Civ 4 Thread!

[Saxif]

An interesting tactic I read about and am trying on my current game, really helps with espionage.

Build Great Wall, ideally in your first city but could be a border city that needs a little culture, this produces 2 esp (espionage) points (4 if your philosophical), wait patiently till you get a GSpy (great spy), settle him into your main city as your palace produces 4esp points.  Then your 2nd Gspy you have make Scotland Yard in your capital.  Run a spy specialist as much as you can in that city and build Courthouse as soon as your able.  Later on adopt Nationhood and make sure you build all the appropriate spy buildings as well.

Theres obviously more to it but thats the basics.  I am on 1050AD and have stolen 4 or 5 techs, as well as changing Charlemagnes religion as he's the Power leader and doesn't like me for my religion

Sax.

editted the 1050 part

[eKo]

Say wot?

You still gonna play WoW, Sax? I've started playing again, but taking it real easy, only got 77 last night with Eara.

[Saxif]

I am not really avoiding it or bored with it or anything but the enforced break over xmas broke that NEED to play we can all generate (and man was I pissed off when my pc went down!).  So atm I want to play Civ4 way more, I also have some painting and modelling to do.

So basically I prolly won't come back anytime soon, at least till I am bored with Civ4, though I have been promising myself a go on Football Manager as well.  We'll see but I have let me subs run out (I think, was using a prepaid card for 2 months) so I can't really promise anything.

Sorry, if I find more time to play, I'll try and drop in though

Sax.

[Cernos]

I'd really love to have a go at Football Manager Live, but all the reviews I've read say how wonderful but horribly addictive it is. So I'm restraining myself at the moment! I've not had any MMO subs active for a month now and have restricted my gaming to a bit of Civ4 and some Guitar Hero. As a result I've got lots of other stuff done and I'm loathe to catch the online gaming bug again ... but must say FML is very very tempting
 

I have been promising myself a go on Football Manager as well.

[Lasiien]

Nice idea Sax, I've not really tried an espionage style game, mostly had thought it was pretty useless but i guess if you invest heavily into then it can be worthwhile, i just hate to lose all that gold/beakers that i could be getting

Tried Mount and Blade eko but kinda found it repetitive (i remember now why i stopped playing the beta). I think its awesome though that a proper indie games developer has come up with this and i like it's originality, so i bought the game to support them as best i can. This really is the kind of thinking we need for future games imo, it really is fun for a while and the gfx mods bring it semi up to date (around the standard of morrowind gfx imo). Imagine what those guys could do with a bigger budget.

Haven't tried FML, not sure i really get the point. If you read the forums there's constant turmoil in the online leagues as the people that lose drop out and i don't think they've really fixed it yet. FM 2009 however is totally addictive, i have been playing it most of January and only recently saved myself by resurrecting fallout 3 (i didn't play it enough 1st time around and am now thoroughly deep into it, really is an awesome game). FM 2009 has that 'just one more game' or 'just get to the end of the transfer window' feeling and before you know it it's 3am again Having said that, if you (like me) last played the series when it was championship manager the tactics have got HORRENDOUSLY complex and the AI is awesome at working out how to beat you meaning you can no longer come up with that set of uber tactics then you're sorted (usually the AI has cracked you within a few in game weeks). I guess that's very realistic and simulation-like but kinda annoyed me how up on tactics you got be now, for the casual football fan and player (i.e. me) it's gone way OTT.

Anyways hope you're all good and enjoy Civ IV Cern :-)

[xann]

prolly jynxing it now, but think i'm omw too 1st win on Noble

Gilgamesh, Pangaea, Large, Normal speed. Got everything under control, think a Cultural Victory is inc, only 1500-ish tho, still time for AI's to screw my over i guess.

[Cernos]

Last time I played any footie sim was indeed back in the days of Championship Manager, and yep I used to find a winning strategy and stick with it for an entire season. Got pretty boring  because the AI wasn't up to much and would only win by fixing the odds. So it's interesting to hear they've made the AI much better. Perhaps I should give FM2009 a try, it'd be less of a time sink than FML. Interesting what you say about the losing players dropping out of FML, I guess I can see why that might happen and they need to find some incentive for people to play the season through fully even if they aren't doing so well (like some bonus cash for the next season or something).

In Civ 4 I'm in the middle of my first game. Playing a Continents game on Warlord difficulty as the Celts. I'm in the mid 1800s and already running around with Airships, so doing pretty well. My capital is the top city (population 26 and lots of wonders), the Ottoman Empire has been trodden into the dust of history and I'm currently giving the French and Portuguese a lesson in good manners and hopefully will get a continent to myself soon. Diplomacy? Espionage? Culture? Who needs any of that when you got hordes of woad-painted madmen with hi-tech guns and your opponents are messing around with bows and lances

Having said that, if you (like me) last played the series when it was championship manager the tactics have got HORRENDOUSLY complex and the AI is awesome at working out how to beat you meaning you can no longer come up with that set of uber tactics then you're sorted (usually the AI has cracked you within a few in game weeks). I guess that's very realistic and simulation-like but kinda annoyed me how up on tactics you got be now, for the casual football fan and player (i.e. me) it's gone way OTT.

Anyways hope you're all good and enjoy Civ IV Cern :-)

[Saxif]

Good luck Xan, I'd wish you luck to Cern but doesn't sound like you need it

A further thing with regards the espionage game, although I am playing with espionage a little more I am still trying to go for my Space Race victory and doing well, so as with any good Space Race game I just swapped to Free Religion.  This however makes espionage alot harder because it means that having your religion in the AI cities counts for nothing, which increases costs by about 30%, so a tip if your going to try it is to steal a load of techs just before swapping to Free Religion, I might do this in hindsight, a quick swap back and fro once I have spies stationary for 5 turns in several promising cities.  A good idea would be to do this in a Golden Age for no Anarchy as well if possible 

This game I also dropped my research slider down to 10% and pumped my espionage slider up to 70% for 4 turns, and chose 2 Civs to put all my espionage into.  This has had the effect that when I have a religion I can see into all their cities with my religion and they are very vulnrable to me stealing techs or messing with their cities, kinda useful for slowing down potential rivals.  Allowed me to see who was creating what Wonders after I worked out what Techs they had on the Diplomacy screen so I could see who was able to build the things I wanted; which meant I was able to pick the city ti build University of Sankore and know I'd get it out, I also got out Taj Mahal (sp?) this way to

Sax.

[Saxif]

Finally beat the AI at Prince to a Space Race, they hadn't even launched by the time I had my ship at Alpha Centuri!   5th game lucky ;p

Ghandi, The Evil Wrinkly One almost beat me with a Cultural Victory though, I had all my armies on his border ready to break into one of his "soon to be Legendary Cities".  Think I am gonna do something else for a week before tackling it again for a different Victory type now

Sax.

[Lasiien]

hehe, nice one

[Saxif]

Grr, hate going to war when the opposition are on another continent!

Sax.

[xann]

just won my 1st noble game

Elizibeth, Terra, Large, Epic. Diplomatic win, 1970. Leadership qualities of Augustus Caesar

nothing much diplomatic about it rly, wiped out the mongols and made the greeks, french, indians and americans Capitulate, so when the U.N vote came round they all had to vote for me plus was a few % away from a domination victory too, and had 1/2 a spaceship built

i should play a few more rly, but will prolly hop straight to prince now and get beaten over and over

[Saxif]

I was trying for a Domination win recently but ended up with a Diplomatic for the same reasons (lots of population and Vassals).  How long did it take you, I spent 11 hours on a standard map/epic speed for my win

I think you should check this out Xan ...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171398

It's a fantasy mod for Civ4 BTS.  The main differences other than the fantasy element are the fact that there r way more barbarians, units tend to have much lower strength but promote much higher and you have Hero units which slowly generate XP over time making them very powerful.  I played a game the other night and got pwned badly, think the AI build more military than vanilla.  Also the tech tree is massively different.

Grats on the Noble win though

Sax.

[xann]

I was trying for a Domination win recently but ended up with a Diplomatic for the same reasons (lots of population and Vassals).  How long did it take you, I spent 11 hours on a standard map/epic speed for my win

10 hours 37mins, Large, Terra, Epic. so about the same speed rly.

i've downloaded that Mod, not played yet, will start a game sometime this week

[Saxif]

Theres also a mod for the mod  called Fall Further, which adds more races and some extra's events and dungeon events (you can send units to explore lairs and they get goodies), advanced alignment rules and other stuff.  I might dl it and load it up for my next game.

Sax.