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.

...

*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 Civ Fanatics website.

There are plenty of mods there, and I can recommend many of them. The Great Options Mod 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 Greenmod 2.10 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 Winmerge 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.

I'm not much into modding, strangely enough. Not exactly sure why.

That aside, what do you guys do for city placement? Do you usually stick to the blue circles? I'm realizing that Civ4 is largely resource-driven, but there's also city maitnence costs to consider.

Also, what civilizations do you prefer? I started playing the Americans because of Roosevelt's traits (and partily because I'm biased). Doing some trolling on some Civ4 forums, I see that a lot of people are crazy for Russia's Catherine. What leadership traits seem to stand out the most?

Also, civics have me confused the most right now, I think (now that religion is essentially a culutural machine, and a source of income if discovered first). I'm not entirely sure how they interact with the forms of government, and largely affect the cities. I'll do so more trolling if I get the time, but I have some actual work to do this afternoon so I might not be able to.

Besides how each civic and government works, and the pros/cons of the leadership traits, I think I have this game figured out - just need more facetime with it to refine my choices.

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 like Frederick of the Germans, more leaders and more culture, hoorah!
Plus I like the techs you start with, in the early game I consider having scouts straight away quite important in getting the goody huts, if you can get some good ones (once, I got 2 villagers straight away) which can be quite a boost.

I usually try to have as many religions as possible, and thus as many temples as possible because my favourite leader is the philosophical one. Not just because he can build holy shrines, but also because his super specialist is, I think, the most useful in the game (+1Production, +3 gold iirc). If you then merge Mercentilism(1 free specialist) and the politics one that gives you +3 science/specialist, you can speed through the techs quite quickly.

MoE, I used to be a lot like that with wonders too, restarting the entire game just because I missed one, and even now I swing between largely ignoring the wonders and obsessing about them. Also managed to get all religions once too, when I got all the holy shrines omg so much money and so many philosphical leaders! I had 100% science rate for a lot of the game and was still running at an immense profit!

Yeah, i've had games where I was swimming in gold!

Have you ever played Civ 3 Laitainion? I found that once I got to 50,000 gold the game would slow down considerably and occaisionally crashed.

...But we're talking abot civ 4, not 3.

Since I had to reformat my computer a week or two ago, most of what i've said about the mods so far has been from memory. I haven't actually got any mods installed yet, but i'll reinstall them once i've posted this. Civ4 is obviously already installed.

The first mod i'm going to install is the Great Options mod. In case you guys haven't checked it yet, this is what it does:



I'm also going to install the Greenmod 2.10 Resources mod (Adds Ancient Temples, Barley, Coffee, Cotton, Hemp, Lemons, Pearls, Potatoes, Salt, Sulphur, and Tobacco as resources in the game WITHOUT replacing any existing resources) and the 3-Square city radius mod. (Obviously this mod makes cities have a 3-Square radius instead of 2-Square radius)

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For Civics, it really depends what state my civ is in and what my focus is - in times of war, I use the civics to boost production of units/get free promotions. When i'm building improvements I choose civics based on build bonuses, and so on.

I generally find that by the end of the game, for Government civics, I have Representation for the Science and trade bonus, or Universal Sufferage for the extra town hammers and ability to spend gold to finish improvements.

For legal civics, I tend to have Bureaucracy for the Hammer and Gold bonus, or free Speech for the Culture bonus. (You can NEVER have too much culture)

For Labour civics, I tend to have Caste system for the unlimited specialists, or Emancipation if I want to give my enemies a hard time with the happiness problems.

For Economy civics, I tend to have Mercantilism for the extra specialist, or Environmentalism for the health bonus. (Since my cities NEED it by the end of the game)

And for Religion civics, I tend to go for Pacifism for the or Free religion for the science bonus.

Anyone up for some 2v2 gaming for a hour or two a day?

On warlords btw.

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.

Haven't played it in a long time, and I've only had the game slow down during the late game, but that's simply because of all the units and cities it had to deal with. (that's with Conquests)

As for a game of Civ4, maybe once I've got Warlords (unless we play Vanilla) although I've never played any civ online ever, so...

Same here, so don't worry about it, Laitanion.

Good old Play. Shoulda guessed that they had it.

I have to look into getting Warlords. I've been meaning to, but I keep forgetting.

Ditto, I'm ashamed to say I wasn't even sure when it was coming out...

i have civ4, though i prefer civ2

if anyones up for a game in 2 weeks, let me know.

Wheeee! Warlords arrived today, and I'm loving the additions!

Churchill with Protective and Charismatic fits my style of play beautifully, although I don't know I'm really ready to play humans at this point. Although if someone doesn't mind having me as a liability, I wouldn't mind a game at some point.

I was liking Mr. Washington's new leadership traits. Plus, I seem to be a sucker for end-game war (I do the same thing in BoTF) so I enjoy the nava seals. Perhaps I should retool my strategy a tad and not drag my games out so much.

I can't contribute too much on this topic since I haven't been able to play Civ 4 since last Spring break, about the time some event, which will remain unknown, happened that fried my graphics card and hard drive, but I do have some advice for single player modes.

1. engage in a 'Wonder Race', in other words construct every wonder in the game and denying them to other civilizations
2. strategically build wonders to compliment a citiy and its surroundings
3. build wonders with similar benefits in cities dedicated to the charicteristics of that wonder resulting in hub cities for art, science, unit production and so forth.
4. don;t underestimate the importance of forts, they should be built and garrisoned to allow for rapid response to any attack or enemy prescene. They also act as effective buffer zones to prevent enemies from cruising through your territories unopposed
5. choose your tech path based on specific goals or the situations as they unfold. For example if you plan rapid expansion, go for techs leading up to railroads, or if you are concerened about attack focus on weapons tech because it is idiotic to want and even playing field in war.
6. Some wonders have benefits that are not easily replaced. Focus on developing toward tech goals without choosing techs that will make your important wonders obsolete before you are ready to loose what the wonder has to offer
7. If fighting a war and your opponent has a holy city within your forces reach, raze it, it will deal a huge blow to your enemies morale and also deny them funds. Doing this will also eliminate some competition for any religion founded in your borders.
* this should only be done in the event that your oppenent is not well liked by anyone else or it will help bring empires to your enemies cause; also, this should only be done if you have no hope of capturing and keeping the city from being recaptured.
8. If no religion was founded in your empire than capture and hold an enemies holy city at all costs so that you can reap the benefits instead of them. If this is done expect a lot of trouble from inside and out of your captured holy city. The brutal truth is that unless a cultural conversion took place to sway the population of a city to join you it is often easier to just destroy the city and built in its ashes in Civ 4.