Mostly for MOE, but for anyone else that wants to chip in....

I just picked up Civ4. I've played the first three several times and am very profecient at them (even though I take my sweet time beating them).

However, Civ4 seems to be a whole different animal - particularly religion. I'm not entirely sure what the benefit of religion is. Also, I'm at a loss for what technology paths to take. In III, I pretty much went up to Philosophy for the free tech advances, and then a beeline to Literature for the Great Library, then a beeline for Darwinism for another tech advantage, then purely military techs. It stalled my offensive capability, but quickly made up for it - particularly once the Great Library is built. I mean, I literally skipped everything except what was required for Literature. Once that badboy was built, I'd end up recieving about 10 techs, including the basic ones I skipped. Like sailing, metal working, etc.

Oh, Invention was an important one too. I HAD to have the Great Library and Leonardo's Workshop. Yay for automatic upgrades.

For Civ4, I'm definitely lost on a tech path, and some of the importance of the religion concept in terms of game play. Lastly, I'm also curious to see how you set up a new town. I've always built barracks first, and I'm curious if it's prudent to still do so.

Moe, you're fired. This has been up for over five hours with no response. So fired.
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-Azh







(disclaimer: I'm just ragging on ya. But there had better be a response by tomorrow or you're really fired!
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-Azh








(disclaimer2: I'm just ragging on ya... again. Can't help it ))

hey Azhdeen, I'm another big fan of the Civ series, although I never played the first one.

First off, religion, I think it's a great addition to the game and can be a really useful tool in world domination. For starters, if a city has the same religion as the state religion, it automatically gains +2 culture a turn, which is particularly useful for new cities.
Secondly, if you own the holy city (where the religion was founded), and get a great prophet, you can build the religions holy shrine in said city, you get 1 gold per turn per city in the entire world that has that religion. Also, by owning the Holy City, and having it match your state religion, you gain line of sight to every city that has that religion.
Religion also helps make certain civics more appealing, just of the top of my head, organised religion and theocracy give you a building construction bonus/unit experience bonus in cities with the state religion. If you choose free religion, you get an extra happy person for each non-state religion present in a city (which is basically every religion as you won't have a state religion).
Each religion you have in a city also allows you to build the temple, as well as other religious buildings, of that religion. Lots of temples = larger, happier city + lots and lots of culture.

The final way that religion can influence the game is in the AI's choices of state religion. Basically, if your state religion is the same, they'll like you more, if not, they'll dislike you more. Refusing to convert to the AI's state religion will also worsen relations.
As you can see, religion can have a *huge* affect on the course of a game, and if you manage to found a religion and spread it widely around, you'll find yourself with a more friends, more money, and happier people, which is always good.

As for the barracks thing, I usually build walls, and then barracks, because the defensive bonus afforded by the walls is better than 4 more xp points for new units in the short term, but it's entirely up to you. I don't think it's really a problem as long as you're not fanatical about doing it when it's obviously a bad idea.
Hope this helps.

Ok. So... in a nutshell... I shouldn't be so critical on limiting religion in my civilization to just one? For example, in my second game ever, I tried pretty hard to just limit my cities to Christianity only. It didn't work easily, but I was trying to minimize any gains that other civilizations could get.

This also sounds like it should be a major goal to found every religion if possible. I'll try that out the next time I play.

I've been playing Duel-sized worlds on Settler difficulty with pangea continents simply because things seem a lot different. I quit the first game, but won the second game without engaging in a single battle. Essentially, I won by just building culuture buildings, and I'm glad that concept is still around from Civ3 - I liked it a lot.

Also, I typically built a barracks before *anything* else, even defensive units. Of course, if it's on the boarder of a warmonger or other exceptions, I obviously rearrange my build priorities. However, the very next thing in the queue is the best (usually) defensive unit available to me, and then culture buildings to expand my sphere of influence.

What technology paths do you usually travel through first? Are there any techs you consider to be required to get asap? Gunpowder, I noticed, is huge - understandably so - in terms of military, plus the fact that it leads to so many new technologies.

I'm in the process of finding an early-game strategy. With what I've played so far, I've found it to be difficult to descern because I can't really tell how my decisions are impacting the game and setting myself up for the mid-to-late game.

Actually, I DID reply. I spent about an hour typing it up but my computer crashed before I could click the post button.

Ask Raiden if you don't believe me, he can attest to my computer crashing.

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*Starting from scratch*

As Laitainion said, Religion is great because of the Culture bonus it gives.

If you build the special religion wonders (These AREN'T world wonders, but are wonders that can only be built by Great Prophets, eg. Temple of Solomon for Jewish cities) then you get additional benefits, such as additional income from other cities with the same religion.

Religions can become a bargaining tool in diplomacy as well. Rivals civs will approve of you for "defending the faith" if you have the same religion as them. If you have a different religion though, they may request you to convert, or could even go into a full-blown holy war over it.

Having the additional culture is great if you prefer to "attack" through culture. As your borders expand, you may start to influence the borders of nearby civs - which can result in you stealing land from them, or even better, stealing a city from them!

I've had this happen to me a few times in my modded game, and trust me when I say that it's helped favour me considerably in the game.

Temples and Monasteries certainly help increase the output of your cities, although I find they can be slow to build. It's definitely worth building them though.

Azhdeen, i've actually managed to found every Religion once before. You have to be super-fast to do so though, and make sure you've got as many research bonuses as you can get. I've even installed a mod to add the Shinto religion to my game as well! (It's got a horrible religion founding sound effect though! )

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For defense, I build Archer or Gunpowder units, with a small amount of other units for the special combat bonuses. It takes a much stronger enemy force to break through a combined force, especially if they are trained well.For that end, I always build a barracks first, although early on I build an Obelisk for the culture increase. You can NEVER have too much culture!

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As for technology, it's more open than in previous civ games. It's possible to get all the way up to Nuclear Fusion without ever researching mining!

This might sound strange, but it allows you to focu on particular tech types - offensive techs, culture techs, etc. It actually works quite well, and allows players to decide if they want a balanced civ, or a specialised one.

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For modding the game, I frequent the website.

There are plenty of mods there, and I can recommend many of them. The is one of the best though. It incorporates 30 of the best mods for Civ 4 into one customisable mod - you can choose precisely which mods you want to work and which one you don't in-game as well.

I'd also recommend installing the resources-only mod componenet of the That adds some nice resources to the game, WITHOUT removing any existing ones.

Modding the game can be an experience though. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, you can seriously mess the game up - but you can always reinstall so it doesn't matter.

I've been poking around in the program files, so I know what sorts of things to look out for when modding the game. A nice little program I found called also helps me to merge my mods, so you guys might want to try it out.

It compares two separate documents and highlights the differences, allowing you to make changes as neccessary to the original or copy. It then allows you to individually save or discard the changes for each file.

It's a great little program, and i've also used it to mod Armada as well.

French. French French French French French.

If you hadn't guessed yet, I play as the French, with Louis XIV as my leader. The only reason for this though is because of Louis's Wonder-Building bonus. The bonuses that you get from building the Wonders is just so great that I can't afford to not have them. Besides, I sulk if an enemy civ manages to build a Wonder before I do.

It doesn't really matter though. I know how to mod the game to adjust the leader bonuses - in fact I already have.

I installed the improved leader traits mod (I can't remember the actual name of it off the top of my head) as a basis, then modded it further. Instead of having one or two small bonuses, each leader in my game now has many large bonuses, as well as some disadvantages. Since each leader has larger bonuses, the balance of power hasn't shifted in any particular direction. I mostly just like having bonuses.

I also have the improved civics mod, which massively changed the bonuses of the civics in my game. Each civic has many, many large bonuses, but they also have large disadvantages as well, eg. "Religious" civcs have a severe research penalty, but in exchange they increase morale, trade/income, culture, and even construction rates. Others, such as Environmentalism, have been changed to simply make more sense. Environmentalism now provides a morale and trade bonus for every jungle or woodland square within the city radius, at the expense of production.

It's a very well-balanced mod, and I think it enhances the gameplay considerably because you have to put more thought into the civics than you would normally.

For now, I'm trying to stay out of the mods. I'm trying to come up with a basic approach for the game. The last thing I need to do is change everything and come up with another strategy.

Having said that, what civics do you usually employ that exist in the original game? I did a lot of browsing on the Civ Fanatics Center forums yesterday, and saw some engaging discussions on city placement and the effects of corruption (distance from a government center). It has definitely influenced my decision process on city placement, and will take it into account as I settle continents.

Going over the civics, I think they already have a deep impact on the game, although I agree some of them could be changed. Envornmentalism, as you suggest, could use a slight improvement. It already gives a morale bonus if there are forests/jungles in city radius. However, it seems the bonus only occurs once and not for each tile that is forest/jungle which would probably make more sense.

However, for the sake of discussion and strategy, I almost always try to stay with the base game as often as possible. Plus, I'm not really sure if I'd use envornmentalism anyways :p Also, I don't know what impact mods have on multiplayer play.

I'm still trying to work out the benefits of the leadership bonuses. I was going to review them in the next couple minutes, and hopefully I'll come up with some intreguing leaders to try. I'm probably going to go with Catherine next game.

So yeah... what about those civics? :p

I'm going on holiday on saturday, I'd have to demod my game, and I haven't got Warlords. Where did you get it from by the way?

I've been in Game and the sales guy hadn't even heard of it! Gamestation didn't have it in stock and HMV said it isn't out until tomorrow!

It's been available on Amazon.com for about a week, I think. I heart Amazon.

Play.com.