1BC Civ Forums / Civilization IV Discussion / CivIV and CivIV:Warlords Discussion

Getting back on the game

Vahn_Arian — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:26:01 GMT

Greetings,

I played Civ IV for some time, when I got Warlords. Now that I have Beyond, I decided to reinstall the game. The problem is... I'm getting my butt kicked.... Literally....

I played some games on the first 3 levels, to get my skills up to date... but on noble... I'm loosing... Loosing big....

I don't have a favorite leader, civilization or win condition... but i tend to get creative leaders.... most of the time that is.....

From the first levels no problem, manage to win easily having more techs then the AI and more soldiers... always built a considerable army and conquered city by city.

But on noble... well... the AI beats me on military and technological runs....

Any tips?

Warlord: where do all the AI troops come from?

calmanner — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:28:15 GMT

Newbie here. I've only played a couple of games on the warlord level. Often, someone declares war on me very early in the game and I am bombarded with dozens of troops. Where do they all come from? Good god, they are like roaches coming out of the woodwork. It's usually Montezuma.

founding religions

chrisw_79 — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:24:38 GMT

I am brand new to this game, although I have logged over 4 billion civ 3 hours. My question is can you be the founder of more than one religion and still get the sane benefits?

Vive l'Empereur!

Konrad von Richtmark — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:22:13 GMT

[img]http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j209/Konrad_von_Richtmark/vivelempereur.jpg[/img]

Yeah, that's right, I finally did it! I won on Emperorrrrrrrrr!!!! :w00t::w00t::w00t:

Maybe not using my usual settings of 18-civ huge pangaea aggressive AI, but a more modest standard pangaea of 7 civs without additional AI aggressivity. But hey, it's Emperor!

Cottages

Comedy Dave — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:37:14 GMT

Recently on playing Civ4 I'm finding that although I make a good start, about halfway through the game the AI seems to start to outperform me on tech and military.

My suspicion is that I am not building as many cottages per city, compared to the AI. I usually build 2 or 3 per city - is that enough?

Is there any other reason why the AI can command such a big army (i.e. a lot more powerful) on levels where the AI and human are evenly matched?

Slavery

Locus Coeruleus — Mon, 28 May 2007 15:25:43 GMT

The Slavery Civic, which is typically the first new civic available, with the Bronze Working, is one that I've not really used.

I am curious what others think of this Civic, how folks have used it, under what circumstances it would be most beneficial to use.

Part of it is I cannot get passed willingly reducing population size of a city for quicker production, although, I could imagine that in a fast growing city, perhaps one with a granary, it would be a great edge, or under times of duress, such as during war when facing a superior opponent, it might be necessary, maybe at the lower levels I play at, Noble and now Prince, it just isn't necessary given the relative balance between the human and the AI.

What say ye?

Tokugawa!

Avocado — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:42:45 GMT

Tokugawa is a major pain in the neck. He NEVER allows open borders!
This only happened after I got Warlords. Now he has his panties in a bunch everytime.

Avocado: Lets make a deal Tok, ol' buddy ol' pal! Open borders!

Tokugawa: No. I don't like you enough.

Avocado: Ummm. OK, I'll give you gold, wheat and Ivory! Let me pass!

Tokugawa: No way.

Avocado: Ok, heres some gems..its a gift! I'll come back later when you are feeling better.

~~~~20 Turns Later~~~

Avocado: Hey Tok! How are you doing? Are your citizens enjoying all of those lovely gems I gave you?

Tokugawa: Yes.

Avocado: Whats a little open borders between friends? C'mon, Whadda ya say?

Tokugawa: No. I just don't like you enough.

Avocado: Oh, I get.. holding out for the big stuff huh? Very shrwed of you Tok ol' boy. I have to admit, you drive a hard bargain! I will give you Horseback Riding and ummm Meditation. ~cough~ you haven't researched that YET? Haven't you been listening to your advisors? Mine nag all day every day. Ok, you put these to good use and I'll see you after I have completed my axeman.

Tokugawa: Ok.

~~~More time passes~~~

Avocado: Ok Tokugawa! How are things? Are you liking Buddhism? Pretty cool huh?

Tokugawa: Oh yes, we are very happy! Cha-Ching!

Avocado: Allright, I thought you would feel a little better, now then..just let my scout get past you, theres a whole world out there!

Tokugawa: No.

Silver Star

cicerosaurus — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 02:04:48 GMT

Anyone knows what this signifies? Seems to appear later in the game.

How to improve relations?!

Bolan Longpants — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:22:49 GMT

Hi all,

In the last GOTM I build the UN and tried to win by a diplomatic victory. Although I had a positive relation towards all other civs I still could not get enough votes to win.

I tried the following:

-giving away techies. This worked out ok but I also noticed the extra relation boost doesn't last very long.

-giving in on demands: this costed me a few very costly turns. For example one civ wanted me to switch to another religion. I thought about it for a while and I decided to do it. I did get one extra relation point but I had to switch back costing me at least 2 turns of production and science output.

-switching civics: I tried to switch to the favorite civics of my opponents. It was not enough to switch their vote(s) from abstain to me.

-open borders: I could get an open border relation to all civs except one. I gave the civ that didn't want to grant an open border some free techies until I received a positive relation but still he did not want to have open borders. What's up with that?

Do you guys have some additional tricks to increase relations?

A subtle AI cheat

jerm — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:53:19 GMT

Tones and I discovered a couple "cheats" the AI has over humans in one of our Vanilla PBEM's. Okay, we're in the classical/medeval period and I attack China and take several cities. I am upon the second to last city when one of the archers upgrades to a Longbow. The city, being on a hill with walls and me being close to being able to build (or upgrade to) maces, doesn't seem worth the cost so I call a cease fire. I tell this to Tones who then tells me he just made a trade which cleaned out China's coffers. He also notices that Mali are also upgrading archers to Longbows yet with hardly enough cash in the bank to do one, let alone several. Okay so we start to get a little suspicious and pay attention to things a bit more and share information. Then the real fun begins. We notice that each turn, Mali and Egypt add 10 gold to their treasuries yet they have like 1 or 3 GPT. You could theoretically guess that they made some kind of trade if it was a one time deal but this was consistantly every turn. Then it dawned on me that in single games, I did notice that some of the low end AI with very little gold would always have sums of 10, 20, 30, 40... It appears that the AI gets special cheats occasionally. It's so subtle that you probably wouldn't notice it in a game but it just so happened that we caught this as it's easier to check every turn in a PBEM. Only some of the weak AI seem to get the gold bonus as China was at the bottom and didn't appear to get this but he did appear to get the free upgrades. Anyone else notice this?

Hooked again

Bolan Longpants — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:28:19 GMT

It's been almost 3 years. Three years of having a good night sleep, three years of having a social life and three years of peace. Since this weekend I am back in the AA (addicted again) club; I bought Civ4 this saturday in the local CD shop.

Luckily I was able to not install the game until sunday.:D I was a bit afraid the game would not run on my 6 years old computer system. I was wrong, the installation went quite smooth and before I knew it I was looking at planet earth from above.

The manual is way too big to start. All civ junkies can play without one so the manual was not opened until later in the game. Of course the tech tree and resource table are quite useful when playing civ. The tech tree did change significantly and also other features surprised me.

Mecca was started 4000BC near some sheep and wines. Thank god, some things never change. Sheep, sheep I did not see any sheep in civ1-3? Of course we start out with a scout; pardon me? I can only build a warrior, doh. After another warrior we build a worker. Mecca stops growing and it's taking a creepy long time before it's finished. OK, let's do make some wine. Moving my cursor over the wines it shows I don't have the appropriate tech to make some wine. We have to wait getting drunk for another few thousand years. So we move to the shape. A pasture? Nope, we can't make those either. The first 6 turns of my worker were pretty much wasted.

In the mean while my scouting warrior beats up some lions and finds some goody huts.Money, money a techie and a scout were the results. Where's my lucky settler?

OK, we need to check the tech tree. I have been reading on these boards that religions are very important for a decent civilization like mine so we found hinduism by beelining to that techie. Yes, I want my people to covert to hinduism.:w00t:

So now what do we do with this religion. Let's start reincarnation.:P In the mean while my warriors discovered we were alone on an island. OK, let's go invent a sail so we can get away from here. In the meanwhile a pasture is build and my sheep are roasting on my barbecue, it's a party! Time for my first settler.

Who annoys you the most?

Agamemnon — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:08:12 GMT

You've probably had more than one of these, but I can't be arsed today with finding it and dusting it off.

In my latest WL game, Brennus literally drove me up a wall. No matter what I did, the bloody jerk kept pace with me in tech, and I was running some serious science specialists. :mad: This was on Warlord difficulty to boot. From now on, I see this idiot, he's toast if I have to do with a warrior rush.

Likewise for Shaka. The way he throws his arms and rants when he doesn't get his way reminds of me a spoiled brat who needs to be taken over your knee and administered some loving reminders of how to behave. The same with Monty.

Alexander is much the same way with that backhand of his. I swear, I wanna chop his arm off when he does that.

I rarely have problems with Toku, surprisingly. He's usually polite. I wonder if the AI has learned from past experiences with me to behave when playing Toku.

Wouldn't that be a frightening thing? An AI that learns from your style of play and uses it against you. :crying:

K, enough ranting. :P

Forts.

Agamemnon — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:09:42 GMT

Does anyone bother to use forts? In my last Warlords game, I built a nice little fortress ring around my central 4 cities as a defense cordon. Does anyone else bother with this, or just use mobile units, or some combination of the two as I do?

Civics!

Konrad von Richtmark — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:03:44 GMT

I don't recall having had a really good discussion on civics in this forum, so let's have one shall we? Do you tend to use the same civics over and over again out of habit (or ideological preference?), or do you adapt to the situation?

A constant in my games is to ALWAYS have at least either Vassalage or Theocracy, but seldom both. The XP bonus from either is the difference between starting with one or two promotions, for a city with barracks. Ok, not always, if I manage to get the Pentagon I'll do with neither Vassalage nor Feudalism, but that's still pretty late in the game so most of the time I should have either turned on. Vassalage also gives free units, but costs high upkeep, which usually evens out quite well. Theocracy prevents foreign religion spread, but I have usually not had a problem with it.

So the choice between Vassalage and Theocracy will have to depend on what other civics I might want from the Legal or Religious civics. Vassalage is the only useful Legal civic for quite some time, so I tend to go Organized Religion + Vassalage until I get Free Speech. Which I might adopt if my gold production is largely based on cities, but not otherwise. I like the +25% building production bonus Organized Religion grants.

From the governmental civics, I like Representation. Universal suffrage is obviously supporting Free Speech well, but at the time you get the choice between them, you have probably researched biology and your cities should be as well-fed as Hermann Göring, well capable of supporting specialists to maximize the benefit of the +3 beakers per specialist. But again, it depends on how much towns I have. Much towns pretty much stipulates Universal Suffrage and Free Speech, from which Theocracy follows (see above).

If I manage to get Representation early on via the Pyramids, Mercantilism becomes an obvious combo and I almost always go for it as soon as I can. Otherwise I'll just stick with Free Markets as a safe choice.

Has anyone btw tried State Property + Caste System in BtS? With both +1 food and production from workshops as well as an overall +10% production bonus, you could get outrageous industrial output.

Victory conditions

Nuclearcow — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 20:22:44 GMT

Does anyone know if there is a bonus to scoring a specific victory condition over another?

Such as, does a conquest victory score the same as a space race victory, etc? I would think wiping everyone else out is tougher than a diplomatic victory, for example, but don't know if thats taken into accout with score.

All other things equal of course, like year, land, etc. Just something I've had on my mind and haven't seen any articles on it.

Does anyone know, other than guessing like me? :P

xFire

Mr. G — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:19:32 GMT

I just checked this pretty light-weight application out, and I must say I was impressed. It probably runs smoother than windows live or aim, given the fact that it's made to run during a game. Pretty slick, pretty slick.

Anyone else use it?

Resourceful scout (4000BC)

Zigeuner — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:53:52 GMT

[IMG]http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s175/solarsinned/splitstart.jpg[/IMG]
"Never mind how I got here, if I see a good spot just swim on over and start our civ already!" :P

Hello, I've a Couple of Questions

ColIndyjones1958 — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:46:24 GMT

Dear All:

Good afternoon from Canada!!! I hope this finds you and yours well. AS for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

In last night's game, I met up with a certain Mr. Churchill. I'm as the Yanks, and my leader is George Washington. I read in the fine print at the top of my screen that Winston's England has been hit by a devastating thunderstorm and naturally I want to help. My questions in this regard are these: 1) How do I get goods to Winnie? 2) How do I connect Winnie to my trade work?

Second topic is the Worldbuilder. Could one of you kind folks tell me how this thing works? I saw a great world yesterday that had all the livestock I could handle, fish leaping out the water at the shores, houses, mines and industries galore, but no people.

Question: How do I get people and set this like an ordinary Civ game? Please excuse me for being dim.

Thirdly, I have a small question as to downloading mods, especially ones with passwords. I saw Rhye's gorgeous one for CivIV, and I can't download it due to the fact he's put a password on it. How does one get said password or get around this little problem?

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

Nuclear Fun

Gen. white — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:17:17 GMT

I didnt really know where to put this but, I thought here was best anyway, i thought it was great, I hope you enjoy.

[url]http://youtube.com/watch?v=T5X6Blsq1CY[/url]

Edit: You need to watch to watch past the black and white part to see what it has to do with Civ4.

How to play

harem Scarem — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:04:11 GMT

Hell too everyone!

I am new to this game so I have some questions.

How do you advance? I mean I know you have study something before you go to the next level but for one of my problem is I want build a farm and I have achieved what it requires but it won't let me build one.

Do you normally see your people move around? I did at first now I don't.

riders and warriors

eoc — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 02:39:58 GMT

the paintings from the Palace collections shows Ming Dynasty's army.:cool:

So this is a Warlord...meh

Leo — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:39:09 GMT

Okay so it's been 6 months since I got and installed Warlords.

I sat down to play last night...got one going...got me a Warlord.

*tosses a small handful of confetti and blows a dollar-store noisemaker*

Am I missing something? You tack this guy onto a unit and he gets some special powers but will die just as easily as any other unit. It was nice giving my first legion (10 praetorians) some xp but it ran out fast.

I miss my Civ III armies.

A LOT

Tell me what I'm missing that made these so uber cool. I think they're all right but not that big a deal

Soon to be up and running on Civ4

Comedy Dave — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:06:40 GMT

Guys,

Alright, the order is placed, my new DVD drive is on its way. What does this mean? Well, it should mean that I will be playing Civ4 before the week is out! (as long as my internal graphics card can cope... it does support DirectX9, so I think I'll be ok)

(Recap: I have Civ4 Disc but my old DVD drive cannot read the copy protection. Since this drive can now only burn CDRWs, I need a new drive anyway)

Now, what I want to ask is, should I stick with Civ4 for a while, and then get Warlords? Or should I get Warlords asap?

Anything I should "Forget" immediately about Civ3 whilst playing Civ4?

Cheers :)

4 minute games? whats goin on?

Maximo Bell — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:49:18 GMT

help me please

i started a single player game and chose play now. After about 4 minytes it said so and so has gota time victory! ithappened 3 times surely this makes the game crap for 4 minutes?

anyway i tried custom game and turned off time victory but sure enough 4 minutes in it said i have been defeated why is that?

Larger population = unhapppy citizens

General Georges — Mon, 28 May 2007 18:38:51 GMT

In another post - there was mention about using slavery to reduce "unhappy" population. My question is, does this unhappy population and larger population add to science/wealth? In a recent game, I was researchign a tech in the early game. It still had 4 turns to go. The next turn it only have 2 left to go! It had skipped one! I had two cities. One of them also increased in population during this turn. It now had 11 population (3 of which were unhappy). So I figured that this extra unhappy population produced extra research. Is this true?

Last turn of healing?

Zigeuner — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:06:54 GMT

[IMG]http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s175/solarsinned/healing.jpg[/IMG]

This warrior wants to heal one more turn, but he's at 2.0 health. Wouldn't he just be wasting a turn? :Wow:

3-city cultural victory

4vic — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 02:44:08 GMT

Hello everyone,

I am very new to Civ4. After playing and winning the game twice (chieftain time victory and Warlord space victory, both with lousy scores), I came to this forum to learn a few more tricks. I then came up with an interesting idea: cultural victory with only three cities. I did not find this being discussed on this forum so I am posting my findings.

It turns out that it is possible to win this way. However, I played only at warlord because I think it would be too tough (or impossible) to tackle the AIs with only 3 cities. I used the Arabs and managed to found all seven religions. After that, I concentrated on gaining as much culture points as possible. This meant that I had a weak military and had to be submissive to any demands for tributes. So I did not experience any battle, except for one scout and one warrior lost to barbarians in the early game.

Some interesting points:

(1) The great people born in the game were ALL great prophets! (I think this is due to me missing out on several wonders that promote great artists.) This means that I did not experience any golden age in the game, except for the only one initiated by building the Taj Mahal wonder.

(2) Due to my strong culture, four cities flipped to my side during the game. But I choosed the "disband" option each time to keep to the 3-city game goal. Interestingly, this action had no negative effect on how the AI feels toward me.

(3) I can afford to always put science at 100%, except for the end game when I put 100% into culture for the last push to victory.

(4) When the three cities were up and running, I was sending out missionary units for many rounds. Toward the end, I was making around 400 gold with a 5-digit treasury. Even managed to build the UN.

(5) The game went quite "stress free" since I never had to manage any large land area and never had to plan for any war. 95% of the time I even automated the workers! (lazy me).

(6) The game took about 9 hours over two days to complete. But I ended with another lousy score: 3588

Earth map on Civ4 Warlords

Timeless Watch — Thu, 03 May 2007 17:54:17 GMT

The one thing that disappoints me in CIV4 Warlords is the lack of an EARTH map.

Anyone know how to move the one from CIV4 folder to the WARLORDS folder one in the pc? A simple copy and paste wont do i think.

Something cool bout cIV on wikipedia

General Georges — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:14:45 GMT

I was bored during class and decided to look cIV up on the web for one reason or another. This is one thing that came up on wikipedia.

Trivia

In homage to Leonard Nimoy (Mr Spock), the Chinese civilization will bless you with long life and prosperity upon first encounter.
In the cultural victory cutscene, the Colossus' face appears to be a composite of Sid Meier.
In the video for the Space Victory, the figure that jumps down resembles CEO Nwabudike Morgan from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri .
In the popup which tells the player that they have reached the Modern Age, there is a digital watch with the brand name Soren. This is a reference to Soren Johnson, the lead designer and AI programmer for the game. The time shown on the watch is 05:23, and Soren's birthday is May 23 (05/23).
The Firaxis logo is the artwork on the sails of workboats.
When zoomed close to an American city, fifes and drums playing can be heard. The sequence is a remake from another Sid Meier game, Colonization.
In a reference to a famous Al Gore quotation, the former Vice President's face is featured in the graphic for The Internet Project.
When the player is at war with France against Louis XIV and he refused an offer to end the war, he would occasionally say, "It is too late for peace, you silly (your nation here)! Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!" This is referring to the French Taunters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's even made more evident if the player uses English civilization, since in the movie the French Taunters also said "Silly English K-nnnigets."
When the player is at war with America against Roosevelt and he refuses an offer to end the war, he occasionally says, "America does not negotiate with terrorists."
Elvis Presley has had some form of appearance in every Civilization title so far: in Civilization IV, the clothes of the Great Artist units, from the Industrial to the Modern Ages, and the " Rock and Roll" wonder are tributes to him.
When starting or loading a game hints will pop up in the bottom of the screen. One such hint is "Never start a land war in Asia." This is a quote from The Princess Bride by the Sicilian, Vizzini. Another is, "Snacks are good in moderation." And another includes: "Never bring a sword to a gunfight".
When selecting what size and style of map a player wants to use in a new game, a globe with seemingly random land masses rotates in a space within the selection window. The globe is actually an upside-down planet Earth with oceans in the shape of earth's continents.
In the movie for the Hollywood wonder, the blueprints include a picture of Clara Bow and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star for Hoot Gibson .
When a player makes a decision that pleases another leader, he or she sometimes replies with the lyrics "Did you ever know that you're my hero? You're everything I wished I could be." from the song " Wind beneath My Wings".

from site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV#Python

Cool eh! :hehe::w00t:

cIV Expansion ideas

General Georges — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:40:51 GMT

So while playing cIV the other day I thought of a couple nice touches I would like to be added to the game:

1. Non - Aggression Pacts - like a period of time/turns where you can not declare war on the other civ. I think this would be a really really cool feature and add an extra cool diplomacy option!

2. This was mentioned on another post, but like getting techs or tech points from capturing AND KEEPING but not razing cities. Probably larger ones for a whole tech and just tech points for a specific tech for smaller ones.

3. Making millitary alliances more easy to make. The AI sometimes don't realise the true benefit of a 2 v 1 war!

4. A thing where cities far from your main country convert and create a new nation when not happy (something like Canada, Australia, USA, etc...).

5. A type of open borders where only non-millitary units can pass through (eg settlers, workers, missionaries, and a new boat unit for exploring - cool extra early naval unit with 3 or 4 movement per turn and 1 attack)

6. Make wars much more common among the civs, human and AI, in the early portions of the game. When civilizations and coutries were first being founded in the real world, wars were much more common because of the grasping for land. I find that when I'm playing a game, I'm the one doing most of the decleration of war!

7. There are many more ideas I have, but I can't remember them all right now lol. I'll post them later.

What do you guys think?? Any other suggestion for the 'Rise of the Sword' expansion. It's probably starting to get a little late to get them to add stuff to this expansion, but maybe the next one :hehe:.

City Locations...

General Georges — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 11:09:13 GMT

This came up in another thread, but do you guys space out your cities so that tiles adn city border do not overlap? I always do and it's working fine for me. But does putting cities closer together help you? I always make sure my first few cities are spaced out because they'll be the powerhouses of my empire later in the game.

CivIV Democracy Game (Dgame)

mongoose201 — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 01:24:30 GMT

[i]This post adapted from a previous TC posting about the CivIII Dgame.[/i]

DGame really works on two levels.

Level One-

Level One is the basic; character level, if you will, similar to what you do on the regular boards, ie., interact with each other, discuss events of the times (depending on what year/age you are in!), banter back and forth, debate issues and topics, etc. You use your character to establish "residency" in 1BigCommunity. 1BigCommunity (1BC) is the name of our civ (based on the Celts) What's different about these boards is the ability to "open" your own business, shop, think-tank, whatever. Your imagination is your only limit. There are different Citizen's Institutes you can join or start, but only if you wish. You can travel about The Community. (It's a step away from the Twilight Zone, but with a return ticket.) There will be several institutes dedicated to different aspects of the game, but which relate to the actual CivIV game being played. They will work to provide input to the representatives actually participating in the CivIV game as to the wishes of the concerned citizens of the community. These are just a few of the things.

Level Two -

This is the actual CivIV game to which we are all addicted. Representatives are elected by the population to execute different areas of responsibility in the game. It's better to read The Constitution, but basically, there is a President and Vice President. The President actually plays the game unless he/she is unable, in which case the Vice President takes over. There are 5 Senators (elected by the people), representing various houses that pay homage to our CivIII DGame of the past. The Senators are there to advise the President and their input is required on many key issues that come to pass in the course of the game. After the President plays 10 turns (or comes to a situation that requires Senate input), he/she will create a turn report in the Executive Reports forum that will contain information and screenshots describing the activity during that gameplay session. The President will also post the most current save file. Anyone can look at the save game, but may not use it to play ahead.

Every 50 turns, a new Assembly (Prez, Senators) is elected. Any citizen of The Community may run for any elected position. Each Senator appoints a deputy to take over for them in the case of absence.

This - in a nutshell - is what DGame is. It's about playing CivIV on a different level, if you will. I've had people say, "I don't know if I can commit the time". A valid concern. The bottom line is, if you don't hold a postition in the Senate or Executive Branch (or are not a Supreme Court judge), there is no commitment. You come and go as you please, just like the regular boards. The only time commitment is required is when you run for, and are elected to, an office. I'm avoiding details here which you can find out in The Community Constitution, if you wish.

Want to have a look for yourself?

Here is the Dgame Section

Here is the Citizenship Signup.

Thanks.

AI Omniscience

Scipio Africanus — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:38:23 GMT

Has anyone else noticed that, the AI still seems to know a heckuva lot more about areas of the map that it SHOULD NOT be able to see. Recent example, started up a Warlord diff game as Rome. Got a worker built than a settler. Had spotted two coppers, so used my scout (popped from a hut) to clear a path for a settler to take the copper that was in an opportune and rich position (rivers, etc.). Then noticed that slightly closer there was another Bronze, very close to where the Inca home city lay. Few turns later I had two archers, one warrior, a scout, and two cities: Rome producing a third settler, the second producing an axeman. One of my archers is set to watch for Inca settlers coming toward the river that would give them a rich position to grab the other copper. Pretty soon, here they come, settler accompanied by a archer and a quecha. I declare war. He plops his settler down on a hill that can still expand its boundary to get the copper within two tiles, but is not on the river (saving that choice spot for me). My other archer is now part way between the river area I intend to locate my 3 settler for and my capital Rome. I spend the dough to upgrade my warrior to axeman, so I now have 2 archers, axeman, one settler coming up in about 4 turns, and two workers and a scout. Suddenly, here comes a quecha right across my border of Rome to take it. I know for a fact that if I had an archer in there, that Quecha would never "pop his head in to see what was there, but as soon as I leave it unguarded, he comes barreling straight for the throat!

I find this to be incredibly backward for a game franchise that has won SO MANY awards, and has made so much money to not be able to simply program the AI as if it does not know certain things that it does not actually know!

It is absolutely MADDENING! It totally throws any "normal" (read: unpredictable, creative, "human," bluffing, gambling) sort of strategy out the window! AAGHGH!

The thing that is MOST annoying is, there are plenty of turn-based games out there where the AI does not behave like this, the matrix games being one that comes to mind immediately. Hide some stuff just out of sight of the AI, and it acts as if it does not know that stuff is there, carrying on about its business as usual. But NEVER have I seen this work in AI. It is like playing against God, and you simply define how easy he is gonna take it on you with the "difficulty" settings.

If other companies can figure this out, then why can't Firaxis?

There are other ways that this shortcoming in the AI emerges. Set your warrior to auto search, he will do a much better job of looking where you need him to look than if you try to look around yourself. This is anecdotal, so maybe it is not true, but it certainly seems true. The other way this manifests is, if you have a scout, watch where the AI warriors are heading. If you can get up ahead of them, you can beat them to the goody hut over there that they are somehow "seeing" through the fog of black and then as soon as you take it, they peel off in a new direction!

Course one can also "lure" the AI by leaving cities undefended too. But is that really the reason why we wanna play such a game? Exploiting the AI and looking at pretty graphics? Yeah, that is my idea of a super strategy game.

This is such a good game, and I really want to enjoy it, and I do try to enjoy it. But it is major flaws like the omnisicient, and yet moronic AI that make it a real challenge to take this game seriously.

Civ IV and Vista

jetjock — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:44:37 GMT

Has any one else loaded Vista? I am running a Core 2 Duo Extreme with 2 gigs of RAM and BFG 7950X2 video card and every time a pop up box comes up during the game my video goes whacky. It runs fine windowed but not in full screen. I tried compatibility mode but NT is the only one that it is able to find the CD in. The rest it tells me the game CD isn't in the drive. Any ideas?

winning??

moderateciver — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 12:25:10 GMT

I played a civ4 game recently on cheiftain to learn the new features of this new version and came in as "warren harding" which is the 3rd from the bottom in rank. But in this game I was 1st in land mass, culture, wealth, I eliminated 3 other civs and so on.... also 1st in family size and all that kind of stuff. I even played "USA" in that I restored a captured city to its orginal owner when another civ took it over. Actually it was 2 cities. I figured that I did pretty good. Oh yeah, i also was the leader in tech. So what did I do wrong??

any ideas ?

2 Questions: 1) Green Faces!!!!!

ozwego — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:55:59 GMT

#1 Every city I own have green faces. I get sooo mad because I dont know how to get rid of them so I just enslave the population for a moment of satisfaction. Then red and green faces are back within a turn or two.

I stopped enslaveing people to see if that would get rid of the faces, but no good. However Im number two in the world, the green faces make me think im doing something terribly wrong. Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks :D.

#2 What do I need to do to add a SWEET pic for my avatar?

In the beginning...

Zigeuner — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:32:26 GMT

I read somewhere that it's best -especially on higher difficulties- to research horizontally instead of vertically (no, no, they didn't put it quite like that :P). I'm just wondering when you start to aim for more advanced techs over contemporary, cheaper stuff. Do you always have to research all the worker techs, or can you sometimes skip one or two (depending on resources for sure)?

Also, what's the first 5 or 6 things you build in your capital? Usually I include Stonehenge, because it's so cheap and the AI (up to Noble so far) doesn't seem to like it very much. How many units do you send off into the wild to hunt for goody huts? When's your first Settler due? (I may be building Settlers Civ3ishly often, but so far it's worked out well...)

Speaking of Settlers, where do you send your first [i]built[/i] Settler? How far away would you go for a really good location? (What would the location have to have?)

How many and which units do you have defending your first couple of cities; do you build Barracks first?

Just some questions, pick and choose, pick and choose... :)

Civ 4 rant thread (kinda an extension of the nostalgic thread)

Dunedein — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:23:54 GMT

The thread where I explain... uh... some other stuff is [url]http://www.1bcciv.com/Topic2221712-14-1.aspx#bm2221726[/url].

This thread will contain the reasons I do not like Civ 4, or why it doesn't appeal to me.
-these reasons might not make sense to you, but they make perfect sense to me

So here they are, my "reasons" in globular form:
In Civilization 4, there are no distinct eras. Sure, it tells you you've entered into the "classical" or "medieval" period, but in this game it doesn't mean anything. I know many people think this was a step foreward, but I like to know that I am in a certain age, and I like the feeling when I enter a new age and it means that I've completely researched the preceading age. I don't know why, it's just a thing with me

The second thing is the civics system. Yes, it is a huge gameplay addition, but I like to know that I am a republic, or a monarchy, not a theocratic police state with free speech and serfdom while being environmentalist. It is a similar thing with the last "reason", I guess I just like clear cut things.

The third reason is that I feel like there are no more Civilizations, but rather leaders. Instead of the Aztecs, it's Montezuma, instead of his people being militaristic, he himself is aggresive. It just seems dumb to me.

Number 4 - In Civ 4 I feel like I am god and am actually looking down on the actual planet. In Civ 3 I felt I was a leader commanding my people through a representatory system. I guess I just don't like to feel like I am an omnipotent being.

A rather vague "reason" is that I feel like Civ 4 is too dark. Now, I am not refering to simple lighting, in fact I'm not sure what I mean. Civ 3 seemed... brighter.

This next reason blends with the last one: the graphics. The graphics in Civ 4 look chunky and unrealistic to me. I feel like I'm playing "Aladin:leader of the cartoon elephant band" (not exactly sure what that means). I am not exactly complaining that the graphics are "bad", but rather that they don't fit the Civilization series. In Civ 3 units look realistic and smooth. I don't think 3D was a necessary change.

===========================================

I'm sure some of those reasons sound dumb or unperceptive, but thats pretty much how I feel about Civ 4. I'm sure I forgot some things though

Feel free to put your own personal reasons for not liking Civ 4

============================================
Could someone found the underground Civ 3 movement?;)

CivIV Warlords

mongoose201 — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:33:27 GMT

Post here if you have Warlords or have it ordered. Mine is arriving tomorrow (I hope).

If we get enough people that have Warlords in the next few days, there will be an August GOTM for Warlords. Although Sept may be a more realistic goal.

Viking Warlord Scenario - Finding Treasure

the_gremlin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:28:10 GMT

This is really bugging me - I'm playing the Viking Scenario in Warlords. I reasearch a treasure location & it says For inst: ' You have located treasure in Northern Ireland' So I go beat up NI sack all the towns search the whole place - not a sou do I find. Where & what is this so called Treasure. I'm running out of time sacked & ransomed as much as I can and am nowhere near the victory conditions. I must be doing something wrong but have no idea what. Anybody out there Help.....!