civilization....

[NightTrain]

Sure, anytime! We're playing almost every day, the teams add a whole new element to the game.

My brother and I developed a few strategies recently that really boosts you and gives you leverage very early in the game while playing teams. First, we both play the Inca leader (Ind / Fin).

You found your first city, and set it to building warrior units until you have 4 or 5. You don't want to build a worker or settler anyway during the first few turns, because it halts city growth.

When you have your 4 or 5 warriors, you should have discovered at least one other Civ. Take out that city, thereby reducing his partner's Technology and Trade rates by 50%.

If you both take out a different rival civ, you're golden. When he'll talk to you again, make peace with him and get down to business developing and expanding as usual. More than likely the orphaned Civs from the destroyed partnerships will offer to be your Vassal State, which is mighty good for business and score.

Something to avoid, though, is taking more than one city that's isolated from your empire that early in the game. It really drags your economy down in a big way.

[Insein]

When I play and start the conquest, I usually just raze cities. Like you said, it cripples the economy and its cheaper just to build a settler and start one from scratch. No insurgency and no overpopulation.

I like Americans early on because they build wonders 50% faster. I get all the early Wonders and it carries you through the first 2 stages of the game.

[avatar4321]

Just started Civ IV again. Ive only got the Warlord expansion, but its just a fun game. I need some better strategies. Because i just seem to go with the flow most of the time and I dont really have a plan. Its fun to watch, but sometimes it gets me no where.

[NightTrain]

Avatar, get the Beyond The Sword expansion for Civ IV, you'll love it. More units and unique racial units and buildings, more technologies, more world and national wonders.

Also, there's 6 different corporations you can control that do different things like add culture, add production or add money to each city you expand it to (works like spreading religion via missionaries). I'm pretty sure the corporations were introduced in the BTS expansion... I could be wrong though.

Late-game is where BTS really shines, though, especially naval warfare. You have attack subs, stealth destroyers, and missile cruisers in addition to standard naval units like battleships, destroyers, aircraft carriers, subs, transports, etc. Stealth destroyers are very handy because only another stealth destroyer can see them - so a couple of these pillaging fishing grounds, offshore oil rigs and other resources is pretty safe unless you get unlucky and a battleship happens to run over you.

One of my favorite tactics lately against a powerful adversary is to make about 5 aircraft carriers, load them up with fighters and run them in a stack of 4 battleships and a couple of destroyers. I'll run that fleet up and down the enemy coast, using my fighters to carpet bomb the snot out of his countryside developments... suddenly losing all your food, resources and luxuries instantly cripples any civ trying to wage war and a size 30 city will be down to single digits in a few turns with this scorched earth strategy. At least two 'medic' promotions on a couple of your ships in your fleet will keep all of them repaired up unless you're really catching hell from a big navy, in which case add a few more battleships to protect those carriers.

Another good tactic I started doing recently is to park an attack sub off the coast next to a large coastal city and hit the 'Blockade' button. This prevents any water resources including overseas trade from going to any city within the sub's influence, which severely cripples the enemy's economy. A few subs in choice spots can bring an enemy's economy to it's knees. Of course, if one of his destroyers spots you, it would be wise to haul ass out of there with your sub.

My brother is a fan of nuking the hell out of a city he's about to assault and it works for him, but I don't like doing it. Too messy and takes a lot of cleanup after you take it. Plus it triggers global warming and I don't like having deserts appear back in my cities replacing farmland.

Anyway, BTS is definitely the best Civ IV expansion out there IMO.

[Noir]

I just got Civ 4 (i know a lil late to the party lol) i've been meaning to get it for agggggges as the last Civ game i had was Civ 2, but never got round to it, but i went on a bit of a game spending spree and finally picked it up,

One thing that keeps urking me (n00b question i know) is over-crowding in cities, there's like forever a -4 or -5 happiness level because of overcrowding, and the in-game help basically just says that over-crowding is bad, with no remedy, so how do i quell such a problem?

[Insein]

Basically noir, you have a 6 button toolbar in the city screen that sets the goals for the city. You can "avoid growth" and that will halt the city from growing to any bigger size then its currently at. You can set it for max production which I prefer once its established since that does essentially the same thing. It will place the maximum amount of production in the city squares possible which in return slows the growth to only sustainable levels. Just scroll over each one to see the options for each.



Right next to the map in the lower right hand corner in the area that has "Draft" on it. The bottom 6 things there determine what your city focuses on. Its default to just keep growing pop unless you specify otherwise.

The Bread is to toggle growth on and off. The Hammer is for production. The Coin is for wealth. Flask is for Science. Great People and then I have no idea what the last one is.

[NightTrain]

I never worry about the overcrowding issue. Be sure to build all the wonders you can, every luxury you can add to your resource base affects every one of your cities, and of course your luxury rate will help, too.

Unless a city revolts, I really don't care - even in Civ, there's a few liberals causing problems in your cities but as long as there are at least as many happy people as unhappy ones, your city will do fine.

[hjmick]

Anybody have Civ V yet?

[DragonStryk72]

for the life of me i can not win a match on deity......

getting angry............

Uh, yeah, sort of the point of deity isn't it? It's the equivalent of having someone roll up and punch you in the balls every other turn

[DragonStryk72]

Anybody have Civ V yet?

Yup. It's great, and I especially the switch over to hex grid, as well as the easy modding tools they developed. My only real caveat at this point is that they do not have historically accurate starting locations for the civilizations on Earth map, which sort of defeats the whole point of playing the Earth map.

Here's a review of the game that I enjoyed thoroughly.

<embed src="http://blip.tv/play/hdEVgf_DcgI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="277" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

[NightTrain]

Civ V, eh? Looks like I'd better head down to the store.

[NightTrain]

I bought it, and I like it.

The only problem is that they released it too early to the public and there are a few very strange bugs still to be worked out. My desktop (running XP) that is much more powerful than my laptop won't play it, but my laptop running Win7 does - barely.

They'll release patches to fix it, but IMO it is unacceptable to release a game like this with flaws that need to be addressed. Using the world to testbed your software frustrates your customer base and makes them reluctant to buy future releases right away.

[NightTrain]

They've almost got all the bugs worked out in it now, with patches. It takes a fairly late model video card to play it, even though it's not readily apparent that the game is graphics intensive. I would guess the engine they used isn't very economical, and the game does begin bogging down later in the game when thousands of units are repositioned worldwide and wars are fought.

It's harder to engage in blitzkrieg and requires more planning, but I do like the game.

Anyone up for a friendly game of world conquest?

[NightTrain]

They released a huge patch a couple days ago, it fixed the game. No more bogging down, it's smooth as silk now and damn near as fast as Civ II.

[DragonStryk72]

so what do you play it on then.....winning all the tim is no fun....

Have you tried finding some online folks to pit yourself against? I mean, the whole point of deity level is to just keep punching you in the balls. My favorite trick was to set up a "secondary civilization" out on Australia, while allowing the others civs to interact with my few mainland cities. At the least, I get a wonderful degree of knowledge that they're coming for me.

I also admit to diplomatting the hell out of my enemies, and keeping solid fortifications and military units up. This usually comes down to picking one civ that I latched myself to, usually one not directly bordering my own empire, and keep my diplomacy as high as possible with them, so that I can set up multi-empire pincer attacks to keep them from being able to focus solely on me. I will usually produce military units for a time, then switch focus to research to speed up my advance to next the next big weapons improvement