Civ IV

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It depends on the game for me, but lately if I do an Oracle Sling, I usually pick code of laws, since its such good trade bait for the other techs. What are some other good techs that you guys have found the ai likes and doesnt normally research? Some other ones are the ones up to and including democracy for me.

As far as the science slider, I never worry about having it at 100 percent, and in most parts of the game its rarely over 60 percent. In the early phases its usually around 30 or 40 percent as I have been expanding land and building units to protect newer cities.

 

I'd say Iron Working is only a priority if you have a resource that you want in a jungle. (Rice and Pigs are the only early game resources that would qualify.) While I would agree that all jungles need to be cleared, unless you have a start location with a LOT of jungles (and that doesn't happen often) I'm OK with leaving the jungles be for the first a while.

Without doubt my most selected tech with Oracle is Code of Laws.

 

For me the Oracle tech is usually Code of Laws. Sometimes Metal Casting, if I already happen to have a religion. If playing with Romans, then it's ALWAYS Iron Working .

Chopping + Slavery is my favorite tactic early on, I like my wonders quick. Especially with Industrious leader and the right resource some early wonders are almost ridiculously fast to build. Mathematics would give a nice bonus later, but IMO it's not worth the wait.

 

By mid game though the big jungle is prime real estate. I usually get my national wonder with extra cash from a city that was planted smack down in a jungle and was god awful for a century until everything is cleared and cottaged. There is usually a river in the jungle as well so a full BFC of grassland with a river running through makes for some very very nice trade city with some time investment.

I also end up taking metal working from the Oracle as it is by far the most expensive tech I tend to be able to choose from. I also think the collossus is an underrated wonder. If you have copper it is damn cheap, you can build it in no time and most of the time you have a city with lots and lots of water squares. A collosus and moai statues turns a peninsula city into a powerhouse.

 

Sometimes I wonder if the forge and metal casting is better option for the slingshot than code of laws...I usually get forges a bit later than I'd like which usually means I have to wait longer for my 2nd military campaign....I may have to evaulate that next time...

 

Aldeth - you can't see the big deal about getting Civil Service for free? Have you ever looked at how long it takes to research that? Civil Service is an expensive tech to try and research early yourself - it takes forever before you have all your libraries and/or cottages up and running. Getting it for free gives you an enormous advantage. Even if you did nothing else other than use it as a trade for whatever you wanted - it would be great. But the other two advantages are:
- being able to run bureaucracy early. At that stage of the game, your capital is still providing the bulk of your science and hammers. Adding 50% to that is MASSIVE. It's so massive that it pretty much gives you a game winning position at all levels up to Emperor.
- giving you a huge kicker toward Liberalism. Once you get Civil Service, you can cruise your way to being first to Liberalism with ease, using your great people to bulb important other techs so you get something really good from Liberalism.

The Civil Service slingshot is THE go-to tactic for most of the really good Civ IV victories I have ever seen. Just being able to pull it off (it's not that easy - it used be easier in the first version of Civ IV when you didn't need mathematics) shows that you've mastered the key early game tactics.

There is no other early game tactic I can think of that is as devastating as the Civil Service slingshot (except maybe the Quechua Rush).

 

Yeah, i agree that bureau is op in the early game.

Well, I lost my game last night due to poor research.....Didn't get education and university or University of oxford till way late....no wonder research was so poor.......
I decided to attack wang kong since he was teching fast and pulling away. I had no chance for space race or anything since so far behind in tech.....he brings tanks infantry and canons against my limited infantry and canons....basically the war would have stalemated and I would eventually be taken over....so i started over....


Anyways after that mammoth fail, I started a new Prince game as hatty. I start the game with three foods and gold to soon be in my bfc. I research husbandry to get horse and chariots to find that its in my bfc in my cap!!!!!!! On the map is Monty to my immediate south, Loius to my east, Toku to my west, Mao southwest and Mansa I finally found out was in the far west. With horse in my bfc, i decided to press very early wars. I took out toku, Mao and Monty super early with chopped chariots!!!! I decide to block Loius off since I had sooooooooooooooooo much land to the east to settle....I aggresively expand almost to the point of ruin (everyone loves this right?)
it's now around 800 ad and I have over ten cities and a recovering economy. Louis already declared war on me, but only sent 3 swords??? what a waste of time...Mansa is teching like a monster as usual, so I have to deal with him fast before he pulls to far away. I dow him and take one of his cities then sued for peace since his culture is so high. I will build up 15 or so cats and dow again to take more of his land. Once he is done I will wipe Loius out and win with the lucky start. This time i wont put off education tech like a noob : /

 

I LOVE doing moai statues + collosus in the the same city (one of course that has a significant percentage of water tiles). Do this with a financial leader and build a lighthouse, and every water square produces two food (more if it has clams/crabs/fish), one hammer and three gold. Woo hoo!

OK, I concede that I may have underestimated the importance of this tactic. I had thought that you were using it to get macemen, but since you also need metal casting and machinery (which also require prerequisite techs) you'd still be a long way from macemen.

But how exactly is this even POSSIBLE to pull off without getting extremely lucky? You cannot exactly wait forever to build the Oracle - someone else will build it first. In order to build the Oracle you need Priesthood, which requires Mysticism and either Meditation or Polytheism. So there aren't too many techs to start building the Oracle. The problem is getting all the techs to Civil Service. Civil Service requires Mathematics and Code of Laws, both of which requires Writing, which requires either Pottery or Animal Husbandry, which requires either the Wheel or Agriculture.

That's a minimum of eight prerequisite techs before you get can get Civil Service, including two pretty damn expensive ones. That also means you are foregoing the ability to get bronze working, and forgoing early techs that would allow to access resources like fishing and mining. You're also missing out on either Animal Husbandry or Pottery, and Agriculture or the Wheel. Sure, you could delay starting the Oracle until you picked up these extra techs, but then you risk someone else building the Oracle first. It seems like this strategy requires a good deal of luck.

 

@brothatactics: Louis is a first class weirdo, he is jealous and you can never trust him. Out of the three French leaders the only one that is remotely nice is De Gaulle. Mansa Musa is the best tech partner you can wish for and you're right not to let him get too far with the lead. Make sure to wipe him out before he has a shot at culture or space (in your current game that should be easy).

Having a good start really matters. Do you guys reload when you've got a crappy start? I do when I'm stuck with jungle and not much hope for improving my capital before Iron Working. Reloading feels like cheating but when you know the game tipped the scale against you then I think it can be justified.

Finding out you don't have copper or iron anywhere is a pain too but it's more of a challenge whereas IMO a really poor start with jungles or tundra really cripples you from the very beginning of the game.

 

The good thing about him is that he doesn't have many troops with all the wonder whoring that he's doing. The only problem is his culture defense which wont be hard to get since I already have construction and am building cats. I think the next war I will take 2 or 3 more cities leaving him to like 3 or 4 and then hes done...Loius isnt teching that fast and once I have Mansa's land, I will be able to crush him very easy.

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Do you guys offer cities back to vassals that are no longer a threat? I'm not sure that I'm using them correctly. If I have a good teching vassal, the relationship is usually not good enough to bum techs off them. If i am not getting anything from them, what is the point really? Any other practices that you guys use to get the most out of vassals?

 

Starting alone in a small desert island isn't very couraging either. Yes, I reload - although you can't always tell if the start is really that bad. At the current game I started at the tip of a long tundra-covered peninsula. All the other civs in the continent had grasslands and forests all over the place, but that's what quechuas are for .

 

The main (really only) use I see for vassals is that they always vote for you in elections for either a diplomatic or religious victory. Other than that, I don't see much point.

 

You can force vassals to give you their ressources for free which is always good. I wouldn't give them cities because if they grow too large they may be able to break free from you.

There is a big difference between vassals that freely required your protection and vassals who did capitulate.

Regarding techs, I feel that giving away some techs to make them more useful can be a double edged sword. You don't want them to be too good nor do you want them to be useless. You can always give them some extra troops that you don't need instead if you don't feel like giving them the techs (after all the AI gets bonuses for upgrading units).

Don't forget that you can direct an ally's efforts in a war. If I'm going after a city I usually send my allies after some other cities because I don't want them to get the one that I've declared war for.

@Kullervo: quechuas make up for bad starts then.

 

I usually dont give them any techs or anything. i was just looking for a way to exploit them and steal all their techs a la mansa musa or ghandi.....lol

 

There are really only 3 techs worth getting from the Oracle: Civil Service, Metal Casting, and Code of Laws. if you're using Oracle for anything else, you're probably wasting your hammers that could have been better put to some other use.

Yes, Aldeth, the Civil Service sling is pretty hard and it can be a risky strategy to go for, because if you miss it, you've gone a long way down a route that you need to backtrack on.

If you go for Metal Casting, then a standard tactic from then is to build a forge and run an engineer specialist to get a Great Engineer and then use him to build a strategic wonder like Pyramids. This is another example of how the good players always plan their Great People and use in ways that specifically support a predetermined strategy.

 

hey Harbour,

Have you ever treid the rush to music and first to calvary tech research on your diety games? If not, what techs to you prioritize in a typical game that you play?

 

I'm probably not the right person to be asking about my own Deity level tactics. I have only ever won on Deity level 3 times as my brain can't juggle the micromanagement required to get everything to fall into place.

Being first to cavalry is a potentially useful tactic, especially if on a continental style map, and if you're Russian. The main problem with it is that it is far too late in the game. If you're planning some sort of Domination or Conquest victory then you need to be making the big in-roads much earlier on. You should probably be aiming to be close to victory before Cavalry arrive, unless playing a non-ancient start. Cavalry would usually be seen as a unit you use to polish things off at the end of the game and use their increased mobility to get to those last few enemy cities required for victory.

If you waited until Cavalry to start your assault then the enemy will have spread all over the known world, making your job longer and more tedious.

There are no "typical" prioritised techs. There used to be, in previous versions of Civilisation, but Civ IV is way more balanced, so different approaches are valid and useful in different situations. In Civ 2, you could pretty much apply the same strategy to every single game and win. Not so with Civ IV.

One thing I will repeat though: Tech trading is very important. Sometimes it is harder to play at the lower levels because the AI techs so slowly that they can't help you tech quickly. The big advantage of Monarch and Emperor levels is that the AI techs quickly so you can actually trade useful techs with them. The best players can finish faster on Monarch level than they can on Settler level because at Settler level you have to do ALL the researching yourself. On Monarch level you can get the AI to do half the teching for you. If you can master this skill, you'll be a long way down the track to winning at that level and above.

 

I still don't see how the Civil Service slingshot is doable without loads of luck. Even if you can manage to get those techs before building the Oracle, you are leaving yourself in a very precarious position, as you won't have either Bronze Working or Archery - so you have warriors, and that's it for defense.

EDIT: While none of the characters in Civilization appear to have been invented out of whole cloth, there does appear to be some liberties taken with the "historical" leaders. Gilgamesh and Ragnar, in particular, while they probably existed as real people, most of what we know of them comes from fictional writings. I find this a bit odd.

 

Tech trading probably once someone gets Alphabet?

Of course they did take liberties with history. Gandhi didn't have a big head like ET for a start. Gilgamesh dates back to almost 3000 BC (iirc) it's miraculous that we actually have any information about him at all (including the epic tale of his adventures with and without Endiku and his confrontation with Uta-Napishtim in his quest for immortality).

If the game was meant to be true to history then the Celts wouldn't have discovered Buddhism and the Chinese wouldn't have build Stonehenge. It would be a bit boring if the game didn't allow you take liberties with history.

 

That's not really what I meant. The vast majority of leaders you can pick from were real people whose histories are well documented. Both Sumerians and the Vikings had kings who were much more well documented than the semi-fictious choices of Gilgamesh and Ragnar.