Civilization IV

[stoutfellow]

Just a few quick notes gleaned from my latest round of Civ IV playing:

• The new Great People system is excellent. I haven't really found much use for Great Merchants as yet, but Great Prophets, Great Scientists, and Great Artists are all extremely useful, and Great Engineers are absolutely wonderful - in more senses than one.
• When you're playing one of the Mongol leaders - either Genghis or Kublai - and you can't find horses anywhere, it kind of cramps your style.
• I love the Philosophical, Spiritual, and Industrious traits; I can make use of Organized, Creative, or Aggressive leaders; but the proper use of the Expansive and Financial traits still eludes me.

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

I haven't really figured out Great Scientists yet, I just build Academys with them. Great Prophets and Artists though, I love. In my current game style I tend to try and get all the religions, or at least as many as I can, within my civilization. Just a thing.

Haven't received many Great Engineers, nor really used them, I'm afraid.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

My main experience with Prophets and Artists parallels yours, especially if I've got a Spiritual leader. I usually use Scientists for Academies, but sometimes I'll cash them in for a tech advance. Sometimes I'll do that with Prophets too, especially if the tech is itself one that gives you a religion.

But Engineers.... If you get the Pyramids or the Hanging Gardens early, you'll see plenty of Engineers. Save them, and use them to accelerate construction of Wonders. In one recent game, I think I picked off about seven Wonders using Engineers, and it got me to a Cultural victory in 1918.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Yay for Engineers! Just throwing in my 2 cents' worth! With Engineers in this game, I imagine you can build the roads that the armies can march more easily on - and move war gear, etc. Or, supplies and men that the outposts will need.

Not to mention that you might be able to avoid a big plague in one of your poplulated areas, using sanitation methods not being used in your current era.

Can you do these sorts of things in this game?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that's not what Engineers are for. Workers build the roads and such. Health is a big problem; you need to build things like granaries and aqueducts to deal with it, but again, that's part of the normal pattern of construction.

Great Engineers do Great Things, like building Notre Dame. (You can use them to speed up the construction of ordinary buildings, but that's kind of a waste.)

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

But. But. But the engineers *design* the things. Can you use Great Engineers to, say, build the Great Wall of China? I would think more apt would be a Great Architect built Notre Dame...or?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Frame it this way: whatever you're trying to build, it'll go a lot more quickly if you've got an Engineer available. (The Wonders of the World that you can build range from actual buildings like the Hanging Gardens, to hypothetical future constructs like the Space Elevator, to metaphorical "wonders" like Rock and Roll. No, I don't understand that one either.)

The Great Wall was one of the Wonders in earlier versions of the game, but has been dropped from version IV.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

A Great Engineer is just the thing for getting the Forbidden Palace or Versailles built. They're ideally located far from the capitol, which generally means a fairly new and hence not (yet) very productive city. Thus: when you get a Great Engineer, hie him over to a suitable city near the frontier; when he gets there, pop one of the aforementioned secondary capitols onto the top of the build queue and have the Great Engineer do his thing and BAM! It's one of the best ways I know for building a Wonder in a frontier town (and those two, in particular, really WANT to be in cities that'd take FOREVER to build 'em in the usual way).

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I've found them useful in the stretch drive for a Cultural victory, when picking off Broadway, Rock'n'Roll, Hollywood, and the Eiffel Tower can give you such a big boost. But that's if you get them late in the game; Versailles and the Forbidden Palace are mid-game ploys. (I haven't had opportunity to use them in the way you suggest; a lot depends on getting the Pyramids, and that one eludes me much of the time.)

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Great Merchants: I must confess that by the time I get a Great Merchant, I'm generally either pretty badly disliked by most of my neighbors or I've already set up trade deals that keep them constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, so I've never really been in a position to do a Trade Mission. I find them really useful when I have a city built in food-marginal terrain (generally sited specifically to harvest multiple different special resources). When a Great Merchant joins a city as a superspecialist, you get a sizeable money boost *and one free food*. That can make the difference between a city that can't grow to meet its full production/commerce potential and one that can.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip; it's come in handy in my last couple of games.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way: I don't think the status of your neighbor's treasury impacts Trade Missions. The inflow from those is huge - much larger than any plausible estimate of their treasuries.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Good to know. I'll keep that in mind, the next time I have a Great Merchant, Open Borders with someone reasonably far away, and no driving need for that oh-so-alluring "free food".