Capital city is already settled, something I don't have to think about. But I need to decide on research.
We are surrounded by water, so fishing would be a nice thing. euh wait ....
We don't have a coastal city so fishing is crap, I like this better. Barb danger is non existing for the moment, once city expands, all fog will disappear. No need to hurry for defense stuff. I can see 2 paths : try for religion, as we are spiritual or just go agriculture and worker. Religion may be good for the happy and for the money so I went that way. And start a warrior

After a few turns I meet an english explorer and see some indian lands. Crowdy, crowdy.

The first target is met and Hinduism is ours




I don't convert as I want to see how things are going to turn out first.
For a second I dreamt about oracle and how getting COL for free will be nice but thinking on it, this is emperor, AI expansion pace is just incredible. I can easily be boxed in my tiny peninsula. So, I guess after agriculture, I need to go for BW and help speed a settler or two

After 2 turns of agri, I decide that even this will be too slow. 18 turns for worker then build a farm and all, no. Chopping is the rule. There are too many trees that need to get chopped here and this first settler I need quickly. So I decide to put some hammers into henge and go the mining/BW road.

After that I see England land which are close. Ooooh, my plan for fast settler becomes mandatory. What was I thinking going for an early religion arghh. I hope it will pay later on. After mining, try to time out the worker 1 turn before BW, so he'd be waiting in forest

Finally I meet the third AI, the nuts Alex. Fortunatley (or not), he is rather away.

Bronzeworking comes and with it the sad news that there is no copper around. The second city will go then for a blocking position since there is no strategic resource to grab




Actually, I did not use the blue circle and settled 1W of it. Don't need no water in the BFC. BTW, what was all this chat about huts and do overs ? not a single goody hut met anywhere

After agriculture and AH, which revealed horses in enemy territory, I went for archery. I don't wanna take chances with my warriors. Then, wheel->pottery to start the cottage spam. No tech trading means I need to live on my own, and great persons slingshots will not be that useful

I lost stonehenge by 10 or so turns and got the money to speed the research. Also start a new settler already. Where will he be ? Barbs already settled the east southern part

When pottery came, I went for IW. Our jags don't need iron but it will be good to have some to bring axes along the way. And here goes the third city, I settled there 2 turns before Ironworking, so it is a bit lucky. OTOH, this was one of the couple spots still available at this time




As you see, it is already fairly crowded. Only Gandhi has a state religion, buddhism, and he got judaism too.

Now I can make jags and have 2 sources of Iron. Time to get an army and start the slaughter. Ah, I haven't talked about strategy but do we have any choice ? I don't want to witness armageddon day (steam power), so I may forget about peaceful victories

First, some training exercice. This would prove to be a very nice city site, in spite of it being coastal






Flash news (235 BC) : Alex built the pyramids. He is also the founder of confucianism. He may turn out a nasty fellow in the end. But there is nothing I can do about it for the moment

I dial Liz. She don't have currency yet, so I can't get anything from her. Just blow the horn already
I have two force invasions to take 2 cities quickly. First Canterbury, rather lightly defended





And then Notthingham, a bit better defended but still doable






In fact, it was easier than I thought as those 2 chariots left the city and went probably to pillage somewhere in the north. Maybe they will return now that I took the city. I have a spear nearby to help just in case

I didn't get to enjoy my won battles much. I was careless reseaching at 100% then I saw this :




I am going to witness a strike for the first time, ever. I start by micro managing to get -10 instead of -16. I disbanded some units and whipped the new cities to reduce the upkeep. No AI has currency yet, so I can't beg for a loan. A few disbanded units later, I declare peace with Liz.

If I win via conquest, then all other armies are eliminated and I have the biggest army by default. Is that the way the game is meant to play or does it mean that I must have any end-of-game army that is bigger than the biggest army ever?

Hi all,

Perhaps this thread would be more suited for Civfanatics, but this place tends to engender more interactive discussion rather than a straight Q&A. Anyway, I've got a few issues with the UI for Civ 4, and I'm wondering what light can be shed on them. The responsiveness of a game's interface contributes greatly to how long I can stick with a game; Civ 3 always had an extremely crisp UI even on my mediocre-for-the-time PC. For Civ 4, my machine is well above recommended (2.8 GHz, Radeon PCIX X700 with freshly updated drivers).

Biggest question: In the late game, every time I click to change a tile or specialist assignment in the city screen, it takes the game several seconds to handle it and respond. This gradually gets slower throughout the game; it's almost instantaneous in the early turns. Any way to speed this up?

2. Whenever I alt-tab back to Civ 4, the screen blanks and takes nearly 10 seconds to return. Civ's mouse pointer is visible the whole time and the monitor itself never blacks out for a video mode change, so it's not a hardware issue, and switching *away* from Civ 4 is perfectly fast. I have my Windows desktop set to exactly the same resolution and color depth as Civ 4 itself. This interferes significantly with the smoothness of the report-writing process; Civ 3 always alt-tabbed to and from the game nearly instantly. I understand this may be low-level DirectX behavior, but I'm wondering how others see it.

3. After commanding a unit, there's a delay of about three seconds before the next unit comes up. This is often actually helpful so you can buffer commands for the unit's next turn or so that you don't accidentally start commanding another unit (maybe if you didn't realize you moved across a river to end this unit's movement.) But the delay is a bit long -- can this be customized anywhere?

4. On the F6 screen and in the city view screen, sometimes my machine stops providing all mouse rollover help text. Most occurrences are if those screens were accessed from the tech-completed or city-build-completed dialogs, but it can randomly happen anytime. Alt-tabbing away from Civ 4 and back restores the rollover functionality. Anyone else ever seen this?

5. Running in windowed mode entirely solves #2, but makes #4 much worse. Also, it makes all the graphics and text appear somewhat blurred. Likely that's a low-level hardware or driver problem, but it rules out windowed mode for me if it can't be fixed.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Here is the link to my Epic 5 report where I got to learn why Monty is such a nut case.

Eliminated in 1340

Epic 5- Emperor, tiny Pangea with 3 instead of the default 2 opponents, Monty can never attain fishing tech or steam power and must delcare war on any civ displaying knowledge of steam power. This game also has no tech trading.

I am going to place an additional restriction on myself- I will not build axemen or Jags. I want to try this game without the cookie cutter strat (by cookie cutter I mean that it works well in any game with any civ) of an axe rush. This could mean that I will lose, but who cares?

Okay how am I going to tech with Monty and no trading? Basically there are 3 choices-cottages, religion, and great people. Not being Philosophical or Financial, but being Spiritual indicates that religion may be the best to fund my empire. I will shoot for some of the early religions, lets see how it works. I don't know who my opponents are, hopefully some that don't start with Mysticisim and hopefully some that are not too aggressive . Probably too much to ask, but lets see.

4000BC-The city is already founded. I move the scout to the south and see the silk. At least I don't have to exlpore the coast . I start working the grassland near the river, trading the one hammer for the one commerce and set research to Polytheism (due in 16). Work set to warrior.

3820BC- Poped my first hut and got a map.

3790BC- Meet Gandhi. This is good. He and I can be peacful in the early game. I doubt it but the map shows Gandhi's capital, I hope he is not working that two commerce wine tile.

3730BC- Meet Lizzy-I hope we can also be peaceful. She is close I hope that I can get some land.



3520BC- I get Hinduism. I set reserch to archery, since I won't build axemen I don't need to know where copper is, but I will need some deterrence. The only reason to go for bronze working is to chop settlers/workers. I decided to delay this, I will chop some later, but I want to, for a bit, travel the road less traveled and not rush to chop them out.

3340BC-Gandhi gets Buddhism.

2530BC-Meet Alex.

1990BC-Found Teotihuacan



1870BC-Bravo to who ever made this map (Sirian?), no copper near the capital, a Jag rush will still be possible, but it is certainly not as easy as an axe rush. I start another settler, I will build workers when I have lands to improve, right now I really only have one tile (the corn) that I can improve.

1030BC-Third city founded. Reserach now at 40%. That is it. I get three cites for a bit, now to pump out workers and archers and possibly missionaries.



370BC Gandhi founded Buddhism and Judaism. Lizzy founded Conf., me Hinduism and Alex nothing. I currently have Lizzy and Alex in Hinduism, but I am afraind that Lizzy will be switching soon. We will see.

250BC-Lizzy converts to Conf.

470AD- Alex converts to Judaism. I am making a serious effort to convert him back. In this year I get a Great Priest and build the Kashi Viswanath. A few turns ago Alex demanded that I cancel my open borders with Lizzy, I comply.

590AD-Alex converst back to Hinduism. Great!

740AD-Alex declares war on me. Hmmmm this reminds me of what Sirian said about Epic 4. I had my best relations with Alex, he should have declared on Lizzy or Gandhi instead. Well I am going to stick with my no ax/jag, lets whip some archers and spearmen. Since Alex declared on me I see no reason to stay in Hinduism and swithch instead to Lizzy's Conf.

935AD-Lizzy declares war on me, figures!!

1256-Lizzy gets Liberalism, still at war with both, gonna lose, oh well.

1316-This looks like the turn.

1334-Down to one warrior, next turn they should get me.

1340-Ha my warrior beat a knight, it was worth it just to see that. You can see that I have whipped Tenochitaln a little bit (I needed lots of spears and archers). Alex and Lizzy attacked with almost exclusively mounted units , no metal maybe.



I lost. From watching the replay, I was only one city behind and could have kept the settling pace if the starting position had not hedged me in so badly, I just could not get around cultural borders to settle past a thrid city, I could not afford to do so either. An axe rush might have been useful as would have coastal tiles for the added commerce and whipping from the sea resources, but per the variant and my private variant made it a bit more difficult. It was fun and quick so I am pleased .

Had a good deal of fun with this one. My report is here .

Now up on my site, http://uberfish.atspace.com

Yes, I crashed my economy too.

Hi all

as I am kind of new to this forum/site, I had one question.
On the pages detailing the Adv9 - 10 rules I cannot seem to find which patch is required to play the game & to qualify for the rankings

(also for the epic games)

greetings

Callandor

It seems the Epics R the games where I experiment with victorytypes

I started to play at 3am so I wanted to have it fast. I tried from Buddism and I got it. Initialy I started on a worker. I manged to get the worker out & in place just in time to start building a farm right after discovering Agriculture.



Tech oprder:
Budda --> Agricult. --> mining --> AH (looking for horsie...)
Then beelined for IW.

Since it is not allwed to have fishing and/or SteamPower I had very precisely stated deadline: win the game before industrial age or lose by variant rule. Stopping the reasearch is not the option because:
1) techs will still get researched even at the 0% science slider (SLOWLY!)
2) as any civ reaches steampower I need to declare on it => I will get beaten if I will be outdated myself.

Conclusion:
This rules most of victorytypes: time, space (no techs), dyplomatic (no UN), Cultural (too little time...?). This leaves Domination and Conquest and having agressive race lets go for it :muhahaha:

I will need to target the strongest civs not to let anybody grow too much:
First target... who to choose...?
3280 - Hindu FIDL (Ghandi)
2200 - Juda FIDL (Ghandi)
1330 - Stonehenge BIFAL (Ghandi)
...hmmm... any doubts? Just wait til I get Jags.

Having 2 I attacked my benefactor from Epic4. I did not managed to get his capital (+60 defence bonus was too scary ), but I still plundered his land, razed holy city of the Judaism (small) in the W, and on the way back captured small city half way from Delhi to my capital. Enough!

I attacked Lizy becouse she started to sorround me with her cities. Took 3 of them, and razed another 1 leaving her without iron (in the W). Enough!

Next Ghandi again - he planted a city in the center of the map and I did not like it. I took Delhi and left him 2 cities only (with iron). Finnancially I could not afford more conquest... eeeenough...?
At he moment I had some peace to strenghten my economics - CoL, Currency and their buildings up. I need to state that I did not pick on Alex - he had no iron so he was no threat I was pleased with Alex, and he was with me. He had worse relation with both Mahatma and Lizy, so we were allies in 2:2 teams.
But leavin weak Ghandi pushed Alex to an assault and he took 2 India cites getting access to Iron....

It would probably be the best to attack Alex soon after but I was had too weak economics, and he had many Axes, being first in power. I was recovering + struggling financially. I decided to beat Lizzy befor going for Alex and I declared. I had some cats prepared and went for London. 1 turn after I conquerd it Alex attaced. This was the moment I was MOST VULNERABLE: my units R damaged and located in English territory.
Enough! ..with Lizzy
(especially since I saw a musketeer of hers... whoa...!)

Alex razed 2 of my cites and was on the best rute to squeeze me with his knights + maces.
But I survived (barely), upgraded spears to pikes and whipped like crazy,

got my own maces out, took garnisoned units and counterattacked, took 3 of his cities pushing Alex back to his penisula = no iron for him. Enough! my cities R at size 3 now after whipping...

I returned to Lizzy and razed her 3 cities, my units recovered, cities had 10 turns to grow :D

As soon as I could I got back on Alex. I was feeling he was for cavalry and HE DID!
But had not yet got many of them - I had gathered 2 giant SoD, and marched across greek penisula.



Conquest victory in 1679



Since the end of the 1st war with Lizy I had too much territory than I could keep up. I did not took the lesson from Epic4 and I had negative income even while 0% research... Tech pace was enourmously slow: in 1670 Paper was the most advanced tech.
Adv 9: Stagnation will be good opportunity for me to learn sth. on the financial issues.

Epic Five - The Covenant of the Sea

This game was at Emporer level, tiny map and 3 AIs. The variant rules were that we could not aquire the knowledge of Fishing or Steam Power. We are playing as Montezuma of Azteca, and our capital was already founded.

I wanted to be aggressive in this game. I had stumbled along to peaceful victories in Epics 2 and 3, not getting much enjoyment along the way because I am naturally a warmonger in Civ. I was jealous of the players who took a more aggressive strategy in those games, and they all scored much higher too.

My strategy was to exploit the jaguar. For a tiny map, I believe the jaguar is the best UU. Better than the praetorian even. Simply because you can get them out much quicker due to not having to build the settler, mine and roads which you would need for axemen or swordsmen. You can therefore always attack a civ or two before they get their own axemen.

My research went: Mining -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working. I started with a warrior because a worker would not have completed by the time BW came in. My scout found England (Elizabeth) and India (Gandhi). Later on a greek archer found my scout. The warrior completed at the same time as Teno reached size 2 and headed towards England. I built a worker. My warrior captured a worker from Elizabeth (3070 BC) and died but I was able to escort the captive back to Azteca with the aid of my scout.

My two workers then proceeded to pre-chop all of the 8 grassland forests in the BFC of Teno, leaving 1 turn of chopping to go on all of them. The 2 plains forests were left alone. I built a replacement warrior to garrison my capital and built a barracks. The barracks came in at roughly the same time IW did (2260 BC), and at that time jaguars were set to repeat-build. The first few were sped up by 1 chop each (each chop only taking 1 turn each). The jags after that were produced slower, but I still had the plains forests and a grassland iron mine to help. The first wave of 5 jags trained up on some barb and English archers on the way to England (who I was still at war with) and were promoted to cover and city raider.

My next tech was Wheel, then I got Animal Husbandry, but in hindsight I should have turned research off. I realised this during the next tech (writing) and turned it off then. My workers now built roads towards my enemies.

The first English city (York), defended by 2 archers, fell in 1630 BC to 3 Jags. London was also defended by just 2 archers and fell in 1450 BC. The English were no more! I kept both cities because they had forests to chop.



Now for the Indians. War was declared in 1390 BC. Madras was captured in 1330 BC and Delhi in 1120 BC. Defending with 2 or 3 archers is not good enough when you have 4 highly promoted Jags at your doorstep! The new cities whipped their barracks and chopped some new jags. India had iron in its capital but had not seen it yet. Their final city Bombay was razed in 955 BC.



Note the -21 GPT at 0% research. I should not have kept so many cities and was paying my soldiers with plunder money. At this point I had to stop producing jags because the upkeep cost was killing me. Every city was set to build an obelisk or some other non-unit build. Every worked tile was changed to a gold-producing one and most of my workers were deleted. At the time of that screenshot I had 12 jags - let's hope that's enough to finish off Alex. I left my captured cities empty.

I declared on the Greeks in 910 BC. Thankfully Alex had built 3 new cities to plunder. It seemed that every time I was about to lose my gold and my units were to go on strike, I razed a new city which kept me going for another 3-4 turns until I could advance on the next city. Corinth was destroyed in 865 BC and Thermoplae in 850 BC. Sparta said goodbye to the world in 760 BC, which just left Athens. Finally an AI had hooked up their copper. Alex's copper was in the 3rd ring of Athens' culture, so he only had time to build 3 axes and a phlanx. 2 of the axes were distracted chasing my shock jags in the jungle.



The 8 jags that advanced on Athens were all wounded, but the only defense was 1 axe, 1 phlanx and 1 archer so I captured the final city for a conquest win in 670 BC.



Now that was more fun! The first epic since Epic 1 that I had really enjoyed playing. Jaguars are great. I actually had iron in my capital, so you could say that swordsmen would have been better. But I didn't know about the iron and would probably have built a settler instead of a barracks if I were playing any other civ. And have started with agriculture or something. It was very tense at the end trying to scramble enough gold to keep my units from striking. I did not research Fishing or Steam Power (I couldn't even if I wanted too )