4x4 CIV *Spoiler*

[Kemal]

Yay, finally opened up a spoiler thread again, the age of MP civ4 has started, but I fear it might not go as well as my civ3 adventures did.

As I have been playing the beta version for all this time until recently, the game has changed big time for me and I need to get (re)acquainted with some features that are simply totally new to me.

Taking screenshots was one of those, I haven't been able to take some really great shots as deskscan isn't functioning for me with this version, so I'll hope you all can cope with some poor quality shooting...

Having said that, I'm playing Mali in this 4x4, and the first few turns have been extremely eventful already. I forgot to take a pic of the start or my capital, but you can piece it together on the other shots... what's important is that 2 huts were nearby, I popped one with the starting warrior for fishing , and the other was popped by cultural expansion resulting in great maps of the surroundings. Unfortunately, the land isn't very fertile (perhaps that changed too though in the retail version ), meaning the agri trait will be wasted somewhat due to need of farms, but it's still a pretty useful trait all-in-all, and spiritual isn't useless either of course.

Enough of the talking, here are those maps I received showing the surroundings (north and south of the capital):


42.46*KB

edit: removed pic for better scaling/readability

As said, not a lot of growth potential though the capital itself has great capabilities with lots of rivers, and some flood plains and hills. Also, on F11 I was doing okay with utilizing just a forest (2f1h), so it seems there aren't that much really good starting locs around anyway.

But, as you might see if you are very observant, there was already another border to be spotted, and my warrior was heading straight towards it... And yes, it turned out Caesar was only a tile or 10 away from Timbuktu, not a great neighbour unforuntately, but it might be he can be contained and taken care of early on. He's a little in front in score, but walking past his borders, it seems there might be a great opportunity presenting itself:


35.38*KB

Aha! Was it a rat I saw? No, but it is a roman worker, and if they have mining it is quite possible it aims to mine the gems nearby... if it does, I'm seriously thinking of grabbing it and risking war, since I can take a great defensive stance on the hills crippling Caesar even further, as it seems he is boxed in a bit (coast in the south, as there is no fresh water access to the highlighted tile in the pic). There are some risks, but the advantage of a really early worker are not to be scoffed at imho. We'll see how it turns out...

Talking of workers... even though I started with mining, I did not pick BW straight away as I want to research animal husbandry and pottery as well to capitalize on the fact that I started with the wheel and pigs nearby, and to utilize my financial trait with a possible cottage on a flood plain. Not sure if this is the best idea especially with Caesar so close, but I never gamble on early copper, and researching BW just would have taken too much time stalling city development. All imho of course, I'm not just a really heavy chopper (or should that be gunship?), could be I'm lagging already on the rest by not doing BW, but these choices are what make Civ4 so interesting I suppose.

More to follow as the game progresses, of course.