Alright boyz, here we go!! Civilization IV first impressions...

[saldana]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wednesday

I've gotten one in each of my games.
The first was to build seven forges, for a "master blacksmith". At the end of it, I wound up taking the option to add the "shock" upgrade to all my swordsmen, there were two others as well. Edit: there was some sort of benefit to having a state religion at the time it went through, I don't remember if I did or not.

Now I have a "get a city on ten distinct landmasses". Remains to be seen if there are ten distinct landmasses, I'm playing tilted axis with random land size so it could be very island-y (I don't think so, based on what I've seen on my home continent) or as few as two large continents. I lose this one if I change or cancel my state religion.

i got two in my last game


the first was to train a certain number of swordsman before i reached the next age (medievel, i think)...if i did it i got a bonus for all my swordsmen, but if i had put in hereditary rule by the time i made the task, i could choose a different bonus for all my melee units, not just the swordsmen

the other one was to build a certain number of colloseums to form a professional sports league. by getting them built i got to chose between an extra +1 happiness in all cities, or a +5 culture in all cities with a colloseum. but if i controlled the statue of zeus (which i did) i could use them to trigger a global sports event in his honor, which launched a free golden age.

[Buccaneer]

Here is an interesting strategic point that I find myself in. I am the French in the dark blue and you can see my easternmost city (Durango). The light blue are the Mayans and they are my vassals. However, I have very much been coveting their two cities you see but couldn't get them to declare war. My ony solution is to wait until they reach the threshold to become free of my vassalage. So how to do that when you have the Portgugese way in first just to the east of them in dark green? By the way, most of the 9 civs started on a snaking island (like myself) or on the snaky end of a landmass. The Portugese found themselves in the fat part of the only large landmass and were able to build 12 very large cities.



So what I have decided to do is to kill two birds with one stone, sort of speak. If I go through the Mayan lands with a large army of Riflemen, I can raze 3-4 Portgugese cities, including striking right into their capital. Not only will that likely knock Portugese off of their perch but hopefully will allow the Mayans to expand and then I can come in behind them and take their two cities.

I am not worries about any political fallout because all of my fellow Jewish civs, including Portugal, are +15 to +20 happy. Even a war with Portugal probably won't get them upset and will be able to stop it at any time. Wish me luck.

[Buccaneer]

Ah, didn't realize that it's still the vassal's choice of whether to break free or not. The Mayans probably realized they'd be screwed if they tried that.

[Radii]

i just won a time victory on Warlord level. I haven't found the need to optimize much yet, and so far in my first two games i've basically taken over my continent and then just coasted to victory. I did run into a small amount of trouble in this one when the Persians attacked me while I was heavily engaged with someone else already, but for some reasons the Persians didn't press their advantage and sat on the one city they took forever.

Looks like its time to bump up the level of difficulty again, I have a feeling I'll be getting my ass kicked this next game though, and will have to start figuring out how to better balance keeping up a good defense vs expanding culture and other building.

[Eaglesfan27]

I'm finally doing well in a Noble level game and am on pace to win. However, I'm really upset at myself right now.. I haven't saved in a while and the game just crashed (probably my computer's fault) and I just lost about 2 hours of work I was just about to invade Gilgamesh with a large force too after he had launched a sneak attack 20 years earlier.

[Eaglesfan27]

Dola -

I just realized, I did have autosaves on. I forgot about them since they are in their own little folder. Of course, I've been near delirious for the last hour, but the urge to crush Gilgamesh is strong and I'm tempted to play just one more turn..

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Radii

i just won a time victory on Warlord level. I haven't found the need to optimize much yet, and so far in my first two games i've basically taken over my continent and then just coasted to victory. I did run into a small amount of trouble in this one when the Persians attacked me while I was heavily engaged with someone else already, but for some reasons the Persians didn't press their advantage and sat on the one city they took forever.

Looks like its time to bump up the level of difficulty again, I have a feeling I'll be getting my ass kicked this next game though, and will have to start figuring out how to better balance keeping up a good defense vs expanding culture and other building.

Yeah I find that at the earlier levels you don't need to optimize as much, and you usually can pull out a win as long as something rediculous does not happen. The fun part is each time you move a skill level up finding that your previous strategy no longe keeps you competitive and you have to adjust.

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Dola -

I just realized, I did have autosaves on. I forgot about them since they are in their own little folder. Of course, I've been near delirious for the last hour, but the urge to crush Gilgamesh is strong and I'm tempted to play just one more turn..

I have a problem with my graphics card that keeps crashing my desktop and its been bugging the world out of me. Luckily those autosaves at least only make me play a few minutes over each time again.

The last game I played was a fun one for me. Was playing Monarch level on a big hemisphere map with like 11 other civs. Was 5 or 6 on each continent and my continent founded 6 of the 7 religions (I founded 4, and 2 others were found by other civs). The other continent only had Confusionism that had spread fully through all 5 civs. I decided to change the goal of my game to being a holy war. My goal was to capture the Confuscionist holy city and raze it to the ground, (which really made everyone else mad), and then win with a normal other victory type. Was kind of fun

[FrogMan]

something's bugging me quite a bit. I currently have four vassals. Both Mehmed and Hatshepsut capitulated after I beat the crap out of them while Shaka and Bismarck asked me if I could protect them. All cool, right. But every now and I then, I get this message that a certain city is rightfully asking to rejoin one of my vassal state. Thing is, it's never a city that was once one of that state's city. Latest example is the people of Byblos, a former Egyptian city, asking to rightfully join the German empire.

WTF is that? There is not one percent of german culture in that city!!! Sure, that they ask to go back to Hatshepsut, I'd understand, but it makes no sense whatsoever for them to want to go to Bismarck, whose capital is halfway accross the world and with whom they have no cultural link...

FM

[FrogMan]

delayed dola, just as stupid, the people of San Francisco (I'm the American civ) have just asked to rightfully join the Ottoman nation. Culture in that city is 87% American, 13% Viking (close to a Viking city) with no Ottoman city anywhere near on that continent. I mean, I founded that city, there's still a majority of my civ's culture in it, and yet they "rightfully" ask to join another nation from far away?!? Makes no sense...

FM

[saldana]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

delayed dola, just as stupid, the people of San Francisco (I'm the American civ) have just asked to rightfully join the Ottoman nation. Culture in that city is 87% American, 13% Viking (close to a Viking city) with no Ottoman city anywhere near on that continent. I mean, I founded that city, there's still a majority of my civ's culture in it, and yet they "rightfully" ask to join another nation from far away?!? Makes no sense...

FM

i had this in my last game to...and they never stop asking...it got to be really annoying by 2027 when i won by culture....two of the cities that kept asking to go over were ones that were legendary.

[Alan T]

That almost sounds like a bug to me. I generally don't take on vassals as they end up doing annoying things that I feel I have no control of, so I never have encountered that. It doesn't sound right though..

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

That almost sounds like a bug to me. I generally don't take on vassals as they end up doing annoying things that I feel I have no control of, so I never have encountered that. It doesn't sound right though..

sure does sound like a bug to me, I mean look at what Saldana is saying, and my last city to ask to join another nation was Houston, 100% American, asking to join the Egyptians while there was, again, no Egyptian cities anywhere nearby. I hate that this just sounds so random, so unlike Civ...

FM

[Celeval]

Could it be a function of one of the spy actions?

[Cringer]

Just picked up the gold edition. Played 15 minutes and had to start driving. So far so good though.

[saldana]

Originally Posted by Celeval

Could it be a function of one of the spy actions?

i dont think so, since it isnt one of the missions we can do as the player....i know it wasnt the foment unhappiness mission, because i never had any unhappiness in those cites (my culture was over +500 per turn in the one city with the slider at either 90% or 100% )

[Eaglesfan27]

Since I go into work late on Monday's, I figure I'll finish my game this morning. Last night, I captured half of Gilgamesh's empire before making peace as the war weariness was building up and I was falling behind in the tech war. Once peace was made, I took a commanding lead in the score and quickly caught up in the tech race. I was 400 points ahead of my nearest competitor and I was sure I was going to win the space race. I notice Wang Kon's next tech is 450 turns away. I'm thinking is this a bug. Well, I realized what happened, but it was too late. Wang Kon realizing that I had the tech lead and was going to build the spaceship first, turned his research way down and went all culture. Sure enough, he won a culture victory 4 turns before my Spaceship victory Still, that was the best I've done since I started playing this again.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

something's bugging me quite a bit. I currently have four vassals. Both Mehmed and Hatshepsut capitulated after I beat the crap out of them while Shaka and Bismarck asked me if I could protect them. All cool, right. But every now and I then, I get this message that a certain city is rightfully asking to rejoin one of my vassal state. Thing is, it's never a city that was once one of that state's city. Latest example is the people of Byblos, a former Egyptian city, asking to rightfully join the German empire.

WTF is that? There is not one percent of german culture in that city!!! Sure, that they ask to go back to Hatshepsut, I'd understand, but it makes no sense whatsoever for them to want to go to Bismarck, whose capital is halfway accross the world and with whom they have no cultural link...

I've been having the same thing happen. I think something's broken with the "overseas colony" machinery, especially considering it's being triggered occasionally for cities on my home continent — including one that I founded!

After a debacle playing at Warlord level as Portugal, I'm having a walkover win as Saladin. I got a favorable early draw, helped immensely by the Persians (Darius) losing one of their first two or three cities to barbarians (which basically hamstrung them and handed the continent to me). I beat the Germans running infantry and paratroops against grenadiers, and I'm beating the Aztecs running tanks and bombers against riflemen. This might be the only time I ever get a domination win. I did play with one nonstandard rule — no tech-brokering. Not sure how much of a factor that is in my research dominance.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Dola, and I had three quests in this game. The first, I already mentioned upthread: colonize ten separate land-masses. Didn't happen.

The second, build castles in seven cities. One of the payoffs would have required that I have the Great Wall, which I did not. I had two others to choose from, and I chose to take +3 relationship points with all foreign civs.

The third was "hostile takeover": I had founded Mining Inc., which consumes the mining resources. I was tasked with taking over sources for all of the resources. I was short gold and silver. Having eliminated the Germans, and with the Aztecs owning gold and silver resources, I jumped on an opportunity to knock off the Aztecs. The payoff was +20 to the corporate HQ city.

[Buccaneer]

I'm still trying to figure out the benefits of having colonies vs. just keeping the cities. In my BtS game (which I retired due to some poor choices and a tough starting location), I had two civs that were in the top 4 split off 3-4 cities. They dropped in the points but I couldn't figure out of they would benefit in the long run?

[saldana]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

I'm still trying to figure out the benefits of having colonies vs. just keeping the cities. In my BtS game (which I retired due to some poor choices and a tough starting location), I had two civs that were in the top 4 split off 3-4 cities. They dropped in the points but I couldn't figure out of they would benefit in the long run?

i was trying to figure out the same thing...in my culture victory game, i was getting bored watching culture build up, and everyone on my continent had already become my vassal, so i sailed over to the other continent with my paratroopers and marines and started whacking on charlemagne...i took two of his cites before he showed up (out of portugese teritory?) with 42 riflemen...by the time they got there, i had a handful of bombers that did enough collateral damage that he never actually attacked but it was a stalemate at that point...he would come closer, i bombed...he retreated....anyway...i spun the two cites that i conquered into a new colony, and they were very loyal to me, but they werent anything special.

honestly the whole vassal thing is a little confusing to me...in that same game, England asked to become a vassal state out of nowhere, so i let them, but throughout the game, they really did nothing worth my while..they would discover techs and refuse to trade them to me, and when the UN came up (which they built, but i was elected SecGen), they always voted for themself instead of for me...i really only took them because i thought it would make for gimme votes for diplomatic victory. i wonder if it is the difference between someone joining willingly, and someone who capitulates.

the other thing i dont get is the apostolic palace....once i took those two cities from the HRE, I had something like 6 votes, and charlemange was in power at the AP...his very first resolution had me giving back one of the cities...i voted to refuse to accept it and it came up as a failed resolution. i figured i would end up back at war. i dont really get what the point of it is if you can refuse to accept the resolutions.

[Alan T]

The Vassals and Colonies I don't think are implemented too well. I don't usually use either if I can help it. They have some advantages but, usually those advantages are too small to counter balance my getting completely annoyed with them

As for the Apostolic palace, you get votes based on the number of cities/population that is the religion that founded the Apostolic Palace. Once resolutions come up to vote, you usually can vote yes, no or abstain. Any of these votes simply go to whether or not the resolution passes or not. It has no effect on you or your cities of that religion. When you encounter one that says Yes, no, refuse (or maybe it says defy, I dont remember), or abstain its because the resolution affects you individually. If you vote no there, the rest of the faith can still overrule you and force you to do so. However if you choose to refuse/defy the resolution, you can do so and it automatically fails (like a veto vote) however the cost of doing so is a relations hit with those civilizations that are of that faith, as well as some unhappiness in your towns that have that faith as well.

[Buccaneer]

It took me a little while to understand the AP. In my game, AP was Jewish and so I thought I had better get cranking on all of the Judaism buildings. Didn't help, which I then realized that the membership points are solely based on population. The Portugese had the fat starting point and were far ahead in pop but I was running close with the Celts and Ottomans for second. Except that the Dutch had built the AP and so they were automatically up for President, along with the Portugese. That's why I tried to hurt the Portugese but they recovered very quickly, leaving me further behind.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Accepting someone else as a vassal is helpful in terms of points — half their land area and I think population counts as your own. In my current game, as soon as I went to war with the Germans (who were in the process of invading the Zulus) Shaka asked to be my vassal, so I accepted. The result is that I've got a decent chunk of territory basically for free. Not as much as if I'd run over the Zulus, but I avoid the time and effort of doing so (and since I've been basically constantly at war with one opponent or another, it would have taken away from gains elsewhere, so the bonus area/pop is basically gratis for me, aside from the vasselage penalty to city maintenance, which I can afford easily).

I think the benefit of cutting colonies loose is supposed to be that they're costing you too much in maintenance to be worth holding onto. I haven't verified whether the impulse to release cities is only for ones with negative net money, but that might be the genesis of it.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wednesday

I think the benefit of cutting colonies loose is supposed to be that they're costing you too much in maintenance to be worth holding onto.

Bingo. There can be a HUGE financial benefit to letting colonies break off, and if you play your cards right, you don't lose the resources.

[Alan T]

I am not sure if this is of alot of interest, but I decided to play out one of my games on Monarch level in the dynasty forum:

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...ad.php?t=60462

Perhaps a place for newer players to go and get some tips and maybe people better than me provide me tips! I'm sure I'll make mistakes along the way, I've only beaten civ4 on monarch level a handful of times and lose just as often.. Hopefully it is entertaining at least

[Mr. Wednesday]

I closed out my first domination victory ever by getting an event that let me toss something like 200 culture out to all my cities — instant expansion for all the newly claimed Aztec cities to fill in the last of the needed 64% of land area.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wednesday

I closed out my first domination victory ever by getting an event that let me toss something like 200 culture out to all my cities — instant expansion for all the newly claimed Aztec cities to fill in the last of the needed 64% of land area.

I got that event in my multiplayer game the other day, but I didn't have enough gold to do the 200 culture to all cities, so had to settle for 100 culture just to that city. (If its the same event, sounds like it though).

Pretty nice win though from the sounds of it.

[Mr. Wednesday]

It was Warlord level, so I'm not making too much of it (although it was nice to get a domination win, I don't think I ever got one of those in Civ3 either). And I played with tech brokering disallowed, I'm not sure how much (if at all) that factored in.

I feel like I'm back up to speed in the game and ready to move back to Noble now.

[Alan T]

Has anyone experienced a problem loading saved games after upgrading to the new patch? I'm ok on most of my games, but two of them (including the one I was doing the dynasty on), crash to the desktop every time I try to load them now

I'll contact tech support on it, but figured I would ask here as well. Normally I wouldn't care and just start a new game, but that kind of stinks on my dynasty game that I was posting for people here.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Has anyone experienced a problem loading saved games after upgrading to the new patch? I'm ok on most of my games, but two of them (including the one I was doing the dynasty on), crash to the desktop every time I try to load them now

I'll contact tech support on it, but figured I would ask here as well. Normally I wouldn't care and just start a new game, but that kind of stinks on my dynasty game that I was posting for people here.

Yes, a few times. It's no big deal because I would immediately startup the game and successfully do the load everytime.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Yes, a few times. It's no big deal because I would immediately startup the game and successfully do the load everytime.

How did you get around the crash to the desktop? If I try to load a game, it pops up an error box and civ crashes. Only on two specific saves though.

[Yossarian]

Is it an option to use an auto save or previous save and just re-take a turn or two (using your dynasty notes to keep you honest!)?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Yossarian

Is it an option to use an auto save or previous save and just re-take a turn or two (using your dynasty notes to keep you honest!)?

Unfortunatly I have like 3-4 different games going on at once. I had only been playing so many turns of that one a night (like 100 or so screenshots) then played a different game so I didn't have too much to post the next day.

The Autosaves I had were for a game that plays perfectly fine. The only games I have that crash are games I was playing on marathon setting. Not sure if that had anything to do with it.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Alan T

How did you get around the crash to the desktop? If I try to load a game, it pops up an error box and civ crashes. Only on two specific saves though.

I changed the ini file to give me a save every other turn.

[Ben E Lou]

I may be on my way to my first win at Noble in BtS. I started with a Big_and_Small map, Huge world, Marathon speed. As always, I went with a random leader. I drew Qin Shi Huang (industrious, protective). The Greeks were the closest civilation, to the east, and there was copper near a river 10 squares east of my capital. I built a second city near the copper, and a third city just north of Beijing, started cranking out Axemen, and eliminated the Greeks pretty quickly. I razed one city, but Athens and Corinth were on such prime land that I kept them. Somewhere along the lines in the early game I was able to beeline and found Judaism, too.

While I had been building an army, Mansa Musa took a significant tech lead, and he was too far away to attack, so I started taking advantage of the industrious trait and started building every wonder I could get my hands on in the first three cities, hoping to push to a cultural victory. Fairly early in the process, however, my generals coveted the iron of Frederick (directly to the north of us). From conquering the Greeks, I had a rather impressive axeman army with lots of upgrades, and one super-upgraded axeman due to a great general. Frederick had longbowmen, but I was able to overwhelm him with numbers. Haamburg, Berlin, and Munich were all on oustanding, resource-rich land, so I kept them.

However, once the unrest ended, with eight cities too early, I was facing a *SERIOUS* economic/research crisis. In order to turn a profit each turn, at one point I had to lower research to 20%. Tech brokering was off, and a game-changing strategy occurred to me midstream: sell technology to weaker nations, and turn research up to 100%. It worked like a charm, boyz! I sold a tech to 6 different civs, got around 1200 gold, turned research up to 100%, lost money every turn, but was finishing research fast enough to continue selling techs faster than I was losing money. Meanwhile, I was building missionaries all over the place and spreading Judaism to catch up financially.

Right now, it's 1100AD, and I've gotten to the point where I've been able to build two more cities, and turn research up to 80% and still profit 21 gold per turn. I've caught up with Mana Musa in tech, and will soon pass him (I'm 11 turns from education, while he's 31 away from it.). My score is 1083, and he's at 600. Next on the agenda is to build 3 more cities to fill in the rest of my land. I don't see myself having to attack again, and my army should be large and upgradeable enough that I won't face any serious military threats (crosses fingers). The industrious trait has helped me build a total of 15 world wonders in the first three cities, so I'm definitely going for the culture win.

This has been a very satisfying game so far, as I had struggled up to now to win on the level below Noble.

[Buccaneer]

Nice work. A familiar strategy, one that I typically have success with except not ever playing on Marathon (I just made the jump to Epic with BtS). I don't understand, however, how you were able to build all of those Wonders early on? Does Marathon speed provide better opportunities to build them vs the other Industrious AIs?

[Ben E Lou]

Oh yeah. I had a ton of forests and used slavery as well.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Nice work. A familiar strategy, one that I typically have success with except not ever playing on Marathon (I just made the jump to Epic with BtS). I don't understand, however, how you were able to build all of those Wonders early on? Does Marathon speed provide better opportunities to build them vs the other Industrious AIs?

I find if you micromanage, its easier to play on marathon vs the AI because the AI doesn't do smart things with worker moves. The turns are scaled for game speed for research, building, etc.. but what isn't really scaled is movement. If you plan out how to use your workers, move settlers and armys to fine detail, playing at marathon only helps you.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Oh yeah. I had a ton of forests and used slavery as well.

I couldn't beat noble level until i started chopping and whipping people, that gives such an early game edge, its amazing that I won on easier levels with out it.

[Buccaneer]

My difficulties on Prince is that while I get a good-sized lead from early to mid game, I then start falling behind mid to late game. After playing the game on Epic and going through my detailed logs (as well as looking at the AI cities after I retired), I think I may have discovered my problem: windmills, watermills and to some extent, lumbermills. I build way too many of them, esp. along rivers where I should have been building cottages and a couple more farms. There was a civ that was smaller in size than me but had a significant tech lead, esp. after mid game. He had, in each city, 2-6 cottages that became towns. While I always play to maintain a very high research rate (nothing lower than 90% except when micromanaging), I realize that 90% of a little is still a little. That's where I have been failing to win easily on Prince because I focused too much on production and plateauing on income after getting out ahead, which eventually catches up with me.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

My difficulties on Prince is that while I get a good-sized lead from early to mid game, I then start falling behind mid to late game. After playing the game on Epic and going through my detailed logs (as well as looking at the AI cities after I retired), I think I may have discovered my problem: windmills, watermills and to some extent, lumbermills. I build way too many of them, esp. along rivers where I should have been building cottages and a couple more farms. There was a civ that was smaller in size than me but had a significant tech lead, esp. after mid game. He had, in each city, 2-6 cottages that became towns. While I always play to maintain a very high research rate (nothing lower than 90% except when micromanaging), I realize that 90% of a little is still a little. That's where I have been failing to win easily on Prince because I focused too much on production and plateauing on income after getting out ahead, which eventually catches up with me.

I usually do ok on prince, but I am really having difficulties winning consistantly on monarch right now. I also notice the same mid-game tech slowdown that you mention. However I have the exact opposite problem. I have excellent cities built up with great commerce, have used cottages to make quite a bit of money (and turned that into research of course), and used farms where needed to build the cities up population wise to be able to have a decent number of specialists.. My problem I feel is that I have too much unecessary stuff in cities, that I don't specialise them enough.

I also feel that I don't expand enough through the middle part of the game (through conquest) to continue my growth curve. I also am not sure that I am picking the best path to tech through. I feel that once I get past Liberalism things really slow down for me and the AI catches up fairly quickly. I will fall from #1 tech to about middle of the pack.

I think I am trying to turn the next step myself and figure out how I can play the middle ages differently.

[Alan T]

Speaking of specialization, my biggest problem I am running into is...

I see a high food town, I want to turn it into my cottage town or Specialist town, which seems like a no brainer for me, and tends to work ok.. but then I see a town with alot of metal resources, alot of hills, etc.. and I think production town.. I'm having a problem growing those towns enough to really have all of those hammer resources used.. so then I try to give the town more food to grow it some, and I lose my production town I wanted...I end up with a hodgepodge town that doesn't seem to get the most bang for its buck.

[Buccaneer]

I am aware of the same things, Alan. What had gotten me in trouble before was my penchant for bee-lining the military techs to get military superiority (this was a carry-over from my many years of playing Civ2). I then realized that unless I used such superiority to full advantages, I end up too far behind those that I couldn't kill.

So in my last game, I tried more of a balance while doing some military mismatches (Axemen vs Archers, Knights vs Longbows and Rifles vs Musks) because the AI generally still don't garrison key cities very well.

Anyway, what is happening after mid game is that techs take a jump in becoming more expensive but I don't have the requisite jump in gold to keep up. I am not talking about the normal cost progression but an increased cost factor, which Firaxis introduced in one of the earlier patches. That's why I fall behind.

One could have a strategy of preparing for that by ramping up gold but I do think it has to be coupled with an offensive strategy of some sort. But I tried that in my last game when I decided to hurt the leader (Portugese). It did work for a little while but they came back stronger whereas I flatlined in prosecuting the war/raids. I think I should have concentrated on infrastructure instead of cities because while they can get the cities back up quickly, it would take longer to get the hamlets/towns back up and thus, slow their research down.

So that's what I am going to do differently mid game: get a bump in gold and to hurt the AI's gold production.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Speaking of specialization, my biggest problem I am running into is...

I see a high food town, I want to turn it into my cottage town or Specialist town, which seems like a no brainer for me, and tends to work ok.. but then I see a town with alot of metal resources, alot of hills, etc.. and I think production town.. I'm having a problem growing those towns enough to really have all of those hammer resources used.. so then I try to give the town more food to grow it some, and I lose my production town I wanted...I end up with a hodgepodge town that doesn't seem to get the most bang for its buck.

I see the exact same thing, usually in my capital. In re-reading the strategy threads at 'poly, I made a note of working on a Commerce City, a Production city (and something else, I forget). But as you said, the capital cities (both your's and the ones you capture) have a lot of everything. It was easier to get one of my other cities a production-centric city, but I always have problems growing such a city, esp. if it's a hilly forest area. Conversely, I also try to make a production city out of a non-hilly forest area but could only go so far with that. For non-resource tiles, I think one has to decide to go one way or the other (that's what the AI does). In other words, if you want a commerce city, build cottages on hammer tiles. And if you want a production, make sure it has plenty of hammer tiles and not just a couple of hammer resources.

[Yossarian]

so I'm definitely going for the culture win.

IMHO, this is the hardest win condition to go for.

You have to plan wayyy in advance - know how much culture you need and you'll want to plan on building 3 temples of each religion you have so that your three culture cities can build cathedrals...

Stuff like that. I find it much easier to win via military domination or space race. If "the world" loves you, diplomacy is an option too don't forget..

But culture win you can't just decide to go for on a whim (not that you are...) you have to really plan your moves.

[Celeval]

Originally Posted by Yossarian

IMHO, this is the hardest win condition to go for.

You have to plan wayyy in advance - know how much culture you need and you'll want to plan on building 3 temples of each religion you have so that your three culture cities can build cathedrals...

Stuff like that. I find it much easier to win via military domination or space race. If "the world" loves you, diplomacy is an option too don't forget..

But culture win you can't just decide to go for on a whim (not that you are...) you have to really plan your moves.

Depends - I've had some luck in BtS deciding to go for a culture win mid-game (this is on Noble), by founding Creative Constructions and whatever the Jewler corporation is.

[Eaglesfan27]

I'm going for a culture win right now. I have a philosophical leader and I've been pumping out great artists early along with lots of world wonders. Now in the mid game I'm building my cathedrals in my 3 cities. We'll see how it goes. Could be my first win on Noble for as long as I can remember.

[henry296]

I just won a Cultural Victory on Prince as Asoka on huge continents map. Cultural is almost my default victory strategy especially if I can found a religion or two. I try to look for an early war, but if it isn't there, I settle back and build up my three cities and pump out military in my other cities as a detterent to attacks.

In this game, I was able to found Judiasm and Islam and built my 12 temples to get my cathedrals and also was able to get 8 great artists out of my great people farms by running caste system. One thing I should've done better is get Liberalism sooner so I could run Free Speech. I forgot about that advantage of Liberalism. Also, I converted to Bureacracy to appease someone and should've switched back sooner. If I had done that I would've won sooner.

In terms of score I was in 4th / 5th place most of the game. I leveraged a similar strategy as SkyDog and traded my techs to the civs below me for cash to maintain my research. At one point, I was down to 30-40% as I expanded quickly by capturing a couple of barb cities. Also, I had an early war with Tokagawa who was on my continent despite being the same religion. I was able to stall him and sent a pillaging team into his territory to end the war. My other wars were all from civs on the other continents. They brought a couple of Galleon's of troops which i destroyed the turn after they landed. Towards the end I was friendly with Isabella who was in 2nd place. Hayuna Capuc was the other score leader, but he never attacked.

[Buccaneer]

I am continuing to believe that the type and style of map, as well as the starting location relative to other civs, can determine the type of victory. There are only certain maps (and perhaps certain civs) that can lead to a cultural victory, just like smaller, dense maps can lead to domination or conquest victories.

[Eaglesfan27]

Sigh. Maybe I need to swallow some pride and drop down from Noble..

I was well on the path to a cultural victory. Each of my cities had over 50,000 culture (needed 75,000 since I'm playing epic) and we were just entering into 1900. I figured at my current pace, I would have a cultural victory by 1970 as I was pushing the culture slider. However, I didn't pay enough attention to diplomacy. I thought my huge army (#2 in power) would deter anyone from attacking me, but suddenly everyone except for my favored trading partner declared war in the same turn! I was playing a normal size map this time, so that was 5 nations attacking. They hit me from all sides and I couldn't get them to stop attacking even when I offered techs. I don't know how I pissed them off so much, but they were out for blood. Before I knew it my empire was cut by over half and I decided to retire instead of seeing our glorious capital fall, which it surely would have - somehow my strongest enemy beat me to tanks by a dozen or more turns. It didn't help that my borders didn't have any oil.