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Civ 4 is too hard! I give up for ever!
HamHamJ
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've been playing a bunch of Civ 4 lately and it seems like there is this huge gap between Noble and Prince. According to the description the AI is supposed to research and build slightly faster than you, but whenever I've tried it they've been running around with Longbowmen and Crossbowmen and Macemen when I'm just getting Swordsmen. And they have more troops.
On Noble I'm usually a couple of techs ahead of the computer, and can usually out produce them. But on Prince this does a complete 180.
Is this how it's supposed to be? Am I doing something wrong? What do you have to do to stand a chance in the upper half of the difficulty scale?
PS: I looked for an existing Civ 4 thread and couldn't find one.
On Noble I'm usually a couple of techs ahead of the computer, and can usually out produce them. But on Prince this does a complete 180.
Is this how it's supposed to be? Am I doing something wrong? What do you have to do to stand a chance in the upper half of the difficulty scale?
PS: I looked for an existing Civ 4 thread and couldn't find one.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
HamHamJ on
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This is just a generic response, but it's usually pretty accurate, especially when given no real information aside from "GAME IS HARD!"
I always found the "Worker Chop" tactic works like a charm.
1: Research Bronzeworking.
2: Build a warrior till your city is size 2.
3: Switch to a worker as soon as your city is size 2, even if you haven't finished the warrior.
4: When the worker is done switch to a settler (again leave the warrior half built).
5: Cutting down two forest tiles will build your settler in 6-7 turns.
This gets you an early second city, a worker to hook up resources and basic military units if you have access to metal.
My early game strategy right now is basically:
Build a Warrior in capital while my starting warrior explores. Then build a settler. Found a second city. Build worker in capital. Rinse and repeat until I run out of room.
I generally don't even bother with wonders early on, except maybe the Pyramids or Great Wall or if I don't have anything else to do.
In the most recent game I was Rome. It was a Tiny map and I had Ragnar and Mao I think as my opponents. I basically got Praetorians as fast as possible hoping to rush one or both of them straight off the bat but by the time I managed to get them going they already had crossbowmen!
Hm. I also really like Creative cause it means you can pretty much ignore Monuments. So... Catherine?
Catherine isn't Creative/Financial in the xpacks.
If your playing Vanilla, Catherine is great. Go for it
Yeah I was looking in the manual at traits. However it has been changed.
I'm running Warlords and apparently there isn't anyone who is both Financial and Creative.
You're like from some kind of bizarro world where down is up and crazy is sane. Expansive is awful. Unless you're trapped on an island full of nothing but luxury resources, then you'll hit your happiness limit LONG before you hit your sickness rating, and all the sickness does is effectively lower the population limit without letting you go past it. You could make an argument for granaries, but even they're pretty minimally useful outside of the midgame when you can actually start population booms. By the time your city builds one, most are already size 3 or 4 anyway.
And besides all this, expansive doesn't even change growth rate until your cities reach size 5 or so when the difficulty level bonus to health outstrips the sickness penalty for size. I guess if you decide to build a city in the middle of a jungle, but still somehow have easy access to food, but if you're picking a trait based on that, I'll hit you. It does get more useful on the upper levels, but happiness is still an issue long before sickness.
Creative, on the other hand, is useful for any city, especially if there are multiple religions around (or you've had trouble grabbing one) and is awesome in the early game if there are nearby rivals. It also saves you from having to build any kind of culture building to fortify your border cities or resource colonies, and since they usually have shit for workable tiles, that's a free 30+ turns for that city. Cheap theaters are decent enough if you have culture issues in the midgame, and cols are nice for happiness issues (which are almost always present), or in vanilla, cheap libraries are just plain awesome... which is why it doesn't get them anymore.
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Hamham,
Ignore people who espouse concrete build orders. There is no perfect build order. If you've got a rival nearby, you can completely skip a worker and just take theirs.
I would suggest sending your second warrior out into the world. Wild animals can't enter your borders, and the AI won't attack you. Especially if you like rushing the Great Wall, make sure your scouts are out and being useful. Leave one in your city to prevent the unhappiness penalty, and keep a few archers at your borders so you can see if an opponent starts massing, but otherwise, your military can be minimal. If you don't get the great wall, keep archers at your borders anyway. An archer fortified on a forested hill is better defended than one in your city until/unless you put down walls.
Also, a good metric for the super early invasions is that 2 warriors have about a 75% chance of taking a T2 culture city on flatland defended by 1 warrior. So if you're feeling lucky, take 'em down. They'll have been building worker/settlers and have sent their other warriors out scouting, so it's an easy rival taken down and if they're close enough for the upkeep to not be oppressive, an awesome second city. 3 warriors is practically a certain win and usually enough to take down those pesky T3 culture cities (creative or holy). The AI does cheat this early on and spawn warriors if you give them too many turns, so if you declare war, you want your warriors next to their capital in that first turn and not attacking across a river or some shit.
This works very well.
Here are some more tips for post chop-build:
It's nice to choose a leader that begins with mining so you can go straight to researching bronzeworking. If you discover bronzeworking through scouting switch to producing the worker before finishing the warrior.
If you like the wonder spam style of play I suggest choosing Bismark; He begins with mining plus being an IND (50% bonus to wonder production). He also begins with a scout rather than a warrior for a better chance at discovering techs.
Then there's the tech slingshot. First thing is to research to priesthood relatively soon, perhaps even before basic improvement techs like farming or fishing. Chop-Build the Oracle for the free tech after researching writing+priesthood. This will free up Code of Ethics for the slingshot which is a 500+ point tech. If following the chop-build method you should get there in 40-70 turns.
Even at the most difficult setting, if utilizing the chop build method followed by this tech slingshot you will be 100-150 points ahead of every civilization. A good head start.
*edit
Another thing, if you are having problems with your economy choose a leader with the Financial skill. (Get +1 gold for plots that already have +2 or more gold) Spam build cottages and you've got it made. I like Huayna Capac whom is IND FIN.
Shaka has completed construction of the Manhattan Project.
Oh you mother fucker.
The way to beat hard comps is rapid expansion I've always found. Also, no skipping turns, no automation on crop management. You have to do everything.
Firstly, IND is a far better trait for a culture victory than the creative trait itself, which is the only thing creative is good for. Make sure you get the Stonhenge wonder, after that I wouldn't be too worried. Use your Great Entertainers and set your civs and cities to produce culture. You don't need creative. On the flip side I think the expansive trait is more pointless than creative, agree with you there.
Disagree that there is no good concrete builder order. The worker-chop followed by the tech slingshot has worked wonders for me (NPI). The numbers speak for themselves. As far as I'm concerned it is the best way to start any game for any type of victory on any difficulty setting.
You should be, anyway. The AI doesn't seem to capitalize on rivers.
Getting that second city up quick is gamewinning. So is pushing for a military. Depending on the agression of your AI opponents you should definetly be looking for some early battles, if you can knock them down a peg at the super early stage it will snowball.
Good basic tip. Lots of early cities is a good way to claim victory. Just make sure they cannot be conquered by providing a decent early defense or you're wasting your resources.
Also deny border access and create an early border perimeter on the map around free territory. This way you can take your time filling in the rest of the land with settlers which your rivals can only access now by boat. You should definitely have the area filled before they could do that.
Started a new game on Noble. So far I'm up to four cities, got the great wall built, and Citzen Itza (that is so not how you spell that). Alexander wanted me to give him Priesthood and I told him to go to hell. Now he's declared war on me. My major problem here is that while I have horses, I do not have a source of iron and thus can't build Axe-man or Swordsmen. He does though. Which makes me think I should just take out the pathetic assault force he sent at me with Horse Archers and then take his source of iron. And raze the rest.
You're right, Industrious is a better one for a cultural win, which in no way reflects anything I said. Congratulations, you've fabricated an argument and won it. Well done.
And those numbers are assuming so very very much. If you're in any sort of situation with very little production (any and all of: coastal city, no hills, very few forests), then it's awful. If you've got a nearby rival that you can just take workers from, it's obviousal suboptimal. If you don't have any visible workable resources, then the early worker is dumb. The slingshot only works if you actually do get the Oracle. It's usually a safe bet against the AI because the AI doesn't prioritize it, but any time you're relying on a wonder, especially one as temporary as the Oracle, you're playing with fire.
And if the price for a slightly suboptimal city is the price for eliminating a rival within the first 50 turns, then... you know... you might want to consider that as a perfectly viable option.
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HamHam, depends. If it's a useless tech and they're way behind, I give it to them. If it's something expensive that would give them a big jump, or they're no threat to me at all, then they can screw off.
I didn't mean to create an unnecessary argument, I was just trying to outline the uselessness of a trait you were advocating.
The oracle should be easy to obtain if you know what you're doing, hell the pyramids should be a snap if you follow the worker chop method.
You think this method has smaller long-term gains than war, but that's silly, you waste so much more energy sending your troops to conquer early in the game than you would building settlers, acquiring Stonehenge and the slingshot.
Conquer in the next era when your tech is twice your opponent's. There are too many variables in the higher difficulties when trying to conquer, there are much more animals, barbarians and aggressive AI. Nah, turtling with wonder spam is my method.
And I was defending Creative by pointing out the times and situations that it was useful over the rarely useful Expansive. Organized, Industrious, Aggressive, Charismatic, and Financial (not in that order) are all far far more universally useful traits.
And even with good strategies, on the upper difficulties, you can't rely on your tech being particularly far ahead of the enemy. You practically need to make a quick strike on at least someone early on to give yourself an early edge to counteract their "ha ha, free workers, free instant military units, and cheap production/research" crap if you've got someone nearby. Otherwise, they'll just overwhelm you before you have the time to make up the difference.
I don't care I'm better than you at this or any game.
I also went back in time and made love to your mom.
I love you son.
I refuse.
Also, I may be confusing this with GalCiv, but I believe that they only demand tribute when they know they have a better military.
Hahahahahaha. No. Civ fuckers will demand whatever, whenever. It's usually passive-aggressive though unless they hate you. "It'd sure be neighborly of you if you shared this with us... YOU'LL REGRET THIS SLIGHT."
It is.
Consoles. Feh.
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That's fucking bananas.
I can't even imagine a Civ without workers. Well, except for the ones where workers and settlers were the same thing.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I have no idea what that means.
I have more fun with the game if I let things play out organically. When I play as a given leader, I try to roleplay them and do what I think they'd do. I don't get bogged down in micromanaging cities or rushing to techs. I play on lower difficulty and sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. It's fun and low-stress that way.
I liked Civ Rev cause its a faster paced Civ2, which was the last Civ game I played.
I'm bored of Civ Rev now. I've already got my 1000 GS, so there is nothing other than the game of the week to motivate me to play. Maybe I should trade up for Civ4.
Civ III, for me, had a pretty steep learning curve that I never could happen to surmount. I'm asking if Civ IV is easier to learn and get into compared to III.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
They removed corruption and pollution.
It's slightly easier now.
I echo the feelings of the OP though. I suck at Civ 4. Mostly because I try to plat like an empire manager and expand like crazy and never trying to start wars.
Creative is an early-game boon, and the game is won or lost in the early game.
Man, someone should really create a colonization thread, it comes out in less than a month.
On topic, One thing that would help keep enemies in check, especially at the higher difficulties, is to keep the more powerful nations almost constantly at war, prefereably with each other. If you can, increase your reputation with them by getting the strong, and slow to fade, "common enemy" bonus.
Also, be aware that at higher difficulties, the AI loves to trade behind your back, so if you have a research advantage, either don't trade it away at all, or if other countries have it, take the initiative and trade it to those that don't have it before the AI does.