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Old 28-04-2006, 02:08   #1
Kemal
 
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Default 4x4 CIV *Spoiler*

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.
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Old 28-04-2006, 13:39   #2
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hey..great to see you back in the spoiler game Kemal. I see you mentioned agri trait..but i think yo meant Financial..so your still on Civ3 mode!

Your Capital appears to be on pretty good spot but after that..lots of plains

Is this a man-made map? the map looks to be the beggings of a doughnut shape
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Old 28-04-2006, 13:44   #3
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, erm well that was just to see if you guys were paying attention eh? Indeed I did mean financial, thanks for noticing! I was thinking of "powerful trait" when writing apparently, and due to my excessive civ3 years I put down agri on automatic.

The map was done by akots, but iirc he didn't edit it and it should be a random continents map, but akots should have more details on that (including things he might not want to share with us players, perhaps). {]
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Old 28-04-2006, 14:15   #4
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Kemal, I'm not sure if you know this but when you hit Print Screen, Civ4 places a JPG (or whatever you have default in the ini file) in the My games/civ 4/screenshots folder. it looks like you are doing the civ3 version of screenshots and I thought that I'd suggest that.
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Old 28-04-2006, 15:08   #5
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Thanks, I did figure that out but the screenshots placed are too big for my reading comfort, so I put them in paint and then use deskscan to grab the relevant parts of the shot... I know I'm pretty weird, but I don't know how else to crop the images in such away that the quality isn't reduced big time.

Thanks for the tip though, I was used to another screenshot shorcut at first indeed.
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Old 28-04-2006, 15:12   #6
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well FWIW, I think that there is a value in the ini file on the size of the screenshots. You can also use PSP to resample (not resize) the screen shot. Re-sizing just eliminates pixels where re-sample actually re-calculates the pixel values based off of the current pixels. It also helps if the grid is turned on since the civ4 graphics blend well into each other and sometimes its hard to tell where the hill tile stops.

btw, what are the traits of the Mali? I know they are Financial, but what is the other one?
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Old 28-04-2006, 15:22   #7
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Spiritual.

I only have paint to work on pictures, and that doesn't do that much good of course. I'll check the ini. file though, thanks.
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Old 28-04-2006, 15:34   #8
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I find Irfanview to be superior to paint, and less spacious than PSP or Photoshop.

Resizing shots is easy with Irfanview (unless I spell it incorrectly, in which case it is difficult,since you might not find it using google)
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Old 10-05-2006, 01:03   #9
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Despite all the splendid advise, Kemal the Conservative still refuses to utilize all these free tools and stubbornly continues with his ugly paintjobs, hope you all don't mind too much...

So, picking up from where we left last time, the notion of having an enemy AI so close to the gates of Timbuktu did not at all trigger any cautious thoughts with the Malinese government, with the first thought popping up in evil Kemsa Mumal's head during the traditional consumation of the "first contacted Caesar" salad being "how can I obtain your worker ASAP?"

Casually, but not being overcausal about it, the Malinese warrior lurked at the Roman border until the inevitable occured:


33.31KB

Playing tip 2: never put an unguarded worker in front of Kemsa Mumal's forces this early in the game.



26.77KB

Note that this choice in reality wasn;t as easy as I am describing here, AI at monarch starts with archery and 4 units, but from what I've experienced in earlier versions, the AI usually overdefends the capital. And an early worker was too good a possibility to let pass, so:


45.73KB

And there you have it, 3 archers in the capital. The mission now was to get the worker home safely, it would be accompanied by their enslavers at first until a second warrior from Timbuktu heading south could take over while clearing fog in advance to prevent barbs from spawning. Next turn brought some additional headaches, as Caesar sent an archer in hot pursuit of my newly claimed prize:


38.79KB

Still no problems, once the path was safe, the workers 2 move range would see it outrun the archer, while the warrior would then split off and lead the roman archer away from the Malinese borders into never-neverland in the south.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Kemsa Mumal isn't the only one who sees (ex)-Roman workers as a tasty snack :


42.29KB

Horrible. I was prepared to combat panthers or wolfs - and maybe even a lion on a forested hill- with my warrior, but a bear is simply too big an enemy, almost as big as that hugely annoying archer that was still fresh on my trail. Since running to the south wasn't much of an option to me with the worker (it won't be long before real barbs will appear, plus with a little misfortune outrunning and circumventing 2 units might prove impossible), and considering that my 2nd warrior was close to getting the worker in viewing range in the north, the final decision was to split up and hope for the best. The only good thing was that Caesar's archer might be in for a good surprise if he'd follow my steps again.

Thankfully, the worker did not encounter another animal during the 2 turns it was on it's own, and Caesar's archer and the bear have both vanished in the meantime.... that would be too good to be true I suppose, but at least they aren't anywhere near my borders yet.

So as it stands, I have myself a worker near my capital in 3400 BC and have nearly completed my 2nd warrior while growing to size 3. A settler will be the designated project next, though I'm uncertain whether I'll grow to size 4 first... after all neglecting BW in favour of AH makes settler construction a bit more complicated.


53.67KB

And on a small minimap:


2.56KB

Note that the minimap includes a large portion of discovered ocean tiles. I found maps from a hut, though in hindsight I would have much rather learnt the technology the villagers used to obtain such map knowledge.

More to follow as the game progresses...
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Old 11-05-2006, 22:48   #10
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A tiny update to report that the gamble paid off well in the end.... I managed to make peace with Caesar 2 turns after the previous update, and have now switched from warrior to settler in the capital. 17 turns is an awful long time, but until I have forest chops available, there is no way to speed things up, the land is too rough to let Timbuktu grow further in size and get a real profit from it.

Btw, 7(!) turns to farm a floodplain is an awful long time.
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