Ask The Civ IV Dev Team 384
On Monday, we asked you for questions for industry legend Sid Meier. Today, we're asking for question to put to the folks behind the technology of Civilization IV. Besides the actual coding and development that went into the game itself, the team has made Civilization IV infinitely moddable through technologies such as XML, Python, and a fully developed SDK. Led by lead designer Soren Johnson, the team will answer your questions about the creation of the fourth chapter in one of the most influential game series out there. So, fire away with your questions. One per comment, please, and keep them topical. We'll pass the ten best questions to Johnson and the team, and the answers will be posted as soon as we have them in our hands.
We have the technology... (Score:3, Informative)
Civ I, II and III were availible on the mac (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mac Version (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I'm the programmer who worked on the Mac port of Civ3.
The AI code in the Mac and PC versions is identical. I've never heard of any AI variances between the 2, and no differences have been pointed out by the Mac fans over at the CivFanatics forums (some of them are cross-platform users). Can you provide a saved game that demonstrates a genuine difference?
yup. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.firaxis.com/community/asksid.php [firaxis.com]
Second question down.
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:3, Informative)
Jaysyn
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:5, Informative)
I usually play on Emperor level and probably win 1/10 games although most of the games I know within 10-20 turns if I have any shot at all. Some suggestions:
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Macro and Micro Management (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:5, Informative)
- On low difficulties build order should be 1. warrior, 2. settler
- On high difficulties build order should be 1. warrior, 2. granary (if you don't have pottery research it first, build a dummy improvement then switch), 3. settler, 4. settler, etc. Keep pumping settlers from here until you run out of room. If your starting city doesn't have access to cattle/wheat then find a city that does and make that your settler pump. More than one settler pump is good if the map is big. You will soon find that you've caught up to enemy civs in terms of number of cities.
- Those settler pumps should mix in workers as well along with cities that hit their population limits (i.e. they are wasting food)
- Resources are worth going to war for. Some more than others but Rubber is king, see below.
- If you don't have the resources to build tanks/mech inf/modern armour you can still go on the offensive against those that do (hopefully to obtain the resources you need). Build enough artillery to be able to do the following in a single turn: 1. reduce a city to population one, 2. destroy all improvements, 3. bring all units down to one hit point. Then use one or two armies (the unit, made from leaders gained in combat) of cavalry to take out the last hit point. Use infantry for defense.
- Artillery, if used correctly, is devastating.
- Create a bigger industrial core by arranging your cities in a ring around your capital, the game calculates corruption partly by the number of cities in between the target city and your capital. Use the Forbidden Palace to extend this ring and create a large industrial core. Cities very far from your capital but close to a FP aren't that great anyway. The overlap turns those mediocre cities near your capital into powerhouses.
- Building cities with two spaces in between (CxxCxxC) is useful for two reasons: 1. slow units can jump from city to city in a single turn using roads, 2. extra culture isn't required to connect city boundaries. But there will be some overlap in tiles so the cities won't be as big.
- At high difficulties there often isn't time for both a temple and library. Build libraries for the science bonus. Temples are only good if you're a religious civ.
- Specialists can turn large but completely corrupt cities into industrial powerhouses. When available, turn the excess entertainers into civil engineers. Each CE can give two shields per turn towards a city improvement. Use these for culture and science. Other large cities with excess entertainers can use CE/police/scientists as well. I jumped a complete difficutly setting when I started using specialists properly, they give huge bonuses.