Discusión: Civilization IV

By QA Manager Tim McCracken and Tester James Copestake

Building Wonders
Know what Wonders you want and tech accordingly. It’s likely other players will be building the same Wonders, so you cannot delay too long in starting them. Strategic resources like marble and stone coupled with the Industrious leader trait offer an amazing wonder building bonus. Great Engineers can be used to instantly finish many Wonders, so save them for key moments.

Plan your unit strategy
Have a rough idea of what units you can make given your resources. If there are no military resources such as iron, horses, or copper nearby, you should plan accordingly. Longbowmen have no resource requirement and offer good defense against all the metal units. Gunpowder units do not require saltpeter as they did in Civ III, so they can help balance out opponents who have the resources. Also note that using the units’ “rock paper scissors” differences and promotions can provide an advantage when used correctly. For instance, you should build Spearmen to counter an opponent who is using horses, or you can give your units the Shock promotion (25 percent bonus vs. melee units) if your opponent is coming at you with Swordsmen.


Know your neighbors
There are many advanced techniques that allow you to gauge your neighbor’s progress throughout the game. One is to watch their score; early on there will be major jumps as they build cities and Wonders. Dependant on difficulty level, the score increases differently, but it is obvious when they complete something. Also watch the demographics. While they may have more troops, they may be doing poorly financing that army. If you have Napoleon or Montezuma on your border, expect them to attack. Preparing a good, solid defense in those border towns is essential and can save a lot of time rebuilding later.
Great People
Using Great People for a Golden Age can be a waste if your cities are not setup properly. Their Great Works can offer a better overall gain if used accordingly. For example, using a great prophet to build the Holy Building if you have a religion offers a gold-per-turn bonus per city with your religion. This bonus helps to keep your city network economically viable as much if not all of the city tax is already paid for through simply spreading your religion, which also generates culture.

Barbarian Spawning
Barbarians spawn in fog covered areas, so you have two possible ways of dealing with them or using them to your advantage. Placing sentries on hills and at cutoff points prevents them from spawning near your more vulnerable infrastructure. You can easily limit their appearance rate in this manner, but you may want to try something else – something a bit more proactive. Try leaving fog shrouded areas early and then send your units “questing” (like an RPG) into these areas to gain some quick experience points and promotions. You will probably want to start planting cities to expose the fog once the AI starts to spread closer to these areas.

Defensive Strategies
Forts can be placed at cutoff points (areas where the land narrows in a strategically advantageous manner) to create almost impenetrable outposts. Stack units and choose your promotions carefully. The Medic promotion is a staple of a stack of units, but only one unit needs this promotion to affect the whole stack! Be wary of the effect of siege weapons on your stack. It’s a very viable strategy for someone or the AI to essentially sacrifice one or two bombardment units in order to render an entire stack ineffective. When faced with a large number of these units, move to a blockade approach and keep your units separate until the threat is handled.

Early Game
Many people refer to games like Civ as “4X” games because they encourage you to Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. In the early game, it is highly unlikely you will get the chance to exterminate anyone, so let’s concentrate on the first three. A good early build order is as follows: warrior (for defense), worker (to “exploit” the terrain around your city), warrior (for an escort), and a settler (for expansion). Lather, rinse, repeat. Keep the first defender home unless you can exploit a close goody hut. Use the escort unit as a scout until the settler is ready and then have them meet in a safe location to travel to your next city. Often, you will have Archery by the time you get to the second unit so go ahead and make an Archer. They are not much more expensive, but they pack a much bigger wallop and make great city defenders. Know your map and plan out how many cities, and roughly where they will be, early on and make liberal use of the in-game help for city locations. An old tester trick from back in the Civ II days is to save the game on your first turn and then explore freely for 20 or 30 turns to get an idea of what your world is like. After that, load up the save and play the knowledge gained from your “covert intelligence.”

Civics and Religion
Know which civics will be useful and don’t forget to switch! However, avoid anarchy at key times, such as when researching a tech that will allow new units. Just because something is new doesn’t necessarily mean it is better for your current situation. Always choose to see the big picture so you can analyze the effects of your change before you make a mistake. It is often tough to found the early religions like Buddhism or Hinduism, especially on higher difficulty levels, so it’s often best to let those technologies go and trade for them later. Instead, establish a certain level of defense first by making sure you can make advanced early units up to and including catapults before making a beeline for Judaism and Christianity. If you miss those, you can try for Islam, Confucianism, or Taoism. Of course, this presumes you like to establish yourself culturally…if not, feel free to ignore all of these techs.

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