Getting started on Civ4 for a Civ2 vet

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Thanks, all. That's very helpful. Now back to the game!

[Solomwi]

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.

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.

I was the same way when I started playing IV. Learning to use specialists and generate GPs made a world of difference in my game, and as you might suspect, consisted primarily of overcoming the view of specialists as just something to do with an unavoidable food surplus once my city was working all its tiles. Early specialists, aside from being very competitive with early tiles, particularly commercially, mean earlier great people, and early great people can be a marvel to behold.