I recently bought a copy off of Amazon, and haven't been able to get away from the computer screen. After figuring out, finally, how to take screenshots, I've decided to share a playthrough. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, linky goodness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_4 In short, it's a turn based Empire-builder with multiple victory conditions. They include the following: Conquest and Domination Science (via winning the Space Race, colonizing Alpha Centauri) Culture (basically spamming World Wonders in your cities, gathering 'culture' points) Time (having the most overall 'points' by 2150AD or so) Diplomatic (everyone likes you, never gone this route) Given this is SB, of course, I fully expect players to want a Conquest or Science victory, but you never know. Civilizations will follow in the next post. For this playthrough, I'll be using the 18 Civ Earth map, for those who've played before.
For expediency and familiarity, I've decided to go with the Earth Map. This map holds as many as 18 different Civilizations. They include: Egypt India China Greece Rome Persia Germany Mongolia Arabia France Spain England Russia Mali Inca Aztecs America Voting begins now. For a list of civilization traits: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/civilizations/
It's not Ghandi that's available on this particular map, but he is in normal maps. Asoka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asoka Qin Shi Huang is available, however.
While I've played and liked it, it is somewhat constricting. This is a more..vanilla map and is better for free-form.
My votes, in order of preference: 1.) Holy Roman Empire (Because his top guys are named "Paladins") 2.) England (Star Kingdom of England!) 3.) America (AMERICA! IN SPACE!) Also: Voting Diplomacy victory (because!).
Rome, beeline for iron working, build a mine on the iron hills, then bumrush the hell out of europe with praets. You'll be at Persia before you face any opposition. By that time the power of all of europe will mean you have few challenges besides China, and they will be overtaken using technology.
Oh what difficulty, may I ask? I'm doing this exact strategy on Prince. I've conquered Europe up to the Urals, and have taken Iraq-Turkey-Palestine before taking out Egypt as well. I left England be. And it's 250AD in my game right now. If the players choose Rome, we're going with Monarch difficulty, at least. Rome is just so broken.
Narrowing it down. Choices are: England (2) Rome (2) China (3) Russia (3) All 4 are solid choices. If we're going with Rome/Russia/China however, I'm going with a higher difficulty, because they have so much potential for a conquest victory. With England, you have to play a 'finesse' game. Unless you can establish a foothold on mainland Europe early (Conquering Spain and France, for starters) England falls behind in production. The AI has no clue whatsoever to conduct a proper amphibious invasion, however, so I think we could pull it off. Also...Conquest or Science Victory?
Rome has a tough time around Monarch-Emperor; the AI gets more aggressive, France doesn't just sit there and wonder-build for you so when you take it it feels better, Spain can be terrifying if Isabella isn't put down quickly, and you run into Frederick's swords before you can take Berlin. That would be more of a challenge, but Rome is a tad overdone. If we want something really hard, America, or the Arabs. America has to deal with ol' Monty and has generally bad land, plus it has the usual issue of being woefully behind the old world. The Arabs have bad land, are sandwiched between the camping Egyptians and the expansionist Persians, and have no useful UUs for the ancient period. Once we break through those two, we should be set, though.
Agreed on America, and for that matter, Aztecs and Inca. Unless you use 'no tech trading' it's likely you're a full age or more behind in tech.
