krys dives into Civ4 - His humble start

[Socrates]

This is the thread for my very first game that I have just started. My start in Civ4 will be humble, and you will be able to <s>spam</s> provide me with valuable tips and strategies during the game (I hope so). At that point I have only tried the tutorial, and stopped it once Cyborg Sid went away. Of course I have already read some games on various websites and forums, and know a bit of the new features, but I essentially have little clue of every detail.

I have decided to paste my screenshots directly into my image software, and then to shrink them from 1024*768 (my full-screen resolution) to 800*600, so as to fit nicely in the forums (seen in 1024*768 of course) and to weigh less. The quality of the screenshots seems to still be OK that way.

Off to the game ! :)



Game : krys_solo01
Version : Civ4 1.09
Civ, leader : France, Louis XIV
AIs : 6, all random
Difficulty : Noble
Map : Continents
Size : Standard
Climate : Temperate
Sealevel : Medium
Era : Ancient
Speed : Normal
Options : City Flipping after Conquest
Victories : all

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I decided to play with Louis XIV in my first game a long time ago, because that is the leader I wanted for France all the way, and because I always first play as the French in new Civ games. :D By setting everything to standard, even the number of AIs (6, which means 1 religion per civ, heh), it's not like I knew how I would play the game beforehand, since I picked Louis just for the character. Noble was the level I chose to start with, let's see how it goes... The only option I changed is the "City Flipping after Conquest", which I thought was closer to what happens in Civ3.

With no idea of what was awaiting me, I clicked on 'Continue'...

[Socrates]

My first starting position :

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So I didn't know where I was and how good the things around me were. There is a tile with some pigs and another tile with some silks. The pigs regularly make their 'pig' noise, which is funny. :D You can also notice the green stuff (TM) in the fog of war, indicating the presence of flood plains in the north ! I could also spot other places like that in the west and in the east. Actually the one you can see here would disappear if the camera flew too near and when my capital was founded, contrary to the other ones.

I sent the warrior to the forest tile with silks because he would be able to climb some hills thereafter. He discovered another tile with silks in the east, but I wasn't sure it would make a difference to move the settler, especially if it meant settling off the river or on the pigs (if the game works like Civ3). So I settled right there, and founded Paris in 4000BC. This revealed a 3rd tile with silks in the east, and also 2 tiles with incense in the west. A tribal village could also be seen.

Food is power, right ? I put the citizen on the noisy pigs, so as to do +3 fpt. This only gives me 1 shield, but I can't get everything. And, what ? 10 gold coins ? With the palace giving 8 of them ? Yummy. I selected a warrior, not sure why. Being creative gives +2 cpt in every city, it seems, so I'm already getting 4 cpt total.

The last thing I needed to do this turn was to select a tech to research. I hesitated between 2 techs : Pottery and Animal Hubsandry. Again I wasn't sure of what to do, but I chose Animal Husbandry for the two things it does. First off, it reveals horses, which sounds important (they have even changed how they appear since the 1.00 version). And second, it allows Pasture. Well, I'm not sure of what I'm talking about, but the pigs already give you 1 more bread, and a pasture over them adds 3 other breads to that !!! [eek] Food is powa, that's still correct, right ? Well, I need this as soon as possible and should quickly build a worker. So basically, my whole early strategy evolves around those pigs, better not encounter any Muslim civ anytime soon. This is the Piggie Strat (TM) ! :) Well, folks at RBCiv put a "(TM)" everywhere, so let's do the same before they grab every (TM) for themselves. ;)

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This is how the game looks like at the end of 4000BC. A good part of what's happening is summed up in the pic, thanks to the nice mousing-over effect. :)

And that's where I am right now ! Any comment welcome. [goodjob]

[Pastorius]

Settle along the river (healthy choice), and dont settle too close - which was never really your preference anyway, right?

Remember that you can physically circumnavigate the map to gain the Magellan wonder. Which may or may not be possible till you have caravels IIRC.
Need to go fishing -&gt; sailing for any ship btw.

I get a lot of MOO starts myself (based on 4 games in total), but an OINK start (TM) is cool

Village (hut) in the west there, if your sunglasses prevent you from seing it [:p]

IMO creative means Stonehenge is less useful, and so is obelisk. And you wont need the prophet points yet either. But you already thought of that I hope.

Are you going for a late religion, or planning to captura a holy city? Or none at all?

Keep in mind that the barbs around can become quite civilized [lol]

And build cottages, and build them early, dont cha know (TM)

[Shabbaman]

Pity those floodplains don't show up like that in my game. Useful for scouting. Think I'm going to get that Save your eyesight Mod (tm) myself as well!

I haven't build Stonehenge yet. And imo it's not that great either. I think people are blinded by Sulla getting it early in his walkthrough. But I think he was extremily lucky to get stone that close to his capital. If you have stone nearby it's probably worth a gamble.

[akots]

So far out of about 100 games started (played only a handful to the end) there had been no stone at all anywhere near the start in my case. Moslty as Gandhi and Caesar though. For Gandhi, it is understandable, may be it is tweaked for balance the Industrious trait. But same thing for Caesar who gets a plently of marble but never stone. [lol] But indeed Stonehenge seems to be pretty useless apart from an early great prophet which you can use to build a shrine. This basically means starting with Mysticism which is not a known feature of Louis XIV.

Also beware of mods: you won't be able to play GOTM with any of the mods. Or so it is now.

[DavidC]

My tip is b-line to Bronze Working and use forest chops to get your first few settlers out quick. Indeed no need for religion or stonehenge/obelisks for now.

[Pastorius]

I ve actually handbuilt stonehenge directly from the start in one start attempt as the Indians.
Which is a gamble in terms of defense


I stopped the game when I was later overrun by the English. But at that time I had had 2 flips already. My getting overrun was probably because of too much effort in the cultural and health areas, and too little effort on military techs.

I did have some force, but built too little protection against mounted units, and forgot to protect the invasion force I was building up. Plus the odds were not in my favor (war elephants vs horsearchers...etc)

But nah - Stonehenge is hyped (Sullla influenced, like Shabba said)
Although prophet can be used for tech or specialist too, which arent so bad - depends on how many missionaries/how much religious spread you have...

But creative trait with 2cpt makes up for them obelisks right?

[Socrates]

Paal, thanks a lot for being the first spammer here, a real pleasure ! [goodjob] And thanks to the other spammers as well.

@ Paal :
I founded Paris along the river because something told me it was better than off the river, and the game now tells me I get 2 health points from the river, so I guess it was a wise choice (though not very difficult).
I won't settle too close, that's for sure ; I don't have any plan for that, I'll see as I discover the land and its resources.
I don't know how good it is to be the first to travel around the world (though I read how you do it (at least 1 known tile for each longitude, I think)), and I'm not by the coast, so I won't go fishing for the moment. I have some pigs to feed (TM). "OINK OINK !!" [lol] BTW, one of the three pigs is always lying on the ground, what an ass !
I saw the hut, thanks !
About having already thought of what is worth building with the creative trait, no, I haven't thought of anything, I'm just playing and trying to understand what I do, thereafter.
I don't have any plan for a religion at this point, though it is obvious I'm not heading towards an early religion, since I'm starting to research Animal Husbandry. All hail the Holy Pigs !! (TM) [thumbsup]
Yeah, I'll tell you when I meet some barbs ; how much do you know them for knowing they can get quite civilized ? Anything to say about Oslo ?
Cottages, hmm... need Pottery to build that... and a worker. Not right now, but not too late, I hope.

@ Shabba : OK, I'll see if it's worth building Stonehenge when I get the chance. For the moment, it's growth time.

@ akots :
I'm not going the religion path anyway for the moment.
I don't intend to play in CFC's GOTM. And I have almost never used any mod with Civ3, no worries.

@ David : Bronze Working seems to be a good tech, I'll research it quite soon. I need a worker with that anyway.

@ Paal : Yes, the creative trait gives you 2 cpt in every city, and IIRC, obelisks just give you culture too, so I must see if they're not redundant... or additive for the good of my empire ! After all, one must play on his strength.

I stopped my game after posting the previous spoiler, because I encountered what looks like a bug to me. Basically, I get more beakers than I should. Using the settings of my game (strategy), I should get 10 beakers each turn, but in fact I get 13 beakers, as could be seen in 3960BC. This can be foreseen in the 3rd pic of this thread (2nd post), where it says "11 turns" at 10 bpt, whereas the tech costs 140 beakers. [crazyeye] An extensive analysis was posted at the RBCiv forum and the bug was also reported at CFC. No valuable answer so far, and I really wanted to play this game with my pigs, so, in anticipation of the many bugs that are awaiting me anyway, I decided to resume the game and live with that extra science.


My warrior started to explore in the east of Paris, and followed some various hills there. It is to be noted that I didn't find anything on "hills" in the Civilopedia. What do they do exactly ? Also, it seems that the forest layer annihilates the gold bonus from an adjacent river, which should be mentioned over there (not the case). Another bugger : I don't know where to find the number of the current turn in the game (F8 screen in Civ3).

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On turn 3 (3880BC), Paris's borders expanded ; they needed 10 culture points, and I already had 12 (4 cpt) ! That's very fast (compared to the 10 turns in Civ3). The warrior found some corn and some other pigs too !! ;)

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On turn 5 (3800BC), I decided to pop a new hut with the warrior, and it gave me Mysticism ! That's very cool, now I'm not that far from the early religions.

As you can see, I'm taking my time to play this first game, and I want to focus on many details. Here is a little analysis of a city growth, and the occasion for me to see how it is now managed in Civ4. I've heard that food, production and science was now carried over to the next level/project, so I decided to not touch the tile assignment in Paris before the growth to size 2, like I would always do in Civ3.

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Turn 8 (3680BC) : tadam ! That was right, items are carried over, which can't be bad. First off, the important thing to note is that the governor decided to put the new citizen on that forest-grassland just north of Paris, as can be seen with the little hut there on the map (this is a pic of the end of the turn, but before I touched anything about it). I had 21/22 breads before growth, and 7 hammers. I'm now at 2/24 breads, which means I got 3 breads during the IT (normal). I'm now at 8 hammers, which means that I got 1 hammer during the IT. But the new tile assignment gives me a 2nd hammer (from the forest), so, big change from Civ3 : we don't get the extra hammers from growth during the IT. I expect it to be the same for bread, but I'm not sure yet (the forest-grassland gives 2 breads, ie. what a citizen needs). I hope it is the same for gold/beakers, but it will be difficult to know in this game. :(

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Food is power, and so I decided to emphasize growth even more. The hut is now on the flood plains in the north, so that I get 3 breads from my new citizen, as well as 1 gold, but no hammer. As a result, I'm now doing +4 fpt (we should think of standard abbreviations, this is getting confusing) and +11 bpt (though I'm getting 14 bpt in fact, as the following turn will tell me).

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On turn 10 (3600BC), my warrior spotted an orange border in the east, so I'm expecting to meet someone pretty soon ! :) Note that I'm trying to display as much useful information as possible in my pics ; in this one in particular, I wanted to display the science status, because I'm just about to discover Animal Husbandry. I've spent 8 turns at 10 bpt (13 in fact), and 2 turns at 11 bpt (14 in fact), so I should be at 102 beakers, but in fact I'm at 132 beakers. It will be interesting to see if beakers are carried over as well next turn. New type of resources spotted : silver and furs, surely interesting...

[Socrates]

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On turn 11 (3560BC) I discovered Animal Husbandry, which revealed no horse on the map (just realized !). I found out there were many more techs that I could research by now (remember I also had Mysticism), the "more advanced" one being Writing ! I hesitated to go for this one, to get Alphabet thereafter (I heard you can trade techs after that one), but I eventually picked up my second choice from the beginning of the game : Pottery. Cottages should be useful but a granary seems interesting as well.

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I sent my warrior towards that orange border, and immediately a dude came out of the magician's hat. [eek] Not expected, anyway, Peter of the Russians ! The Russians start with Hunting and Mining, so I could smell some trading there, but that's when I realized I needed Alphabet for that. :( So, nothing to do except having a beer (TM). Peter is philosophical and expansive IIRC, well, nothing I can do with knowing that for the moment. In this pic we can also see that the extra beakers (6 out of 14) were carried over to the next research. Although it is being displayed once as "6/112" and once as "0/112" in the same box !! [blush2] The former figure is the correct one actually. [This pic shows you how to display 2 kinds of very different information on the same image, thanks to the mouse-over effect.] Oh, and you can barely see a lion at the bottom left of the pic.

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[hmm] A scary music or sound ! Hinduism has been founded by someone (turn 12 (3520BC)), and I must quickly capture the image before the message disappears. Funnily the tech triggering Hinduism costs more than the tech triggering Buddhism... Oh, and that's some marble outside of the Russian border. I guess it is something important to note. Oh, and the lion had moved away during the IT, but I don't know in which direction, because he just disappeared from the screen (probably due to my hardware) ; this is like in a PBEM in Civ3, except that here it's a solo game ! [crazyeye]

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On turn 14 (3440BC), Paris reached size 3. This pic was taken after my tile assignment. The governor had chosen the forest-plain south-west of Paris (probably because he thought there was too much food everywhere), but I moved the new citizen to the forest-grassland in the north of Paris (I traded 1 hammer for 1 bread). I wanted to build a worker after the warrior, and I heard it stops city's growth. Since I didn't know how that worked exactly, I chose to continue max growth, but to test the carrying-over of hammers (14/15, +2).

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There was this Russian scout on the hill next to my warrior. He didn't block my way, but it was a good occasion to test the tile sharing between units of different civs. So I moved my warrior to that same hill, was asked whether this meant war or not, chose "not" (TM), and then both units shared the tile in harmony, and I guess they had some beers as well. Here I clicked on my warrior after he had moved, and that was the first time I actually heard a unit speaking in French in this game (haha), and for some reason he is awaiting orders (red circle at his feet).


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I then entered the city screen, to see what's up with the worker. This pic has the answer : all the surplus food is actually transformed to production !! [thumbsup] That's even more impressive than Jesus turning water into wine. [groucho] As a consequence, there was no point in harvesting one of the hill-forest-plains in the south (3 hammers ! but zero bread), because that would mean the same amount of bread-hammer, the brick of which workers are made. We can also see that the extra hammer from the previous turn was carried over, though it's not very clear. I should be at 1/60 hammer and going at +6 hpt, but there it says 0/60 and "total production : 7". We'll see this next turn !

[akots]

Indeed animals disappearing is not due to your graphics, they disappear on all computers. It is annoying indeed, you can seldom see where the enemy unit went if the destination is in the fog.

Also, another note is that Peter the Great is apparently the only one AI personality which actually selects Alphabet as a target tech in the tech tree.

[Pastorius]

Just you wait till Killer hears about your comparison of settler/worker production and Jesus turning water into wine...

The fact that you can reselect a unit that has ended his moves is a very good thing - since you (read: since I) tend to send people out in the fog, then they suddenly stumble across something while enroute to their selected destination, and you can just swap the route in an instant.

But it is (to me) a mixed blessing - potentially harmfull if you waltz into a barb or two. Not unlike the go-to feature of civ3, but in a way different, since IMO the game gives an incentive towards using the right-click-to-go feature vs moving via numpad. I bet you move via num pad though...you seem more patient.

I was gonna go with an explanation about the beaker stuff that went a little something like this: the french military victories (0) made the game designer decide that they should receive at least some compensation. Thus some more beakers. But I am too mature to tease you like that [:p]

Your floodplain bug looks like a scary green monster (TM) lurking in the fog btw [lol]

[Socrates]

@ akots : OK, I'll see if Peter gets Alphabet early. It is a rather expensive tech, and the only prerequisite is Writing ; Writing, on the other hand, has 3 prerequisites but no "strong" one, and it "strongly" leads to many further techs, making it an accessible but pivotal tech, which just makes sense.

@ Paal :
I'm not sure to understand what you mean. I move my units every turn and never use the go-to option (I hate it). Are you sure you can change the destination of your unit in a blink of an eye ? Anyway that'd be cheating to me, but maybe it's something else that you're talking about. Though I have always moved my units with numpad, here I'm using the right-click, I don't know why. Maybe I'm scared by the 3D environment with its rotation possibilities... Also my hardware makes it very slow to play, and it takes a minute or so to alt-tab back to Civ4 after saving a pic.
If I were Louis, I would have sent you to the Bastille jail already. The French are sooo great. [cool]

Back to the game...


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So the game works fine there too : I got my carried-over hammer transformed into a bread-hammer for my worker, and I'm now doing +6 bhpt (bread-hammers per turn). This is a pic of turn 16 (3360BC), and I didn't tell you about the warrior I had just built. Since he wasn't needed for happiness and there was no AI around, I chose to send him on exploration too. There was this tribal village in the north-west, but maybe my borders would eventually pop it. Not sure if it works like in Civ3, but I should quickly know, since being creative meant more culture towards borders' expansion. So I sent the warrior to the south-west. After all there seems to be a lot of tundra in the north, so my best chances to find someone else should be in the south.

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Lots of quotes from the Bible, heh. With Civ4, now you don't even have to open up the Holy Book, it is all in the game ! :D Anyway, turn 19 (3240BC), and I got Pottery. The French started to become experimented farmers, but that was still all theory back then. Once gain, I was tempted to go for Writing, but then I remembered that Bronze Working was a nice advice ; after all I have 10 forest tiles around Paris !!! That's huge. Mining is the prerequisite for Bronze Working, so Mining it was. The Russians also had it, but we couldn't trade for the moment, and I needed the forest chopping ability sooner than that, or so I thought.

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On turn 20 (3200BC), a Japanese warrior approached my borders and I immediately met Tokugawa. The goal is to try to capture the best image of the leaderhead's animation cinematics, which lasts something like 15 seconds or so. I also discovered the "Cautious towards krys" layer by accident, though it's not hard to fine : just mouse-over His Greatness. Nothing to do except having a beer (a 'Kirin') (TM), and bye bye.

That's when I realized that there was a Japanese warrior outside my borders and no French unit inside. [blush2] My 2nd warrior was already too far away to protect Paris, so I let him continue his exploration. Could this be the end of the game already ? Not sure I could even "rush" a warrior, since it meant to get 15 hammers in 3 turns, even 2 if enemy units move before production is computed. Anyway I didn't even think of that, for some reason, so the debate didn't take place in my head. I relied on the AI's sympathy and will to have fun in this game longer than by killing me right away, which is irrational and shouldn't be the way to program an AI anyway. ;)

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The Japanese warrior moved towards the tribal village, which surprised me for some reason (didn't think of that hut because it wasn't worth thinking of it anyway). I don't know what he got, but no barbs anyway. Due to some technical issues (which ended in a simple PC reboot), I reloaded the game a bit before and so the warrior popped the hut "twice". I wonder if there is an option which gives the same results, like in Civ3, and if it is ON by default. By moving to that village, the Japanese warrior was also moving towards my city, and so I got even more scared. Also notice the promotions he already has : more strength twice, if I'm not mistaken. Let's call him SanGoku. ;)

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On that same turn, my 2nd warrior encountered a bear. That's some tough beast ! It was blockading the path to the west, so I was forced to retreat to the east for the moment. I wasn't going to fight him.

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On turn 22 (3120BC), Buddhism was finally founded. I may have been able to get it first after Animal Husbandry, but I was more eager to grab some piggy techs first. The bear seemed to be hungry : note how he is able to smell fresh flesh from a few hundreds of kilometers away !! [lol] Also, SanGoku moved back into the fog of war, preventing me from telling the shameful tale of krys the n00b-loser. [mischief]

I decided to move the warrior to that hill-forest-plain in the east, which gave me a defense bonus of 75%, probably enough to protect me from the bear. But then he wasn't interested anymore, maybe he thought that I had too much protection, and it disappeared into the fog of war too.

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On turn 25 (3000BC), I discovered Mining, and started on Bronze Working immediately. I'm taking the occasion to say that, if I alt-tab to my image program when I have that screen, alt-tabbing back to the game remotely clicks on "Continue", which is a bit annoying.

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On that turn I also built my worker at last ! :) I sent him to the pigs and started a pasture, which sounds like the no-brainer improvement for those "very intelligent animals" (TM) Firaxis 2005. ;) I decided that it was wise to build another warrior first before anything else, since some AIs could get back with more units later. BTW, it seems that they don't know where future resources are anymore, but do they know about enemy units in the fog of war ? Did SanGoku know I had no unit in Paris, and was he aware of my borders there before we met ? Maybe he thought that I could have had a unit in Paris and didn't risk a war for that. As you can see, the extra bread-hammer from the worker's building process (I had 1) is ready to be transformed back to a hammer. Jesus can go into hiding now. [cool] Maximum growth again from now on. Last thing, my borders expanded once again on this turn (25*4 = 100).

[Rik Meleet]

No unit can enter your borders if you don't have "open borders" deal with them. If they do, it is a declaration of war. So he couldn't have entered your border without declaring war.
No more Deity RoP in cIV.

[akots]

Don't do this in multiplayer though. AIs will not declare on a human until there is some expansion room. Even if an AI is cornered, it would first build a few galleys and then try to drop settlers in some remote areas you fail to cover to found cities there. Only then if it fails, the war is declared.

I had a hard time adjusting to this because the maps look so crowded. I thought that AI should declare and rather soon but they do not even the aggressive ones. It seems that each tile gained is of high value to the AI apparently because there is no corruption. So, each tile makes something useful in the long run. It seems also that AI can go into the builder mode for some turns especially with jungle terrain which takes some time to improve. So, no worries here, it was a safe bet.

[akots]

Now, about where AI moves with scouting units. I'm pretty sure AI knows where the human player is. The AI scouts always follow almost direct path to you to make contact if they can in most cases. On a standard size Pangea map, you are essentially guaranteed to get all contacts by turn 25-30 imh-e (experience). They though tend to leave the large areas unexplored which is god because there might be some huts left there to pop. And huts are almost always good on all levels. If you pop the barbaric warriors, you die though 100% with warrior or scout, often even with an archer if you end up in the open. But I think out of 100 huts I've popped barbarian warriors 3-4 times. Ok, may be 5 or 6. Usually it is cash, sometimes scout, rarely a tech or a warrior or experience, maps are also often popped. It should be all in xml files, just somebody has to find it out in exact numbers.

[Socrates]

@ Rik : Yes I know, but what I feared is Tokugawa declaring war because it was too good an opportunity to miss. Apparently it was a safe bet in solo. But I didn't even think "safe bet", I was only driven by my pigs. Gotta love those pink, fat things (TM). :D

@ akots :
That's too bad, the AI should know where to start a war for land, otherwise it's just too easy to send many settlers without relying much on military.
Not sure if they know where to find humans. For example, see where SanGoku found me ? One tile south-west of the former tribal village that I missed. Not sure he took the direct path to my borders, as you'll see later in this post.

Onto the game...


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The next thing to check was how workers work in Civ4, compared to Civ3. My worker started a pasture on the pigs on turn 25, and 3 turns later, on turn 28 (2880BC), I saw the pasture built. [blush2] First off, nothing like Civ3's PBEM : the extra bread (3 !!!) wasn't added during the 3rd IT (6/26 breads 3 turns before, 18/26 now, +4 bpt before the pasture, +7 bpt from now on). But that still means that the extra production is added during the 4th IT, like in Civ3's solo... whereas the pasture is supposed to be completed in 4 turns. Too bad they didn't simplify this one. I still have to see how buildings in the city work as well.

I can see you starting to be tired of my bean counting, but hey, first game ! For a change, let me tell you that I enjoy looking at my 3 pigs locked in my new pasture. At last they stop running everywhere ! The lazy one, which was taking a nap all day, is now staying under the tent and refuses to play with his mates. Shall I trade for some females someday ? ;) Also, the little hut showing that you work the tile is now gone, instead the pigs are put out of the pasture if you don't work it, making it very easy to see if you work the pasture or not. [And I request a 'pig' smiley at CDZ. [groucho] ]

What about the music ? I once could listen some baroque music (or so I think), but it must have been a bug, since I've never heard it again, and that time it kept being played along with the Lion King music in the main menu after exiting my game... Anyway, what I can hear so far is the little piece of music when I approach the city with my camera. Judging from the instrument, it really reminds me of the music that you could hear in the main village in the first Zelda game on the Nintendo 64 (Ocarina of Time, IIRC). Except that the Zelda one was more lively that this one.

Shortly after, my 2nd warrior popped a hut that I had left, and I got a map of the region. This revealed a source of stone !! :) Meanwhile my worker was sent to the grassland tile in the south of Paris (by the river) and built a farm there. I hesitated to build a cottage, but then thought I'd better profit from the river, since it seems we can't irrigate far from fresh water. There will be plenty of tiles to cover with cottages in the future.

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This is a pic of turn 35 (2600BC). The bear was still following me at some distance, in the fog. I had intended to scout in the west, but now it was really blockading the way, and still no way to go fighting that beast. But I had now found the Japanese borders in the west. :) Probably their capital, but not sure. So this warrior could now explore in the north. The Russian scout had been wounded a bit and had taken a few turns to heal (at 0.1 strength per turn, this sure isn't fast). But he had promoted too, so he had likely defeated an animal in the north.

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On turn 37 (2520BC), I discovered Bronze Working. No copper spotted, but I didn't look closely. Since I now had all I wanted to make good use of the worker for a while, I chose Writing for my next tech. This isn't an expensive tech, and it enables Alphabet. Hopefully I'll be able to trade with my neighbours soon.

Bronze Working also enabled my first civic : Slavery (labor). I declined the offer, since the only difference seems to be the possibility to sacrifice population to rush production. Since I don't plan to use that feature now (I like my pop !), and since it requires 1 turn of anarchy, there was no use for me to switch. Also, not sure it's better to switch right away rather than at the end of the turn...

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On the same turn, Paris reached size 6, which is my current limit regarding happiness. After the worker, I built 2 more warriors in a row, one for happiness issues in Paris (the people wanted it !), one to escort a future settler. And that's where I was now. So it was basically the best moment for me to start building a settler, with a maximum of breads and hammers. The worker had been sent to the northern flood plain and ordered to build a farm there as well. It is longer to build than on the grassland (7 turns to 5), but should be completed before the settler is done. I didn't do the math but maybe this will cut 1 turn for the settler ? Funny thought... a farm.

A last note to say that the 'beaker' bug is still there, and still goes along the lines that I wrote in other places : the number of extra beakers depends on the %age of science and on the tech's cost. BTW, I've never seen a tech deflation so far, does this exist (a la Civ3) ? For example, I had to research Mining at full cost (besides the 'beaker' bug), despite knowing the Russians, who start with it. The mentioned cost (70) corresponds to the settings' factor (here : *1.4) affected to the standard cost (50).

[Pastorius]

Research music to get ingame music [crazyeye]

I really like the music in this game - even though it is Naxos quality classical music.

Erm, getting music isnt bad in itself, since you get a free Great Artist if you are the first to discover.

BTW, dont wait too long with the cottages - since they take time to develop into provitable villages and towns.

When you start expanding, you ll be hurt severely by maintenance cost. Normally I find that religious income and cottages combat this in a decent way, but this one time, at band camp....


no wait...wrong scenario.

Well, I was sloppy one time and expanded too hard. Suddenly my research was at 20%. Too many cities and stuff meant expenses were higher than income.

Ok, my "tips" are certainly more crappy than akots' et al, but...meh, what the heck

If you are...err...lucky...you can have a scout promote to woodsman 2. Then it is an "all terrain" scout, almost (except hills and stuff), and you can cover serious ground. Only drawback is that you tend to do right-click exploration, and then end your scout next to a lion or bear (I seem to see more of those two than I see panthers and wolves in my games), and there goes the kickass explorer [wallbash]

What I meant about the right-click stuff is that in a way, right click to go is quite similar to the civ3 go-to function. The good thing is that when some unit has ended his turn, you can still click it and reorder it, which IIRC you couldnt in civ3 using go-to.

It certainly feels weird to self research a lot, doesnt it [crazyeye]

[Socrates]

@ Paal :
The music is disabled until we get Music as a tech ?
I know that cottages are to be built rather early than late, but I can't help getting more and more food for my hungry city. "Food is powa" and all that is killing me.
Oh, I use right-click for movement, but as previously said, I don't order my units to move more than is neccessary for one turn, so every turn I must order them something new or they won't move. Same applies to city's prodution, techs, etc... All in all, I refuse to use the 'queue' feature in Civ. I think this feature is well-suited for RTS games, but not for TBS games. You don't basically win time by doing so (it takes the same amount of time to order a warrior and a settler on turn X as ordering a warrior on turn X and a settler on turn Y), and you sure are better informed by the new situation if you choose one thing at a time.
No, it doesn't feel weird to self-research a lot so far. What feels really weird is to have nothing to do with my neighbours except having a beer (TM).

Onto the game and my first, obvious and apparent mistake.


So I was right, the farm on the northern flood plain cut the settler's production by 1 turn by adding 1 bread. :D Since the path seemed blockaded by the Japanese in the south-west, I decided to scout every accessible tile on my landing mass around me. I sent the 4th warrior in the east to quickly search more valuable resources (I have a settler coming up !).

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Well, I guess it was a risky mission. The stupid warrior got trapped by a bear along the coast (it feels like being 'mate' in chess, akots could tell ;) ). Fortunately it's never so easy an end in Civ, and I could rely on the forest's defense bonus : 50%, which brought my warrior at par with Winny. Nothing to do, so he started to fortify there. Before I forget, note a 'display' bug in this pic : Paris growing in 31 turns ? It is NOT growing, dude, it is producing a settler. I certainly have 31 breads to gather before reaching size 7, but that's not the point. Even Civ3 displayed that correctly... I can't understand how this is still possible to exist after one patch. Firaxis, please. :(

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[thumbsup] I guess the warrior climbed a tree and then hit the bear on the head with his club. It was rather close though, still he has lost 3/4 of his strength. Not sure if the fortify bonus (5%) was taken into account or not (definitely something to know someday). My brave warrior was only rewarded with 1 XP, though I don't know the algorithm either.

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On turn 45 (2200BC), I completed my first settler ! And decided to build another one immediately, since the worker had been ordered to chop down a forest. This gave 30 hammers to Paris, just as I was starting on the 2nd settler (in this pic, only those 30 hammers have been added to the production bar so far). I thought a bit on where to send the settler, and then decided to claim that stone reource in the south-west. It must surely be important to get, and the marble resource will soon be covered by Moscow's borders in the east anyway. So the settler was able to go through the newly bare grassland before heading south-west all the way.

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On turn 46 (2160BC), I discovered Writing. And I didn't think long before setting up my mind on Alphabet. After that I would be able to act as the middle-man between the Russians and the Japanese.

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And there came the mistake. As I approached the stone resource, I started to wonder where to really found the new city, and this became more difficult than expected, since I had no experience in that so far. And then I had the idea to block the Japanese in the south-west. Some more scouting in the north showed that it may be the only way to their empire. Since enemy units can't cross borders, I would then be free to settle the whole area, that is, until they decided to declare war or use ships for their settlers. My 2nd warrior was trying to catch the settler and provide him with a good sight from the hills. But then I got scared : I didn't want to encounter any animal on the 2nd movement of my settler ! So I played safely and eventually the settler joined the warrior just west of the stone reource (he was just east of it 1 turn before). On the following turn, I moved the warrior south... and this is what I discovered : a Japanese settler ! [cry] And very likely to settle pretty soon. I thought 'WTF' and took a gamble : I moved the settler to the grassland south of the corn, in order to settle there on the next turn (this would block the Japanese, give me some corn and coastal access).

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[cry] [cry] [cry] And there goes the plan (TM ?). Thanks to a Japanese settler, founding a city inland. Should I have not been scared, my settler would have climbed on that same hill just before the Japanese, and then I would have moved him to the grassland and found the city right away. Of course the Japanese may have been able to settle in the east, but their city would have been a remote, feeble city. Also this is my first encounter with a feature which I dreaded while reading previews and spoilers : my units were remotely expelled from Osaka's territory. I think it's a very stupid feature, both for gameplay and realistic reasons (no need to explain how it is both obviously stupid and ready to be exploited by humans). Thanksfully but oddly, my settler was expelled on the 'right' side, not on that trap in the south-west. Oddly, my warrior was expelled further than the immediately accessible tile (where the settler is). Huh ? This is a random process ? So I double-hate this feature now. [mischief]

I decided to retreat and to find another place for my settler, closer to home. I also learned that you cannot found a city 2 tiles from another one (contrary to Civ3), which I think is a good feature (both regarding the immediate and long-term consequences it brings). I also sweared that never will I ever be so greedy in the future (under the same circumstances : walk a long way to blockade a civ just at their doorstep). If I can lose this at Noble, what will I be able to do at higher levels ? Next time I'll nicely settle close to home.

[Mistfit]

Thanks for this informative spoiler krys. It is much appreciated (by me at least)

[mistfit] TM

[Socrates]

No problem, Mistfit. :) You want to see if my pigs can take over the world ? Haha. :D I figured out that, since everyone was enjoying Civ4 on his own, playing game after game, I could as well play a slow game and tell about it in details, so that everyone could see krys doing his newbie on Civ4. [groucho] But I'd better hurry up, since I'd like to play Epic 1 afterwards, and it is over in less than 3 weeks...

Game up !


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Hmm... Not the best piece of news, but at least I'm not last (TM).

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After much thinking about where the damn to settle, trying to find a balance between no overlapping and all covering (a la Civ3-krys lately), I found the city of Orleans on turn 51 (1960BC), close to some corn and close enough to the stone resource. Of course I would grab that one within 5 turns (creative trait), whereas the Japanese could just go sulking. [groucho] Paris had just completed a 2nd settler, which I sent in the east. I decided to go for a library now, since Alphabet was pretty expensive and maybe I would start to face maintenance cost... So I stopped growth there and put everything on hammers (which meant less beakers too).

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On turn 52 (1920BC), Judaism was founded, which marked the end of the foundation of the early religions. From now on I would fortify one warrior per city until further notice, and put my new cities on full growth of course.

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Hmm... my first encounter with a human barb, I had forgotten about them. Unfortunately, my warrior spotted him on a plain, so another warrior joined him there, in the hope I could kill the bastard, should my first warrior fail.

I got lucky on the following turn. My first warrior defeated the barbarian (he was left with 1.6/2 strength) and got to choose a promotion. I chose the 'Combat Strength' promotion, the one giving +10% strength. [cool]

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On turn 53 (1880BC), I founded Lyons, closer to Paris than I did for Orleans. I heard that founding on the coast was even more important in Civ4 (it is quite obvious anyway), and that fitted with a coastal pattern towards the Russians. Note in this pic : Look at the grassland tile NW-W of Lyons, it is unavailable, though Paris isn't working it ? I clicked there, and then it became available, just like the other tiles. [hmm] Also, I started to have some city maintenance. What is weird is that only Orleans was contributing to city maintenance, though it wasn't before Lyons was founded. I guess I should learn this algorithm too (TM).

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I met another barb in this area, and this is Super-Warrior scouting. With +50% defense bonus and the barb being at 1.6/2, there should be no problem. Note the odd (and new) Russian borders. Is that a city down there ?

The barb got killed as well. :D Super-Warrior found that, to reveal more Russian tiles, he had to scout around. So the new city, St. Petersburg as I would soon know, revealed its real borders as my scouting progressed. This site has many resources and is a top site. The only downside is that they don't have access to the coast (that's 2/2 for the AIs so far !). BTW, regarding the odd borders, maybe that's why I still cannot see Moscow's expanded borders (that should have happened around turn 50). Last but not least, the fog of war has been a bit reduced in Civ4 : here, each tile inside your borders acts as a unit and allows a 2-tile line of sight if the tile is a hill or if the tile in sight is a hill. Not sure if I like it or not, but that kinda makes sense.

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We're jumping in time, and after the library, Paris had built 2 workers, one for each new city. Each one of them started to connect Paris to his city by road. With a new warrior in Lyons and one soon-to-be built in Orleans, it was high time Paris built a settler again ! This pic is interesting. First, note how Paris hasn't gathered a single surplus bread for storing since it started on the first settler. Then look at the mouse-over box ; that sure is a lot of hammers, how come ? In fact, one turn before that, Paris was at 40/60 (worker). But at the end of the turn, the worker chopped down the forest NE of Paris, and added 30 hammers on top of it, making it that 70/60. I had seen this coming, but wanted to test it too. Result : Civ4 makes a good job out of it. This turn I'll get my 13 usual hammers, and also the 10 extra hammers (70-60) as well as the 13 hammers gathered when Paris completed the worker. Tricky, and this sure could have been badly programmed easily.

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On turn 66 (1360BC), I eventually discovered Alphabet and entered the Classical Era (with some ingame music now ?). Weird to have a quote from the Buddha when it deals with Alphabet... [hmm] I chose Iron Working for my next tech, no wonder why.

I now could trade techs with my neighbours. That is... Tokugawa refused to trade anything, he wasn't friends enough with me yet. [eek] Despite having a "+1" for years of peace. Well, no problem, the thing is, neither Peter nor him had even discovered Writing, so they were far from being able to trade to each other.

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Peter was more open to trading (hehe, funny face, gotcha !). He was open to the idea of Open Borders, but I wasn't ready for that (I want to kill him in his corner when I'm strong enough). He wasn't ready to let Masonry go (probably because of a wonder). So I put Pottery on the table (the cheapest out of that and Writing), and asked what I could get for it. He immediately put Fishing and Hunting on the table, and, contrary to what can be seen in the pic, I accepted that and we were done. :) With Writing still being my local monopoly, it would be long before my middle-man position was over. [thumbsup]

[Shabbaman]

quote:Originally posted by kryszcztov
Funnily the tech triggering Hinduism costs more than the tech triggering Buddhism...


Nice eh? And the AI still goes for the cheapest tech apparently, so if you start as religious you can be sure to found hinduism.

[Socrates]

@ Shabba : But then I don't understand why Hinduism was founded earlier than Buddhism in my game (turn 12 and turn 22 respectively). Religious or not (you get Mysticism, right ?), Meditation should be the first researched tech in any case. Maybe some AIs prefer to go for Polytheism for obvious reasons (humans would do it too).

Gamey time !!


I continued what I was doing... At some point I lost 1 warrior to a barb, despite having better odds (forest). A little drawback when you're not a warmonger like me (and thus don't want to waste time on military). Peter was also eager to trade with me again (do I smell good ? [mischief] ) ; he wanted to sign an Open Borders agreement, which I declined. There was also the possibility to trade Writing for Sailing or Archery, but I first wanted to get Iron Working, to see if I could give away this one instead (after knowing where iron is, of course). Orleans was now working on a library (not sure it's a good choice, this is a default choice influenced by Civ3), and Lyons was on a granary (more sure it is a useful building, since there isn't much food there, unlike the 2 other cities). I put Paris on 2 settlers in a row.

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On turn 73 (1080BC), the first of those 2 settlers founded Rheims further in the east. Lyons was located between silks and copper, Rheims near some wheat and some fish. BTW, this creative trait immediately expanding every city's borders is really useful. A work boat seemed a good deal, to make use of that fish pretty soon. Also note that the forest chopping that was just done near Lyons helped the granary to be completed before the city's growth without ever delaying it.

As I had some warriors finishing some scouting in the north, fighting more and more barbs, I now lacked warriors in my cities. Not too important for the moment.

After discovering Iron Working, I picked Masonry next, knowing that Peter wouldn't sell this one. The Pyramids started to be tempting, and they require stone for fast building, which I was close to improve. I needed a quarry for that... and it comes with Masonry anyway. Oh, and Iron Working was already known by Peter, so no trade right now. :( And what about iron ? 2 sources of that near my lands, one just outside Osaka, and one in Paris's north-east. I guess the next city's location was now known. [thumbsup]

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On turn 75 (1000BC already !), I heard about the first wonder of the world being built : Stonehenge. Maybe a sign that I should start building some wonders too ?

[Socrates]

From now on, the story will be less detailed, as my cities started to build many buildings, my workers started to cover much of the land with improvements, many techs were acquired, more fights against barbs were fought, etc...

After Masonry, I decided to research Mathematics, in the hope of doing more trading with my friend Peter-Funny-Face.

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On turn 80 (875BC), I founded a 5th city, Tours (which is the plural of "tour" : "turn" (of game), or "tower", or "rook" (in chess), but I don't know if this is related to the city in RL). Anyway, this city grabbed me some corn and the so important iron. Now Peter could just go sulking (TM). Also note in the bottom right of the pic, a worker is building a road to my copper. I think I understood how resources work : you must connect them to the road network like in Civ3, except that rivers now act as a piece of network too.

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Then I remembered I wanted to trade with Peter. [crazyeye] He could offer me Sailing for Writing, and I accepted it. Somehow the Japanese were kinda backwards and I wanted to really increase the difference with them.

You can see in a previous pic that Paris had started to build the Pyramids. I first thought that I would need to build a quarry over the stone so as to get the +50% building bonus. In fact I would need a road there too (I had it wrong before). But more importantly, I saw the +50% building bonus in Paris before the stone was available !?! [hmm] I'm creative, but also industrious (or whatever it is called) ! This means such a bonus for every wonder I build ! That's kinda powerful... So I was building the Pyramids as fast as I could, and was about to connect the stone when...

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[cry] I like how I failed at my first settlement race in Civ4, and now the same happened to me with the wonders. Oooh, I'll love this game, no doubt. [blush2] And I was 4 turns away from the damn thing... Being so close to completion was due to the mines I had been building in the south of Paris, they give a lot of shields. Also, in the confusion Confucianism had been founded, all of that on turn 92 (575BC). But the French couldn't be arsed about that latter piece of news. :D

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And so I was refunded with 374 gold for that failed gamble (likely 1 gold for each stored hammer). At least this would help me to run science at 100% for a long time. Orleans's borders had expanded a second time, and it grabbed the other iron source near Osaka and pushed back the Japanese borders by 1 tile (which was soon over 90% French :D ). Oh, there was a barb in my land ; my warrior teared him into pieces ! I'M VERY ANGRY (TM) !!! :(

The game continued. I was still relying on my few warriors only, but this is absolutely no surprise. People, if you play with krys in MP, an early rush will do it all the time, let that be known for the common good ! Meanwhile both Peter and Tokugawa became annoyed with my closed borders, though Tokugawa wasn't ready to open his borders, what an asshole ! [lol] I sent another settler in the north-east, so as to close the way for the Russians. The Japanese had been able to settle in the south, near some pigs and some clams.

My cities built libraries, granaries, and I also built a lighthouse in Lyons, which was now building the Great Lighthouse. I also had built my first work boat, used on some fish. I was facing a problem now : almost all my cities had reached their virtual happiness limit, and I was afraid to send them into disorder, though I know it's not a total disorder anymore. Is growing still a good option if it doesn't delay anything else ? The lack of a religion may have been the cause for so much unhappiness... I was counting on my friend Peter to trade me some nice religious techs someday.

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This is a pic of the current situation, on turn 100 (375BC). After Mathematics, I started on Construction. With some barbs still in the area, I felt I urgently needed some better units. Fortunately, a worker is about to connect the iron source near Tours. Just wait before iron is there... :)

[Socrates]

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OK, so I'm a n00b with no military, and I have two of the strongest civs as my neighbours. Do they know food is powa ?

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On turn 102 (325BC), I founded Marseilles in the (almost) sole purpose of blockading Peter in his corner. We can't see it on the minimap, but he actually had 5 cities already, so he was probably starting to feel a bit annoyed. And so he blamed me for the closed borders. I also refused a deal, and now our relationship was in the red...

Once Construction in the pocket, I sailed towards Calendar. I looked up what techs gave me the stuff which is bonified for Louis (regarding traits), and there were a few of them coming up. Calendar seemed good enough to start with.

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On turn 109 (150BC), out of the blue, Mao contacted me, and I don't understand how we could have met and how we could have had years of peace already. [hmm] Anyway, I accepted a deal which was not fair at all : my Construction for his Archery and Meditation, 2 techs that the 2 other leaders refused to share with me. So it was more a "fuck you" to them than trying to get a good deal out of it. A nice consequence of this (which I hadn't thought of) was that I got a "+4" with Mao for this fair deal. ;) Somehow I was starting to like my new friend, as he appeared stronger than the 2 assholes sitting just around me. Of course Alphabet was still my monopoly. [thumbsup]

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On turn 110 (125BC), Lyons completed my first wonder ever : the Great Lighthouse !! [cool] The wonder movie was totally fucked up though... I didn't have that much to gain out of it, since I didn't have many coastal cities and didn't need culture badly. I guess I wanted to have a wonder and try the Great Person system a bit. [groucho]

Calendar known, I chose Metal Casting, for the forge it gives (I get to build it at half price). Calendar did some good. It obsoleted obelisks and Stonehenge (though I don't know if it did it for other civs a la Civ1/2 or just for me a la Civ3 (BTW, I'm still undecided about which solution I prefer)). It centered the map, so I could find out I was located far in the north (as if I didn't know already ! ;) ). It also enabled plantations, much needed improvements for my silks and stuff. I also started to build coliseums at half price too, so as to partly solve my unhappiness problem. A quick note to say that, for the moment, I like the new unhappiness system ; no more slider for clowns feels better.

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:D

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So that damn fool declared war... On the first turn he just entered Orleans's vicinity with 1 warrior. Oooh, I'm scared ! (TM) And just as I built my 1st swordsman in Paris, what a good timing ! With all the gold I had left from the failed gamble on the Pyramids, I was able to upgrade the warrior in Orleans to a spearman. I found it better than an axeman on the long term, because I wanted to have a few spearmen for defense in my stacks, against the mighty horse-driven units (though I still don't know how combat in stacks works). The swordsman went in the east towards Rheims, where a Russian galley appeared (with an archer and... a settler ! I guess they're not part of Peter's plan, because it's a very ridiculous diversion into which I won't bite). The spearman got out of Orleans to meet his foe before this one could start to destroy everything.

[Pastorius]

Nah. They arent sending stupid 1 unit naval invasions in this game, so those two are for settling purpose and not part of any military strategy.

I suddenly realise what is odd with your game. You ve turned off mulitple units, so everyone is single (TM)

Seen where Mao came from yet?

Since he has the buddhist holy city, and Tokugawa is also buddhist, maybe he is on your landmass, south or something of Japan?

[akots]

Well, on noble, it is not possible to see a stack on 20 units but a stack of 5-10 units is quite possible to attack one of your cities. And it is a nice combo depending on resources: chariots, axemen, archers, and catapults. However, it all depends on wellbeing of a certain AI. Sometimes indeed it as a few warriors and nothing else. Spearmen are good only for fighting off chariots and horse archers. Otherwise they are much worse than axemen imho.

[Socrates]

@ Paal :
Yeah, I figured out it wasn't some military oddity, just like plain, old Civ3 (a settler with an escort). That was a joke on my side. ;)
Yeah, everyone is single in my game, but I rely on field crops to get babies, you know ? There are a lot of gays in my fields, and then they meet at some... barn (thanks Babelfish), where the crop is stored, and then they have babies there !?! [hmm] Or something like that, I don't master Civ4 very well, you see. Serious, what is odd ? Having a few guys representing a few thousand guys is stupid IHMO, and it feels a LOT better to have single units for representation. I turned this on before starting the game.
I have no clue where Mao is and how he contacted me.

@ akots : Well, the AI is so far (as you'll see in this post) even dumber than you could imagine. And I agree that spearmen aren't so impressive except when facing mounted units (but that is why we build them, right ?).

Gimme gimme gimme my game !!!


The Russian warrior was killed, saving Orleans from destruction. :) Paris was now building swordsmen, so as to provide defense in Tours and Rheims, as well as to fight the evil barbs in the north which were still annoying me. My treasury shrinked to zero, and I had to lower the science rate too.

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On turn 120 (125AD), Mao came to see me and asked for an open borders agreement, which I accepted. Contrary to my two neighbours, there was no real threat to sign this with my new friend. I'm still clueless as to what it gives though (no mention of more commerce from the finance advisor).

The war with the Russians really was a phoney war. [eek] I thought they'd have units to send at me, but during all these turns it was rather quiet. Since I was building units in cities with barracks of course, let me tell you what promotions they would start with. I'd choose 'City Raider' for a swordsman, since it was his specialty and what I wanted to do of him. I'd choose 'Combat I' for a spearman, since a spearman's strength (4) isn't high enough. And I'd choose 'Collateral Damage' for a catapult, since it was its specialty and what I wanted to do of it.

I solved a bit of my unhappiness problem too. Colosseums and the new resources triggered by Calendar were starting to be useful.

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On turn 126 (275AD), Christianity was founded. I started to wonder if I'd ever found my own religion in this game. Maybe I didn't need to go for a religion in this first game ? Also note that Mao adopted Organized Religion. I was still with my 5 primary civics. ;)

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After learning Metal Casting, I decided to trade it to Mao for Polytheism and Priesthood, a very fair deal. [mischief] But hey, he's my buddie.

I was now researching Drama, a cheap tech that could offer some nice buildings. But then I stopped science a bit in order to gather money for some upgrading. There were 4 warriors in my cities that I wanted to upgrade to spearmen. It's a rather expensive upgrade : 85 gold each !! [eek]

Meanwhile, Peter started to send some units at me around Rheims. Fortunately he wasn't very skilled at that. He was basically sending 1 or 2 chariots at a time from his close city, so that I could tear them into pieces with my different units, which were starting to get promoted a bit. I could have a view of that close city and know what units were there : some archers and chariots. With sill some barbs to fight, I was lacking units to start an attack on that close city, but I was definitely taking advantage of that odd war with my promoted units. He sent a few galleys to pillage some fish camps of mine and the wheat near Rheims, so in return I pillaged one of his camps on some beavers. [tongue]

And while Peter was probably draining his whole economy to war, I was peacefully building forges as well as letting my cities grow at maximum speed (read : very few hammers) to reach the new unhappiness limit. :D Once there though, it would be time to switch back to more units, as well as some settlers to fill in the last bits of my continent.

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Then I saw that Tokugawa had learned Alphabet at last. Peter had learned it before, but since Peter didn't know Mao, he could only trade with Tokugawa, who then couldn't trade with Mao in return. That is, until my Japanese "friend" got it too. So I made another fair deal with Mao Zedong : Alphabet for Monotheism. Like if the French had to research religious techs themselves... How stupid can this be !

[digger760]

quote:Originally posted by kryszcztov
[
Mao came to see me and asked for an open borders agreement, which I accepted. Contrary to my two neighbours, there was no real threat to sign this with my new friend. I'm still clueless as to what it gives though (no mention of more commerce from the finance advisor).



You'll get a bonus of + 1 in relations with Mao, but i'm sure you have figured that out already.

[Pastorius]

Also means possible trade routes if I m not mistaken. Closed borders being the equivalent of protectionism.

[Melifluous]

Also Krys can I point out that the AI doesn't get annoyed at your 'closed' borders (you not letting them in) but at your 'close' borders (ie cultural borders touching).

Hope this helps.

Open borders are essential for your missionary takeover of your neighbours and if you get a great merchant you'll need open borders to make a shit loada money :)

[meli]

[Pastorius]

Yes, the AI doesnt always volunteer to accept a missionary position [lol]

In your case, no personal holy city (TM) means that open borders are better used to scout than to send out them missionary d00ds - since you get less income from spreading the faith (TM). In fact I think you get diddly income if you spread a religion you havent founded, but my girlfriend has the game locked up, so I cannot check to see if I am 100% correct.

Somewhat related is religious scouting: just look at what Sirian and Sullla did in Cuban Isolationists - swapped state religions to use converted cities's line of sight to scout the FOW.

[digger760]

quote:Originally posted by Paalikles
[Somewhat related is religious scouting: just look at what Sirian and Sullla did in Cuban Isolationists - swapped state religions to use converted cities's line of sight to scout the FOW.


Sounds like an unfixable exploit to me. What are the consequences of switching religion, apart from diplomatic relations. i.e is there a period of anarchy?

@Kyrs....what happens to the overflow of hammers if you select something, but on the same turn change your mind and decide to build somehting else. Are to hammers moved to that new selection?

[Pastorius]

To spiritual civs there is no anarchy. To non spiritual civs there is anarchy associated with switching.

So you're both more likely to have founded a religion or two if you are spiritual, and you are more likely to use the exploit if you are spiritual.
Diplomatic relations obviously are affected. Other consequences:

-LOS depends on state religion - so if you switch from one to another - you loose the LOS of the cities that had the first religion present, and gain LOS from the cities that have the latter. IIRC, the cities no longer visible through LOS are not covered in black again, so you just loose track of unit numer in city, and activity around it.
-LOS may also depend on whether you have a holy city or not. I have not experimented much myself, so I cannot describe the "feature/exploit" in detail yet.

Also, as to being an exploit or not:
-Sullla and Sirian both tested the game, and would have spoken out if they considered it an exploit.
-it is an exploit to the extent that the AI probably would not use it the way a human possibly could.
-it is not effective if the civ using it is not spiritual, so it has limited effficiency. Also, it is probably faster to scout with regular units rather than LOS.

IMO, this is more of a quirky side-effect of the religion game mechanism.

[Socrates]

@ digger & Paal : The "+1" in relationship with Mao certainly wasn't what I was after, but yes, some more commerce I want. No sign of trade routes with the Chinese so far, maybe because I don't know where he is ?

@ Meli : Ah. But I get a "-1" in relationship with Peter and Tokugawa for closed borders, I'm sure. But I'll look it up again.

@ Paal : I really don't know about religion right now. I think I'll skip this part of the game in this first experience, or just won't try to understand it. I already have enough for my little head so far.

@ digger : Good news, it also seems to work well, be it with standard units/buildings or settlers/workers. In fact, the overflow of hammers is stored somewhere and thus isn't directly put into the first project you choose. So, if you decide to switch project on that first turn, the overflow will just follow your decision. Same for techs, I think, though I haven't tried yet, my game being a bit fucked up as far as science is concerned. Basically, the game is user-friendly regarding this. :)

Time to tell what happened last night... GAME.


I was trying to continue my weird game plan, ie. repell any Russian "invasion", build up my military and settle the last places around me, so it was a slow process... Some cities were starting to be unhealthy because the evil Russians had destroyed a few improvements near Rheims. At the same time, I was connecting more and more happiness resources, to the point that health became the limiting factor in my empire ! I'd need to think a lot more about it, but it seems that the best in this case isn't necessarily to grow the cities until there is no food, because then they won't be flexible and won't be able to use their tiles with hammers (trapped on the tiles with breads). And this speculative growth (TM) would be slower and slower than usual (-1 bread for each unhealthy smiley). So I stopped growing my cities once again.

Drama was researched, but I couldn't make good use of it right now, since I now really needed to crush the Russians. I chose Music, because it could give one free Great Artist, so who knows ? :)

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[eek] Damn, I got infected by a virus !! (TM) I really didn't want to spend a single turn in anarchy, so I declined. Furthermore, as said before, my limiting factor now was health, not happiness, so I didn't badly need this 1 extra happy face. Buddhism spread to Tours, and it gave some bonus, I think...

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I could share Drama with Mao, but he only had Horseback Riding. That was fair enough for me, but still... And then I saw that Mao now had Currency, which meant that gold could be part of deals ! So I just asked him what he could give me for Drama, and he put Horseback Riding and his 60 gold. [thumbsup] I needed some gold to fund science, so I accepted the deal.

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On turn 144 (680AD), another religion was founded : Taoism. But this was just tales from the outter world...

At some point, I lost 1 spearman and 1 swordsman to the Russians, which delayed any invasion a bit more. Each time, I had better odds, but not by much...

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On turn 149 (780AD), Lyons completed the Colossus ! [cool] Now you can see why nothing really happened with the Russians : because I was still busy building stupid wonders... Anyway the Colossus brought 1 extra gold in each water tile, not bad. I chose that wonder because it was cheap to build (copper, industrious, forge), and I built it in Lyons because it also gives some Great Merchant points, and so I wanted to concentrate those in one city, so as to get a Great Merchant sooner, and to not dilute the same kind of Great Person points in different cities.

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Once again, a religion spread to one of my cities : Orleans got <s>flu</s> Christianity. [vomit] Alright... Orleans... Christianity... all I need now is Joan of Arc to take over my empire. [cry]

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And on turn 150 (800AD), I decided I had enough units to start attacking the Russians. That was some 800 years after war had been declared. [mischief] So I started to move a stack consisting in 7 swordsmen, 4 catapults and 2 spearmen towards Novgorod. I had just spotted a Russian horse archer, a fearsome unit whose production I needed to stop soon. Those bastards fight better against catapults ! My cities were now heavily producing spearmen, so as to protect my new cities and to protect my stack from chariots and horse archers.

The war was now taking shape...

[Socrates]

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(Mimicking Jim Carrey playing as Andy Kaufman incarnating Tony Clifton in Man on the Moon : ) THAT'S... BETTA ! :D Apparently there are 2 civs really backwards.

My stack advanced onto Novgorod. I used my catapults to do some collateral damage there, and lost 2 out of 4, but that was useful, since the rest of my units had life much easier after that. Only after that battle did I realize that catapults could be used for damaging city's protection... Anyway the battle was hard, and a spearman eventually killed the last archer in Novgorod...

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That is the pic. How was I able to take this one with my PC is beyond my thinking skills... [mischief]

I thought I would face more and more horse archers (a real pain for my catapults, and my swordsmen weren't strong enough to kill them (they all chose City Raider)), but they were rather rare. On that same turn I had to sacrifice one unit in order to save Rheims, because the Russians had landed 3 units at the city's gates. With some reinforcement and clever thinking (and a bit of luck too), I was able to eventually repell this attack within 2 turns or so.

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On turn 153 (860AD), I discovered Music, and I believe I was the first one to get it, since I was rewarded with a Great Artist : Homer !! [goodjob] My first one, what to do with him (no idea) ? I heard that Golden Ages were less useful, so I didn't want to save him for that (maybe I was wrong, since I was about to get a Great Merchant next, making it possible soon), and I didn't need any culture bomb anytime soon (probably a feelbe use when you're creative, under normal circumstances). So I was left with getting a tech in 1 turn and adding a super-artist in a city. The tech being Literature, a cheap one that I could get in 2 turns (at the current rate, a temporary one), I picked the super-artist. So Homer did some 'Allah Akbar' to the heavens and fused into Paris to set up his poetry academy. ;) 3 gold and 12 culture, not bad.

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On turn 154 (880AD), so just 1 turn after Homer, I finally got my first Great Merchant in Lyons : Harkuf, unknown to me. Googling, he was an Egyptian nobleman who lived during the 6th dynasty, and who led expeditions in Nubia through the Nile. Other Google results include some links to that other site, lol. Anyway, no Golden Age for him. Sending him on mission was rather long and required that I opened my borders, so as to get through Japan, but I wasn't in that spirit. The tech was Currency, but was already known by the Chinese, so I used him as a super-merchant in Lyons : 1 bread and 6 gold, IIRC.

While I was dealing with all this non-interesting stuff, I gathered a new stack to advance towards Moscow, the capital ! And I was surprised by the lack of resistance there. I had faced more units in Novgorod, which is different than Civ3. But this is probably better, since there is no point for the AI to wait for your attack at the capital city. So it looked like the Russians were already out of steam, and...

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On turn 161 (1010AD), Moscow was mine !! [cool] Getting all this gold from pillage allowed me to run science at 100% on some occasions, which I really needed. At that point there wasn't much to fear from the Russians anymore.

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Weird, because I had proposed a fair deal to Mao a bit before : Compass for Currency, but he wasn't feeling like it. And now he was coming back, offering me 40 gold to make good measure !?! I didn't hesitate one second, and took tech and money.

The attack continued in Russia. I could gather another, small stack in the west of St. Petersburg (the most western city), and took it with that. It was only a question of time before all Russia was mine now.

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Out of the blue again, I was contacted by Mansa Musa. Apparently he hates the Chinese, because I got a severe mark for trading with their worst enemies ! Though I couldn't get some techs from him, I was able to make a nice deal including many resources, and sign an open borders agreement as well.

Immediately after that, I got ill again, and Confucianism spread in some city. [blush2] On the science front, after Compass, I researched Machinery. The goal was to get Engineering, to allow an extra movement point on roads, which sounded like an important thing, with all my units in the east. The Japanese were still surprisingly quiet, but I could be attacked at any point.

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After having conquered the Russians' last city on my landmass and having destroyed the last Russian unit, I signed peace with Peter. They had a last city somewhere (actually I had seen a settler on a galley going somewhere in the west), and there was still the possibility of a culture flip in their former cities, but I now needed to stop the war, because I was facing some war weariness ?!? Even under basic civics, waoh !

This was a sign for my cities to grow again, so as to catch whatever new limit could stop their growth. With all those new cities, I couldn't run science at more than 40 %. I needed to build more stuff in my cities, so as to stay competitive. And watch those Japanese, you never know...

[Socrates]

The game suddenly returned to a heavy management session, and that is what I like with Civ : you alternate periods in many fields, like war/peace, military/economy, buildings/units, expansion/development, etc... And the goal is to time all those periods perfectly. So the goal now was to catch up a bit in science, and cure my economy. 40% science was the highest rate I could run without a deficit, though I could sometimes do better because of a little more gold (due to natural gold surplus for a while or due to a deal including gold).

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Engineering for Philosophy and 70 gold, not bad. I would never argue with the AI about deals, because I heard it was pointless now and maybe they would be more pleased to see me accept deals without argueing. And since I was acting as a pseudo-middleman with Mao and Mansa (they hate each other), I had to gain precious diplomacy points to counter the fact that I traded with each other's worst enemy.

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For example, Mansa was surely not pleased to see me give Machinery to Mao for Monarchy, Code of Laws and 30 gold just after our own deal ! How can AIs be aware of other trading, I don't know.

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A bit later, Philosophy to Mao for Theology and 20 gold. Hehe, only now do I realize that this was the tech I got from Mansa ! ;)

At that point, I had gathered all my troops in Orleans, so as to be ready to strike Japan, should I feel like it someday. I also experienced a very brutal crash just at the exact end of my session last night, when trying to save my progress : the PC just rebooted ! So I had to replay 3 turns, and tried to do what I had done before the crash. The following pics are from the first session though.

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What about next Thursday then ??? :( (TM) Hehe, what an arse ! Never will I agree to get into anarchy even for 1 turn just to be friends with you, do you understand ??? Besides, I'm scared by religion. (TM) [And I got a different 'welcome' message today, but that first one is way more funny.]

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And yet another deal : Engineering to Mao for Feudalism, 30 gold and a world map ! [groucho]

The world map revealed another continent, and also the Russians' last city. Maybe I should ask someone to kill them, so as to be sure I won't experience a culture flip ? [hmm]

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And immediately after that, I went to see Mansa and traded newly acquired Paper for Optics. I was at par with my friends, and they sometimes even lacked some techs I had. Also note how Mansa is pissed because I refused to convert to his useless faith. ;)

Oh, but you may have sharp eyes and so you may have noticed my next choice for a tech ? Well, before you go on telling me I contradict myself, lemme tell you that this is not based on gameplay at all. I'd like to found Islam because it suits my pigs theme very well !! [lol] Who said that all the religions were the same ? Anyway, this is just to annoy my Muslim friends in RL, I'll tell them about it if I succeed, haha. McBacon Akbar !!!

[Pastorius]

I am curious about one thing. How come Mao has -2 for your trading with Mansa, while Mansa has -4 for your trading with Mao?

Also, since you are a pagan (TM), what gods were Mansa Musa going to have his gods fighting with? (not to mention confusianism not being polytheistic afaik)

BTW, swap civics to the right settings, and you can produce units with 2 promotions. Choosing combat 1 will open up punch (bonus vs melee units) etc.

It will make your war effort vs Japan more effective IMO.
But I think you are afraid of bureaucracy (civics experiments) just as much as you fear religion ;)

[Socrates]

@ Paal :
I don't know how this is computed, but my marks (I feel like at school, ewk !) with both Mao and Mansa are evolving throughout the game. It may depend on what deal I make or refuse, and/or it may evolve naturally.
Hehe, I'm a pagan and a happy one ! I think Mansa smoked a bit too much of confucianist incense in his temple...
Regarding civics, I will be honest with you : I have been lazy to study that, but recently I saw that I was getting access to more and more of them, and last night I decided to swap during my next session (today), just before trying to save my game (but it crashed). I wanted to save the game, and resume the latest turn today by studying the civics before going any further.

So that's where we are now, onto more fun !


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Of all the accessible civics, 2 seemed pretty tempting, so I chose them right away. First, Bureaucracy looked strong enough to change now, since it gives +50% hammers and gold in the capital for a mere +7 gold at that time. Even just for gold it seemed efficient. Second, Serfdom was nice enough to consider, since it speeds up the workers. I wasn't in a hurry to speed them up (!), since I'm doing a poor job of my workers in this game anyway (let's say, a sleepy job), but it didn't cost anything to change, and I could swap those 2 civics in just 1 turn, so I did that. If it had meant 2 turns, I would have regretted it.

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:( Islam is gone ? OK, so you don't want me to test religion ? Well, then be sure I won't build any religious building in my cities ever !! Pagaaaaan !!! [aargh]

From now on, this story will be a bit more loose, since it was basically a management session (with lots of (a tad) annoying Christian music (it's nice at the beginning, but then I yawn), and an overall very slow performance from my PC). Generally, I was taking the head of the science race now, leaving Mao behind, and competing with Mansa (by far the most powerful AI). Things were starting to be good at last, and I was now able to run 60% science at no cost. At some point I wanted to kill the Russians, or should I say, I wanted someone to kill the Russians for me on the other continent, but Mao wasn't feeling like it, and Mansa was too far away. Too bad, so I decided to let them live and work my way.

I also started to build national wonders. I built 2 'Heroic something' in Paris, giving me Great Artist points there. One gives +100% gpp, so I thought "Cool !", but it appears it only applies in the city it is built. :( Despite being named a 'national' wonder. I guess it is a bit misleading. And then I saw that I was allowed only 2 national wonders per city ! Well, Paris is done then. :D

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Orleans completed the Hagia Sophia. Not something I really needed, but there wasn't much to build when it started on it. Now there were plenty of buildings to build : grocers, banks, and soon unis and more... Also note that this one is related to Great Engineers. I like to specialize my cities regarding this, so as to have a probablity of 100% for a type of Great Person in each city.

A little note to say that governors are really annoying. At some point I found out that one of my cities was producing Great Engineer points, and this for many turns, where I wanted it to get some food. I hadn't paid attention before, but the governor does put new citizens on specialists. One day I'll kick his face for his stupid management. (TM) :D I stopped at what appears to be turn 200 (1400AD). Starting to think if and how I could win this game. Maybe the standard spaceship victory ?

[Socrates]

My economy was now getting better, a direct result of stopping war and building everything related to growth, production and commerce in my cities. Even Mansa was starting to have a hard time in science. I came to an amusing trick on the tech tree. There was this tech, Economics, which looked nice since it gives interesting stuff but also rewards the first to get it with a Great Merchant. But immediately I found out that another tech, Liberalism, gives a free tech to the first one as well ! So I started to research Liberalism, so as to pick up Economics as my free tech, in order to get both a free tech and a Great Merchant. [groucho] But while I was doing that, I got a Great Merchant in Lyons once again : Hanno. Googling, it looks like he was that Phoenician dude who may have scouted the coast as far as the Gulf of Guinea. Nice pick. I like the theme of this game a lot. But back to the game.

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Here is Hanno with his camel. Yes, a camel always makes a good friend on a ship... I used to get many beakers into Economics, in fact I almost got it all at once. But I had to wait for the other tech to be discovered first before being actually able to do Economics in 1 turn.

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And I got to Liberalism first ! [cool] I hesitated between Astronomy and Nationalism, since they both have the same cost, but picked Astronomy because it required more turns !?! Oh yeah, the game is a bit fucked up regarding beakers, and the techs' deflation is badly displayed.

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[Got to resave this one with a slightly lower quality because of the upload size limit. :( ]
And I must have been first to Economics too, since another Great Merchant appeared in Paris afterwards : Pytheas. Googling, and surprise : lots of links in French. He was a Greek sailor from Marseilles who explored the northern seas as early as in the 4th century BC. And he had a camel as well ! ;) I used him to get many beakers on Printing Press, my current project.

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I decided to swap civics once again, this was on turn 209 (1490AD). And there again I did 2 changes. First, Free Market : 1 extra trade route per city for the same upkeep. And second, Free Religion : stuff regarding no-state religion (yup), and more importantly +10% science in every city. Yes it was a time of freedom, the "Siècle des Lumières" was becoming a reality. [thumbsup] I also saw there was this Free Speech civic, which sounded very good : more gold and more culture in every city for no upkeep at all ! But I had some stuff to build, and wanted to keep my extra hammers in Paris for the moment, so I didn't get that one. Of course, a civ with very few cities won't get it, but a civ with a lot of developped cities will choose it.

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A bit later, on turn 219 (1545AD), an American ship crossed the ocean to say hello. So they were the missing civ ? (The Spanish are inbetween the Chinese and the Malinese, but I don't have contact yet.) They should be pretty backwards, but I was a bit surprised to see Roosevelt being in Universal Suffrage (before trying to offer a deal). And then I realized that he had built the Pyramids very early. So he was really backwards ! ;) I guess he'll be useless in my game.

I stopped on turn 220 (1550AD). With an idea for my next turns... [mischief] What could this be ?

[Pastorius]

Trade for or research constitution to enable representation, which should be better than despotism. Unless it is dictator Krys, not monsieur le president.

Just be glad FDR didnt choose emancipation, since that would have given you a happiness penalty (though happiness is probably not a problem).

Also, if you can be arsed to open the borders, using one of your GMs to establish a great trade mission would give you around 2000 gold. Enabling more speed on research.

[Socrates]

@ Paal :
Yes, I started research on Constitution on my latest turn.
I can't be arsed to build a single ship in this game, don't know why.

GAME TIME.


I built the Forbidden Palace in Orleans. Maybe it could become useful soon ?... [mischief]

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Just after that, on turn 225 (1575AD), I completed the Taj Mahal in Paris, and this triggered a Golden Age ! [thumbsup] Production in Paris sky-rocketed, especially once I ran out of buildings to build, and so used my capital to produce military units (there is the wonder doing +100% hammers for military units in Paris).

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As the AIs often say in Civ, I got bored with Tokugawa at some point, and wanted to use my units without upgrading before they were obsolete, so I declared war on Japan on turn 226 (1580AD).

They already had some longbowmen and axemen, and in fact my units were a bit obsolete ! :D I attacked Osaka, the evil city which had prevented Orleans from being the blockading city at the beginning of the game. But I suffered some heavy losses... I eventually was able to capture Osaka, but this was an unstable situation. So I upgraded 1 swordsman to a maceman, I think. This upgrading may have saved my last units a bit afterwards.

Meanwhile, when Paris and Orleans ran out of buildings to build (Orleans still had the religious stuff to erect but I didn't want to give into that, and Paris was still free from any religion !!! [thumbsup] ), both cities started to produce a few cavalries. This should make the difference : strength of 15 !!! Indeed, a few of them combined with the 2 catapults out of 4 that I could have saved were able to capture the city in the south of Paris.

I'm now on turn 233 (1615AD), and the Golden Age has just ended. Everything looks fine, apart from the war weariness.

[Socrates]

After Osaka (middle) and Edo (east) had fallen, it was time to start the attack on the Japanese capital in the west ! I was pretty confident in my cavalries (strength 15, most of them Combat II), and sent a first wave of 5 of them. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough to take the city, which was much more defended than the other cities. I got a few bad rolls, but on odds that were quite close. So a few of my cavalries died, and the other ones had to leave the country to get some protection before healing. This was a failure. :D But that's good because... I started to really have nothing to build in my cities, especially Paris (+100% on military production, no national wonder anymore, all standard buildings erected...). So I decided to wait a bit before sending a 2nd, more equipped wave.

In the meantime I was discovering tech after tech without any threat from any civ anymore. I reached the Industrial Age with Steam Power, and got some coal and oil in my territory. Things could get ugly very soon for the little Japanese...

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I decided to ask Mansa if he wanted to attack Tokugawa as well, and he was open to the idea, and so I gave him Military Tradition (cavs !), the tech he wanted, but got his 150 gold nonetheless. ;) The idea is that I want the Malinese to capture that Japanese city on the other continent, because I can't be arsed to build a single ship in this game. And I wouldn't want to have a city overseas. The problem is that Mansa isn't close to that city, but Mao refused to attack Tokugawa because I'm not friend with him enough. [mischief] Anyway, as you can see, Mansa is my best buddie !

Also, a little note to say that updates will be less detailed and less important from now on, because at this stage of the game, my PC is completely choking when I play Civ4. The game is barely playable, and I don't even talk about alt-tabbing... Sometimes it takes 1 minute for the game to display a message (I hear the corresponding sound, but I have to wait). Sometimes the music freezes a bit (always nice to do the DJ on Beethoven and pals [lol] ). In general the experience is becoming less and less interesting (but maybe it's because the end of the game is less entertaining as well ?).


EDIT : Pfff, for some reason, both pages of my thread suddenly became wider than before, requiring me to move the horizontal bar a bit when reading the whole thing now. I hate this Snitz forum !!!!! [aargh]

[romeothemonk]

Hmm, I am expecting a patch to be forthcoming to help with comp issues.
Do you have the marbled terrain? Apparently that helps some.
I still lack the game and I find these walkthroughs quite enlightening.
Maybe when I finally get my copy I can put Krys on my victims, er friendly opponents list.

[Pastorius]

Krys, you seem to be one of those who experience slow late game syndrome (TM)

I do to. Well, my last game was with vanilla civIV, so I dunno if the patch helps.

And I ve only experienced slight freeze on one game, but some of the same symptoms as you described

One way to limit this is to shut down not needed processes (cntrl alt del and check out processes)

Example:

shut down Quicktime quicklauncher (also doable from task manager in the bottom right corner)
Check out that area to see other stuff you dont really need.


Look at who is eating up what of your memory, and terminate if the process is not needed.
Also, look into fixing the pagefile (discussed in some Civ4 GD thread here). Dunno if it helps (perhaps mr. Supportline (AKA Mel) can help?)

[akots]

Yes, same here. First 2 games I've had going to Modern Age in version 1.0 were just fine. Now another game in version 1.09 is choking on a standard map. I guess they have patched compatibility but this came at the expense of performance. At least my PC is choking on animations which now do seem go not directly through the graphics card like it were in ver 1.0 but somehow are involving cpu effort as well. And my cpu is weak whereas graphics card is good. [cry] I'm very close to turning the animations off because otherwise it is barely playable especially with a lot of units.

[akots]

quote:Originally posted by Paalikles
...
Look at who is eating up what of your memory, and terminate if the process is not needed.
Also, look into fixing the pagefile (discussed in some Civ4 GD thread here). Dunno if it helps (perhaps mr. Supportline (AKA Mel) can help?)


IMHO, this is not an issue here. It won't hurt to increase the swapfile size though. But really, you cannot do anything with cpu load being increased except turn off animations or might be decrease graphics quality. I have tried the latter by decreasing resolution of the display and it did not help which means it does not involve swap file, memory or graphics card performance. Well, it might involve still but seems unlikely.

[Socrates]

@ romeo :
No, as you can see on the pics, I don't have the BMT mode. I can't be arsed with mods right now, since it's the beginning of the Civ4 era, and I'm after patches and learning the game only. Given the performances I experience, this could only be a drop of water into a large ocean.
Thanks, you all people enjoying this "walkthrough" (well, it is one, it is mine !) is what it is supposed to be. My latest session has been horrible regarding performance, and I'm starting to wonder if I even want to finish this game. I think I have won, but this is my first game with Civ4, you never know, and it's not like I had won 20 times with this game. But the fun is disappearing...

@ Paal : If I can avoid playing as the sorcerer (ie. doing things I don't understand), that's fine. :) I don't even know what those 20 or so applications are in WinXP, so I won't touch them. I bought Civ4 with an obsolete PC (for that game), so it's all my fault.

@ akots : What I've just done is toggle on many options in "graphics", so as to speed up the game, but I haven't felt any better performance with my human senses. I don't have many units myself in my game, so I'd better stick to always peace games, no ? ;)

Gimme gimme gimme a game after midnight...


At some point FDR also attacked Tokugawa, but this had no visible effect... just as Mansa's attack. Useless AIs... Mansa even signed peace without being able to take the Japan city on the other continent. :( Anyway, while I was gathering a new stack of cavalries, I got 2 Great Persons.

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I was the first to Physics of course, and so it gave me a free Great Scientist : Antony van Leeuwenhoek (won't try to pronouce that), never heard of him. Googling, he was a Dutch naturalist during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, who wasn't a scientist at the beginning (he was into cloth and stuff), but who studied the tiny world with what lead to microscopes. He found out that spontaneous generation was rubbish. So now I know him and Huygens (pronounce "OyRRRHens" ;) ). Doesn't he look like an evil scientist from some comics in the middle of this smog ? So I used him to create an academy in Paris.

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One turn after that, Paris spawned a Great Artist : Li Po. Googling, he was a Chinese poet in the VIIIth century. I moved him to Osaka, and then used him to create a great work there. Yes, my first culture bomb ! I wanted to speed up my cavalries towards Kyoto, and so it seemed like a good move. Unfortunately, those 4,000 culture points didn't make anything regarding the tiles in the area. [lol] A total waste. Of course someday I'll search for the algorithm (TM).

When I got 9 cavs, I sent them towards Kyoto. The first turn was quite OK, I lost 1 or 2 of them, but managed to kill many units in the city. Many of my cavs were redlined, but after being promoted on the 2nd turn, most of them were almost ready to fight again, and that's how I was able to capture the city in 2 turns only, without catapults.

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A sight of Kyoto after the French cavalries have entered the city. The Japanese are probably out of steam by now.

It's 1715AD, that's when the Sun King left the RL world, and I don't know what will happen of this game. I'm not even micromanaging my cities anymore (there is a Japanese boat doing some mess along the coast), because it takes too much time for my PC. So I let the cities starve, I don't care. There is a constant noise when I play now, you know, the noise when the PC is lagging. Is that the PC writing temporary data on the HD ? Does it hurt any material ?

[akots]

Actually, my PC is still lagging even after I exit from Civ4 for about 10-15 minutes. So, your case is not that horrible. Might worth trying to increase the swap file size though or defragment the hard drive. But I thought you have a new hard drive, so might be not a problem.

[Socrates]

@ akots : I defragmented my HD just before installing Civ4 a few days ago... ;) My HD dates from this year, yes, but I fear HDs breaking up now, I hope Civ4 doesn't kill it too much.

In fact, I continued the game tonight, and I can safely say that it'll be finished very soon. :) So : GAME !!!


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On turn 255 (1725AD), Orleans completed the Statue of Liberty, which gave one free artist in every city. Since I wasn't micromanaging my cities anymore (lags and interest value of the game), I couldn't really feel this effect, but it was probably good. ;)

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One turn later, a stack of cavs arrived at the gates of Kagoshima, and Isabella immediately appeared. I saw the Hindu symbol above the city's name, and that's how I understood how I had met the 3 civs from the other continent (Chinese, Malinese and Spanish) : line of sight ! [eek] Madrid was indeed the Hindu holy city. Frankly, I'm starting to not like this feature (line of sight). Sounds a bit silly, but I'd need more thinking about it. Now, Isabella is yawning, and we have nothing to say to each other (TM).

My cavs easily captured the last 2 Japanese cities on the continent, so that the whole landmass was now mine.

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So it was time to sign peace. Tokugawa only had one city left. I wanted to show you his white, scary eyes, but apparently I missed the right moment !! [blush2] I think this scary graphics effect is due to the options I toggled on (so as to put less pressure on my PC). Next time...

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Michael Faraday was born in Rheims, and I first thought he could found an academy in Lyons, but I first waited for the current tech (the chosen one) to be discovered, so as to see what tech he could get next. And the game being soon over, I found it best to use him to discover a tech, so Fission it was.

After my cavs were healed, I put them near Paris in one big stack and ordered them to sleep. Same for my workers, once they had finished railroading the main routes. Except the occasional improvement for the new resources. And I won't comment on new, not-very-interesting wonders and Great Persons anymore. I was now picking up whatever building came first in the production list, not thinking if it was efficient or not. Since the game was lagging all the time, I started to resume my reading of a magazine about Pharaoh : I would read a stanza each time the game needed some time to calm down. [lol] Reading about the Battle Of Qadesh while listening to classical music and regularly picking up a building in whatever city was what I was doing now. :D

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In 1790AD, I decided to change 3 civics at once : I picked Representation, Free Speech and Emancipation, with the intent of keeping those for the rest of the game. This induced 2 turns of anarchy and a current discount of 41 gold !

In 1800AD the Revolution was over. [mischief] But no Napoleon in sight, still the old fart that is Louis. This civics' swap indeed allowed me to run science at a higher rate in average ! [thumbsup] Cities were building all kinds of stuff, I was discovering tech after tech, almost in the order they're displayed in the tech tree...

At some point, I got another tech and heard the Tech Guy saying something like "Be... be... be... be...", and I was annoyed since it was the first time his quote saying was lagging too.

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[lol] Before this screen actually appeared (took some time : lagging...), I suddenly realized my mistake : "Beep... beep... beep... beep..." :D Of course ! But I like how he has recorded that one, with a monotonous voice which makes justice to the Sputnik. ;) This revealed the world map (not updated with the current borders though). I started to build the Appolo Program. Every boring Civ game must end with the Space Race victory (TM). [mischief]

[Socrates]

So the game continued, as boring as ever...

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In 1949AD, I zoomed on the pigs near Paris, the key to success. :D They are happy.

I clicked ENTER, and Orleans completed the last part of the spaceship. Spaceship victory in 1950AD ! [thumbsup]

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You have a silly face, but you won the game. ;)

Weird, the Hall of Fame indicated a victory in 1949AD, whereas it was in 1950AD. Also it'd be nice to have the message that Orleans completed the last part... The whole victory process took almost 30 minutes to develop on my PC (lagging)... On the whole, some weak programming for the end of the game. Needs some patching and soon, and no, I don't need to play 50 times the same story in order to have something else than a "first impression". I got all the first impressions in the world with the first 3 Civ games, HAHA !


I hope you enjoyed this reading, despite a few rants here and there. These just show the so high expectations I put into this game some 18 months ago (when Soren came in with his PowerPoint presentation of what Civ4 should be). But there aren't only rants ; if you read it closely, you must have seen that I'm pleased with many features and corrections. My "first impression" is that Civ4 has a huuuuuge potential, but needs some solid patching before we all fall in awe before it. But it certainly is the best Civ ever yet already. My second impression is that it was the first and last time I played on Noble, except maybe for some severe variant in the future (and I even doubt it).

Next will probably come the report for RBCiv Epic 1, which I intend to start this weekend.

[akots]

[goodjob]

The game is boring indeed on lower difficulty up to Emperor IMHO. But it is less boring in case of the military victory set as a goal. However, the maps are really big compared to Civ3 and it takes a long time to travel there and kill the AI without 3-move cavalry and with half of the game played at 2-mp for road. Also, to micromanage everything with many cities takes horrendous amount of time without mapstat telling you which city grew in size this turn.

It might be also possible that Firaxis will buy the memory fix from Harkonnen or may be program their own fix. Meanwhile, it is possible to download it from CFC. It seems to work in most cases especially on low-end machines. Also, imho, it is essential that the game can be played in a window'ed mode (not full screen) after patching. Or at least Alt-Tab memory leak fixed. That can greatly increase playability.

But the main concern - stupid AI - will not be fixed in the forseeable future unfortunately.

[Socrates]

I agree that maps are INDEED larger in the sense that roads aren't as effective as in Civ3, and there are no 3-movement units, at least to my current knowledge (didn't build a single unit after attacking the Japanese with cavs). So much for the supposedly small maps in Civ4. I micromanaged everything until the lagging became absolutely unbearable (industrial age).

LOL, a guy did his thing for a few weeks, and it seems it solves a lot ! Firaxis HAVE to get his work in the next patch, or at least something similar. Playing in a windowed mode may be faster, but it is less enjoyable, especially for taking pics (which is THE point actually).

[digger760]

[goodjob] on the write up Kyrs..really distracted me from work.

[Pastorius]

I m with akots and digger.

Nice writeup. Has a Krys feel to it

[Socrates]

@ digger : That's my plan to take over the world, by slowly decreasing productivity in every foreign country (Frenchies don't speak English anyway), but shhh ! don't tell anyone.

@ Paal :
Answer #1 : I think that's because you can find mentions of overflows of hammers and googling about great persons, mixed with words that should be censored and chit-chat about pigs and Islam. Maybe it's what you feel.
Answer #2 : And does this make you horny ? (same goes for digger) :D
You choose.

[Pastorius]

Answer 1 to answer 2: Not as much as it used to
Answer 2 to answer 2: Does it make you randy baby (Austin Powers)
Answer 3 to answer 2: Nope

To me the Krys feel (TM) is also about the writing style.
Yes indeed, what you include in a text is part of it, but how you write up stuff is what makes you unique [lol]

[Socrates]

Err, now I don't get it, Sir. Do you mean I don't speak English properly or something like that ? :( Or is it something else ?

[Socrates]

Been reading some parts of my forum tonight, including this game, and it makes me feel nostalgic again... It was good to be the first story-teller with Civ4 here (though some people had already played dozens of games like crazy).

God damnit. I'm soon back to business. [goodjob]

Including thread bumping. ;)

quote:Originally posted by kryszcztov

EDIT : Pfff, for some reason, both pages of my thread suddenly became wider than before, requiring me to move the horizontal bar a bit when reading the whole thing now. I hate this Snitz forum !!!!! [aargh]

Tonight I realized that Firefox doesn't do this (still no horizontal bar with 800*600 pics), despite having a wider margin on the left of the screen than IE. I bet Mr. Gates didn't think of that as well. [lol]