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Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword Megadetails; Holy fucking Zeus. NSF the illiterate.

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Posts

  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    As far as I can tell, the best way to win a war in Civ4 is just to throw a stack of 2-4 attackers for every 1 defender and hope you wear them down.

    There's also assraping their resource tiles and whatnot to fuck with them, but usually when I try that some UberWarrior with STICK OF DOOM runs over and crushes the entire stack just for shits and giggles.

    KiTA on
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Siege wins city attacks.

    jungleroomx on
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Neighbors are there to be eaten.

    Which is probably the best advice I've ever gotten. If your neighbor has a couple workers near his border in the very early game, grab them and they're unlikely to ever really come back. They'll hate you but they'll have no infrastructure so you don't really care.

    DevoutlyApathetic on
    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Neighbors are there to be eaten.

    Which is probably the best advice I've ever gotten. If your neighbor has a couple workers near his border in the very early game, grab them and they're unlikely to ever really come back. They'll hate you but they'll have no infrastructure so you don't really care.


    No infrastructure just means more of a blank slate for you.

    Also: Never automate any workers except for building trade routes after your major cities are connected and resources gotten.

    jungleroomx on
  • CheezyCheezy Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Neighbors are there to be eaten.

    Which is probably the best advice I've ever gotten. If your neighbor has a couple workers near his border in the very early game, grab them and they're unlikely to ever really come back. They'll hate you but they'll have no infrastructure so you don't really care.


    No infrastructure just means more of a blank slate for you.

    Also: Never automate any workers except for building trade routes after your major cities are connected and resources gotten.

    What about with Better AI?

    Cheezy on
  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Neighbors are there to be eaten.

    Which is probably the best advice I've ever gotten. If your neighbor has a couple workers near his border in the very early game, grab them and they're unlikely to ever really come back. They'll hate you but they'll have no infrastructure so you don't really care.


    No infrastructure just means more of a blank slate for you.

    Also: Never automate any workers except for building trade routes after your major cities are connected and resources gotten.

    Eh. Depends. On anything lower than Monarch, the AI does a decent enough job handling them that I could not care less about min/maxing my cities. It's just not worth that minute extra edge.

    And yes. If you start near anybody, take their workers. Take their workers and then laugh. And then when they build more and put them on their border undefended again... take even more. The AI is stupid like that. Just be sure to have two to three warriors to sit in their territory on forested hills or what-have-you to keep their archers/warriors in their city instead of coming after you. Generally though, after two 'harvests' they get tired of it and won't let you have peace... that's when you bring in the axes though. :P

    Aroduc on
  • themightypuckthemightypuck MontanaRegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    It's always scary when Aroduc starts pointing out his civ strategies. After the last thread I realized I'm not aggressive enough by half when I play this game.

    So does anybody know how this Steam thing works with the add on? Haven't ever used it before so I'm clueless how this would work out. Someone mentioned something about validating Civ or some such...

    I have retail civ4 and just steamed BTS and it just worked.

    themightypuck on
    “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
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  • BibbleBibble __BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2007
    My first BTS game. I am egypt - one on one with Gilgamesh. Why can't I DECLARE WAR?? When I mouse over hsi name it say s I cannot declare war. I have no permanant alliance or anything with him. Is there any other possible reason why I can't? I have been at peace with him for the entire game.

    Bibble on
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  • BibbleBibble __BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2007
    It says I have a peace treaty! I've never been at war with him, how is this possible???

    Bibble on
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  • Mojo_JojoMojo_Jojo We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourse Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Has anybody figured out the secret behind corporations yet? I founded the sushi one in the last game and was informed that if I had more crabs, fish and rice the company would do better so off I set, claiming lots of crappy locations and even waging a small war.

    Then I was sent a quest from the company to expand into another eight locations. Doing this put me in absolutely colossal debt. Although the food and culture boosts were useful (I had some cities up to size 28, which I think caused a fair amount of overcrowding unhappiness). The financial burden forced me to reduce my sliders to zero and start rushing to build as many stock exchanges as possible to finally just about get in the green (after about four turns of striking that took out my airship fleet).

    Spreading these things to enemy territory seemed the likely option but such activity is not allowed. Although I did manage it by accident, I got a message saying one of my cities wanted to join another empire, didn't read it properly and said yes thinking I'd flipped an enemy city. So my vassal state ended up with one of my sushi chains and started spreading it throughout myself.

    It was a strange game. First normal one I've played and random events are awesome.

    Mojo_Jojo on
    Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    A thread from Civfanatics about corporations. Apparently executives are broken.

    http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=233292[/url

    Doing state property?

    jungleroomx on
  • BibbleBibble __BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2007
    Are you sure execs are broken? It's not being complained about many places it seems. I haven't gotten to that stage of the game.

    Bibble on
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  • Mojo_JojoMojo_Jojo We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourse Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    No, that thread was just somebody running state property being unable to build executives. That isn't a bug. Although the second post did say that corporations are currently broken, so possibly he was referring to the massive gold drain.

    Mojo_Jojo on
    Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Mojo_Jojo wrote: »
    No, that thread was just somebody running state property being unable to build executives. That isn't a bug. Although the second post did say that corporations are currently broken, so possibly he was referring to the massive gold drain.

    Apparently. There's not much, but the fact that someone else said something about 2000gp per turn in drain is nuts

    jungleroomx on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc should whip up a Let's Play thread.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • SudsSuds Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    So, question:

    If I buy it off Steam, do I need to have an active internet connection anytime I play it? I've never used Steam before.

    If so, is there a different digital download service where this isnt the case?

    No. You can play in "Off-line Mode"
    Marathon Mode, ya or nay?

    I always play Marathon Mode. Depending on who I chose I want long drawn out wars in all stages of history. At the faster speeds I find it's just easier to tech up to Tanks before I even declare my first war. I find that very unsatisfying.
    jdarkson wrote:
    At some point, Aroduc, you should post a brief log of how you play / major things you do. I'm usually pretty militarily handy early game, then flounder a bit after taking over one or two local civilizations, and by the time I've caught up with the techs I've missed, Space Race is right around the corner.

    Do you do the whole "build two workers, then a settler first thing for every city - using the workers to cut down trees to speed the whole thing up", or some other starting strategy?

    I'd like to see this as well. I've gone for the early conquest and completely taken over my continent before anyone had even made it into the oceans. However, by the time I found the other major continent I was so far behind in Technology and so far in the Red as far as money went that there was no way I could win.


    Also, I haven't played BtS yet, what are everyone's thoughts?

    Suds on
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  • LeztaLezta Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Sigh, patched vanilla civ and now it won't work. Ugh. It don't like them shader libraries...

    Lezta on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Suds wrote: »
    Also, I haven't played BtS yet, what are everyone's thoughts?

    SO AWESOME!


    I really liked it. It even has the Cristo Redentor!!!

    Stormwatcher on
    Steam: Stormwatcher | PSN: Stormwatcher33 | Switch: 5961-4777-3491
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  • GoodOmensGoodOmens Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    KiTA wrote: »
    Ergandar wrote: »
    5 gold mines

    So he gets + a few bucks a turn, and +5 happiness to his main city?

    He'd only get 1 happiness...multiples of a given luxury don't give multiple happiness. If he had gold and silver and gems, then he'd get 3 happiness.

    But having extras is good..you can trade them, use them for that one jewlery corporation, and you have spares in case an opponent pillages one of the mines.

    Having that much gold is insane early on...if you had wheat or fish nearby to fuel the population, it would be even better.

    GoodOmens on
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  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Suds wrote: »
    Also, I haven't played BtS yet, what are everyone's thoughts?
    SO AWESOME![/SIZE]


    I really liked it. It even has the Cristo Redentor!!!

    for me the important new wonder is the Shwedagon Paya

    getting free religion early on has totally changed the way i look at using religions

    i really like the expansion. new civs are always fun and the colony system is something i'm really interested in perfecting. espionage seems like a lot of fuss over not too much but i'd be interested in figuring out some of its finer points

    although it blows that you need sailing for river connections now

    edit: also the Moai Statues national wonder is amazing. maybe too amazing - it should be a world wonder. combined with a lighthouse you can easily live off the sea.

    bsjezz on
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  • dsplaisteddsplaisted Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    eelektrik wrote: »
    Just picked up Beyond the Sword at the local Gamestop, apparently it was the only copy they got in and lucky for me no one preordered there. After I get the hang of the new features someone needs to make a Game On thread, or just turn this into one. Hopfully it goes better than the one time I played Civ 4 with the PA crowd, where 6 of us started on one continent, and the 7th player started on a continent all to himself.

    I tried to buy it last night, and my gamestop had sold their only copy. :(

    EDIT: So apparently I can get it off steam even though I have the retail copy of the base game. I'd rather have an actual box and manual, but it sure is tempting to just download it...

    dsplaisted on
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  • ErgandarErgandar Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    I'll be receiving BoTS in the near future-yet what irks me is my ineptitude as a warmonger. I pimp my initial 5ish cities and have a powerhouse economy, yet am vanquished due to my lack of perimeter defense.

    Should I construct a few defensive units near my borders on hills to annihilate any counterastacks?

    Ergandar on
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  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited July 2007
    Suds wrote: »
    Also, I haven't played BtS yet, what are everyone's thoughts?

    SO AWESOME!

    I dunno. The reduced upkeep for your close-in cities seems to me to be making it even easier to crush all your enemies in the early game and get away with it. I am noticing a massive increase in war weariness though, which I guess is supposed to make wars tougher, but it hasn't really stopped me yet. Of course, I've also been sticking to my Ind/Org staple and only been playing Noble.

    I really liked it. It even has the Cristo Redentor!!!
    Aroduc should whip up a Let's Play thread.

    Wouldn't that just be a succession game thread... only with just me? :P

    Maybe over the weekend.
    jdarksun wrote: »
    At some point, Aroduc, you should post a brief log of how you play / major things you do. I'm usually pretty militarily handy early game, then flounder a bit after taking over one or two local civilizations, and by the time I've caught up with the techs I've missed, Space Race is right around the corner.

    Do you do the whole "build two workers, then a settler first thing for every city - using the workers to cut down trees to speed the whole thing up", or some other starting strategy?

    Nah. Two workers is overkill. Especially if you're stealing them from other people as well. And I start to cut back on expansion usually around my fourth city to prevent my economy from hitting the shitter. Seriously, seeing the AI's techs thanks to spying shows me exactly what happens to them. They overexpand and then everything goes to shit for them.

    Aroduc on
  • ErgandarErgandar Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Press ctrl-y for the display for the stats of each tile-preferably settle near a river/lake or in a hilly range for a production city

    Ergandar on
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  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited July 2007
    jdarksun wrote: »
    How do you pick where to settle?

    Connection, proximity, resources, rivals. That's pretty much what I look for, in that order, though especially nice resources in danger of being snatched up obviously get priority, with the caveat that I'm going to be seizing their cities eventually anyway, so if I don't need it in the now, who cares.

    Aroduc on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Suds wrote: »
    Also, I haven't played BtS yet, what are everyone's thoughts?

    SO AWESOME!

    I dunno. The reduced upkeep for your close-in cities seems to me to be making it even easier to crush all your enemies in the early game and get away with it. I am noticing a massive increase in war weariness though, which I guess is supposed to make wars tougher, but it hasn't really stopped me yet. Of course, I've also been sticking to my Ind/Org staple and only been playing Noble.

    I really liked it. It even has the Cristo Redentor!!!
    Aroduc should whip up a Let's Play thread.

    Wouldn't that just be a succession game thread... only with just me? :P

    Maybe over the weekend.

    Yeah, pretty much it. I just wanna see a play by play from you. I used to be pretty shit hot with Civ2 (rush to Invention, build Leonardo's Workshop, win) and AC (pick University, win), but I really CANNOT win CIV4 above noble. Considering you're so awesome, I can learn a few things.
    Aroduc wrote: »
    jdarksun wrote: »
    At some point, Aroduc, you should post a brief log of how you play / major things you do. I'm usually pretty militarily handy early game, then flounder a bit after taking over one or two local civilizations, and by the time I've caught up with the techs I've missed, Space Race is right around the corner.

    Do you do the whole "build two workers, then a settler first thing for every city - using the workers to cut down trees to speed the whole thing up", or some other starting strategy?

    Nah. Two workers is overkill. Especially if you're stealing them from other people as well. And I start to cut back on expansion usually around my fourth city to prevent my economy from hitting the shitter. Seriously, seeing the AI's techs thanks to spying shows me exactly what happens to them. They overexpand and then everything goes to shit for them.

    Do you use Cottage economy? What about City Specialization?

    Stormwatcher on
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  • Spyder3XSpyder3X Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    I've found that my captured cities are generally never as happy/productive as my own cities. So generally I just burn all of my enemies cities to the ground until they will become my vassal. By then I have so vastly decimated them that they can never grow large enough again to escape my grasp. I have had sucess on noble using this strategy. But I like the worker stealing. I never thought of that!

    Spyder3X on
  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited July 2007
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Nah. Two workers is overkill. Especially if you're stealing them from other people as well. And I start to cut back on expansion usually around my fourth city to prevent my economy from hitting the shitter. Seriously, seeing the AI's techs thanks to spying shows me exactly what happens to them. They overexpand and then everything goes to shit for them.

    Do you use Cottage economy? What about City Specialization?

    Not any anything below Monarch really. My macro policy of "eat everything the same size, smaller... and occasionally larger, than me" tends to be more than enough without dealing with an extra hour or two of keeping track of what the fuck every single unit and city is doing and making sure you skirt the borderline between pissy cities and perfectly content ones, and really, that's what I find the micromanagement most useful for... just making sure that your cities are at the optimal size for their buildings and your techs.

    Aroduc on
  • The_LightbringerThe_Lightbringer Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    So, yesterday I engaged in decades of espionage blitz and must say it is an interesting concept.

    With poison water, cause unhappiness and sabotage of nearby food/luxury tiles, you can reduce large cities into small 2 man villages, it's sickening how effective this is.

    Plus, facing a 100 defense city with no artillery? Just cause a revolt with your spies and now there's no defense bonus!

    The_Lightbringer on
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  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Oh crap. I just finished installing this and I can already feel it, grasping at my soul ready to devour me.

    So far I've just looked through the civlopedia. Once I start a game I know I'm lost.

    Damn.

    DevoutlyApathetic on
    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • SniperGuySniperGuy SniperGuyGaming Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Someone explain this espionage system to me. Because it is confusing.

    SniperGuy on
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  • SudsSuds Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    I like that I can set the starting menu to the original Civ IV theme. Baba Yetu FTW.

    Suds on
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  • DoronronDoronron Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    My copy should be arriving soon. Tonight, I'll probably recompile the DLL to allow for 34 man games instead of 18.

    Then I'll get my ass kicked. Again. and again. and again.

    Doronron on
  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited July 2007
    SniperGuy wrote: »
    Someone explain this espionage system to me. Because it is confusing.

    I've chosen to ignore it entirely except for very late game surgical uses.

    Basically though, you accumulate points due to your palace, courthouses, etc, which are then distributed across all the civs you have contact with. You can change the weight too, so if you're about to slaughter some civ, you can stop spying on them and it'll give those points to the other civs. When you accumulate X points with them, based on their size and population, you get to see various things about them. Each higher X lets you see more crapola. You can also spend Y using spies to do various things to their cities, units, and infrastructure. If they have more points against you than you have against them though, then it'll cost more and your spy will have a higher chance of being discovered per turn that it spends in the enemy territory. Nobody gives a shit if they find a spy though, only if they find a spy fucking around with your stuff.

    Aroduc on
  • ErgandarErgandar Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    I'm succeeding partially as Julius Caesar in Warlords on Noble difficulty.

    I subjugated a few incan cities, sued for peace once he became a vassal of Brennus (whose vast military surpassed mine).

    My legions are stationed in a good perimeter formation (including my incredible great general unit)

    Ergandar on
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  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited July 2007
    Ergandar wrote: »
    I'm succeeding partially as Julius Caesar in Warlords on Noble difficulty.

    I subjugated a few incan cities, sued for peace once he became a vassal of Brennus (whose vast military surpassed mine).

    My legions are stationed in a good perimeter formation (including my incredible great general unit)

    SPAWN MORE PRAETORIANS.

    Aroduc on
  • NewresNewres Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    jdarksun wrote: »
    I'll leave a few "sweeper" units in cities near borders, but for the most part I just bring the fight to the enemy and never let up. Send quick, cheap units to ransack their infrastructure while your main offensive lays siege and brings down the cities. They're generally too tied up to mount counterattacks.

    If my offense flags, I'll either demand they become my vassal or offer peace. I try not to do that though, the captured cities are horribly unhappy. Better to keep your war machine moving with good support.

    What I also found that works is to put a mix of defensive and offensive units on tile with a big defensive bonus in the middle of the enemy territory. That way you essentially set up a base from where your offensive units can sweep moving enemy units and pillage the countryside, and it is very hard to take down such a base.

    Newres on
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  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Hey, when did the Gaelic Swordsmen get made less sucky? Now they just need copper or iron instead of Iron. The Celts still get shafted overall, but at least it's somewhat better.

    DevoutlyApathetic on
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  • Triple BTriple B Bastard of the North MARegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    So I've been playing as Gilgamesh of the Sumerians. I must say I fucking love the way he plays. Creative is so damn amazing. My borders were popping twice as fast as anyone else's. Protective is cool too, as my cities were well defended enough with only one or two units.

    I experienced something unusual when I was playing last night. I capped a city from some barbarians, and it grew into my most productive, prosperous city aside from my capital. I chalked it up to the location. It was coastal, and also had an adjacent river. I'm just not used to seeing captured cities flourish like that.

    I basically played the entire game without building more than one or two military units per city, just to sit there and defend. Once I threw the Great Wall up, I didn't have to worry about barbarians anymore, and my diplomatic relations were good enough so that I was only getting the occasional demand/threat from Julius Caesar, and that prick Wang Kon.

    Later in the game, it became clear that everyone hated Mao Zedong (who just so happened to be established directly south of me), so I built up a massive stack of riflemen and stuck them with about 8 cannons, then proceeded to rape his civ against the wall until he capitulated. Big ups to Warlords for adding capitulation, btw.

    I can't stop playing this game. That is all.

    Triple B on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    Capped cities work a lot better in Civ4 than in CivIII, where they were REALLY useless.

    Stormwatcher on
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