Civilization Thread!

[RPS]

Is this the first war you've had all game? I think it's helpful to prosecute a war in just about every era if you go military; in my game I went at Hannibal with swords and axes and catapults, then went at Pericles with maces and Trebuchets (and, later, Cannon and rifles), then Izzy with Infantry, then Boudica/Saladin/Bismarck with modern ordnance (Bombers, Tanks, and Destroyers/Marines for the overseas invasions--Marines are insane with a tech lead attacking from boats, just zipping across the coast capturing city after city). Getting the early land by smashing a neighbor guarantees that you'll have the base necessary to leverage a later war more effectively. I sometimes wait until Macemen/Trebuchets (Civil Service/Engineering/Machinery) for my first war, but in my highest-score games I've warred early and often. The Mao game was my second highest score besides the Gandhi game I mentioned a week or so ago.

Who are your rivals and what kinds of units are they fielding? As I said in the last post, I tend to attack my most formidable opponents first if I can (Hannibal in this case), but by the late game, if you're just shooting for land, I think it's helpful to go for the civs that are the furthest behind.

Not my first war... I've taken out the French and the Chinese by myself and took their land. The French were on another continent and everybody ganged up on them and took them out, but I didn't contribute jack shit.

Now it's basically just a huge stale mate. The nations left standing are Victoria, Catherine, Washington, Huyana, Isabella and Mansa Mansa. Everybody is friendly and pleased with one another and nobody can be coerced into doing anything stupid. No one wants to cancel their deals or declare war on each other. I've got five cities north of Isabella on a continent only she resides in. I've been transporting a good percentage of my military there and building up. I declared war on her and played defensive as she sent basically her entire military up to attack me. After 3 or 4 waves of her attacks, I took two of her cities on the same continent. I noticed she had shipped over a boat load of enemies onto my other continent, so I air bombed them, decimated them and made a 10 turn peace treaty with her. I'm going to lay low for twenty turns, take out her capital and than take the rest of her continent. I've got spies in most of her cities just stopping production, so she isn't rebuilding her army. Than, I'm basically fucked. Several of the nations left standing have defensive pacts with one another. If I declare war on the second biggest army, he has defensive pacts with 3 of the other people left standing, so that option is off the table as they'd clearly overtake me.

Edited August 5, 2011 by RockPaperScissors

[Sousa]

Jesus Christ, those are some powerhouse Civs to make it to endgame.

Um. Of that group, you'd probably have the easiest time taking out Mansa--who's a great techer but doesn't really build military--or Izzy, who techs terribly. Catherine, Huayna, and Washington don't fuck around when they go to war, and Vickie can be formidable as well. But given the situation you're describing, I usually throw my hands up and say fuck it, I'm teching to space. If I'm locked into a terrible stalemate like that, that's what I usually do regardless of what my goals were at the beginning of the game. Score will probably be low, but it almost can't be helped. If you're committed to a late-game war, go into total war mode--bulk up production everywhere, build airports, buy airports in cities you capture, and then ship in shit-tons of units/planes. If you can out-produce the AI, you can almost always win; Civ IV is more about hammers than anything else.

EDIT: Oh, wait, you turned off other win options besides Domination/Conquest? Yeah, in that case just don't stop producing units. Tech to Modern Armor/Mechanized Infantry and spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Send in cheap Fighters to disrupt any defensive units (SAM Infantry, other planes), and when those attacks are used up, deploy the Bombers. The more people you roll up, the easier it'll be to beat the next Civ down the line.

Are you just playing vanilla Civ IV (no expansions)? If you're not, fight Isabella until she capitulates, then take on the next one. The snowballing power of capitulation is just insane (and one of the reasons why I can't go back to playing vanilla ).

Edited August 5, 2011 by Sousa

[stokeriño]

Just started a Marathon game for the first time (Earth map, large, random civ - ended up as Montezuma in RL India).

The mission here is not necessarily to see if I can win the game well. It's more to see if I can play a Marathon game without wanting to kill myself. ¬_¬

[RPS]

Jesus Christ, those are some powerhouse Civs to make it to endgame.

Um. Of that group, you'd probably have the easiest time taking out Mansa--who's a great techer but doesn't really build military--or Izzy, who techs terribly. Catherine, Huayna, and Washington don't fuck around when they go to war, and Vickie can be formidable as well. But given the situation you're describing, I usually throw my hands up and say fuck it, I'm teching to space. If I'm locked into a terrible stalemate like that, that's what I usually do regardless of what my goals were at the beginning of the game. Score will probably be low, but it almost can't be helped. If you're committed to a late-game war, go into total war mode--bulk up production everywhere, build airports, buy airports in cities you capture, and then ship in shit-tons of units/planes. If you can out-produce the AI, you can almost always win; Civ IV is more about hammers than anything else.

EDIT: Oh, wait, you turned off other win options besides Domination/Conquest? Yeah, in that case just don't stop producing units. Tech to Modern Armor/Mechanized Infantry and spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Send in cheap Fighters to disrupt any defensive units (SAM Infantry, other planes), and when those attacks are used up, deploy the Bombers. The more people you roll up, the easier it'll be to beat the next Civ down the line.

Are you just playing vanilla Civ IV (no expansions)? If you're not, fight Isabella until she capitulates, then take on the next one. The snowballing power of capitulation is just insane (and one of the reasons why I can't go back to playing vanilla ).

Yeah, the win option was altered when I went to play my game and only Conquest was selected. I played for a good hour before I realized and didn't want to restart a new game so I went with it. Big mistake. Long ass game ahead of me apparently and a chance I'm not even going to win, haha.

[Sousa]

Ugh, Marathon games and also ugh, Conquest without vassals. I have the patience for neither.

EDIT: Picked Napoleon as my "time to move up a level!" leader, and it was the right choice. France sort of sucks, but Napoleon's traits are so much fun for knocking people around. Would've had a much easier time had I not ended up on the board with four Protective leaders: Gilgamesh and his ridiculous Vultures, Sitting Bull and his ridiculous archers, Churchill and his ridiculous Redcoats, and Tokugawa and his ridiculous, uh, mustache (also Frederick and Zara Yaqob, so, yeah, ridiculous Panzers and Oromo Warriors as well). I was slugging it out with Sitting Bull at the tail end of the Renaissance, which means he had his horrible Totem Pole-fueled Longbowmen. By the time I was finished with him, my cottages had finished maturing, I finally took a tech lead, and then I invaded England as France and gave you fucking limeys what's for. Not my best score ever, but lots of fun.

[Herr Matzat]

New DLCs comming.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/08/civilization-5-adds-koreans-ancient-wonders-dlc-august-11/

A new patch is comming aswell. But might arive after the DLC.

Edited August 9, 2011 by Michael Matzat on a Plane

[Sousa]

I was playing as Montezuma last night hoping to really start getting the hang of whipping to beat the shit out of some people in early war. Lo and behold, I ended up with no nearby opponents, lots of good land, and five religions (four founded by me) in my cities. So I won a Cultural victory as Monty. It was horribly annoying, and Joao of all people was the big dog on our continent, which meant I occasionally had him coming by for my huge purse of failing-to-build-a-wonder gold.

So fucking annoying. I'm going to play as Monty again and make sure he's one of the opponents so I can shove that fucking hat down his throat.

EDIT: Wait, no I'm not, I'm going to end up on a continent alone with Hatshepsut in which she gets all the good land and won't trade, and then I'm going to get involved in a long slog of a war while the other continent (Joao, Stalin, Mansa Musa, and Isabella) gets all lubby-dubby, sharing one religion and trading techs, so that by the time I discover anyone else I'm hopelessly behind thanks to the long slog through Hattie. Then I'm going to use careful diplomacy and good micromanagement to get caught up while not launching an intercontinental invasion because everyone's slightly ahead of me, then I'm going to commit myself to a space race win once I get the Internet and swipe everyone else's techs, then Mansa's going to win a fucking cultural victory when I'm two turns away from having my spaceship.

Fuck this game.

[Plubby]

Necroooo!

After toying with, and loving, the demo I bought this game via ozgameshop and had it arrive yesterday. Started a random map, ended up as America. Been making friends with Montezuma and sort of just developing my cities. I capture Quebec (Cuck Fanada) and then move my army along the coast to do a favour for Budapest when Montezuma decides he's had enough of research agreements and beneficial trading and Wars me. Now, I hold Boston and Quebec along his borders - and the turn he wars me, my buddy Dublin gifts me a unit of horsemen, which I bolt into the fray.

Long story short: He takes out my Char Archers and a Trireme early (gutted about the CharArch) but otherwise gets quite badly battered. My two generals come sweeping down from Washington to reinforce my marauding Dublin horsemen, who basically run riot like Genghis Khan from east to west across the continent, accounting for three units by themselves. Bombards from Quebec and Boston each nab a unit of Jag Warriors and there is no more army forthcoming. Monty then offers a peace treaty, offering me in return for my 10 turns of peace...every single thing he possesses except his cities. I briefly contemplate knocking him back and wiping him off the face of the map, but end up opting against it as I have just researched into Knights and feel like I could use the 10 turns and DI resources to reinforce that border...and then wipe him out. I was rather satisfied with myself. Thou shalt NOT fuck with AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! And other assorted lines.

[RoHitman Reigns]

GOTY edition is currently $10.99 for Direct Download on Amazon, I suggest jumping on it if wish for the game, i\as it is like $24.99 on Steam, so your saving about 14 dollars from Steam Sale and 39 from regular price.

[Plubby]

Oh, I killed everyone in my above game. The Egyptians killed my siege units so I got all at them and purchased tanks from the nearest three cities and shoved them RIGHT UP his clacker.

[Thrilla]

So far I have discovered that I can only play as Bismarck in this game. Also, only being able to defend a city with one unit really annoys me.

[Benji]

For those unaware, we're having an EWB Civ 5 group game this coming Saturday. If anyone's interested then they are welcome to join. Probably say about 7/8 GMT.

[Ruki]

Rather than clog up the Steam Winter Sale Thread....let's talk about the possible EWB Game here!

I am actually free all day tomorrow if anyone else is ok with that?

[Benji]

I am too, if people are up for it. Just a note - I think that we should make the rules of random leaders, to get the whole thing started as quick as possible and stop arguments over who's who.

[Ruki]

I also like the sound of this. Also, it's 2:30am, so, I likely won't be able to play for like....8-9 hours

[Benji]

I know, I meant later today, you silly canuck.

[Plubby]

I want to play! I can probably only start a game within the next hour or two, or in 14 hours time

EDIT: Benji, this would require you accepting my Steam friend request you meany jerkface.

[Benji]

Who are you on Steam? I thought I accepted you the other day - aren't you just Plubster or something?

[Plubby]

I go by Revoke as my Alias at the moment.

[MDK]

What time are we playing?