Favourite Civs & Strategy

[Sir Eric]

Well now that everybody has had a good while to get use to Civ4, I was hoping to get a bit of discussion on what peoples favourite Civs are and what strategic decisions they make when playing that Civ.

I haven't played that much but so far, but I prefer the Egyptians for their Spiro trait (No anarchy during Revolution)

Most of my opening moves depend on what resources I have close by. If there are none that I can utilise before or just after the first cultural expansion I'll try to be the first to research one of the 2 early religions,(Preferably Monotheism as I haven't been able to get to Poly first) and then research Masonry so that I can build the Pyramids (All civic allowed).

After that I go back and research some of the earlier techs or trade for them with the ai.

[digger760]

well I'm only on my second game, and in the first game i pretty much ignored the civ traits. I did notice that Mansa Musa did quite well in my first game with a small empire and almost "pipped me at the post" in the last few turns of the game to win a space race, instead i won a "Time" victory. It got me curious how Manas could do so well with such a small empire. Turns out Mansa has the Financial trait which adds one extra gold for each square that procuded 2 or more. That seems to be a pretty good bonus, so I have picked The americans, I would like to have picked the Chinese, One of the Chinese leaders is finacial and some thing else..which i was interested in. Mind you the Chinese did no do so well in my first game [evil].

I tend to beeline for Alphabet for early trade opportunities, but if there is something in my starting position that requires a tech ie farming, fishing or animal husbandy then i might go for one of those techs first.

[col]

I like playing as Indians. Those fast workers really mean you can get early cities up and running. I always seem to do well as the Spanish in grabbing several religions. The Romans of course have the best early unit and given iron can go conquering very early.

I go for the improvment techs as soon as possible and leave trading a while. Farms/Animals/mines and roads. I guess that's essential when playing indians or you have workers standing around with little to do.

[Lt. Killer M]

Indians rock! Fast workers, fast religion, outculture everyone and whack them hard with elephants (somehow I always get my hands on ivory). :D[estwing]

[Shabbaman]

Recently I came to like the financial treat. +1 gold for (close to) every tile you work adds up.

[romeothemonk]

I happen to be partial to aggressive civs.
I really like the ability to attack early.
I also happen to like spiritual a lot as I flip civics very frequently.
I like the Aztecs.
For non-aggressive the Egyptians are very fun, especially with the war chariots.
I like to bums rush a neighbor early, and war chariots let me take down a financial civ before they got started.

[Melifluous]

Much as I hate to admit it, I find that my favourite Civ to play with is the French, more specifically Louis XIVth.

Creative and Industrious are just too good together.


Creative +2 culture per city.
Double production speed of Theater and Coliseum.

Industrious Wonder production increased 50 percent.
Double production speed of Forge.


So your borders expand like stupid at the start, Theatres are cheap and the +50% wonder production is just unbalanced, especially with Stone or Marble nearby.

Plus the fact that I get musketeers at about the time the AI normally tries to invade my Wonder Heavy Empire is an added bonus.

Turtle up and culture win :)

[meli]

[Socrates]

I really don't know, since I played just a few games, and apart from my usual French 1st game, only played those games at that other site. So I didn't have the choice. Really, I have no idea what I prefer, but don't think anything is particularly unbalanced at that stage. But I have much less time now, and I'll probably enter my 1st Civ4 break these days. [blush2] Having a slow PC and being a slow player and reporting my games don't help completing games on time.

[Sir Eric]

What about religions? Does anyone see founding a religion as a 'must have'?

[Whomp]

I like financial, aggressive and organized traits quite a bit. The cheap courthouses and lower upkeep make for a great warmongering game with the organized trait, aggressive for the extra hps and rax and the financial trait allows you to keep the science rate up and spam cottages so you don't go bankrupt taking civs out. I'm playing Washington now on Monarch and things are going pretty well.

[Shabbaman]

quote:Originally posted by Sir Eric

What about religions? Does anyone see founding a religion as a 'must have'?


Not really. Capturing holy cities seems a better strategy ;)

[Matrix]

My favorite leader trait is creative: +2 culture in every city means their borders automatically grow, so that you get resources two squares away very quickly and you have more freedom of building cities wherever you want and can pay more attention to overlap with other cities, etc. Plus the overall advantage of culture of course.

Next to that I also like to play with a civ that start with Mysticism, so that I can grab an early religion. Those civs are usually spiritual. Unfortunately the the creative+spiritual leader, Hatshepsut (Egypt), does not start with Mysticism. Otherwise I would be as much hooked to her as krys to Byzantines in Civ3. ;)

But spiritual on itself is nice too nevertheless. My third favorite civ trait is industrious. +50% wonder production is mighty sweet. :)

And then there are the Praetorians...

So now my favorite leaders are:
Julius Caesar (Rome), because of Praetorians
Louis XIV (France), because of creative + industrious
Hatshepsut (Egypt), because of creative + spiritual
Gandhi (India), because of fast workers and spiritual + industrious

[quote]Originally posted by Melifluous

Much as I hate to admit it, I find that my favourite Civ to play with is the French, more specifically Louis XIVth.

Isn't that quote rascist, and then if you are rascist, Civ4 is just a game, not a place where you can kill the people you wouldn't in real life.

[Matrix]

Calling someone a racist in your first post is not a nice entrance. [nono]
He's just fooling around; I promise you that.

[Darkness]

Ahhh,

Another n00b ;) fooled by Meli's wicked sense of humour.... :D

[Matrix]

Hey, wait, I thought I had a picture for that...somewhere...

Ah, there you go:
http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/Matrix/200636121554_0720.jpg
27.31KB

[Whomp]

Back on topic...I'm curious what your thoughts are on conquest. Raze or keep?

I'm playing a monarch game and control one of three continents. The CoL/Oracle sling gave me all the benefits it should. However, as I've started to conquer it appears to be better to raze a city if there aren't any chops available to speed up culture or courts.

I invaded the Indians to my north and took two cities. Madras, which I should've razed due to its maintainence, and didn't have chops but I used it as my toehold. The 2nd city that's now my forbidden palace is ok but still is very small. I've held both cities for a long time and can not get Madras to expand it's borders. It's stayed at pop 1 forever.

Now I've invaded the Japanese, in hopes of getting sheep and a holy city. Now I've taken over the Jewish holy city of York from the Japanese, Osaka and razed a tundra town. No border expansion for the holy city and pop remains at 1. It seems to me razing becomes the only option for conquering, without chops, because the maintainence in these cities is brutal. Thoughts on a better way to conquer?