Civ IV

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Things just got interesting.

- After pounding Hammarubi almost into dust, he capitulated to Caesar, and the latter declared war on me! He had infantry and machine guns, and he attacked the weak point of my empire - by this time Hammarubi had also got infantry and it was difficult to continue my invasion, as I had lost momentum. But he agreed to capitulate to me, instead, and I was able to make peace with Caesar.

- For the short peace, I focused on making Marines, and then, soon after, Tanks. Both were outside of his current technology level.

- Quite suddenly, Cyrus and Caesar declared war on me altogether! This was not good - I had focused on an invasion against Caesar and so my military production had been focused on the Southern part of my empire. The Northern (formerly Babylonian) parts were loosely defended by units left from my original invasion, and I was focusing on rebuilding commerce there.

- I went through with my original plan and attacked Caesar - I have so far taken four of his cities, including Rome. The rest are relatively unimportant and his empire is more or less ruined. But he had cunningly capitulated to Cyrus, who is eating up my Babylonian empire whole, with tanks of his own. I think I will quickly destroy Caesar, then move my attentions towards Cyrus.

- Right now, Cyrus has about the same amount of land and population as me, which is quite dangerous. He also has a half-dozen Great Generals running around somewhere. But no matter - I have the tech lead and I should be able to take him down.

 

Just finished my first Monarch game with Incas, which went surprisingly well, considering I played the game in many short sessions. I actually came very close to winning a space race victory, but in the final stages AI was just stronger. Joao launched his ship just few turns before me but Suleiman beat us both with a cultural victory. AI acts differently in Monarch and unhappiness becomes an issue but otherwise it wasn't as hard as I thought.

 

Just finished my first Prince win with Mali. It was surprisingly smooth after I crippled the Aztec early on with a skimisher rush - these guys are impressive for their age. A strength 4 archer with extra first strikes? Nice. I was planning a spaceship win but got a cultural one first.

Surprisingly, I still didn't get the points I got with Germany on warlord level - I didn't even come close.

 

From what I have seen, score seem independent of difficulty level, which seems really odd. If you play a game on Warlord and win in the middle ages, and the play on Prince and win in the industrial era, you'll get more points for the Warlord game, even though it was a lot harder to do. This was NOT how the scoring worked in previous iterations of the game. In those games there was a multiplier based on difficulty level, so unless you were able to finish a LOT earlier, a higher difficulty game typically resulted in more points than one at the easier levels.

I tried one game on Monarch, and I got absolutely owned. When I got into Civ again a few months ago, the highest difficulty level I was able to win on was Noble. I can now win consistently on Prince. IMO, the jump in difficulty from Prince to Monarch is great. I didn't have too much of a problem with unhappiness (you basically need one more happy face than do you do on Prince), but as you stated the AI seem MUCH better. Also, I think Monarch is the difficulty where the AI starts getting a head start on you. I think they start with both a settler and a worker.

 

There could also be an initial archer - in my game I made a very early contact with Sitting Bull, but he already had an archer defending his capital. 2 quechuas still did the trick .

AI is better, and also more daring, even foolish. During the game I got attacked just twice, first by Hannibal, who managed to captured one of my colonies with a sneak attack. His invading force, however, was very weak and I recaptured the city easily. After that Hannibal didn't really do anything, and we came along fine after this brief skirmish. Later Tokugawa was really optimistic as he made a pointless attack to my continent with a small and outdated force. At that point I had defensive pact with Suleiman, whose military power was unequalled plus he had Justinian as his vassal. Tokugawa ended up losing most of his navy and 4-5 cities. I didn't see much point in either of these half-hearted aggressions.

I was leading the tech race most of the time, but in modern time Joao made some kind of giant leap and he went ahead. I don't know if he bulbed some tech(s) or what, but he got Robotics and Genetics really fast. The same happened earlier with regarding army. Suleiman had a small advantage in military power, but suddenly, in a few decades his army was 2 times bigger than mine - although I kept pumping battleships and tanks at the same time.

 

My early strategy in teching is always get Code of Laws early. In fact, I usually try to get it by constructing the Oracle, which means Priesthood is also an early priority, although that and the prerequisites are cheap techs. Generally, I start out by getting the Wheel and whatever techs I need to access resources in the immediate vicinity of my capital (things like Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Fishing, Mining, sometimes Masonry). Now, you often start with at least one of these, and if you don't have a need for it, I'll obviously skip it and come back to it later. After that it's Bronze Working.

My question is this - assuming you have Bronze Working, Code of Laws via the Oracle, and have the techs you need to access all of your early resources, what do you guys go for next? I see four possible options, and granted some of them are dependent upon what type of victory condition you are shooting for. As I see it, the next goal should be one of the following: Drama, Calendar, Currency, or Optics. What are you preferences, and why?

 

This scenario sounds very familiar. From the four options given I very often take either Drama or Currency. With Drama path the idea is to get Music first, as I like techs which give a free GP. It also leads to Philosophy, which is good for several reasons. In a culture game this path is obvious. With Currency the reasoning is simple: mo' money. Free trade routes don't give much, but Markets combined with Courthouses usually start my rise from the economic slump. Calendar is an option only if there's a lot of resources needing Plantation. Optics would my the last choice, as in the circumstances given there's usually plenty of unclaimed land area available. Caravels and whaling boats don't seem to be a huge asset at this point, although it's always better to find other civs before they find you.

 

Optics would be an option not because of Caravels and whaling boats (IMO, whales are the least common resource in the game), but because they allow you to build harbors, which increase money from trade routes and give a boost to health.

 

The jump from Prince to Monarch is not really any greater than the jump from Noble to Prince. The main thing you're noticing is that Monarch requires new tactics. The things that work on Noble don't work on Monarch, but different things do work. For example, tech trading. Tech trading is nearly useless on Noble because you end up teching faster than the AI. But on Monarch, the AI will often tech faster than you, so you can progress faster by getting them to do the research for you. This means you can often win a Monarch game more quickly than you can win a Noble game.

 

I've tried using Gilgamesh to fast-tech to priesthood (which allows the oracle and his courthouse/ziggurat), but for whatever reason I always fall behind. It's strange, his combination (protective+creative) appears quite decent, and the special unit isn't half bad either.

 

Yeah, but that's a big difference. On Prince the AI is given slight advantages over you, but nothing that you cannot overcome with superior planning. Not so on Monarch. (They also get an extra worker to start IIRC, which is another big advantage.)

The Sumerians never did much for me. The Zigguart doesn't do anything more than a regular courthouse, and getting it built a little earlier isn't a great advantage if you use the Oracle slingshot. The Vulture is a slight improvement over an axeman, as it only gets +25% against melee. So it's the same 7.5 rating against melee as an axeman, and a slightly better 6 compared to 5 for everything else, like archers and mounted units. So you would still be a signficant underdog to a chariot, and an archer behind city walls. You would move up to even odds against a horse archer, possibly a slight favorite if you got a terrain bonus.

 

Well, the Ziggy is cheaper and available earlier... though of course an organized Civ gets an even cheaper courthouse when it gets the tech, but it's still something. The vulture scales better due to higher base price, so it should be able to supplant swordsmen against cities. That S6 is a flat 20% higher than S5, and scales better with promotions.

It's just that despite looking ok on paper, for some reason I can't seem to tech as fast with Sumeria. Maybe it's a matter of starting position or AI civs. BTW, how is Korea? I never quite compared their Hwacha to regular catapults... I prefer using artillery against cities, pretty much.

 

IMO, the Hwacha isn't going to help you much for attacking cities, as cities usually aren't defended with melee units. (Unless I'm mistaken, the Hwacha is exactly like a catapult with the exception of getting a bonus against melee units.) The collateral damage is the same so against, for example, a longbowman, a Hwacha is exactly the same as a catapult, and both are greatly outclassed by a trebucet for city attacks.

 

AI isn't very keen on trading techs in Monarch IMO. Even when you have good relationship with someone, AI won't trade techs with 1:1 ratio - you'll have to give more. With 2-3 willing trade partners and clever trading it's probably possible to stay ahead in the race.

On Monarch AI gets at least Archery for free - I tried a game last night and Bismarck had an archer after 6 turns. I wonder if there's more freebies for AI?

 

Probably.


I'm curious. Why is it that after becoming the 2nd highest rated nation in the Beyond the Sword senario where you play an American Indian faction (the Spanish may drop off their diseases but are often so small compared to the other factions they are a minor power at best) I'm I given the 2nd worst rating as a leader if I decide to retire 17 turns early?

I researched every tech it has options for there. Avoided being broke (my treasury was decidedly growing after I started building banks). And ran the Yucatan. I wasn't going to have time to finish my attack on the Aztecs but I figure with more time I would have had them.

Why did it say I lost when I retired? I left the Spanish alive and serving as a nice buffer (with only 2 cities) along my border and a larger faction.

 

Second serious try on Monarch (with Huayna Capac) yielded a diplomatic victory . Space race or domination victory would have also been possible, but I wanted to end it quick.Didn't have a big plan, my only policy was to keep good relations with neighbouring Isabella (=same religion), which worked out great all game long. Good timing on offensive wars, especially near the end: I noticed that Sitting Bull had 3 strong culture cities - capturing all three with a pre-emptive war eliminated his chances. Actually, I had to give the UN city back to Sitting Bull in order to win. Otherwise it would have been me vs. Isabella, which would have put my only ally against me.

Standard cottage economy with financial leader works out fine on monarch. I lead the tech race almost all the time, with research at 70-80% and some tech trading (again with bad ratio).

 

I don't play the scenarios, so I cannot be sure. However, what were the victory conditions for that campaign? If you failed to meet the victory conditions, then you lost. Even if "time" victory is possible, that's having the highest score after X number of turns, so if you failed to meet the other victory conditions, and then retired prematurely, you would have lost. Other than that, I cannot help you.

 

Is it just me, or do some AI leaders show up much more frequently than others? I seem to run into Sitting Bull, Wang Kon, Pacal II, Hannibal, and Hammarubi a lot. I have a slight suspicion that BtS leaders have higher chances of showing up. I've very rarely met Elizabeth or any of the Russians, for example.

 

Really? I almost never get Hammurabi or Hannibal.

 

Firstly, it depends on the leader. Mansa Musa will trade just about any tech with you any time, whereas you pretty much to sleep with Tokugawa to get him to trade to you.

Secondly, the trick is not about getting a good deal from one AI. It's about getting an OK deal from several. There are certain key techs that you can get to first by beelining and then trade to several AIs and backfill loads of other techs for. This speeds up your tech progress hugely, meaning you can usually finish Monarch level games much faster than you can finish Noble level games.