Civ IV Tactics

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Check the governing options. It's somewhere in there along the panels. There are such options as "free religion" and "state religion", to which others referred. They have their advantages and disadvantages.

In Civ4, the religions spread to nearby cities connected by a road. Missionaries can also spread religion further, e.g: cities owned by AI. If they become the same religion as you, then you gain a bonus, which makes them more amenable. Meaning: they will demand less from you in case you haven't already begun to war with them (which is kinda mandatory).

 

Religion in Civ:

Your State religion will be showed with a symbol beside your name on the score list in the lower right corner of the screen. Controling the Holy City of your State religion gives that City 5 Culture per turn. State Religion in your cities grants 1 cpt. Religious civics (Organized Religion, Theocracy, Pacifism) also grant bonuses to cities with your state religion. Wonders like the Spiral Minaret and University of Sankore also benefit based on buildings of your State Religion. No State Religion means that all religions give one Culture per turn, and you get 5 CPT for each holy city. The More religions are in a city, the harder it is to manually add another religion in that city, but it is possible to have all 7 in a city.

Also, Holy Cities, by using Great Prophets, can build Shrines, which generate 1 gpt per each city with that religion in it, regardless of who owns the city. If you get one of these shrines, then build missionaries and spread that religion around the world if you can...

 

Yes. Not only is it possible, it's quite likely. On the main map screen, there should be symbols of which religions are practiced in which cities. (A cross for Christianity, a Cresent for Muslim, a Star of David for Judaism, etc.) If there is a gold star next to the symbol it designates that this is where the religon was founded. Not only is it possible to have more than one religion in a city, but it is also possible to have more than one religion founded in the same city.

 

How is the founding city decided? Whenever I found a religion, it always seems to be in my smallest and crappiest city. So based on what you are saying, I have to change tack and go and build up that city into something cool with a shrine and lots of defence because its now really valuable.

So, if you found a religion and have a shrine, then you want everyone else to have that religion because you get money? So what if you found another religion? Surely you then don't want anybody to have that religion because you want everyone to have your first "shrined" religion. So what do you do with your second religion missionary? Do you just kill him? Because you don't want to convert anyone to anything other than your first "shrined" religion, surely.

 

No, every city that practices your "shrined" religion gives you an extra gold piece per turn. So if you have two shrined religions and a foreign city has both of those religions being practiced, it gives you two gold pieces. If it only has one of those religions, you only get one gold piece. I think the point of confusion is that you think each city can only have one religion. Like Gnarff said, the more religions a city has, the harder it is to get another religion to take hold, but it is theoretically possible to have all seven religions functioning in one city.

Once you get the free religion civic, cities get +1 for every religion practiced in the city, so that's another benefit of getting many religions into a single city. Getting all 7 is difficult (espcially if the religion was founded on a distant continent and you don't know the people who founded it), but it is relatively easy to get 3 or 4 per city.

It's not entirely random. If it is possible, a new relgion will be founded in a city that currently has no religions being practiced in it. That's why you'll find your smaller cities being the founders of religions. If they were recently built, and no religion has taken hold there, they will be preferentially selected as the founders of that religion over more established cities that already have an existing religion. If all cities in your civ already are practicing a religion, the ones with the fewest number of religions are preferentially selected. If all of the cities have the same number of religions, it's random.

 

Phew - I'm struggling to get my head around this religion business.

But I do like the way that trade routes are automatic. They seem to have cut out lots of the annoying parts of the old games, such as, in the case, the painful process of building caravans and sending them on long journeys to set up trade routes.

My favourite wonder at the moment is Stonehenge. Having instant culture in all your new cities in the early parts of the game is pretty cool.

 

Especially if you aren't playing one of the cultural civilizations. Having huge culture isn't necessary to win the game, but if you don't have some culture, you can't even access all the squares in your city's radius (capital excluded of course).

 

Not me. It takes me a few hours just to get as far as the medieval era.

Questions:

1) What difficulty level are you guys playing most often now? I can see that earlier on you were winning on Noble but losing on Prince. Just wondering which level you have settled into.

2) Which victory type do you usually go for these days?

3) Can someone please explain precisely what courthouses do? The in-game description is a bit vague. In previous versions, you stuck them in outlying cities to reduce corruption, but now they seem to work differently (and Aldeth seems to think that they are super essential).

 

Man, what do you do during all those turns? I basically spend the first 1/3 of the game clicking enter with refreshing change of telling a worked to build a road now and then or move a settler into position. For some reason this is the part I enjoy best. By the time I have a decent civ in my eyes it is generally time for me to try to fix that win. Not too fond of wars in Civ. I usually take out one neighbour when I have been able to build a few units in between all buildings so I get some space and extra resources and after that it is time to click enter again until my space ship is built. Jeez, this sounds dull.

1) I tend to favour the difficulty where the playing field is even (noble I think) with smoe forays into Prince. I am not too fond of facing a cheating AI even if I can beat it. Make the AI smarter at higher difficulties, dont make it cheat.

2) If I play seriously I generally end up going for space race. I have never actually done a proper world conquest since Civ1. Way too much micromanagement and you know you have won about 10h before your score is actually recorded. Diplomatic is harder in 4 than it was in 3 and no matter what you do it seems to end up with all the AI's except one or two hating your guts. Cultural is pretty nice but if you want that you need to start aiming for it pretty early. Meaning that you need to found 2-4 religions, crank up those culture buildings in your three designated cities and as soon as you have the option and hte cash raise the culture slider as much as you can afford.

3) According to the description Courthouses reduce maintanence by 50%. I am not entirely sure what maintenence is except that I know units generally need it and I think buildings too. What I think they do is cut the expenses of stuff related to that city in half cause I know I notice a significant financial gain as soon as I get a few courthouses.

 

- try and work out what my workers should do next
- move military units around the place
- explore with scouts
- talk to other leaders
- analyse what my cities should build
- work out what techs to research
- look at city screen
- look at domestic advisor
- work out how to get out of negative money position
- work out how to please unhappy citizens

If I played for three hours in an evening, I would make it up to the maceman stage, if I went really really fast and didn't stop to look at too much.

 

1. The highest difficulty I can win on with consistency is Noble. I have won on Prince difficulty once or twice, and certainly not with any consistency.

2. Usually space race. Conquest is a tough victory condition, and only practical early in the game. In later game stages, you would hit the criteria for a domination victory long before you conquered everybody. I have only done diplomatic victory once, and that was when I had two vassal states that had to vote the same way I did in elections.

3. Courthouses reduce city maintenance by 50%. In other words, they reduce the amount of money you spend to keep your cities running by 50%. AFAIK, it does not reduce the cost of maintaining military units by 50%. You are right that I consider them essential, and that I think organized leaders are the best ones to take. Unless you are a warmonger, chances are most of your maintenance costs will be due to your cities, not your military. Even if you are a warmonger, your cities will still be a significant percentage of your total mainenance bill. By reducing these costs by 50%, it allows you to divert more of your income into science and culture, which is always helpful regardless of what type of victory condition you are going for.

EDIT: I should point out that while I feel courthouses are very important, maintenance costs aren't bad early in the game, when you have just two or three cities. Because of this, there's no reason to go for Code of Laws immediately. What I generally do is research all of the techs I need to improve the tiles near my capital city. That means I'm probably going to need at least the wheel, pottery, and mining.

After that, you also want to pick up any tech that will allow you to access any special resources in your immediate vicinity. Be smart about it, and don't research something just to get it - put it off until later if possible. For example, only research masonry early if you have marble or stone. Only research hunting early if you have deer, beavers or elephants. I generally prefer building cottages rather than farms, so I only get agriculture if I have corn, wheat or rice. Just use common sense.

You'll also want to pick up either Archery or Bronze Working so you have something better than a warrior unit in your cities. If you get lucky and have access to horses, you can skip this step and defend your cities with chariots. After that, click on Code of Laws. It should be about the 10th technology you research, meaning you're getting access to it when you civilization is really starting to grow and courthouses start becoming beneficial.

[ December 29, 2006, 15:52: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Harbs: Once you get a second Holy City, then use your misionary to spread the religion to a good production city and spam out more missionaries. Eventually you'll get another Great Prophet and you can use him to make a shrine for that religion too. Two shrines with a lot of cities with each religion generate a lot of cash. In some cases, you can run 100%science and still turn a profit...

Before the recent patch, I won a couple matches on Prince. After the patch, I struggle with Warlord and get beat down on Noble. I have a site that I visited regularly that had some tactics that I learned from, and did have some success.

I try to keep the progress working towards Space and Cultural, but keep an eye to military targets. Try to keep the wars short, and your objectives clear. Have a secondary objective ready if the war lasts longer than planned, or objective A is taken earlier than expected. I find I get more Conquest or Domination wins though.

After the first war, they are imperative. They reduce the maintainance cost of the city by 50%. Maintainance is added in two parts. The more cities you control, the higher the maintainance, and the farther away from your capital (or Forbidden Palace, Versailles), the greater that maintainance cost is.

Marathon game length increases that number of turns. In such games, consider an early rush with Chariots or Axes for some excitement. After the patch, the Computer will settle right in your face if you let them...

Actually, the AI is better with Micromanagement after the patch, so it gets more production, science and growth out of the cities. They didn't change the AI bonuses though. Now some complain that the game is too difficult now. The one weakness the AI still has is execution of war. As a result, a greater portion of the wins are Conquest or Domination wins...

Vassal States gained through Capitulation count as conquered for the purpose of Conquest wins with the Warlords expansion. Conquest wins are easier now...

Sometimes I will grab it on the way to Archery if I feel I need a better defence than just warriors or a lone axe. If my opponents are likely to have chariots or Horse Archers, I will take Hunting to build Spears...

Normally, Bronze Working will win. An early Axe Rush (with Spearmen for support) will take a huge chunk out of a rival civ that's right in your face.

Iron Working and Construction shouldn't be delayed either. Swords and Catapults will be needed for an early war to take someone out.

 

I am currently playing on Warlord level and I appear to be winning, although I got lucky in that all the civilisations were on one continent. It turned out there was another completely uninhabited continent on the map as well and I managed to find that and settle it first. That helped.

One of the biggest hurdles you can encounter in this game is unavailability of modern resources. With the old resources like iron and horses, you can settle your cities near to them to make sure you get them. But things like coal and oil are a lottery and if it turns out you don't have them, then you're stuffed, because the others civs will never trade them to you.

Next question: Which are your must-have Wonders? In Civ III, Great Library was a must-have at the higher levels, as it was the only way to keep up with the AI bonuses. Which ones, if any, are as vital in Civ IV?

[ December 30, 2006, 22:29: Message edited by: Harbourboy ]

 

HB, if you lack a resource you must get it. Take it. Crush those smug bastards who are sitting on vital resources for your starving people. Just make sure you jump a civ that do not have access to any units that resource would make possible and that you thus would be unable to build.

 

It's no easy feat to take oil off someone if they have Tanks and you don't - because they have oil and you don't..........

 

You need to get the oil before it goes that far. Find some other more hapless victim. You should keep in mind that even with tanks you should be able to crush the AI, infantry and artillery. A few big stacks and the AI is toast. Slow war and no blitz but it gets the job done.

 

The AI is very good at targetting YOUR strategic resources. I have had my oil supplies cut off several times in this game by smart tactics from the computer. This has lead me to the new strategy of using the very cool spy unit to go and pillage the oil, uranium, and aluminium of my enemies. Awesome.

 

3-4 spies can completely devastate a civs access to resources, any resources. I wreck their entire country side, cows, pigs, oil, iron everything gets blown up. They should know better than to place their civilisation next to mine.

 

How much do you guys use city specialists?

 

I actually use them as little as possible. I find it more useful to crank up the size of the city as much as possible so you get the specialists whether you want them or not so to speak. Priests are by far the best specialists as there are wonders which improve them and if you are unable to let a city grow due to unrest then to get a few is useful until you can build buildings to handle said unrest.