaction force" would have stopped the invasion.

Nothing will stop a civ from declaring war on you. I've had people who I was plus 21 on friendlyness attack me.

The simple rule of thumb is to plan for when it happens.

[joncnunn]

Starting about the time of Gunpowder I usually consistantly run small to large surpluses and use it to keep my border cities (including all coastal ones) up to date.

And like Ming says, station reaction forces along all land borders of those who aren't your vassals when practical.

Also unless your on Pangena, I think it's safer to vassalize your entire landmass first when going for space race victory.

[Blaupanzer]

If 7you've turned vassals off, as some of us do, build an excessive military and kick the a** of both your neighbors. Lots of troops, especially siege weapons does way more to deter invasion than any diplomacy. Thus, when space race time comes, you have no one on your continent who can interfere.

On another thread we listed the psychotic killers of the game (Yamomoto, Shaka, Montezuma, either Mongol, Ragnar, etc.) that can never be trusted. They will ALWAYS show up with a 60+ unit Stack of Doom (SOD) at some point. You MUST either attack them to activate and annhilate that SOD OR you must maintain reserve stacks in support of your cities with 15-20 of the very latest units to crack those stacks.

[rah]

If there's no room to expand, the psychos will start building troops and continue building troops till they feel they can do something with them. Lords know they're not building city improvements (obvious from when I take their cities) It's best to station a few missionaries in his territory near his cities along your border. (spys if you don't have open borders) It will usually give you a few turns warning since you'll see the massing of troops.

Prepare to respond and if they don't attack, go ahead and declare war to force him to commit his troops on your territory where you siege units can be used. End of problem. YOu don't have to usually worry about othe civ relations since they all usually hate him already. And those that do are other psychos that are going to need similar treatment later.

[rah]

And for those civ II vets, the biggest difference is that in CIVII, it was easy to beat the game at deity. In CIV IV the higher levels are relatively much harder.