/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6360112
Don't wage war on everyone at the same time.

Expand like mad in the beginning.

Deity player here - which is less of an achievement than you'd think.
>Any tips for a long game?
>Get out of Despotism ASAP by picking techs on the way to Monarchy. Despotism sucks.
>Each subsequent tech is more expensive than the previous, so don't immediately trade for techs you don't need.
>For that same reason don't get Great Library. It's a trap wonder in this game. It just slows you down.
>Spam a lot of cities. Lots of them. Especially on Deity you can't grow large cities early (citizens revolt at size 2 without a military unit acting as police). Improvements cost money. Cities don't. Maintain happiness (settling tons of cities causes problems there) with military police (any unit in city) while in Despo/Monarchy.
>Some of the best wonders in this game are:
Hanging Gardens - really helps grow early cities and help them celebrate
Pyramids - gets cities to size 3 ASAP
Marco Polo Embassy - instant contact with every single Civ and an embassy
Michelangelo's Chapel - perhaps the most universally important wonder for controlling happiness on high difficulties, along with its successor, J.S. Bach (Monotheism is one of the best techs in the game as it unlocks Crusaders for warmongers and Michel's for growth).
Shakespeare's / Colossus / Copernicus / Newton's - you can put all of those wonders in a city with lots of trade specials / rivers / grassland / sea to make a "Super Science City".
>when pressing the Foreign Minister screen, pay attention to your advisor saying what power rating you are relative to everyone else. If "Sire, your power is Supreme", that means you should try to demand Gold from neighbors, especially if they're far away. Usually they will be impressed by your military power.
>Make sure to get Civ2UIALauncher utility. It has a few QoL features and lets you comfortably turn off the infamous "all enemy Civs are superhostile towards you" issue from Civ2 Mutliplayer Gold.
I'mma continue in next post, hopefully it won't be too overwhelming

>>6360112
Does archer spam work in 2 or is that just a Civ 3 thing?

>>6360206
>Why are Caravans OP
Each Caravan lets you rush 50 production points ("shields") into any World Wonder being built, which is a good way to win wonder races. Each Caravan also lets you establish trade routes, which is the most complex thing in Civ2 by far. I won't bore you with details, but try to establish strong trade routes between cities with strong trade. Delivering trade caravans to other cities gives you a big bonus to gold AND research points, especially if the resource you are trading is Demanded by the city. It's a horribly complex thing, but in general, as a rule, try to trade:
>with large cities (= lots of trade)
>which demand your commodities
>preferrably foreign
>preferrably roaded to your civilization
>preferrably on another continent
Domestic caravans just for establishing trade routes between your own powerful cities are also good.
>>6360209
No, Archers require Warrior Code (which is eh) and are 1-movement unit which are hard to wage war with, plus they're too expensive for what they are. Civ2 early conquest meta is about rushing Polytheism->Monotheism and conquering with (preferrably veteran) Elephants and then Crusaders. You can also conquer some stuff with Diplomats by bribing cities (or sabotaging City Walls). Also exploring as much as possible in the early game might get you a lot of free units, which can often be enough to conquer an AI.

>>6360112
>>6360206
>>6360225
Just to wrap it up, your general early goals:
>Expand a fuckton, you can end up with like 20 or more cities by 1 AD. Don't worry about overlapping tiles much. After you get a strong core, you can keep a Settler to road all of your establishments together. Settle next to strong tiles like Spices or Whale, and work them.
>Get at least one of the strong early wonders if possible, with Caravans if possible
>Despotism->Monarchy. Later if you want a more peaceful growth, go Republic. (There's a trick where you can grow your cities instantly to max size by invoking We Love The Consul / President Day in Republic/Democracy, usually by going Shift+T and cranking your Luxury rating up the ass). Communism is an okay "modern Monarchy" if you want to balance warfare and economy. Fundamentalism is for pure conquest. Democracy is Republic on steroids.
>Rushbuy a lot with the gold you have. Remember to always put a shield into a build before you buy it, as rushbuying something from the start is very costly. Use your cash to rush out Settlers, units, improvements and whatnot.
>Explore a lot and pop huts for gold, free settlers, free cities and techs
>Make contact with AIs ASAP, feel free to kiss their ass if you're focused on growing as AI tends to fall behind in tech (they start trading maps at "Cordial" at minimum, too).
>Connect your shit with roads
>Figure out a gameplan (conquest or space) and go forward from there

Is this game still any good? I just remember the other nations ALWAYS demanding me to give them things.

>>6360367
>Is this game still any good?
I come back to it every so often to play some Deity, my main game is Civ4. It's fun and quite deep, but also micromanagement heavy and sometimes quite daunting. The WW2 scenario bundled with the game is a favourite, though.
>I just remember the other nations ALWAYS demanding me to give them things.
They do that. It's often a bluff.

>just started game
>spawned next to Egypt
>can't explore ANYWHERE becuase it will cause Egypt to attack me

FUCK

>>6360394
If you are bottlenecked by Thebes, you can probably dickslap them with some Horsemen.
Also, generally, if you are at peace treaty, you get two announcements:
"We notice your troops moving around [CITY]. Get the fuck out of there!"
and on the next turn they will pipe up with
"GET THE FUCK OUT OR WE ARE BREAKING YOUR TREATY!"

A thing you might try out is to actually provoke them into declaring war and suing for peace a turn or two later. In ancient times, civilizations don't usually hold a grudge and are willing to talk peace really quickly. This might backfire if they happen to have an exploring military unit next to one of your cities or settlers, though.

>>6360408
Why can't I get near their cities but they have fucking troops all around mine.

>>6360413
Because if you're in a peace treaty, technically both sides are supposed to uphold the paragraph that says military units aren't allowed to loiter around your city limits. However, the AI loves to squat on your shit and then you have to call them up and demand for them to get the fuck out. Whether they listen or not depends on your relative Power rating (as mentioned before, your Power rating is a few key words that you can find out by dialing up your Foreign MInister (F3) and reading the line that says "Sire, your power is _____ and your reputation is_____"). If your power rating is lower, they're more likely to declare war. "Demand tribute for your patience" also occasionally causes the AI to forfeit their forces from your territory. If the AI is not happy with you, they are also more likely to have a volatile reaction to your demand.

BTW, this is also how you can annoy the AI into declaring war on you when you're in a Republic or Democracy or when you're trying to protect your Spotless reputation. Constantly demanding for them to fuck off of your territory tends to rile them up. So yes, the AI is basically Dick Cheneying you.

>>6360427
Also, note that you can decline to sign a peace treaty with an AI without provoking war. While this allows you to explore on their territory, it also opens you up to sneak attacks a bit more. (The AI will still Sneak Attack you when in a peace treaty, especially if they're particularly bloodthirsty (like in Multiplayer Gold) you have Space Flight, or if it's past 1750 AD). If you hadn't signed the peace treaty with the Egyptians, you could scout out their territory, albeit your diplomatic situation would be more volatile (though they can still be mostly appeased with gifts if you're not playing unpatched Multiplayer Gold).

>>6360449
Wait, what is wrong with playing Gold version?

>>6360474
While it's perfectly playable, it has an odd AI quirk where it will be unreasonably hostile to you, making diplomacy (and appeasement) difficult. I don't remember the specifics, but basically at the start of every turn the AI resets its reaction towards the human player to Hostile. It's also way more prone to sneak attacks. There's a way to fix that with some sort of change in a variable in one of the files, and Civ2UIALauncher utility allows you to turn the excess hostility off in its menu.

>>6360501
Was that AI reaction a error in coding? IT sounds very odd.

I always used the cheat codes to nuke my enemies while still in the ancient eras.

>>6360514
No clue, really! Since MGE was, well, aimed for multiplayer use, perhaps it was intentional to make games with players and AI in them more exciting or something. I don't know.

>>6360520
I'm furloughed and bored as fuck. I've been reseting Animal Crossing for 3 weeks 3 hours a day to get the perfect island layout. I need a break.

What is the nest CIV game?

>>6360532
Assuming this means the best, the answer varies from person to person. I'm biased towards Civ4 because it gives me the most challenge and streamlines some of the more busy mechanics that I don't care for much, while not sacrificing overall depth. I don't particularly like Civ5 and Civ6 because their AI is underequipped to deal with the One Unit Per Tile system.

In general, I think every Civ game has something in it for everyone, and I keep coming back to Civ2, Civ3 and Civ4 (but mostly to Civ4). Since I can't give a good answer that would satisfy everyone, I'm going to cheat and tell you to get Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which is mechanically most similar to Civ2, but it has a cult classic due to rich storytelling, refinement of certain mechanics and some very cool and innovative things it did (It did unique civilization traits 2 years before Civ3 did and "modular" government types 6 years before Civ4 did).

>>6360549
I like to building my cities without going out and killing everyone. I like to play Switzerland basically.

>>6360553
Every Civ game works okay for this. Just get some defenders and sit in your cities and grow them. I don't think any game really lends itself in particular to this, and in SMAC, University of Planet or U.N. Peacekeepers can easily play in that style. Civ3 and Civ4 added special traits, so if you want to just sit back and build shit, in Civ3 you'd pick, let's say, Babylon and in Civ4 you'd pick Inca, for example.

anyone know where I can download Civ2? the non-gold version. Do I need to mount the game on like Deamon?

>>6360201
>Expand like mad all the time
ftfy

>>6360582
drive google com/open?id=1yl0NP61XUivuT3C4pw71gJXeqSRmRlpH
add dots to the link where appropriate, it's gold but you can turn off the features from gold you don't want

>>6360225
Different anon, but could you please elaborate on trade routes? I always tried to grasp this shit and always failed, using Caravans solely for rushing wonders, as the routes were just too random for me.
How this shit even works? How it's decided who needs what and produces what? Can you even affect that, or it's lolsrandomdumb?

>>6360587
Doesn't GOLD remove the awesome music from the base game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxkHAbNbrxM

>>6360367
It's perfectly playable and unlike all the games that followed, runs on most basic simplicity

>>6360587
You need DEAMON for this. I'm not downloading DEAMON after what it did to my last PC

>>6360594
Before I start here's the elaborate answer:
https://apolyton.net/forum/civilization-series/civilization-i-and-civilization-ii/95334-early-landing-games-strategy-guide?p=2707840#post2707840

...but since it's basically a fucking dissertation and even I didn't internalize every single thing in that document because you don't need that even on Deity unless you're trying to beat high scores or landing dates, I'm going to try my best to simplify it.
>How it's decided who needs what and produces what?
Supply and Demand is affected by:
>city size (tiny, underdeveloped cities are likely to deal in Hides and Beads)
>tech level (for example, Pottery causes your cities to start supplying Salt; cities also don't generally supply/demand Oil or Uranium until Automobile / Nuclear Fission)
>city improvements
>location (on the map grid)
>tiles around your city (e.g. if you have Hills around, you are likely supplying Coal)
>occasionally a "wildcard" commodity happens to mix it up a bit.
Each commodity also has a secret demand modifier, for example if Gold is demanded it's value in revenue is much bigger than the value of demanded Beads.
>Can you even affect that, or it's lolsrandomdumb?
Based on above, you can:
>get or not get certain techs (if you don't want to trade Salt, you can avoid Pottery)
>keep cities small sized (wide empires full of 1-size cities, common on Deity, are often trading in Hides a lot)
>build in certain places
Also, if your city has traded all of its supply away and can't build any more non-food caravans, you can "unlock" its supply by delivering a caravan from another city to it.

But basically, if you're just starting off, you'll still get more than your money's worth from just spamming caravans, trying your best to meet Demands (by making ship chains of Triremes / Caravels / Galleons / Transports, preferrably), preferrably in foreign cities (for instant revenue in Gold and Research points) or any high trade city (for increasing Trade arrows).

>>6360615
You don't need to mount anything. I'm running this exact copy from that link without a CD on. Just simply turn off the CD-based features in the Civ2AIULauncher.exe options. (Disable CD Check)

>>6360635
Does it still have this music? >>6360601

>>6360639
No because it doesn't come with a CD, which you apparently don't want anyway because you don't want to use Daemon Tools.

>>6360642
Not him, but I can't see the counsel. Any idea why

>>6360671
because that's also a CD-only feature

>>6360532

My favorite is Civ 4 with the Realism: Invictus mod. It is pretty awesome.

>>6360112
>Any tips for a long game?
Spam cities.
Make cities so you reach as many workable tiles as possible.

Martial law is great when you're not growing with I love the king day+democracy.
martial law = military units in the city decreases unhappiness, doesn't work for democracy, capped at 3 military units.
The quality of the military unit isn't important, so spamming warriors just for happiness can be a good idea, just 3 for each city. This combos very well with Leonardos workshop, since Leonardos workshop upgrades units when you get new techs. Those Warriors will become Musketeers and later Riflemen.
Warriors have a low production cost so you'll save a lot of production this way.
Adam Smiths Stock Exchange can save you a ton of gold, because it makes it so all your buildings that cost 1 maintenance, costs 0.
Hoover Dam is also amazing, giving you the effect of a high value building in all your cities(on your home continent maybe, I think it's in all cities even if the tooltip says otherwise)


Note, in this screenshot I have way fewer cities than what is optimal, that's just because I was specifically settling cities in geographical india, not because that was a good number of cities.

Defensive bonuses are very strong.
A Phalanx has 1 attack and 2 defense.
But on a Forest it has 3 defense, on a Hill it has 4 defense, on a mountain it has 6 defense.
On a River Hill 5 defense.
A Phalanx behind city walls on flat terrain has 6 defense.
Legion/Knights have 4 attack, Catapults have 6 attack. So breaking defenses early on can be tough.
Terrain+City Wall modifiers are supposed to stack too, but not sure if they're additive together, looking up one source that says they're all multiplied but that doesn't seem right, because phalanx in a city with city walls on a mountain would get 2*3*3=18 defense.

>>6360587
Games run smooth, but obviously has GOLD's AI issues.
How to turn that shit off?

>>6360632
Oh, so it's essentially what I was always expecting, plus a hefty dose of lolsrandomdumb. No wonder I never bothered to make more than 2-3 routes per important cities and then always got bored with searching for partners.
The part that really annoyed me is that you can very quickly run out of destinations for your goods and that's a bummer.

>>6360781
The bonusus from tiles are additive, not multipliers. Which means a phalax in a walled hill city is going to have 8 defense, as hills give +2

>>6361928
CIV2UIALauncher.exe -> Options -> -> Enable civ2patch -> Enable "Hostile AI"

>>6360112
This is the game that defined ICS - Infinite City Sprawl. Forget about shit from Civ 1, as it was barely a game to begin with. Civ 2 is where you get all the stuff from making a tile of break and planting another city. Who fucking cares if they can't reliably frow beyond some low value of pops? That just saves you effort and requirement for aqueducts and sewers. Spam cities like crazy - you can't go wrong with it, and it thumphs pretty much any sort of finesse strategies and micro you can put into the game.

>>6360632
>Link to apolyton
Man, that brings memeories...

My starting area blows dick. Guess I need boats ASAP

>>6362827

>>6360532
probably civ4
3 is very good as well, both are worth a look

>>6362829
What happened to Paris?
Anyway, your starting area isn't the worst. You have a ton of grassland (just road it), are safe from invasion, and Settle the Whales ASAP.
You don't need to build cities so far away, even if you're aiming for being perfectionist.
Get Map Making-> Trireme and put the horsemen on them to seek out new life and new civilizations.
Settle a city on an island for better trade.
This might be a rare game where Lighthouse would be good but there is a habitable island to the south of you so maybe not.
You have room here for like 12 cities.

>>6362829
Probably how I would've settled if I was precognitive in your situation.
Yellow=Less Certain.

Depends a bit on the southern continent.

>>6363117
I wouldn't settle on grassland [shield] tiles though, that's a waste.

>>6363138
As long as the city reached 1 more tile it's worth it.

>>6363551
We differ in philosophy, then.
On Deity, you stay at size 1-2 for such a long time that you have no reason to be running surplus food tiles if possible, since those tend to push you over into revolt or force you to run Elvises. Since this start is entirely grass, you only have 2/0/0 tiles for a while in immediate vicinity. 2/1/0 is a marked improvement over such a tile. If you can road it quickly, it's a 2/1/1 tile you will be working for a long time.

If you're doing hard ICS, you are often unlikely to see cities grow past size 8 anyway (since you're going cheapo on aqueducts, and there's an unhappiness modifier from city size meaning it's difficult to control a vast number of large cities), so I'd be really mindful of preserving those grassland [shield] tiles.

>>6363936
>unhappiness modifier from city size
from amount of cities* you have

>>6360587
Seems to be the old, strip-down version of the game. Plays no music (aside menu and cues), doesn't auto-save and doesn't have the council or the videos. What am I missing? Because I might just stick to the old, strip-down version that at least was released in my native

>>6363936
Different anon, but if you are going hard on ICS, you don't really care about actual productivity of fields - you just churm up 3 new cities ASAP from each new one and sprawl over any landmass you can encounter. The only time ICS doesn't work is if you start on some tiny island that would have hard time contain more than 5 (regular, non-ICS) cities. Other than that, ICS is just what the name implies - sprawling out of any control, for the sake of it. You don't really start upgrading your cities or area around them until you have like 20 of them

>>6363936
>>6364503
Also, the only game that allows to do ICS that's also efficient and profitable long-term is SMAC, due to ability to use supply crawlers and having tile improvements that synergise well with the strategy. Any other Civ and Civ-like game will face inefficient design when pulling ICS

>>6364503
>you don't really care about actual productivity of fields
What Anon posited wasn't even hard ICS, otherwise the island would have been entirely littered with cities. The design is built sparsely and measured at not wasting overlap, but we don't know what's on the island to the south, the terrain is extraordinarily poor in shields, and you don't want to / can't grow your cities to high sizes until at least Hanging Gardens or Michel's, anyway. This city's best tile (as far as we know) is being settled on, and it's hard to tell when its surroundings will be roaded or when Harbors will come online.
>>6364504
There are early spaceship landing saves from GOTM competitions that use some variety of ICS. Here's a 1134 AD win using ICS.

I don't think ICS is necessarily the most efficient way to play the game in SMAC unless you're Morgan, who's forced into it.
>>6364501
Like 4 different posts in this thread already are saying, the reason you don't have those features is because you don't have the CD. That version doesn't have the CD either. You would have to get a mounted .iso. The launcher that this version is bundled with supports CD features if you have the CD. Anon asked if there's a way to play Civ2, and a link was provided.

>>6364521
I'm not saying ICS is the most efficient way of playing SMAC. I'm saying that SMAC is the only game in the whole "franchise" where you can go for ICS disregarding terrain and just setting base after another AND enjoy full efficiency of the design, since you have things like crawlers, satellites (which allow some massive buff due to the scale of your base numbers) and silly things like non-cheated clean minerals limit counted in three digits

And not the anon asking about that release, but I suppose iso for Gold is the one needed, right? I can provide that, but that would be just regular piracy.
Also, why the fuck GOG didn't release Civ yet? Like what the hell?

>>6364527
Thanks for clarifying, it was really clear from your first post what you meant, but my head's in the clouds today.
Yeah, .iso for Gold would be needed, I'm assuming, since the google doc is basically just Civ2 MGE with UIALauncher bundled in.
>why the fuck GOG didn't release Civ yet?
Good question, actually.

>>6364527
Copyright issues. Technically speaking, Civ 1 and 2 belong to MicroProse, which library is now owned by like 40 different entities (some of them defunct themselves). Which is why SMAC, Civ 3 and 4 is on GOG, because they were released by Meier's own Firaxis, but Civ 2 and 1 are missing. And will probably stay like that until someone decides to spend few millions just to get an ancient, retro game from clutches of few idiots that just sit on their share of copyright for it. And that's assuming none of them will decide to spike up the price further.
Not saying that Civ 2 doesn't deserve modern re-release and fixes, but it's exceptionally dodgy due to the clusterfuck of copyrights. Mickey Mouse approves!

>>6360112
i just played 2 matches again, was really awesome. it's hard to get it to run on pc, you need an xp emulator for the original game. one of the versions floating around also has a glitch that makes the relation with ais reset to -100 after every turn, essentially rendering diplomacy useless.

look up guides.

also anyone knows a version where you can play the original music? i couldn't so in the end settled with playing without music.

i have the original CD somewhere but couldn't find it in like 5 hours

>>6365452
If you have original CD, all you have to do is mount it and use it in the game settings to play music.

>>6365445
just use Civ2UIALauncher which solves both of those issues

>>6365445
>it's hard to get it to run on pc
>He uses Win10

>>6360383
The Civ2 WW2 scenario was so fucking good. I had so much fun as the brits, germany, and russia.

>>6360112
Civilization 3 is the peak of civ games and I suggest trying to get that working instead

>>6367886
The actual peak is SMAC.
3 would be good, if not retarded expansions, their even worse power creep and also brain-dead AI.

>>6367992
SMAC is definitely the peak

>>6360632
>Someone spend their days of life figuring this out
>Somoene spend hours of their day to write this down
>Someone expect anyone to spend their time on reading this all
Haha, caravan goes ka-ching! and freight goes brrrr!

>>6371749
>Someone who doesn't play video games enters boards about video games
>Someone looks for threads about things he doesn't like
>Someone bumps a page 10 thread with useless ESL-ridden sperging
Haha, retard press Post!

>>6371786
>If you aren't autist that gives a fuck what the caravan produces and genuinely seek a difference in delivery money between 420 and 435 money, it means you aren't playing games
I'm eager to bet a fiver that I'm playing Civ 2 longer than you are alive.
Also, decide yourself - either this is a board about video games and discussion about them, or useless thread that shouldn't be bumped.

>>6372701
>outwardly and unironically P*lish
>uses the "lmao I've been playing Civ2 when you've been shitting your diapers" argument
>shits on actual video game discussion, just wants to show how "based" by being dismissive of people having actual passion for something
Ale ja tobą gardzę, nie masz pojęcia

>>6360781
Map could use some work. Since when is India a completely flat plain? There's hills running up and down the peninsula and the central part is a plateau.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:India_topo_big.jpg

>>6372714
Since it's the modern era and Anon most likely terraformed everything he could into a Grassland when he got Engineers.

>>6372706
>outwardly and unironically retarded
>never heard about sarcasm or jokes
>can't even into basic memes, yet posting on 4chan
>gets his panties in a twist, when told it in his face
Ale serio, co ty tu koleś robisz, bo nie rozumiem twojego problemu, poza tym, że jesteś zjebany

>>6372719
the only thing basic and a meme here is you
wypierdalaj

>>6372718
Did anyone ever figured out how the "with shield" chance is drawn? Or it's too much RNG to do it and up to chance? Because it's definitely not the old claim of "you can't get two shielded grasslands in a row from plains" (I just did so 3 hours ago when finishing up a map), yet it feels very random and if you insist on transforming the same field ad nauseam, it will eventually give you a shielded grassland, but that's either extensive save-scumming OR wasting an army of engineers for a single tile.

>>6372720
First week in the internet?
Uspokój cycki

>>6372723
>Did anyone ever figured out how the "with shield" chance is drawn?
Yes, but they forfeited their autistic writings about it once the P*lish man showed up and said it's a waste of time and life to calculate this.

>>6372718
I'd leave some hills behind to get extra shields for my manufacturing capability. It is a lot better in Civ3 and up where you can put resources wherever instead of the RNG randomly dropping them on a tile.

>>6372728
Roaded Grass with superhighways under Democracy is 3/1/4 or something like that, railroaded mines are like 1/4/0, and if you have a ton of trade you can just rushbuy everything with the tax slider.

I always liked how in Civ2 you could use caravans to transfer stuffs between cities including food which is much more realistic than how it works in the later games.

>Civ2
>barbarians just randomly pop out of tiles where the player doesn't have line of sight in
>they can occupy cities
>Civ3
>barbarians have actual villages they spawn out of, they can't take cities only raid them
>Civ4
>back to how it works in Civ2

>>6372738
>back to how it works in Civ2
Not really
I had a game a while ago where a trireme with 3 horsemen spawned on a lake next to which I settled my first city
needless to say that was a quick Retire from me
Civ4 wouldn't allow this

>wah wah we made all religions in Civ4 completely neutral because we're PC and don't want to offend anyone

>>6372730
Considering caravans were retired from the series until the god-awful Civ 5, I don't know what the fuck you are even talking about. Part of the reason why Civ 5 was such clusterfuck of bad decisions and bad mechanics was trying to "return to the roots" of Civ 2, without fucking understanding how Civ 2 played, as it was all made by a Panzer General fanboy who apparently only ever heard about Civ games, but never played any.

>>6372738
>barbarians have actual villages they spawn out of, they can't take cities only raid them
Which is far, far, FAR worse, since there is nothing to recapture, once they are done.

>>6372753
Have you tried C2C? Religions aren't neutral in it.
Which leads to situation where you only want three of them: Druidism, Shamanism and Shinto. Everything else is pretty much fucking useless. Also, Druidism and Shamanism aren't useful until you reach about modern times and you need every single facility that decreases pollution you can get. So in the end, Shinto is the only useful one.
Also, Civ 5 had even worse system, because religions are not only neutral, but also formable from pre-defined elements, so it really fucking doesn't matter, as long as you pick the right set of bonuses, leading to the same religion being formed over and over and over again.

>wah wah
The only person sperging are idiots like you who don't even play the game, but are offended by the fact religions are just a feature in them, rather than some sort of important mechanics.

>>6372761
>Which leads to situation where you only want three of them: Druidism, Shamanism and Shinto
To be fair, regular Civ4 games have a massive bias for splitting the map across the Buddhist, Hindu and the occasional Jewish blocs. Very rarely is Confucianism or Taoism relevant due to the Oracle plays or bulbs. Whoever wins the Meditation/Polytheism race usually dictates the diplomacy for the rest of the game.

>>6372738
Civ 2 mountains
>Utterly trash tile that has some of the worst productivity
>Bad resources
>Fucks-up trade goods for caravans
>Turned into Hills the moment it is possible
Civ 3 mountains
>The best possible tile once you switch from Despotism to anything else
>Very good resources
>Perfect spots for defense
>You wish you could turn Hills into those badboys
Civ 4 mountains
>Back to Civ 2 shitness, also impassable now, unless specific unit upgrade is had

I feel you

>>6372773
You sure yo are talking about vanilla 4? Because last time I've checked, you wanted to have as many religions as possible as a founder AND as many religions as possible in every single fucking city on the planet.

Here's how it should have worked:

>Christianity
The basic everyman religion with no particular advantages or disadvantages.
>Judaism
All marketplaces/banks/stock exchanges produce doubled output. If you're playing Germany or Arabs, the presence of Judaism in one of your cities will cause unhappiness in that city.
>Islam
Science output is reduced by 50%. All military units can be produced twice as fast.
>Hinduism
City maintenance costs reduced 50%. You cannot build a sewer system in your cities.
>Buddhism
Going to war causes additional unhappiness in your cities.
>Taoism
>Confucianism
Fuck do I know.

>>6372773
>>6372780
And you preferably wanted to do that before Monasteries are no longer possible to build, since their bonus to research persisted even after the building was disabled. More religions = more monasteries = more research. A complete no-brainer.

>>6372753
>>6372773
>>6372781
>>>/pol/

Nobody cares about you being edgy, not to mention the most important bit:
Not retro.

>>6372780
>you wanted to have as many religions as possible as a founder
No, you didn't. Going down the religious tech path is delaying your worker techs, and the "meta" opening is Worker first anyway. You're delaying growth for a dubious bonus to happiness and culture that you don't need in the first turns. On high difficulties you pretty much always let the AI get religions and spread them to you (since they are the ones paying for the missionaries), since it's much easier on the diplomacy for the player (if you found a religion, you have to spend a ton of hammers spreading it and converting the AIs, which leaves you in the dust).
Spamming monasteries is nice before they expire but again, the opportunity cost associated with hoarding religions is too much to consider. You get Monasteries when possible and firmly as a "nice to have" bonus rather than something to base your play on.
Multi-religion play is only useful for Cultural Victory, but even then it pales in comparison with turning off science for Free Speech and just running a 100% Culture slider with a lot of Cottages.
>>6372781
>hehehehehe religions shouldn't be neutral xD instead they should grant bonuses based on..... wait for it... stereotypes xDDD get it? xDDDDDDD hilarious xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
I'm going to help you out, Taoism gives you a free Artist (the man who goes TINGTINGTINGTINGTINGTINGTING YOOOOOOOO) and Confucianism gives you fortunes every single time you discover a tech xDDDD ebin xDDDDDDDDDD

Here's how it should have worked:

>Christianity
The basic everyman religion with no particular advantages or disadvantages.
>Judaism
All marketplaces/banks/stock exchanges produce doubled output. If you're playing Germany or Arabs, the presence of Judaism in one of your cities will cause unhappiness in that city.
>Islam
Science output is reduced by 50%. All military units can be produced twice as fast. Can build special unit Suicide Bomber which can explode and damage adjacent enemy units, destroying itself in the process.
>Hinduism
City maintenance costs reduced 50%. You cannot build a sewer system in your cities.
>Buddhism
Going to war causes additional unhappiness in your cities.
>Taoism
>Confucianism
Fuck do I know.

Actually they were PC enough that in Civ4 they didn't make Hirohito the Japanese ruler since they were afraid Japanese would be offended and not buy the game (like if you have a cartoony depiction of the emperor it's offensive?). So instead it was Tokugawa or something.

>>6372807
>they were PC because they reused Tokugawa, the iconic Japanese leader since Civ2

>>6372803
>Confucianism
The only unit you can produce ever is the Kung-Fu Fighter. Amazing early game, gets deleted late game.

>>6372807
>like we can't use Hitler as the German ruler that's offensive but we can use Stalin and Mao for their respective countries after they killed even more people

>>6372803
>Post gets removed by jannies
>Reposts it once more after pulling ban evasion

>>6372802
The point of monastery spam isn't about early game (where you can't get monasteries anyway), but to not rush for Scientific Method and use the extra time gained this way to propagate as many religions as you can and getting as many monasteries as you can, for fucking +10% research PER MONASTERY bonus. This bonus persists even once you can't build new monasteries, so ironically, you get more research by NOT rushing toward industrialisation ASAP.
So I'm not sure what are you even babbling about

>>6372845
>>6372802
>>6372787
Not that guy but damn, when did /vr/ become Tumblr where we need safespaces and are offended by every little fucking thing?

>>6372864
From the first sentence of the sticky:
>This board is for the discussion of classic, or "retro" games.
You sure you are in a right board to talk your bullshit, my man?

>>6372860
>The point of monastery spam isn't about early game (where you can't get monasteries anyway)
You are missing the point. There's a very tiny frame of time between Monasteries being even a viable avenue of pursuit (they cost hammers and they are never discounted, and you want to be rushing out workers / settlers / libraries / units or building Wealth / Research instead) and the discovery of Sci Method.
>This bonus persists even once you can't build new monasteries
It does not, actually.
You are advocating for a strat where you found a ton of religions. This cripples your growth rate because you're working unimproved tiles (since you aren't discovering techs that improve terrain), and it's not even likely you will snag most of them because Mysticism-starting AIs with research bonuses on higher difficulty levels have an advantage.
+10% research per monastery is nice - the post you're replying to even says so - it's just really not worth it to hoard religions just for the sake of building monasteries, or make them a pivotal point in your strategy.
Also delaying Scientific Method for too long is rarely even a good idea since Biology and Communism are extremely powerful.
Since Scientific Method deletes the science bonus from Monasteries, all you have going for Monasteries is a small, trickling bonus to science in the early game. You're better off getting more Libraries earlier and using Great Scientists from the specialists you will run to lightbulb important techs, then trade them.
Monasteries are firmly a nice bonus, not something to base your scientific strategy around.

>>6372915
>There's a very tiny frame of time between Monasteries being even a viable avenue of pursuit and the discovery of Sci Method.
Which is the entire point of this thing. Rather than rushing toward Sci Method, you should slow the fuck down and spam monasteries when you still can and can afford doing so. It's not a rocket science, man.
The only improvement you are lacking is building unconnected irrigation, granted by Biology. At this point of the game, all your cities should already have all their tiles improved anyway.
>it's just really not worth it to hoard religions just for the sake of building monasteries, or make them a pivotal point in your strategy.
Yes, a 70% increase of research per city that sticks for the rest of the game is totally not worth pursuing. Of course it's not. Better to rush techs like an idiot so you can lose ability to build said 70% bonus increase for nothing in particular. It's not that you could earn profit while pursuing this strategy by decreasing research spending (and not exactly slowing down), earning money needed for rushing buildings or anything like that.
Nope, let's just cancel monasteries, because... reasons!

>>6372915
>>6372921
The 7 turns you are going to spend per city on monasteries all well worth to "waste" considering the final boon from this.

>>6372921
>sticks for the rest of the game
It doesn't. That's what I keep telling you. There's no more science boost after Scientific Method is out. The only benefit from Monasteries you get after SM is the ability to build Missionaries without Organized Religion. That's it. You're working off incorrect data.
>Yes, a 70% increase of research per city that sticks for the rest of the game is totally not worth pursuing.
It isn't. Because not only is this not a permanent bonus as I keep repeating, investing into the long-term in Civ4 is never as good as knocking out the first turns. 70% research from monasteries is a pipe dream due to increasing chances of spreading religion failure and the ridiculous cost in hammers that monasteries and missionaries are. You won't outpace the AI in that way.
You can be winning the game with a strong Liberalism slingshot into Steel, SciMeth or Biology way before Divine Right is ever researched.
>The only improvement you are lacking is building unconnected irrigation, granted by Biology.
Biology is for +1 food per Farm for pop explosion. You're forgetting Communism, which unlocks State Property, making Workshops ridiculously good and removing any problems with distance maintenance.

>>6372776
Mountains are great source of copper and silver, so given the spike of late-game copper demand, it's pretty handy. But tile-wise, yeah, even fucking tundra is better

>>6372926
>It doesn't. That's what I keep telling you.
Test play it. Go on, do the basic check in-game.
Then tell me again how the research bonus is lost, you moron. It wasn't until modders started to work with the game where bonuses from cancelled buildings are no longer provided. But as far as vanilla BtS is concerned, buildings persistingly provide their bonuses, even when they are no longer possible to build.

>>6372970
>But as far as vanilla BtS is concerned, buildings persistingly provide their bonuses, even when they are no longer possible to build.
No. Monasteries lose their bonus to science. The only bonus you get from them is the ability to keep making missionaries, as well as the culture bonus (presumably also from the "landmark" status after 1000 years pass). I don't have any mods I play that I would base contradictory data from.

>>6372970
But okay, let's go. Let's play your game. Every single thing on the internet says Monasteries obsolete with Scientific Method. Worldbuildered Commerce city with 7 religions and 7 monasteries, plus some temples to work all of those Towns.

>>6372970
>>6372996
And now we add Scientific Method with the world builder and... voila, now you're also proven wrong by a direct 4chan post. This install is regular Civ4 BtS from Steam. Doesn't even have BUG installed. Not that it would have mattered in the first place, because as it turns out, Scientific Method obsoletes the Monastery science bonus no matter what.

>>6372714
>>6372718
It actually isn't a flat plain.
I terraformed everything into hills, but the farms make it less apparent.

The reason I terraformed everything into hills is because I kept playing after the victory and I was melting the icecaps over and over to ruin the rest of the world through global warming.
When global warming hits terrains change in certain lines depending on the terrain type.
But, some terrain types like hills and mountains don't change, so india would stay the same.

I even brought down parts of the Himalayas from mountains to plains outside my perimeter, to get rid of the defensive bonuses of the invading Babylonians and Chinese.
Here's how it looked a century earlier.

>>6372968
Mountains are dog-shit bad, regardless of meme trade commodities your main goal, when setting up trade within your own borders, is to pair two cities that are the furthest away, regardless of what they exactly trade, since it's the combination of trade in the city (and thus population) and distance that affects profits, not goods traded, which are only useful for the one-off money grab
>No food, ever
>Less shields than hills
>Obviously can't be settled
>Iron and Gold are meh and don't scale with Wine or Coal that hills have
>You can easily turn regular mountain into hill with bonus resource if you know what you are doing, making it even more profitable

>>6372723
>and if you insist on transforming the same field ad nauseam, it will eventually give you a shielded grassland,
No that's not how it works.
It is soley depended on the map seed and follows a pattern like the resources in civ2.

>>6373364
Different anon, but does it mean each field has pre-scribed qualities? So no matter what, it is going to give shield or a bonus resource and thus you can't fuck that up?

>>6373423
You can't change it once the map has started.
Other than maybe cheating, but I don't think so, I don't remember.

This means if you open the map up in the editor, and change the terrain to grassland, you can check which plains, forests, hill tiles etc have grassland shields under them.
And which grassland tiles hide resources.

Or you can study the pattern.

>>6373423
There is a very obvious pattern to special tiles and their occurence. From each resource you can see, press Page Up three times, then Page Down once. If there is nothing in that tile currently, try to change it with engineer to something else. There are two outcomes:
1) It's a special tile that required change to unlock
2) The tile from which you started is a border of a cluster, so you are on genuinely empty field now

Pic related is how it works in practice.

The special resources are pre-defined in their type (since each type of field can have two special resources on it), so you will always get one or another and they are unchangable. Say you have Coal on Hills. Change to Plains and you have Bison. But if you had Wine, Plains would give you Wheat instead.

tl;dr follow the pattern and you will potentially tap out new resources with it or at least find a "border" of your cluster

>>6373423
>>6373550
Also, it means that you can't access certain special tiles, since their starting "form" won't allow you to have them.
For example, you can have a special tile that's currently Mountains. Even if you change it, you can't have Gold Or Iron (Mountain's special tiles), only Wine or Coal (Hills' special tiles).
This also means it is potentially beneficial to change grassland with shields, because it means it can contain resources, as long as it fits the pattern of a cluster.

>>6373574
So... if I have enough time/engineers, potentially a shielded grassland can turn out to be plains with wheat? Noice!

>>6373550
Thanks for all the info. I sorta hate that I can barely make use of it because my recent COVID pastime was trying to optimize early landing and early conquest games and engineer turns are at too much of a premium to do anything like that (well, and in conquest I usually don't hit Explosives)

>>6373916
You can still change forest to other tiles (or plant forest as your desired tile) with settlers. That still can potentially unlock a hidden special tile if it wasn't revealed yet.

>>6373916
Is there any real definiton of "early landing"? Or just "whichever year that isn't 20th century and relatively close to it"?

>>6374289
Basically I've been trying to at least beat my usual landing date of the early 1800s, but I've seen GOTM save files where they landed in dates like 850 AD, 1134 AD, 1525 AD and so on. The world record on a particularly strong map with everything going just right was AD 16, so a decent ship (I think 9/3/1?) launched exactly at 1 AD.

It's just that I'm good enough to beat Deity every single time but not good enough to really cut down on the landing times, so I'm just testing myself like that instead of gunning for high score.
So I guess your definition of early landing is as good as mine.

>>6373825
>So... if I have enough time/engineers, potentially a shielded grassland can turn out to be plains with wheat? Noice!
Sure, but a non shielded grassland can also turn out to be plains with wheat.

This reads like some Eastern Yuropoor's edgy Civilization fanfic.

>>6374632
My point was more about the fact people rarely try to change shielded grassland into anything else, since it's seen as the ultimate field that shouldn't be messed with. Non-shielded ones usually are first to be changed by planting forests.

>>6360561
>Every Civ game works okay for this.

Not Civ 3. AI is extremely unfriendly.

>>6373550
There are actually 2 patterns for this. The one you've posted in green is "4 wide". In the top right corner, with whlales, you've got an example of a patter that's "4 tall", so the grouping is different.
This is important to note, because it can be frustrating to search for right pattern without knowing there are really two of those.

>>6375779
>There are actually 2 patterns for this
ah right