Civ IV Tactics

Remove all ads!

Do you ever try to deliberately get Great People? And if you do, do you try to get a specific type, by putting all the right wonders and specialists in one city?

 

Well, you naturally have 2-3 wonder pumping cities and these will by default crank out great people at regular intervals. I do not plan my wonderbuilding with the aim of getting great people, it just happens, usually in my capital. I often get too many of the same great people though which is bad, I tend to end up with trucloads of prophets, a few artists and only 1-3 of the others making it hard to get more than one or two golden ages. Engineers are sadly most of the time too valuable in getting golden ages to be used for wonder rushing.

 

I have never had a Great Scientist and they are supposedly one of the more useful Great People.

 

I actually tend to get 2-3 scientists, enough to put an academy or whatchamacallit in my most sciency cities. 50% extra science is a lot especially considering you tend to end up with a city or two with mass science due to wonders.

 

I agree with Joacqin. Generally speaking, adding specialists to cities with the aim of getting great people is something I don't do. I find it much more useful to put the people working the land tiles. As a result, the only time that I have specialists is late game when my cities have grown to the point that all of the city's tiles are being used.

I too tend to get a lot more Great Prophets than any other specialist. The first ones go to making holy shrines. After that, adding the Great Prophet to a city as a permanent resident isn't all that bad of an idea. It gives you +5 food for turn so the city grows faster, as well as a rather modest (but significant early) +2 hammer bonus.

 

I reckon that careful management of Great People would be the sort of additional micro tactic that would make a difference at Prince level. The Great Scientist is pretyy useful but hard to pick up reliably unless you make a specific point of working towards one by having a specialist Science city doing all the right things.

Do any of you ever use strategic chopping of forests to rush important constructions in the early game?

 

Depends on what the tiles look like. If I got lots of forests and need whats underneath and dont need the forest I chop em down and try to time it nicely. I also tend to chop down a forest or two around a new city to rush something important. Often though forests on grassland is too valuable to chop down in the early game while all your forests should be chopped down by mid game unless it is a city in dire need of hammers. Cottages, cottages, cottages build as many as humanly possible. Enough food to grow to 20, enough hammers to make it possible to build things and the rest cottages cottages cottages. When they are maxed out they give 1 hammer, and a truckload of trade.

 

If you're really keen, you can sit down and work out in advance exactly how many farms you are going to need in your city area by the time every square is worked and then you can cottage up all the rest to ensure they become towns as soon as possible. But that sounds like far too much work for me, and one of the reasons I will probably never bother with the really high difficulty levels.

 

Harbs: Must build wonders: Pyramids are a huge boost. If you want an economy based on specialists, then the Pyramids are almost imperative. The Oracle is a free tech, so build it if you can. The Great Library is another one worth trying for, and if health is a porblem across the board, then Hanging Gardens will help. There is a strategy involving the Spiral Minaret, University of Sankore and a State religion which is good. Later on, The Pentagon is the most important. Others are nice though. All in all, few clunker wonders...

Resource denial sucks. Usually you attack with what you have to take what you need (I've had games where I had to rush gunpowder earlier than planned). I've had games end long before Oil was a factor...

Specialists: Normally, I use a few in selected cities when I need a particular GP to pop or to get a nice boost. I will use Priests to get a great prophet to build a shrine or even pop a specific tech along the religion route. There is an economic model based on using specialists to tailor what you want out of your cities. This is the Specialist economy. Basically you farm out your land then hire specialists. Need gold? Merchants will hook you up. Need culture? Artists are great. Scientins and Engineers are self explanitory. The Pyramids allow you access to Representation, which gives each specialist 3 beakers per turn ontop of what they do. The Sistine Chapel adds 2 culture per turn to each specialist. The main use for this is when you know that you will have a lot of fighting. Pillaging farms reduces the yield for pillagers, and are more easily rebuild than advanced cottages. Philosophical civs also get a bonus on GP production which can't be ignored...

I usually wait to chop forests until I need some specific wonder or improvement. Then I get the forests used when I need it rather than willy nilly...

 

As you imply - far too much work. Given that water tiles will quickly yield 2 food per turn (although 1 initially) and that you usually are going to have access to some special food resources, you don't need many farms at all. Three or four per city should be more than enough. Plus as joacqin points out, cottages are the way to go. You don't want to waste cottage tiles on farms, so whenever possible, I avoid building farms until I'm well into the game. Food resources usually provide enough extra food that you can go with mostly cottages and still grow at a reasonable rate.

Other things about land improvement: I also tend to avoid workshops. Just because I don't make a point of getting farms, it doesn't mean that I'm going to take a -1 food penalty from a workshop - plus I'd rather have a cottage anyway.

Also, except in areas where there are a lot of hills and thus insufficient food for a city to grow, generally speaking you're better off creating a mine over a windmill.

 

This game rules! Is anyone winning consistently on Prince level yet?

 

It's not as good as Medieval

 

Following on from something that Joacquin said a while back, I have now decided that Epic speed makes more sense than Normal speed. In Normal speed, the technology advances so quickly that your army can be obsolete by the time it has completed its march to the enemy city. Under Epic speed, you get much more of a chance to use your units before they get outdated, so I am finding it to be more fun.

 

I just managed to complete a Cultural victory for the first time at Noble level. It's pretty tricky because you have to get loads of religions going to get the religious buildings. Excellent fun though. Must be time to try Prince level now.

 

Go for space race, most allround victory, a little war, a lot of science and you need a solid culture. The purely military victory conditions turn into micromanagement hell in my opinion.

 

Space Race is my fallback victory condition if it looks like I'm going to struggle to get one of the others. I will usually set out for either domination or culture but if it all goes pearshaped then I'll pull the Star Trek card.

I would like to try the One City Challenge one day as well.

 

I seldom have a game last that long. Either a war to annex more turf gets out of hand or someone tries something to get a fight started...

 

I'm going to have a go at this Successive Game of the Month

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=205978&page=9

The idea is that you get into a team and each team member plays a set number of turns before saving the game and passing it on to the next team member. You compete against other teams who got the same initial starting saved game. Each game has a different objective (e.g. earliest Cultural Victory) and they have nifty graphs on the website to track each team's progress. Sounds like a laugh and would be the closest I would ever get to 'online gaming' because you still play the actual game by yourself in single player mode before handing over to the next person.

 

I'm new to this forum, not sure if this topic is active anymore, but let's give it a try.

Been playing civ4 for some weeks now, and did a pretty good job on prince lvl recently.
Got a culture victory around 1980. I used custom_continents and somehow every1 was at 1 continent, was able to conquer 3, but the 4th took to long, after a while 3 cities became legendary so I won.
Second I became better in my tactics and didn't have any trouble in getting a domination victory around 1800. Only resistance I got was a few fighters damaging my slth bombers in the end .
now I have a game on monarch lvl, am around 1700, in the lead 2900 pts towards 2000 pts of the 2nd place. already in modern age, about 10 techs to go.

My general tactic is to chop wood asap, getting production in quickly, start with 2 workers and then a settler... usually I have stonehenge, pyramids, oracle and parthenon before 1 AD.
In close contact with an AI I build a city in a forested area close to them, and rush a barracks and a few swords to invade 'm quickly.
If I have good ground for 8-9 cities to grow nicely I don't bother with war till I have tanks and bombers.

gonna try the warlords expansion soon, according to what I read here it has some cool features

 

Warlords is geared more towards combat and fighting. Also, if you get the patch, the AI is better at managing their cities, so the game becomes much harder...

It forces you to go on the offensive early and keep the hammer down...