Civilization 4

[JarlFrank]

I have a new PC, high end, bought last year, but my screen is from 2009 with a native res of 1920X1080 so a game like Civ4 works perfectly well for me and runs like butter!

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

How goes the mod scene for CivIV btw? Does Caveman2Cosmos finally have AI that isn't pure ass?

 

[AgentFransis]

Recently I got into Civ 4: Colonization with the We The People mod. It's a total overhaul that adds a bunch of new goods, units, ships, civs, founding fathers etc. Totally revamped building tree and production chains. Colonies now have happiness, health and crime rates forcing you to develop actual civilization to sustain large cities by importing doctors, judges and harlots and building infrastructure for them. Adds an internal market where more advanced professionals demand finished goods so you can develop an economy independent of Europe. And finally it adds a bunch of flavor with events and art.

You can even buy slaves from Africa and enslave the natives to work them fields. It's actually very strong, I use a bunch of them to suatain my massive capital as the Portuguese.

It's very nice but the logistics gets a bit intense in the late game and frankly the sheer number of goods they added is a bit much until you familiarize yourself with all the icons.

 

[Krivol]

Recently I got into Civ 4: Colonization with the We The People mod.

I thought Civ4:Colo was a dead game! I love the original Colon, I will definitely try it.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Reminds me I never played Colonization lol.

I'm gonna get some more disk space and then reinstall Realism Invictus.
Any other worthy cIV mods? Any improvements to C2C? How is Fall From Heaven II doing? Did Fury Road ever get anything more done?

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Been playing C2C, the main version not the SVN (didn't feel like downloading TortoiseSVN). With the Ultimate Earth Map, because it just seems fitting to me.
Nation Brazil of course, default options, maximum difficulty like A MAN, Eternity.

Some thoughts:
- UEM is SUCH a gorgeous huge earth map. Bigger than the Giant Earth Map Realism Invictus uses, too. Wish the author would make a RI-UEM btw.
- When I played C2C a few years ago, I pretty much ignored Hunting until I got Trackers AFAIK. Here I've been hunting since early on.
- Hunting is great, you just have to know how to do it.
- Wanderer hunting is pretty much about doing opportunity attacks on 1 strength critters and baiting aggressive 2 ST beasts and predators into stupid attacks against your wanderers. You CAN'T beat anything over 2 ST unless you are lucky. Run from Barbarians and Neaderthals, always. Run from dangerous animals like Lions, Dire Wolves, Jaguars, honestly anything above 2 ST will wreck you.
- On improvements: Leave one or two units on a single tile improvement in your best resource(s), preferably in defensive terrain. Otherwise Barbarian Thieves WILL wreck them.
- Most early game buildings are pretty shit. I have the impression that you're better off building one or two buildings early on and then focusing on hunting and scouting until your hunting is sorted out (post-Persistence Hunting), then you can start cranking out buildings for real.
- Use Scouts for exploring and get goody huts. Once your scouts are done, well, scouting, the continent, send them to help your hunters find prey and avoid bad shit.

- Hunting gets cool when you get Persistence Hunting. You get Chasers, which can become pretty good at hunting with enough XP. You can also get Hunting promotion, higher levels of Woodsman and similar Promotions (great for hunting). This tech also gives Master Chaser, which are great.
- Post-Persistence Hunting, the way to go is to find somewhere full of animals, send a stack of 5 Chasers + 1 Master Chaser + 1 or more Wise Women (you will likely get some from Goody Huts), and start hunting nonstop. If you have a scout, use the scout to find packs of easy prey and scout out dangerous predators. Have one or more Wise Women parked somewhere to heal, always have Wise Women covered by a Chaser.
- DON'T get into shitfights you can't win with 3-4 ST animals. If you see anything strong and aggressive, fucking run. Chasers can be expensive, and are limited in numbers unlike Wanderers. The ideal is to get your shitty ones to kill weak animals until they turn into Gigachads.
- I notice that eventually, you run into the problem that you have plenty of food (especially if you had two Great Hunters and turned one into a super specialist in your village) going but a serious lack of hammers.
- At some point, you might wanna start ignoring the weak shit, only attacking it if its close, and focusing on the bigger prey. You will also get tired of killing yet another Jungle Tarantula and want to kill a different animal instead (for the Folklore and such).
- Bongos are probably the best early game prey. Better reward than some 3 ST prey too.
- Master Chasers are your big bad monster killah. I've managed to kill even Jaguars, Lions and Gorillas with a well-promoted Master Chaser. But you need a GP to make one, so take care of them.
- Run from Barbarians and 'thals. Seriously, there's no good reason to get into stupid shitfights with them.
- Eventually, hunting gives out some pretty rewards and a good food and hammer icon.

- Pretty sure the AI still doesn't know how to play the Grug Age. Maybe in the SVN?
- UEM is actually fairly historical re: starting positions in the Americas. Its why the Mayans start near Venezuela while the Nahua start in Central America. I find it weird that the Tupi start in the northeast (the original Tupis started out in the Amazon and scattered across the brazilian coast) and Brazil starts around São Paulo (should it it start in NE?), but I guess its game balance. Sure could do with a civ somewhere in current-day Paraguay, Bahia or Argentina (Guaranis? Patagonian natives? Aymaras?), and maybe one in the Amazon (Marajoarans ftw), but maybe the mod author ran out of civ slots? Honestly I'm just happy the Tupis were included, very based.

I do have something of a Barb/'Thal problem near my village right now, tho. I simply don't have the units to go and kill them, its not worth it right now to waste the unit turns either (best to build more buildings or hunt moar). The terrain around it is too forested, as well. I probably won't do anything to the barbs until I reach Spiked Clubs at least, maybe even later.

I will probably have a pretty peaceful chalcolicthic, not many civs in South America. Classical Age is prob going to be nuts tho.

 

[Krivol]

How is performance on such a huge map? I have never gotten past the information era due to lags in the end (and occasionally CTDTs). Also, how is enemy AI in later eras?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

performance is always great, light years better than any more recent civ, until at some point you hit an "out of memory", even with 24 gb and everything artificially unlocked.

 

[Cael]

performance is always great, light years better than any more recent civ, until at some point you hit an "out of memory", even with 24 gb and everything artificially unlocked.

Yeah. That is a major issue with Civ4 for me. Always having a good time and then End of Turn CTD...

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Decided to use the SVN because I heard v43 had some crash issue which they didn't patch outside the SVN.

Notes:
- If you want to use Latitude Mod (and/or UEM latest version), use the Revision 11552. For now, Latitude doesn't work with later revisions.
- If you prefer playing v43 with UEM, AFAIK you need to use 4.6 or 4.5, later versions don't work with v43.

How is performance on such a huge map? I have never gotten past the information era due to lags in the end (and occasionally CTDTs). Also, how is enemy AI in later eras?

So far so good, but I was in early game. I was also using v43 and not SVN.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Note for playing with latest UEM:

I decided to play Portugal since Brazil civ was removed in newest version of Ultimate Earth Map.
Is it just me or Europe sucks for hunting? South America has a bunch of pretty decent animals and they are quite common.
Meanwhile in Europe, it seems like you can barely take a few steps before you stumble into Brown Bears, Lions or even Cave Bears.
Possibly because South America in this map has a lot of space, while here Europe is lacking.

I get the feeling that if you're in a relatively big and empty continent (Like South America or maybe Africa), its worth to build Wanderers. But if you're somewhere relatively small and full, like Europe, you're better off focusing on Buildings and a Gatherer to work a plot. Your research will suffer for the lack of Animal Folklore, tho.

I really wish UEM had an upscaled Europe, like Realism Invictus' Giant Earth Map does. GEM has a nice-looking Europe but a sad-looking South America, while UEM's South America is GORGEOUS, but Europe is smaller.

 

[R@tmaster]

Is someone knows which is more balanced: Master of Mana updates or Tweak Mod? There also this one, but it's version is too low.