Civilization IV

[BDC]

Anyone have any hints on how to do well? Such as how to focus on expansion or what to research...

[econ21]

I've played a few games on epic/huge/terra. On the "fair" difficulty level, "Noble", I find it a little easy. But on "Prince", I find the AI competes nicely.

I tend to play a building game - to me Civ's strength is not it's combat - but I suspect that on higher difficulty levels, you will only survive by conquering rivals. Their cheat bonuses are too much.

For the early game, I do the "worker chop" trick. Build a worker first while researching bronze working. Then grow a settler and a warrior, speeding up the process by chopping down forests. It gives you an early edge over the AI.

Research priority for me is Judaism. If I am lucky, I can found other religions too. If they catch on - helped by missionaries - it really eases foreign relations and, with some great prophets to found holy cities, can make a stack of money.

I also pick up the Oracle for the free tech, then head for alphabet to trade and backfill my techs. I don't trade alphabet though, to keep a monopoly on tech trading for as long as possible.

After that, I research for wonders I want - e.g. Statue of Liberty - or techs that give a great person to the first one to discover them. On a terra world, getting astronomy early is a biggie.

In terms of expansion, I quickly get about 4 cities in prime sites, then more slowly expand to fill up the space. Often I have a weak military - I am going to have to work on that - and get attacked sooner or later. I then conquer my attackers for extra growth (I tend to play England and find redcoats come just at the right time). I find you need a certain size kingdom to get Oxford type national wonders and be guaranteed to get the oil and other resources necessary to survive the end game.

I go for a space race victory, as the others seem like hard work, and it is the natural end to a building game. (Setting culture to 100% etc just seems gamey). On Prince, I tend to lose my tech edge around the time of Biology. Then it gets tense.

One thing I've learned lately is the advantage of having a "Great Person" factory - stuff one city full of wonders as it will tend to produce nearly all your great people - and the way you can use specialists to determine what kind of great person it produces. (With the Great Library allowing 3 scientists, I've got Great Scientists so regularly, I've got sick of them). I've also learned to micro manage cities - the AI tends to work tiles in ways I don't like (often not prioritising food and population growth enough).

Anyway, I am still finding it a fun game. It can't compare with Total War as a wargame or historical simulation, but gives you a more competitive single player gaming experience.

[Del Arroyo]

I've also learned to micro manage cities - the AI tends to work tiles in ways I don't like (often not prioritising food and population growth enough).

But aren't you able to adjust the AI Governor's priorities as in previous versions (SMAC, CIV3)??

DA

[econ21]

But aren't you able to adjust the AI Governor's priorities as in previous versions (SMAC, CIV3)??

DA

Yes, you can do that easily. I don't trust it though - I fear if I chose a priority, I would probably forget about it for the rest of the game unless it led to a noticeable disaster. The thing is the city's priorities are likely to continually change. For example, more population is great until you run into happiness problems and the point at which that occurs frequently changes as you get more resources, better civics etc.

Also, even on a huge terra map, I find I don't have so many cities that periodically reviewing what tiles your cities are working is a problem. (Unlike Civ2, where IIRC you have to continually manage what cities are doing in order to avoid revolts that stop the city producing - in Civ4, there is no such burden.)

[BDC]

Personally I preferred Civ3 to Civ4. Ah well.

[Big_John]

somehwere between prince and monarch seems to be ideal.. price is a little too easy, and monarch AIs get a little too much cheat bonus, imo. in addition to the chopping settlers, founding your first city or two on a plains/hills square (if avail.) really boosts one's early-game production and expansion.

on the higher diff levels (emperor and up) building a large army is essential. best way to do it is alternate between buildings and units. foudning a religion and spreading it around really ehlps a lot too.

i always play random and try to tailor my game to whatever civ i draw.

[frogbeastegg]

New patch is here:

v1.52 is a major upgrade to Civ IV and includes numerous optimizations for memory usage that should help performance on all machines but are tailored to especially improve performance on machines at or near the minimum specification.

Major changes include:

-Shared low-level graphics buffers

-Removed many unused fonts and reduced interface memory usgae

-Paged out units which are not visible

-Reduced terrain data size and overhead

-Reduced route data size

-Created a set of low-res movies for machines without dynamic texture support (this is a separate download)

These changes not only reduced the amount of system memory required, but lowered video memory usage extensively. Also, the rate at which the game consumes memory in the late-game has decreased, which is extremely important.

In addition, a new config file (ini) option called 'MemorySaver' has been added for further memory reduction, at the cost of alt-tabbing support. If you set MemorySaver=1 in the config file, you can lower your system memory usage by 70% of video memory. So if you have a 128MB video card, you can save an additional ~90MB of system memory. MemorySaver defaults to off, and is not officially recommended since it doesn't handle alt-tabbing and other cases of graphics device loss at this time. However, we recognize that some users may want to experiment with it.

Finally, the use of unofficial patches is not recommended and is largely redundant with the memory fixes in this patch. Unofficial patches may slow performance, cause graphical problems or conflict with Firaxis code resulting in crashes or other problems. It also makes it more difficult for us to respond to error reports and debug issues reported by users running unauthorized patches.

Suggestions for optimal performance:

Increase AGP memory size in your BIOS settings to 128 or 256 if necessary.
Go to www.windowsupdate.com and apply updates
Update graphics and sound drivers
Close other background applications
Turn graphics to low and use low-resolution textures in the options screen
Turn off Antialiasing in your display properties
Disable virus protection

-Mustafa Thamer

Civ IV Lead Programmer



Fixes
unit attack move bug
civ naming bug in sp
no longer keep your gold and techs when regenerating a map
missing civic name from popup help
minimap now appears correctly after regenerating map
unit cycling bug
load game freeze bug
movement freeze bug in si-move
unit cycling bug in PitBoss and HotSeat
missing plot list buttons bug with large stacks
pathfinding bug involving defensive terrain and group movement
bug with AI attacking over rivers
can no longer see spies on caravels
group attack bug
group attack bug with gunships
GS lobby ignoring game settings bug
disappearing popup help bug
diplo city trading bug
wonder movie/zoom to building crash
no camera adjustment to city screen bug
user profiles with build queues no longer crash
no more negative gold in diplo screen
fixed gifting bad cities to AI exploit
AI issues with Always War and Always Peace
units not moving into tiles after combat bug (graphical only)
pathfinding reuse fix
fixed pathfinding bug
fixed SHIFT-selecting multiple cities
end score not matching up with timed winner bug
fixed bug allowing selection of disabled techs in tech chooser
fixed Sentry promotion visiblity bug
fixed AI city targeting bug
fixed AI healing bug
AI city attack bug
no more message lag in single-player
fixed bug with gunship stacks attacking cities
random seed bug (causing duplicate world maps...)
unit health bars no longer show up in city screen
two-palaces-from-culture-flipping-capital bug
Foreign Advisor: Gold available for trade does not show up when there cannot be a trade for gold
Diplomacy screen fix for gold popups not appearing properly
Foreign advisor: Resources for active player are shown multiple times if you have more than one instance of a resource to trade.
Fixed weird little bug with Unit Categories page in Civilopedia
diplomacy bug for PBEM/Hotsesat
Removed some cheats from password-protected games that should not have been allowed in the first place
Fix for competitive games: Password-protected saves can no longer be easily stripped of their passwords, and the assets checksum in the save can no longer be modified by external means
Fixed vanishing yield symbols in multiplayer
Fixed some PBEM/Hotseat issues when there is just one human player
River and Wind sounds are now properly classified as ambience. This fixes inconsistent behavior in audio options
Minimized or No Interface no longer reverts to normal after entering, then exiting city view
You can no longer duplicate deals with the AI from the "Active deals" section of the diplomacy screen
Out of memory message problem on machines that don't allocate small textures properly
Assert error for software vertex processing only machines
bug where you could draw strategy lines and signs outside of globe view
"globe view buildings disabled" option now hides buildings in globe view properly

Changes
tech cost rebalancing
improved city attack AI
moved MaxAutosaves to ini file
slower Great People name generation
hide health bars during combat
increased late-game tech costs
waypoints now invisible when city screen is up
ai more willing to trade cities for peace
ai stays at war longer
cottages no longer grow durring anarchy
combat info now shows odds of success
WBS's now contain unit damage
score from land doesn't count until you own land for 20 turns
better invasion AI
Slavery: No Upkeep
Emancipation: Low Upkeep
tweaked AI civic values
filled in missing diplo entries for Frederick
Praetorians: 40->45 hammers
Jaguars: 40->35 hammers
AI turn optimizations
interface game messages are now flushed at end of turn
Environmentalism moved to Medicine
increased industrial era tech costs
Environmentalism is medium upkeep
Free Speech is low upkeep
Forests give 0.5 health
firepower in combat now based on max strength
Lobby sorting improvements
Clearing the table in the MP diplomacy screen resets the "They accept/They do not accept" text
Dawn of man screen closes with ESCAPE just like all the other interface screens
The hall of fame now shows only games that have been played with the currently-loaded mod
When trying to build an item that it not allowed in a city, you will get a production popup asking for a build instead of leaving production empty
Wonder Movies and other popups may appear in PBEM/Hotseat
Incremented save version to 102
simplified city billboard placement. This should fix the weird billboard offsets and scaling.


Additions
Lobby chat and buddy lists from staging rooms
combat odds now shown in combat turn log
ALT-S now allows you to place signs
added "Leave Forest" option for automated workers
added Marathon game speed (longer than Epic)
added NoTechSplash ini setting
More communication about autopatch failures
Domestic advisor remembers which cities you had selected last time screen was up.
Added "no cheating" game option for single-player
In addition to tradeable techs, techs that are not allowed to be traded to you are also shown, provided that you can research them yourself at the moment
Added event and replay messages when a human founds a city. This got broken when we added city renaming
Support for Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
When you zoom to a city from the domestic advisor, you return to the domestic advisor after you exit the city screen
Updated Info Screen with changes 'borrowed' from one of the forum modders

[frogbeastegg]

On the quotes, that is another area AC spoiled me. The tech quotes in that game were great. For those who didn't play, you can see some of the best here. I liked the musings, the philosophy, the in-game humour, the bits of history both real and invented for the game's background, and the voice actors were amongst the best I've encountered in a game.

Compared to those [bored sounding droning voice]Pig iron. Pig iron. I got pig iron.[/voice] is no good at all. I don't like Star Trek, I don't like Spock, and I'd rather have a narrator who sounds like he cares than someone famous who sounds like he can't even be bothered. It's not an interesting quote in the first place, anyway. Most of them aren't.

But it's a minor thing overall.


The unit promotions, on the other hand, how could I forget them? I love them! Specialisation ...

[Pindar]

Thank you for the replies gentlemen. My first experience with the Civ. series was version III. I was really surprised by how "un-fun" it was while still having that mentioned "well, one more turn" quality. I actually bought an expansion to it: I don't remember the title "empires" or something where the focus was various ages of the world. I liked that idea, but the game still suffered from the earlier mentioned qualities of the base game. Obviously, I haven't bought the new IV, but am a little interested based on the comments.

Simon: the EB mod. is out? I have been playing RTR and recently the new big BI mod by Attila over at TW Center. What are the differences between EB and RTR?

[econ21]

Simon: the EB mod. is out? I have been playing RTR and recently the new big BI mod by Attila over at TW Center. What are the differences between EB and RTR?

[We're heading a little off-topic here, but I hope frogbeastegg will indulge us:] EB is out as an open beta. I was a little shocked at how incomplete it is - I am currently wondering whether to give up my EB Roman campaign due to CTDs - whereas RTR has always seemed amazingly polished to me.

EB and RTR are aiming at very similar things with the units and battle system - and they both hit their targets superbly IMO. If you've looked at the faction previews in the past for EB, you'll have a good idea of what to expect and won't be disappointed (although RTR has spoiled the water a little by producing similarly good units for some factions - eg Rome and now Germany). Both mods are also doing similar things with limiting recruitment to homelands etc. As a result, the games feel more authentic at both tactical and strategic levels; and are aesthetically very nice.

The pleasant shock I had with EB was how much they were trying to change other aspects of the game. They use scripting to pump up the AI and alter general's traits in very fun ways etc etc. As a result, it is more ambitious and I think more challenging than RTR.

Both EB and RTR share the same fault, IMO, of being a little glacial in play speed. RTR because it increases the province number; EB because it has 4 turns a season - I think you have to play 1000 turns to get the Marian reforms. Whereas in Civ, you are always tempted to go for another turn, with the RTW mods, I am often tempted to take a break.

[Vladimir]

The corruption issue in Civ 3 was easily solved by using the edit feature where you could tweak various options, colors, etc. The only "disadvantage" I’ve found was that you needed more cities to build the Forgotten Something-or-Other which you needed less. If I had talent or desire I might find that the bland AI could be modified too. Soon I'll be able to afford upgrades for the ancient chimera I call my PC so I'll check IV out. I do prefer to wait for any patches/mods and for the first price drop. Thanks to all for your great reviews.

[Ironside]

The ones in SMAC is very hard to beat, although I missed this one from that list:
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.

Commissioner Pravin Lal
"Man and Machine"


And this one, the scariest one IMO.

Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.

Assassins' Redoubt
Final Transmission


And what that makes the above one scary is that Assassins' Redoubt is a Spartan base (the most militant faction) and that you get psi attack with that tech.
Somehow is destroying the mind of a person worse than killing him. For me atleast .

I did find a more complete list anyway SMAC quotes

Back on topic for Civ 4, it's fun, but I still miss surrendering factions from SMAC.

[Dutch_guy]

I'm considering to buy this game, though I do have some questions about it, since I have never played a Civilization game before.

what is combat like in Civ4 ?

Is the game about collecting enough resources to pound your enemies or is resource gathering not a first priority in the game ?

Is there a lot of micro management involved, more or less than MTW/RTW ?

How good is the diplomacy, do alliances last, does the AI know how to manage it's alliances ?

Is the AI any good, in your opinions, does it - as an example - refuse to a ceasfire while it has but one settlement left ?

How steep is the learning curve of the game,more like HOI 2 or MTW/RTW?

And finally I have a more technical question to ask of you.
I've downloaded the Demo, installed it , then tried to play it..however after double clicking and you can see it loading, a window pops up saying that an error has occurred and then proceeds to ask me if I want to report it to microsoft or not.
The problem occurs while Civ4 is checking XML, it always orders me to terminate the loading at that point.
Has anyone heard of this problem if so , does anyone know how to fix this?

if it helps, these are my specs.
Intel pentium 4 COU 2.66 GHz.
512 MbRam
Direct X 9.0c
NVIDIA Geforce 4 MX 440 with AGP8X


thanks in advance.

[econ21]

I can't help with your technical problem, but here's some opinions on your other questions:

what is combat like in Civ4 ?

I think it is fun. You attack with one unit at a time, but you can have stacks of units with different strengths and the best defender will meet the attacker. So if a knight attacks a stack, it will be met by its pikeman rather than a vulnerable missile unit. This is balanced by the ability of artillery to damage multiple units in a stack. Units strength gradually deteriorates, so a tank may crush one infantry but may be destroyed if attacked consecutively by three or four. There's a fair variety of units - for example, in the medieval period, you have longbows, crossbows, knights, horse archers, macemen, pikemen, catapults etc. Each faction has its own unique unit - praetorians and redcoats being the standouts, IMO. Units gain experience and can use it to buy some very nice, but generally context specific upgrades (eg +25% attacking in cities; or the an AT bonus etc). That means they have individuality and you treasure your veterans (who can be upgraded overtime, from lowly warrior to mech infantry).

Is the game about collecting enough resources to pound your enemies or is resource gathering not a first priority in the game ?

I think it is essentially a building game. You build up your cities, and they provide you with units and technology (to make better units and better city buildings). Nurturing good cities is the first piority of the game, but it is not resource gathering in a twitch RTS sense. It is rather cerebral and all about trade-offs and choices - you'll agonise over where exactly to put your cities, so they get access to the many things they need to thrive. Combat adds a necessary element of danger, for me, but it is not a wargame in the way TW is, and I like trying to survive combat but don't seek it out.

Is there a lot of micro management involved, more or less than MTW/RTW ?

More micromanagement, I guess, but I find the turns seem to fly past more quicky. I guess TW bogs down in the battles, which are very time consuming. In Civ, you can be at peace for 500 years or so, and whereas that would be deadly dull in TW, in Civ4 I find it very rewarding. Largely, this is because the AI is often biting at your heels and threatening to invade you, so peaceful survival is non-trivial.

How good is the diplomacy, do alliances last, does the AI know how to manage it's alliances ?

I like it. You can keep the "nice" civs onside throughout the game - a diplomatic victory is one way of winning the game. There are some predictable headbangers, but if you are superior in power, they will tend to keep away.

Is the AI any good, in your opinions, does it - as an example - refuse to a ceasfire while it has but one settlement left ?

I think the AI is great. I thought that about Civ2 as well - Civ has one of the most competitive AIs of any strategy games. Far better than TW. On harder difficulty levels, you are always holding your breath, to see if you can keep ahead of the AI in tech and if you can deterr attack. Somehow the challenge is also maintained throughout the game - no mean feat, considering the "broken" endgames of TW. To give you one example of smart AI - in my first game, the Japanese attacked me by land and sea in the feudal era. I beat off both attacks, but when the dust had settled, I realised they had destroyed my only two bronze mines (needed to make good troops). The AI was so smart and the dumb human hadn't even realised what was being done to him...

How steep is the learning curve of the game,more like HOI 2 or MTW/RTW?

Easy to learn, hard to master? I think it is very accessible and intuitive - you can pretty much leap in. But as you explore, you will find a lot of depth to the game. Probably like TW. I have not played HOI, but my impression is that Paradox games tend to emphasis realism whereas Civ is like a cartoon representation of history. They may both be complex, but a Paradox game may tend to have messy complexity - because reality is messy - whereas Civ2 can be more elegant.