Civ IV

Remove all ads!

I just completed a Diplomatic win on Prince in 1786AD. My settings were Gandhi, Small, Epic, Hemispheres.

The decisive tactics in this game were:
- Warrior rush George Washington right at the start and take his capital with first 10 turns. This left me alone on my continent to expand without having to worry about military.
- Leveraged Philosophical trait by going for food and specialists as much as possible
- Taking Code of Laws from Oracle
- Building Parthenon and running Pacifism to get more Great People.
- Use first Great Scientist for Academy in capital - lightbulb the rest
- Beeline Optics to meet other civs for tech trading and to get circumnavigation bonus, but there wasn't much trading to be done as I was too far ahead on techs
- Spam Confucian missionaries to every city in Isabella and Charlemagne's empires but not to Sitting Bull, who has been targeted as being the common enemy
- Charlemagne converted to Confuscianism, but attempts to convert Isabella unsuccessful.
- First to Liberalism and took Electricity as free tech
- Beeline Mass Media and build United Nations
- Convert to Isabella's favourite civic (Theocracy) to offset the fact that she had a different religion to me. Also agree to every request from Isabella, including requests to change religion. Being Spiritual, Gandhi can change back to Confuscianism after 5 turns, but keep the "you changed to our religion" bonus.
- Build virtually no military units the whole game
- Win first Diplomatic vote

I hardly ever play for Diplomatic victory so I'm pretty happy with how this game turned out. The limiting factor in this was research speed so I think I could probably have shaved off a bit more time by focusing more on beelining Mass Media (e.g. did I really need to get Rifling?).

 

Hey guys.

I finally got BTS for xmas and am thinking about installing it tonight. I have been playing warlords for the past few weeks. From what I have been hearing and reading, the major differences are the espionage system and the corporations. The corporations seem easy enough, but I am a bit confused on the espionage system. Can someone give a brief overview of how it works and some of the things you can do with it?

---------- Added 0 hours, 0 minutes and 55 seconds later... ----------

After playing a few games with Ghandi, he is now my favorite leader

Also, been winning consistently on Prince now the last few days...think I'm ready for Monarch??

 

I started a new game and pulled off the Civil Service slingshot with the Oracle! I admit I got really lucky, as I got three free techs from goody huts. I got Agriculture, Bronze Working and Writing. With early access to Writing, I built a library very early in my capital, and I actually got a great scientist who lightbulbed Mathematics for me. It was just a situation where everything fell into place.

 

About those huts. Is there anything that you can do to get techs from those huts? I noticed that I can only get unfriendly huts if I try to take them with a warrior, but are there, for example, any leader traits that influence the outcome?

 

Great work, Aldeth. You've taken your first steps into a larger world............ as someone wise once said.

 

Not directly, I think. But aggressive and expansive leaders start with scout, which usually leads to better results, both in quantity and quality of those hut rewards.

I have got three techs from villages a couple of times, but it's rare. Aldeth certainly got a dream start with three good techs .

 

I think it's also anyone with Hunting researched, Frederick II has a scout at the start of the game.

 

After some quick research: apparently it's just the hunting that counts (which makes sense, because scouts require hunting) - my bad.. but many civs that have Hunting are either aggressive or expansive

 

Yes - having a scout activate a goody hut improves the odds of getting something good. However, I alos think that the difficulty level influences what you can get. At Warlord and lower difficulties, it is even possible to get a worker, or even a settler from a goody hut! From Prince onward, however, the best result from a goody hut is a tech. Likewise, I think at higher difficulties, you have a greater chance of having the goody hut be hostile and spawn some barbarians (usually only warriors, but if you activate the goody hut with a warrior, and three barbarian warriors spawn, you're warrior is dead.)

Unfortunately, if you don't start with a scout, you're pretty much SOL of getting scouts to open goody huts. You certainly wouldn't pass up a goody hut because other civs will take them, and hunting is never a priority tech as your first couple of research projects.

 

The only units I have gotten are scouts and warriors, but I haven't played easier than noble. Free worker or settler would be sweet . A second scout is a nice addition though, you can search the region for other goodies really fast. The experience bonus can also be really useful if the time is right.. Combat I & City Raider with quechuas is deadly.

 

Yes, most of the elite strategies for getting huge scores and fast finishes at Settler level revolve around a mad chase for Goody Huts because of the big kicker you get if you can pop a free Settler or two.

 

Aaargh. Just played a super frustrating game. I was about 30 turns away from a Conquest win when Hammurabi (who was getting slaughtered by me all over the place) managed to pull off a Religious Diplomatic victory. I had failed to notice that my warmongering had made me everyone's common enemy and that Hammurabi actually had truckloads of votes, especially as I did not have Apostolic religion in many of my cities so I had hardly any votes, despite being the biggest civ by far.

There's a lesson there to pay closer attention to what is going on!

 

I'm very close getting a diplomatic victory: all I need to do is get Pericles vote for me, but I can't turn him friendly towards me. Giving techs and resources won't work, because I got a -3 from "You declared a war to our friend" when I attacked and destroyed Justinian about 50 years back. The idea behind that war was to get Lincoln like me more - a bad decision in retrospective.

I have Mansa Musa (defense pact) and Wang Kon (vassal) backing me up, and I need both of them and Pericles to get enough votes. Lincoln is the other nominee with Hammurabi as his supporter. Pericles and Lincoln aren't the best buddies, they had a brief war - can I use this as a tool?

 

Does Mansa Musa like Lincoln? If not you could arrange for a war with Lincoln if you can convince Mansa Musa and Pericles to fight with your the bonus could be worth it. Provided your allies are not wiped out and vassalized by Lincoln of course.

 

What about changing to Pericles religion or favourite civic?

 

I just quit a monarch game, shouldnt be too much trouble as I had stacked it a bit in my favour by playing the Dutch on an archipelago map. It started out so so, had a super wicked starting position and a decent position, was trying to bee line for steam power so I could get the all powerful dikes running and gain more production than all other civs combined. I am not too active on the diplomacy screen, I trade when possible, never give in to demands, never give help when asked and treat every equally even though I am aware there are better ways. I just can't be arsed. It has never backfired as harsh as it did this game though. I played custom and had thrown in a bunch of extra civs to make it nice and crowded with lots of island hopping. Yeah right, every civ except two declared war on my simultaneously, that was eight or nine civs that wanted me dead. I had no idea what I had done, I was not over extended, I didnt have a great military but nor was it so weak as to attract the AI to attack I have learnt that from past mistakes. I had my own little religion but the other civs were pretty fractured when it came to religion so it doesn't seem to be that. I just quit cause I couldnt be arsed with playing the rest of the game I might very well have taken me out of the war stronger than before but it would be awfully tedious. I was just perplexed that a vast majority of the AI civs declared war at me at the same time for no apparent reason. Could it have been the apostelic palace?

 

Thanks for the advice, changing civic and religion with bribing did the trick - finally a real diplomatic victory in Prince game . Settings were Darius I, Standard, Epic, Continents.

Converting from free religion back to hinduism (which happened to be Mansa Musas religion too) and adopting representation both gave +1 with Pericles, but he was still just pleased. One turn before the next voting I cancelled the defense pact with Mansa Musa, which lost the -1 "You have signed defensive pact with our rival" . After that I decided to go all in and gave Pericles all of my gold, Computer tech, Hit Movies, Uranium and one small city that was almost surrounded with Greek area anyways. He didn't even go friendly, but voted for me, which gave me a total of 542 votes (539 was required for victory).

Earlier in the game I tried making Hammurabi a common enemy in our continent by spreading Christianity to his civ and then converting all others to Confucianism - and maybe getting a religious victory in the process. Plan worked well until Hammurabi built Shwedagon Paya and went for free religion.

Very satisfying game. Darius is an excellent economic leader, which gave a huge advantage in research. Wang Kong was actually an useful vassal as he managed to research 3 or 4 techs before me.

 

Joacquin - who were the other civs exactly?

 

Don't remember exactly, there were more than ten of them which is why I reacted. The Aztecs declared first no surprise there then two rounds after ten more civilizations declared war on me (custom with extraAI) everything from Gandhi to Shaka and with a wide variety of religions.

 

I think the AI likes to target other factions already at war-likely thinking their military will be divided.

I've had 2 front wars pop up on me because of this.


I wonder if it also could be that AIs reach a certain threshold level of annoyed about the same time, though I think the targeting of divided/weaker militaries still takes place.