Civ IV

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Right, let's go.

Last thread about this was '07, so I feel justified to start a new one.

Started a new game last night - Dutch. Playing a naval map. Willem's Creative + Financial is great, especially since I've got the Colossus (+1 on all water plots, that's +4 for every coast!), and I'm going to get incredibly rich once my cities start growing.

I'm just about to discover Astronomy. Almost time to Colonize the whole world!

 

What level?

 

Just Noble.
Yeah, I'm not really good at the game yet.

 

Better than me, I'll warrant. Just bought the game recently, and I can't say I have much of a clue of what I'm doing. I've been reading through the older thread here and followed Gnarff's link to CivFanatics, but I can't quite wrap my head around all of it.

The thing that's got me confounded the most at the moment is the improvements you can build, and how they affect your city growth. Money's easy enough to understand, but the production and food thingies I can't quite put in the picture yet. I suspect that you need food to keep your city growing, but I can't seem to find out how much is required for various city sizes. And does every tile that has a food resource or whatever on it automatically contribute to your city when it's within your sphere of influence, or do you need to build something on that tile to reap the benefits?

 

You need 2 food for each person in your city. Any more than that goes into storage to grow your population. So, the more food in your city's 20 square cross, the bigger the population it can grow to. You can't have a strong city without a decent source of food (usually clams, fish, sheep, corn, wheat, rice, or cows).

 

Most tiles have an innate food source - those next to rivers have a bonus (they're represented by bread). You don't HAVE to build improvements on them (but eventually you should build improvements on all your city's useable tiles), unless they're special resources (cow, pig, sheep, clam, fish etc).

 

It's useful to count up the potential food value of your city's big fat cross in order to determine its potential before you decide on the exact position to settle on.

Civ IV is pretty much the only game I play these days. More than happy to discuss that game here.

 

So, Harbs - what difficulty do you play on? Favourite Civ and leaders?

I haven't played much of the game, to be honest. Creative is probably my favourite trait, as it saves many precious turns getting a Monument/Theatre/religion into new cities. Yes, I know, Stonehenge - but there's so many other things to do early game. I had a blast when I played Catherine - Imperialistic and Creative is such a nice combination, and allows tactical early expansion.

Thinking about Pericles next (Philosophical/Creative). Three current games running: Dutch, Byzantine, and Persia (Cyrus). Justinian is quite a powerful leader, and his unique building is great. Going for a pure domination game with Cyrus, and I've eradicated Germany and most of America. Lack of Creative really bites, though, as most of my conquered cities are still sitting with no expansion.

 

My next question would have been: But what do you need city growth for? But I think I've figured that one out - the bigger the population, the more tiles you can work. Which I suppose would then mean that you can never reap the full benefit of all the squares in your sphere of influence, as you'll never have enough population to work them all. Or am I wrong there?

 

It is quite possible to use all the tiles, your city population just needs to be in the 20s (the max is 30). So, yes, finding a site with lots of food is PARTIALLY important for a successful city.

I said partially because in my opinion, it's well worth founding a city with crappy food conditions if you get a few special resources out of it. Your major cities, however, should have lots of food tiles.

 

I'm more of a cultural victory player.

And you need city growth for eumm... I think it increases productivity. But only if your culture is good enough.

 

Your cities can become huge if you play them properly. The other benefits of having lots of food are:
- you can run specialists like scientists or priests if you have excess food. These provide extra benefits and can also help generate very powerful Great People the management of which are essential to success at the higher levels
- you can use the Slavery civic to whip-rush buildings safe in the knowledge that your population will grow back quickly (i.e. converting food into hammers)

I usually play on Monarch level, but have managed to win on all levels (although it requires a near perfect setup for me to win on Deity level).

 

I have been able to win beyond the third difficulty level (the one above Warlord), which I believe is Noble. Perhaps because I don't use specialists much is a reason for this.

Do you have any useful tips? My strategy in this department is obviously lacking.

My normal style of game play is to get Code of Laws ASAP (with the exception of a few early techs like Fishing and Animal Husbandry to access the resources I have immediate access to) to give me the ability to build courthouses. I find without courthouses I'm in a world of trouble when it comes to acquiring new techs.

I would presume that in order to run a specialist economy you a ton o' food, as every specialist takes away a square you can use on the city cross. I usually focus on maximizing hammers, so if I go to maximizing food, this is a major change in game play for me.

 

My strategy is always a mixed one, I mostly tend to aim for lots of cottages as they tend to pay off best when developed. Make sure there is food for at least 20 population and then maximizing trade and hammers. Then again I always quit my games in disgust above monarch as I can't handle set backs. Have not done the maths but I can't convince myself that specialists are better than cottages and not to mention that larger cities are more prone to unrest and squalor.

 

I think the same way joacquin - I always play to win the tech battle, and the best way to do that is maximize trade, and spamming cottages is the best way to do so - or so I think. Like I said, apparently my strategy is flawed, as HB wins on higher difficulties than I do.

 

You can succeed through cottages or specialists, or a combination of the two, but it's important to stick to your strategy and use all the synergies you can.

For example, the following things go together:
- Philosophical leader (more Great people)
- Running lots of specialists (more great people)
- Running Representation (extra science from specialists)
- Running Caste System (can have more specialists)
- Making farms instead of cottages (more food for more specialists)
- Running Pacifism (more great people)
- Building Parthenon (more great people)
- Running Mercantilism (extra free specialist)
- Building Statue of Liberty (another free specialist)
- Using all those great people to lightbulb key technologies for you at critical times in the game
- Using great people to set off Golden Ages to power you ahead
- Using a great scientist for an Academy in your Bureaucracy and Oxford University powered super science Capital city
- Using a carefeully planned Great Engineer to rush the critical Wonder that supports your strategy
- Going to war with your neighbours (don't have to worry about them pillaging your hard earned Towns).

So you see that all of these elements work together and exponentially multiply each other's impacts to maximum effect.

You can also run a super-powerful cottage based economy by choosing a range of other options that complement each other as well.

The key is to choose a strategy and execute it consistently. If you try and do bits and pieces of things half heartedly, you get slaughtered at the highest levels.

Another common trick for success at the higher levels is achieving strategic advantages from clever tricks that the AI never thinks of.

For example, a standard manoeuvre is the Civil Service slingshot. If you plan your progress properly, you can build the Oracle at just the right time for when you've finished researching the prerequisites for Civil Service. If you can get Civil Service for free, you gain a huge advantage over the AI because:
a) Civil Service is an expensive tech at that stage of the game; and
b) you can get an early switch to Bureaucracy, which massively powers up your capital city, which at that stage of the game is a huge part of your still small empire.

If you pull off the CS slingshot, you will find yourself well on the path to victory at levels right up to Deity (but it's pretty hard to execute at that level when the AI techs so quickly).

 

HB,

Thanks for the help. I consider you the resident expert on this game.

To be honest, I don't think I've ever ran mercantilism. By a "free specialist" I take it that means that you get a priest, scientist, engineer, etc in each of your cities that doesn't cost you one of your workers on the map? So if you had a city at size 5, you could be working 5 tiles and still get a specialist of your choice (provided you have constructed the appropriate building in that city)?

What types of specialist to you tend to use? Do you try and get a range of different specialists to get all different types of great people, or do you limit your specialist to great people you really want to generate. (For example, I would imagine you don't need nearly as many great artists or great merchants as some of the others.) Other than the specific instances you outlined above, do you tend to use your great people to start golden ages or have them become residents (effectively super specialists) in the city?

At what point do you start using specialists in your cities? What do you think is an acceptable city size for beginning to use specialists while still maintaining a decent rate of growth? What specialists would you focus on early? (Although I guess really early, you don't have much choice - it's priest or nothing.)

Hmmm... Perhaps I'll give this specialist economy thing a go of it. I'll try to pick whichever leader is both philisophical and organized. (Which I think may be one of the Greek leaders.)

 

Great questions, Aldeth.

Just as the specialist economy is a particular strategic path, so there are sub-paths within that that use different specialists. But to answer your questions:

• if a city has enough food-rich tiles, it can run a scientist specialist the moment it finishes its library. It might only be very small at that point, but getting that first scientist out achieves two things: it usually increases your science rate, plus you soon get a Great Scientist which can be used for an Academy
• this really highlights why it is so very important to choose the sites for you cities well. In earlier versions of Civ, you could plonk your cities anywhere and wouldn't make THAT much difference. Civ 4 is much more unforgiving of poor city site placement. If you find a site with 4 food resources, it can pump out great people like there's no tomorrow
• sometimes you have so much food that your city would grow too quickly if you didn't use specialist (or slavery) to keep the population down until you develop more health and happiness tools
• I forgot to mention that you would always build National Epic in your main Great Person producing city as well
• Great Scientists are my most common Great Person, but others that can be used in certain circumstances are:
  • a Great Prophet if you've founded a religion and have a plan to build that religion's shrine in your holy city, build all the commerce buildings and Wall Street in that city, and spread your religion all over the world to create a super gold producing city
  • a Great Engineer, as part of a Metal Casting slingshot, in order to get a particular crucial wonder in place
  • Great Artists are the cornerstone of a Cultural victory game plan. It's possible to achieve cultural victory at the highest levels by about 1400 AD if you can pump out enough Great Artists and use all of them to bomb culture into your 3 target cities
  • each Great Person also has a Corporation that they can start (which is a whole other topic of strategic conversation)

The main lesson here is that if you want to win at the higher levels, you're not going to be able to do it by following the same strategies you have been all over again. You need to try some different ideas - there are many different paths to victory at the higher levels and part of the fun of this game is finding all the different strategies that work.

 

I see, but ideally, wouldn't you want your main GP-producing city to be your very first city? You aren't guaranteed with starting with a great food-producing area. It's never a bad place - you almost always get 2 food resources in your starting city, and it's not that uncommon for you to start near a river or lake.

The other change in strategy that I have to make is I evidently don't have to be so hell-bent on expansion. In most of my games, I don't build much of anything beyond a unit for defense, a worker, and then settlers, settlers, and more settlers. The goal being to get as many cities started as I can as early as I can. You obviously want to acquire as many special resources as you can, but I will build cities even if there is no special resource nearby - sometimes you get lucky and you build your city near a special resource that you have not yet revealed.

I also realize I may have been wasting my GP. I would always use my scientists to build academies, I would use engineers to hurry wonder production, and I would use prophets to build temples in any city(ies) that had founded a religion. (I notice that I usually found both Confucianism and Taoism.) All the other GP would be used for one of two purposes - if I wanted the tech they could research, I'd spend them on that, or otherwise, I'd use them to start Golden Ages.

 

In Civ IV, cities are expensive. A poorly placed city will cost more than it brings you in benefits. If you expand too quickly in the early game, sometimes it can slow your commerce down too much, until you can get Code of Laws for courthouses.

There are so many nuances to this game.