Civ IV Tactics

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It also halves the cost of lighthouses and courthouses, the latter of which is definitely very useful. Lighthouses are nice and all, but they are cheap to build in the first place.

Also, unhealthy workers still work - they just require more food. Unhappy workers don't work.

I also have a question for you. It states that Cho-Ko-Nu get two first strikes. However, both Chinese leaders are also protective. So does the free drill I really give them THREE first strikes? Or do they just get one like regular crossbowman, which is increased to two because both are protective? If they get three, I may have low-balled them in my rankings. Three first strikes would completely rule.

Hmm... I feel the need to defend some of my rankings here. I should point out that I also take into account how long you use the UU. A unit that dominates for a long span of time is better than one with a short lifespan. So....

Redcoat - the only reason it isn't ranked even higher (not that 5th out of 24 is low) is because it is outclassed by infantry, and typically I don't have a long wait between rifling and industrialization.

I've always had more success with Immortals rather than War Chariots. War Chariots attack at 5 instead of 4, but Immortals are +50% vs. archery units. So Immortals are effectively 6 when attacking an archer. Since this is definitely an early rush unit, you're much more likely to find enemy city defended with archers or warriors than spearmen. If they have warriors, it doesn't matter, you'll win no matter which one you use. If they have spearmen, again it doesn't matter, because you're going to lose no matter which one you use. However, your odds for success against archers are better with the Immortal.

I have to concede your point on the Fast Worker. With three movement points, that means they can move into a forest/jungle/hill and begin improving the land on the same turn. So, it effect, they are one turn faster than regular workers because they get to start a round earlier.

How are Phalanx effective against axemen? Phalanx are melee units, so the axemen's +50% bonus kicks in. If you can build phalanx units, you can build axemen, and axemen vs. axemen is better than phalanx vs. axemen.

Keshiks built in cities with both a ger and barracks are extremely useful. They start with 7 exp, meaning they have Flanking II. If you don't have barracks and a ger, they are just as useless as horse archers when it comes to taking cities.

The reason I like the Conquistador is the +50% vs. melee is extremely useful when attacking cities. It means you usually get the weaker archery units on your attacks. Thus, they tend to rack up a ton of experience points and will form the backbone of your army, and retain their usefulness as they can be upgraded later to cavalry. (And I suppose, eventually gunships.) The Conquistador/Trebucet combination is especially useful. I overlooked this UU for a long time, and only found out how good it could be when I got the Spanish on a random civ selection.

What arguements have you heard in favor of the Cossack? They do have a pretty long life span, so that's a definite plus. They are reasonably effective with flanking for taking out everything up to riflemen, but so are regular cavalry. Do they have something besides the +50% bonus vs. mounted that I'm missing? In my games, I don't run into that many enemy mounted units.

Finally, I have to defend the Numidian Cavalry. The reason you think they suck is probably because you are considering them to be an offensive unit. In that regard, yeah, they suck. If you're using them against cities, you have to bring something else with you if the enemy has spearmen, like axemen or swordsmen. And if you are building axemen and swordsmen, then mounted units become superfulous. Their 50% vs. melee helps against spearmen, but they are still significant underdogs.

However, they are the best city defense unit early in the game. Their +50% vs. melee means they are perfect for cutting down attacking axemen and swordsmen (who will have no bonuses against mounted units) as they approach your cities. With 2 movement, you can even kill them before they have a chance to pillage anything. And they are even significant favorites against archers (though not as big a favorite as axemen and swordsmen).

Think of them as axemen (50% bonus vs. melee) with 2 movement points that other axemen don't have a bonus against. Looking at it this way, don't you agree that an axemen with 2 movement points would be useful? Also useful for clearing pathways for settlers against maurarding barbarian axemen. Finally, if you can hook up horses early, you can start a war before the enemy gets spearmen, and in this case, they are the equivalent of axemen with 2 movement in every regard. They also have a base 30% withdrawal chance, so with Flanking I & II (assuming barracks and stable), their withdrawal chance is very high.

[ September 08, 2006, 16:18: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

They have two to begin with. Drill I gives them a chance each fight of a third first strike. With further Drill promotions, this gets to be from 4 to 7 first strikes! Add Collateral damage and that softens up a stack!

With most civs, I look into ways to get their UU a little quicker, and in the process pass over some other techs. Once I get my Unique unit, I go back and research some fo the techs I skipped before to extend the life of my Unique Unit.

The problem is that Conquistadors still draw Pikemen as defenders. Also, Longbows, without promotions start 50% defending cities and with CG II that adds another 45 %, so 6*2.20=13.20. That will ruin the day of a Conquistador rather fast.

Keshiks do get to the enemy faster by ingorint inhospitable terrain, but in battle, they are the equivalent of Horse archers with all the normal strengths and weaknesses. It just doesn't turn my krank like I thought it would. The Ger does make the Mongols a better choice, but it doesn't elevate the Keshik above a mid level unique unit.

Cossaks start with 18 versus 15 for a normal cavalry. That's big. Then they get 50% against Mounted units. They are just like Cavalry, but tougher and they also work better for shutting down pillaging parties.

Phalanx has a 5 power instead of 4. Further, Greece is an aggressive civ, meaning they get Combat I free. With 2 exp, they can take Shock. that gives them another 25% against melee units. Against an attacking Axemen, the 50% is reduced to 25%. Fortification gives them another 25%, completely nerfing that 50% bonus. It's City Raider that makes any difference. If the civ is not aggressive, then the axe comes in at 5.0, the Phalanx is reduced to 4.5. If the city is on a hill, which is a good exploit with Greece, they have a bonus of 50% on top of that. That totals to 100% when defending a city (assuming that the city's cultural or walls defence has been stripped away). Therefore, assuming that an axemen with city raider equivalent to the city's defence bonus is 5.00 attacking 8.00 when the city is on a hill.

I'd still prefer Combat I and Shock on an Axeman as opposed to a Numidian cavalry. Put a Medic Spear with them to deal with Chariots. I also find that withdrawl chance never works out to the odds promised...

 

In that case I think I low balled them. I'm inclined to move them up to 2nd, ahead of the samurai. I still think I have to rate praetorians as 1.

However, it's not as bad as you'd think, because pikeman ARE MELEE. So the Conquistador's +50% vs. melee does kick in here. With Flanking, your Conquistador has a puncher's chance in these fights, whereas regular knights that lack the 50% bonus have virtually no chance at all.

Just looking at the base numbers, you're looking at a pikeman 12 versus a Conquistador 15. Also, I've discovered that any other promotion, terrain or fortification bonuses you get with pikeman (phalanx, impi, and spearmen as well) are not doubled vs. mounted units. For example, a pikeman fortified in a city without walls and no cultural bonuses is 13.5, whereas an unfortified pikeman in the same conditions is 12.0. So provided you bring siege equipment with you, you're usually looking at 15 vs. 13.5 - you can win those.

Longbowmen present a different challenge, one that is potentially much tougher. even though Longbowmen are only 6 (9 inside a city) the big problem here is that your Conquistador doesn't get his +50% bonus against them. So you're stuck at your base strength of 10, whereas the longbowman with just a simple fortification bonus insdie a city comes in at 10.5. Obviously, if you're attacking a protective civ, or if the city is located on top of a hill, you're looking at closer to 12.9 vs. 10, and that isn't going to work very well.

So believe it or not, it's actually longbowmen, not pikemen, that are the biggest problem. And I don't have any magical solution to this problem either. Protective civs with longbowmen are tough, no matter what you do.

OK, if that's true, then it's a huge difference. It's also a misprint in the book (where they are listed as 15, just like regular cavalry). Anytime a unique unit gets a considerable boost in strength over the normal unit, it's pretty good, and the +20% in this case isn't shabby. They would be worth building for this alone, and the +50% vs. mounted is just gravy.

 

The +50 vs Melee would be subrtacted from the Conquistador's +100 vs mounted.

So a combat 2 Conquistador is 12. The Pikeman would be at +50 from the matchup, +25 fortify, plus tile bonuses (+25 if on hill, any city defence bonus). the Pikeman will likely have at least combat I if not II and Formation...

This means 10 * 1.2 = 12 vs 6 * 1.85 (with just combat I) = 11.10 fortified in the field/city with culture stripped.

With more bonuses? this could go as high as 6 * 2.85 = 17.10...

Cossacks are 18 in the vanilla civ book, but 15 in the Warlords book. I'll need to play a game as Russia or with world builder to see what is accurate...

 

If Cossacks are in fact 18, that is a significant difference. Since I got Warlords, I obviously don't refer to the reference tables in the book of the original game, as they don't include any of the new units or buildings. I know I can look anything up in-game using the civilopedia, but for some reason, I always play with the book at the computer desk, and leaf through it whenever I have a question. 18 represents a 20% increase over 15, and then when you consider that all promotions are also building off this already larger base number, a Cossack with a few promotions is significantly more powerful than a Cavalry with the same promotions. For example, C1 gives a Cavalry a bonus of 1.5 when attacking a city, but gives the Cossack a bonus of 1.8.

While I can't argue with your math on the Conquistador, I can tell you from personal experience that they work pretty well. I usually bring a few Conquistadors and a few trebucets up to the city walls. After using the trebucets to reduce the defences to zero, I use one of the trebucets to attack the city. It usually is destroyed, but sometimes you get lucky and it successfully withdraws. Either way, you still get the collateral damage on the units in the city. After one trebucet attack, the conquistadors go in. Regardless of whether the defending units are longbowmen or pikemen, the conquistador usually wins. The typical right-click odds on these attacks are usually in the 60%-70% range. In the event that they don't succeed they also withdraw a fair amount of the time. Granted, whenever I intend to use a mounted unit to attack cities, the first promotion always goes to F1, so the withdraw more frequently. However, with melee units, the first promotion is usually CR1 for the 20% bonus vs. city.

One of the things with me is that I never use my promotions for thing like Cover or Shock. I hate using a promotion on something is going to eventually be obsolete. I hate in the end game when I have mechanized infantry running around with a +25% bonus vs. archery units. I will take Pinch or Ambush, but they are obviously unavailable early in the game. So early on, most of my promotions for melee units go to city raider or combat 1, 2, etc. Mounted units will get flanking, and siege units will take things like accuracy and barrage.

[ September 14, 2006, 14:50: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Ugh. Yet another game I've now become severely, hopelessly addicted to. Guess I've found my BG2 methadone.

 

Welcome aboard DR.

I tried something new today. I used my capital as a settler factory, but used my second city to build workers. Perhaps this can be refined to get the land grab I need early on. If the Capital builds settlers, the second city builds garrison units and the third builds workers, that lets you get the three to 5 cities you need earlier so that you can then focus on getting what you want out of them.

Another thing I'm experimenting with is based off Chairman Mao's "Backyard Blast Furnace" theory. If you get and spread your state religion, build University of Sankore and the Spiral Minaret. Then you put temples and monasteries in all your cities. That makes 4 gold and 4 beakers. This applies before Library, university, market, grocer, bank...
It will let you maintian a higher science rate or build treasury for upgrading units.

I didn't look in the game itself, but the manual for Warlord says it's only 15 for a Cossack. I can't believe they'd nerf it that badly. Also, Mounted units can't get City Raider bonus, so that bursts that bubble. I'd love it if they did (makes war chariot, immortal and keshik rushes truly evil!).

Shock and Cover are only in some situations of course. If the Barbarians are kicking your ass, then a Combat I + shock Axe in the right place will keep you alive. If you already have CR III on a sword/axe/mace, and Combat I, why not add cover for that extra boost against Longbows? Formation is always useful, so that's fair game. Pinch does help when the opponent starts to get gunpowder units (I'll put a Combat I + Pinch riflemen/Infantry in a city when that time comes). I seldom have games last long enough for Ambush to be useful. I either win earlier than that or I've hopelessly lost.

 

Of course they don't. I just looked at my last message, and I see I wrote that. I meant to say I give my mounted units FLANKING as the first upgrade. That's why they withdraw a fair amount of the time. Hopefully it still made sense as I said later on that the first upgrade for melee attack units was City Raider, for mounted flanking, and for siege units accuracy or barrage.

Because I definitely need Combat II before that. A lot of the later promotions have Combat II as a prerequisite, and some even have Combat III as a prerequisite. (Granted, you're talking about a 7th level unit at that point, so it's not like you get them that often.)

 

I've recently discovered the value of mass religion. I know, the irony of what I just said must be killing you, Gnarff.

Anyway, I've found that if you spread as many religions as possible to each of your cities, and start building temples as soon as you can, your city production level goes berserk. I just played as Spain and won a domination victory before I even got to the industrial age. I took out the two meanies on the map early, which left me and two other civs with whom I was friendly. By the time I defeated my enemies, I set my civics to Pacifism, Caste System and Free Religion. Every new unit/building in most of my cities only cost one turn to create. So I was adding every building I could (I already had a huge military) to each city and researching techs that gave me new buildings/wonders almost exclusively. The only units I created for a while were missionaries, so I could spread new religions and build new temples. I had the holy cities of 4 of the religions on my territory. After the military campaign I had about 60% of the map. The rest was just economics. My allies were still running around with Axemen by the end.

Ah, there goes my social skills...

 

Aldeth: Good point about combat II. I just make my decision based on what I need immedialtely. If they have Longbows, then cover is really tempting.

DR: I did get a chuckle out of your point on Religion.

Getting one is imperative, two or three is a bonus for cultural situations. I find that the various religious civics help at various times. Organized Religion for building up cities, Theocracy for going to war and Philosophy when you want to build great people.

 

DR,

I received your PM and tried to reply, but your mailbox is full. Since this topic has covered all things Civ IV related, I figured I could just post the response here, and that way Gnarff can add his two cents to the discussion as well:

Sure, we definitely can get a game going one of these days. We can get Gnarff to come along too, although I would much prefer not starting off on the same continent as he does - the guy knows how to fight a war - his early axe rushes are legendary. However, you'll need to get Warlords first. Once you install Warlords, Civ IV is no longer compatible, because there are new leaders, new leader traits, and many of the old leaders have their leader traits changed.

I bought Warlords the first week it came out, and it only cost $30 back then, so I can't imagine it's much more than $20 right now.

The other major change in Warlords is now each civilization has a unique building. It works just like the unique unit, in that only one civilization can build it, and it has bonuses that the base building doesn't have. To use the Americans as an example, their unique building is the shopping mall. It replaces the supermarket. Any civ can build a supermarket and get the health bonus for the city. Shopping malls give the same health bonus as supermarkets, but also give a happiness bonus to the people of the city if your civ posesses hit singles, movies, or musicals, as well as a 10% wealth bonus regardless of whether you have them or not.

You'll notice that on the top left portion of your screen you should have a science beaker next to a "+" and "-" button with a percentage next to it. That's your science rate. Right next to it you should see a number with the word gold next it. That's your treasury. Next to that there will be a number in parenthesis indicating what your net income into your treasury is per turn. If the number is positive, you're taking in more than what you're spending, while if it's negative, your spending more than you're taking in, and making up the shortfall with whatever is in your treasury. At the start of the game, you'll have no gold in your treasury, and will be earning zero gold per turn, which is fine, because you have no upkeep costs either.

But back to the science rate. It represents what percentage of your commerce each turn is going into researching whatever technology you happen to be working on at that moment. It starts automatically at 100%, because when you build your first city, your civ's upkeep costs are zero, so all income can be put towards science. You can manually adjust it upwards or downwards by clicking on the "+" and "-" buttons next to the beaker. How high your science rate happens to be is usually inversely proportional to your civilization's upkeep costs.

Upkeep costs are determined by a number of factors: The size of your civilization, the number of units you have, the types of buildings in each city, and waste. All of these things are variable from one game to the next, and are also heavily influenced by what types of civics you are employing at the time, so there's no real way to tell you what an appropiate level of upkeep costs will be. The general rule of thumb is: The more you build, the more it costs to keep your civilization running. The AI will automatically lower your science rate if you don't have enough gold in your treasury to pay for the upkeep costs that turn. However, the AI will never raise your science rate if later on you have surplus money, so it pays to keep a close eye on it. Generally speaking, you want to run as high a science rate as possible while still maintaining all of your upkeep costs. In fact, the only reason to lower your science rate is if you need to upgrade a whole bunch of units, and need cash quick for the upgrades.

While you didn't ask this directly, once you discover drama (I think it's drama - I'm sure Gnarff will correct me if I'm wrong), in addition the the beaker icon on the top left of the screen, immediately underneath it you will see a purple musical note with the same "+" and "-" buttons and percentage next to it. That's your culture rate. You can't spend money on culture until you get drama, so it doesn't appear at the start of the game. The culture rate works a lot like the luxury rate worked in the other civilization games. Spending money on culture does two things: First, it makes the people happy in your civilization. Each 10% you spend on culture gives +1 to each city in your civ. Also it makes your cultural borders expand quicker.

There is no setting for taxes as there was in other civilzation games, although it's obvious that whatever you aren't spending on either science or culture is the tax rate. So if your science is at 70%, and your culture is at 10%, then naturally 20% of the money being taken in is in the form of taxes, used to pay for the upkeep of your cities, with any unused portion going into the treasury.

I definitely recommend leafing through the manual and having it next to you when playing. (I've had the game for a while now, and I still need the manual for some things!) I definitely recommend reading through the chapter which covers city and civilization management (Chapter 3 IIRC). Until you "get" that part of it, winning on the higher difficulties becomes really difficult.

[ September 15, 2006, 14:17: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

When it works, it's a thing of beauty. The problem is that it doesn't always work. If the city is on a hill and has a high cultural defence, then Axes won't cut it. Swords are more effective in such cases, and you'll need catapults to break the siege.

AS to the fear of being on my continent, an Archipelego map will prevent that, and slow down most axe rushes.

We can still play with the Vanilla game. If we all have the 1.61 patch (available from www.civfanatics.com), then we could play the same game, but due to the fact that I'm on Dial up, I can only play by Email.

My percentage on Noble is nothing to brag about. On Prince I screwed like a White House Intern...

 

Well, I bit the bullet - just bought the expansion, ten extra bucks be damned.

I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. It doesn't seem to add much to the game, at least not for that price. So anyway, now playing won't be a problem.

 

When you two feel up to it, just PM me for my e-mail address for a game.

Another option we have is to team up and pick off AI opponents. Play on a standard map and put the three of us against 5 or 6 AI with each of them on their own...

 

You see, the problem with me is that I can win consistently on Noble, but on Prince, unless I go for a space race victory, I'm not winning that game (and sometimes I lose even when going for a space victory). Perhaps I just don't plan my military conquests that well. I hate sinking tons of resources into units that will likely be destroyed. I hate having to use 5-6 units to take a city occupied by 2-3 defenders. Therefore, my strategy hinges on military supremacy through better technology. The problem with that is on the higher difficulty levels, you probably are not going to be vastly superior to the AI opponents.

 

Did I mention how much I hate barbarians? ACK!!

edit - and longbowmen are WAY too overpowered.

[ September 19, 2006, 23:34: Message edited by: Death Rabbit ]

 

And watching your improvements that you've spent many turns building (and in the case of cottages, hundreds of turns developing) pillages by opponents that decide that they don't like you or have their nose out of joint because you won't give up your tech lead? I find that if I eliminate the first bastard that tries that kind of stunt, the next civ is a little slower to try that...

Exactly. On higher levels, the AI has an advantage in technological research. Even higher levels even give free techs to the AI. Technological superiority is not likely on higher levels. Therefore, you need these early wars and generate science from captured cities...

Yeah, they are worse in Warlords...

With a protective civ, it gets even worse!

 

Yeah, DR. In Warlords, don't even bother trying to take a city from a protective civ unless you are willing to accept some casualties. Protective civs automatically get city garrison 1 (meaning +20% to strength when defending in cities) and drill 1 (extra first strike chance) on gunpowder and archery units. Since many of these units already HAVE a first strike, they are in effect getting two first strikes.

Barbarians only annoy me when I decide to send an early settler out to found a new city, and I send him unescorted. It seems like Barbarians "know" where you're going with your settler, especially since when you're initially exploring the area, your exploration unit hardly ever runs into barbarians.

[ September 20, 2006, 16:41: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

What I do is send out a unit to be the initial garrison which also doubles as a fogbuster so the risk is greatly resuced (I still lose the occasional one, but not that many).

Another idea might be to customize the game with more civs on a smaller map. This will reduce the amount of room for Barbarians to spawn...

 

What I don't like is when there is an area on your continent that is just so poor that you'd never build a city there. Like in the far north or south where you have all snow and ice squares, and there's no special resource. You are disinclined to build a city there because it will always stay small when there's no food. Unfortunately, you usually decide eventually to build a city there just to avoid the barbarians from constantly spawning. Once when I refused to do this for a while, the barbarians started getting stronger and stronger. First they were spawning regular warriors, but then axemen starting coming. Not wanting to deal with anything more than that, I build a city in the far northeastern corner of my continent.