Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Doom]

Discussion of how you play the game. The more specific, the better.

My preferred opening strategy is to slam-dunk Hinduism(comp always rushes Buddhism), toss up Stonehenge for the guaranteed First Great Prophet, and erect my Religion's Great Building. Then I missionary to every other city in the world for cash to cut down on maintenance costs as I expand and to use Organized Religion Civic for +25% production.

The problem is that I've been trying a few games recently and taking peeks every 20-30 turns at the computer via world builder. How the fuck do these bastards make 10+ city empires before the Classical era? They can reach 20 by the time Gunpowder is getting thrown around. I start getting grievous -20 per turn gold maintenance costs if I have more than 6 cities with even a bit of spread.

I guess they just rush those cities, suck up the research penalties for a while and use trade routes/create wealth to gradually claw back up to 100% research, now ahead of me by ten damn cities each.

Also finding myself wildly favoring the Financial trait for Biiiiiiiiiiiiig Coastal Cities. Even if my civ was small, I was King of Tech for that round at least!

[SCD]

I like playing as rome, with a similar religion strategy.  I keep my religion to myself and people I don't want to slaughter, then go into mass-production mode once I find Iron in the classical age.  Similar strategy for britian:  Wait until your infantry unit has a real advantage over everyone else and then stack it up and kill kill kill. 

I like to raze cities I know I can't keep in the long run due to distance to my production centres, or that the enemy is too damn strong to defend that city while staying on the offensive.  I also use calvary as my elite forces, and seldom for city.  A stack of five is more than enough to ensure that the cities and their supporting production centres (larger cities) starve, any exposed resource is crushed (and occupied if possible by archery troops) and that they remain too chicken-shit to do anything.  The problem with war however is that I have to carry out the "short victorious wars" as my people don't get too happy with me.

This is why on the home front, anything I can do to focus on the :) is essential while I kill kill kill. 

My general civics are

Hereditary Rule(if pyramids = yes, than representation peacetime, police state approaching and in de jure wartime)
Barbarism or vasalage (when I can, I will jump to nationalism)
Slavery
Decentralization, free market (state property when wartime)
Org Rel peacetime, theocracy wartime.

My favorite leader so far is HM Queen Victoria.

[Bal]

On any setting able Noble the Computers cheat. Noble is no advantage either way, and anything under Noble gives you advantages (extra health and happiness for the most part).

I play all sorts of different ways, but the first hundred or so turns are generally devoted to getting three well placed cities at least, and getting a tech advantage in whatever I'm planning to do next. I had a recent game where I was playing the Mongols (Kublah Khan > Ghengis), and I planned an early military campaign against my neighbor Greece, so I rushed horses and Iron, and built barracks and Gers (Mongol stable replacement) in every city. I also made sure I had vassalage and Theocracy ready to go for when I put the war machine in motion.

Other times I just pound out culture and science so hard that my fellow leaders probably think we're a race a supermen, and wizards.

[Doom]

How do you guys deal with cash flow, though? I had the feeling I could toggle two of my medium or better cities to permanent wealth status, but I was still hopelessly behind on city quantity compared to my neighbors.

[Bal]

Quality over quantity is how. The AI is obsessively expansionistic, that's all. You don't need a cities working every single resource square, so long as you build access to it you get most of the benefit. Building a city out in the desert so you can get income from a goldmine is just not going to work, but the computer will do it, and that's why they have to many level 3-5 cities all over the place, while I have half the cities and ten times the production.

[Doom]

Yes true but the game still rates me 300 points below that fucker and it really rustles my jimmies.

[Bal]

Well, I can't really help you there. I almost never fall behind in score. One good strategy early on is to cut off a portion of the continent and deny all open borders requests. They're only asking for them so they can plant more cities. Cut off an area, and then fill it out at your leisure, just make sure it's worth cutting off. Once you feel you've secured your area sufficiently you can start negotiating again.

EDIT: RE: Money. Found as many religions as possible. Most of them give you something good like a civic anyway, then build that religions holy wonder. Then spread it all over the world. Every city with a religion associated with the holy wonder will give you income, whether it belongs to you or not. You can enhance this effect with the Apostolic Palace, which is great for early game chicanery. For instance, say a city with your religion and mostly your culture is on your border, you can actually use the Apostolic Palace to just vote it to be yours. No war, no nothing.

[Spikey]

Civilization V is going to be AWESOME.

[R^2]

http://www.intentionallyblank.net/gameguides/index.html

Everything I know about Civ 4 is there. Sorry can't remember the tag to link like a normal person.