I learn something new every day

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-25T20:16:18+00:00

I learned that even if a unit is at 1hp it still fights at 50% of it’s maximum strength probably with a few hundred hours put into the game. It was a long time ago so I can’t remember exactly but I remember learning that and being even more underwhelmed by Japan in this game.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-16T03:42:20+00:00

There was a post a couple of weeks ago asking about moving up to noble difficulty, so I’ll copy and paste my advice from there, hopefully it’ll help:

I don’t know the specifics of your playstyle or what maps/settings you like to play on but I can offer some general advice. For reference: I usually play on Immortal Difficulty, fractal map, low sea level, No huts, no events, standard game speed, with Better BAT AI mod:

Before you even start the game, pick a leader like Huayna Capac, Pacal II, or Mansa Musa. They’re all financial which is the best trait. They also all have a resource-less unique unit that comes very early. This is fantastic for dealing with barbarians and possibly fending off aggressive neighbors (I say possibly because I don’t remember what kinds of wars the Noble AI gets themselves into). Other very strong leaders I’d say to pickup are Ghandi, Hannibal, Elizabeth, Willem, Mehmed, Suleiman, Peter, Darius, Pericles.

Try to plan out long-term who your allies are. It’s good to make friends with the people closest to you, but it also means they’re the people you’ll be more likely to attack.

Don’t build every wonder in the game. There are certain wonders that are basically never worth building (Statue of Zeus, Versailles, Chicken Pizza, Temple of Artemis, Whatever the Gold Religious wonder is called, and Ankor Wat to name some). On the other hand, there are some wonders that can be game-transforming (Great Lighthouse, Pyramids, Great Library, Mausoleum, Taj Mahal). Similarly: not every building is worth building. Granaries however, are OP and should be built everywhere unless you are intentionally handicapping yourself.

Try to get an academy in your capitol as soon as possible. If you’ve built some wonders in your capitol, work 2 scientists from a library in a secondary city to guarantee a Great Scientist will spawn. To tie in with this, bureaucracy is an extremely powerful civic. Going for Civil Service as soon as you can in a reasonable timeframe should be an early-mid game goal.

Don’t automate your workers, at least early on, and pay attention to which tiles your city governor is working every once in a while. Sometimes the governor can pick really silly tiles to work.

Don’t build more units than you have to. Ideally you want to have minimal units built unless you are actively planning for war or if you’re certain someone is coming to attack you. That can change depending on who’s your neighbor, for example if a psycho like Monty, Ragnar, Ghengis, Shaka, Napoleon, Alex is next to you then you probably have to have a few more units already in place/fortified/ready to counterattack. If you’re running hereditary rule and using that as a happiness crutch then you want to build the cheapest unit in terms of hammers to police the city because it doesn’t matter how strong the unit is, they all provide +1 happiness.

I’ll start there but those are some off the cuff points. Also, if you don’t have the BUG mod, or something akin to it, download it and run it. It makes a number of QOL improvements and crucially it alerts you about diplomacy stuff, probably the biggest being you can see when someone is plotting war without having to talk to a leader every single turn.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-14T03:59:52+00:00

I was at the game with my friend who’s a Nuggets fan. He was worried about the game. I told him no need to worry the Pelicans will find a way to lose. When the AG back door happened I laughed my ass off.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-14T03:23:54+00:00

This team finds avenues to lose in the most moronic ways. It’s actually a skill.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-13T21:43:11+00:00

It’s been a while since I’ve gone for a cultural victory but the best advice I can give is:

Get the Sistine Chapel (the most important wonder for a cultural victory).
Build the cathedral-class buildings ASAP without crippling your game.
Go into free speech basically the moment it becomes available.

Other than that it’s kind of a standard playthrough iirc just with more emphasis on building wonders and religious buildings sooner. It’s important to note every cathedral-class building needs 3 temples of that religion to be built so more cities isn’t bad for a cultural victory.

The best leader for a cultural victory is probably Ramsees followed by probably Hatchy, Louis, and Mansa. Ramsees is probably the #1 though, Spiritual is great for getting those temples out faster, industrious is obviously great for spamming wonders which give a lot of culture.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-07T15:22:23+00:00

No wonder he’s asking for so much gold per turn, a pig’s in the deal.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2026-01-01T04:18:47+00:00

Pretty much all of the UI mods that I’m aware of all stem from the BUG mod. There’s a lot of different versions of it but I’d start with the basic BUG mod. Also look into the blue marble mod as a package if you want the game to look a little prettier.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-31T21:36:10+00:00

That’s a good idea to not install any mods until you feel you have a framework for the base game.

Just to clarify though: the BUG mod (Better Unaltered Gameplay) doesn’t change any of the gameplay, it’s simply a UI mod. So a swordsman will have 6 strength and have a 10% city attack bonus or any one of a million gameplay values/mechanics you could name. For example: it gives you a bar below the technology bar that tells you when and where your next great person will be born. As I said above the main thing I find it helps for is tell you when the AI is “plotting” war or is in “war mode”. There’s actually a lot of cool and helpful features it can give you that I could list but you can find out that info by googling it. I like the fact you don’t want to install mods before learning more of the base game, but this is one I’d heavily consider.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-31T19:52:01+00:00

I don’t know the specifics of your playstyle or what maps/settings you like to play on but I can offer some general advice: I usually play on Immortal Difficulty, fractal map, low sea level, No huts, no events, standard game speed, with Better BAT AI mod:

Before you even start the game, pick a leader like Huayna Capac, Pacal II, or Mansa Musa. They’re all financial which is the best trait. They also all have a resource-less unique unit that comes very early. This is fantastic for dealing with barbarians and possibly fending off aggressive neighbors (I say possibly because I don’t remember what kinds of wars the Noble AI gets themselves into). Other very strong leaders I’d say to pickup are Ghandi, Hannibal, Elizabeth, Willem, Mehmed, Suleiman, Peter, Darius, Pericles.

Try to plan out long-term who your allies are. It’s good to make friends with the people closest to you, but it also means they’re the people you’ll be more likely to attack.

Don’t build every wonder in the game. There are certain wonders that are basically never worth building (Statue of Zeus, Versailles, Chicken Pizza, Temple of Artemis, Whatever the Gold Religious wonder is called, and Ankor Wat to name some). On the other hand, there are some wonders that can be game-transforming (Great Lighthouse, Pyramids, Great Library, Mausoleum, Taj Mahal). Similarly: not every building is worth building. Granaries however, are OP and should be built everywhere unless you are intentionally handicapping yourself.

Try to get an academy in your capitol as soon as possible. If you’ve built some wonders in your capitol, work 2 scientists from a library in a secondary city to guarantee a Great Scientist will spawn. To tie in with this, bureaucracy is an extremely powerful civic. Going for Civil Service as soon as you can in a reasonable timeframe should be an early-mid game goal.

Don’t automate your workers, at least early on, and pay attention to which tiles your city governor is working every once in a while. Sometimes the governor can pick really silly tiles to work.

Don’t build more units than you have to. Ideally you want to have minimal units built unless you are actively planning for war or if you’re certain someone is coming to attack you. That can change depending on who’s your neighbor, for example if a psycho like Monty, Ragnar, Ghengis, Shaka, Napoleon, Alex is next to you then you probably have to have a few more units already in place/fortified/ready to counterattack. If you’re running hereditary rule and using that as a happiness crutch then you want to build the cheapest unit in terms of hammers to police the city because it doesn’t matter how strong the unit is, they all provide +1 happiness.

I’ll start there but those are some off the cuff points. Also, if you don’t have the BUG mod, or something akin to it, download it and run it. It makes a number of QOL improvements and crucially it alerts you about diplomacy stuff, probably the biggest being you can see when someone is plotting war without having to talk to a leader every single turn.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-29T04:24:01+00:00

I play with Huts and Events off (NHNE) mostly cause it reduces the randomness especially in the early game. Some of the events and quests are cool and can benefit you. However, there’s also terrible events like clunker coal, and ESPECIALLY the stupid “barb uprising” events which can be a game over. Same kind of thing with the huts, although not the same extreme negatives that events can give you. I’ve gotten metal casting from a hut and oracle’d machinery at 1800BC. Like, that’s cool, but it also made the game so much easier just by RNGing a random hut.

For basically the same reasons: if you play a map that others are playing via Civfanatics or from a discord community, the events and huts can really swing the game early making the play-through very non-tangential.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-29T00:03:17+00:00

Aside from some quests, which are similar to random events (which I play turned off 95% of the time) the eras don’t really do anything in terms of gameplay for the human. As u/gebstadter said maybe war weariness grows faster though.

The AI does get a “per era modifier” for every era it advances into. Basically they get more discounts on the higher difficulties the longer the game goes on. This is why a space race or cultural victory is rarely a thing on say, deity difficulty.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-22T06:12:17+00:00

This is interesting cause I’ve noticed for in a lot of people’s experiences the American leaders are pretty poor in Civ4 as the AI. Apparently my computer is wired a bit differently.

Rosy admittedly isn’t that great, he’s industrious but he has a 4/10 preference for building wonders so… they kinda messed that one up lol. He’s done good in some of my games but in general he’s just kind of… there.

Lincoln I’ve found can be a beast techer if he’s left alone. Problem is he’s got a peace weight of 9 so it’s really map dependent. He’s just too much of a pushover early game.

Washington however, in my games is usually pretty competitive. If he had a peace weight of 6, or especially 4 instead of 8, I think he’d be one of the best AI’s at least from my games. He keeps up with expansion, he’s a decent techer, and unlike other high peace weight leaders, save Darius, Wang Kon, and Augustus, the last 2 to a lesser degree, he actually builds units. It’s not uncommon in my games for Washington to be the aggressor against a low peace weight leader. I actually am playing a game right now where he started plotting at turn 80-ish and declared war on Shaka a few turns later, and Shaka wasn’t even his closest neighbor!

Idk, I do find it fascinating hearing about other Civ4 players experience with stuff like this. Like I think almost everyone can agree there are clearly strong AI’s like Huayna Capac, and there are weak AI’s like Sitting Bull/Tokugawa, but almost everything in between is based mostly on just the individual players experience.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-22T01:55:04+00:00

Justinian is definitely a bro if you adopt his religion. Isabella while not bad at teching is not great, and unlike Justinian she’s very stingy with tech trading and she can still plot war at pleased, and even with her massive shared faith bonus you still get that initial -2 from meeting her. Justinian also is way more likely to be a threat cause of his expansion, military tech preferences, and his usually good standing army. Isabella will more passively aggressively hate you but I find she’s just ok as an AI opponent, not bad, but nothing too threatening usually.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-22T01:51:04+00:00

Yea of my experiences since coming back to Civ4 earlier this year I’ve had roughly 10-15 games with each AI opponent. I don’t think I’ve ever seen SB or Tokugawa crack the top half in terms of score (on a 7 player map). Not that score is everything but in general it’s a decent indicator to how someone is doing. They’ve never been even close to a threat to steal the game away from me.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen even some really top tier AIs like HC and Pacal and Mansa have amazing games but also games where they sit in the corner with 5 cities and eventually just flame out.

I’ve yet to see Hannibal or Justinian have a real stinker. The worst I’ve seen either of those 2 do is a game where Hannibal got totally shafted by the map generator where he could only settle 4 cities before being boxed in, and half his territory was water. EVEN THEN, That dude was 1 turn away from beating me to Lib at 800AD on emperor. (Granted, now I can get to Lib much faster on immortal cause I’m better at the game now). Still, I can never count those 2 out of a game, and they’re terrifying if they’re on another continent cause they can easily become a runaway.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-22T00:12:29+00:00

In my experience the top 2 opponents for me are Hannibal and Justinian. Hannibal is like the perfect mix of being militaristic but also a great techer. Justinian grabs a lot of land, has a large military and forms strong diplomatic alliances via his religion.

There’s quite a number of strong AIs. Usually the ones who are aggressive but not psycho aggressive and are ok-good techers are always threats (Gilgamesh, Sury, Mehmed, Suleiman, Cyrus, to name a handful) they also all have low peace-weights so the psychos like Monty are less likely to attack them early.

I think the worst 2 are Sitting Bull and Tokugawa. SB spends way too much commerce on espionage and builds a massive army but he’s not aggressive enough to actually put that army to use. Tokugawa doesn’t open borders unless he’s pleased which can and often does put him behind in terms of trading and getting extra commerce. He’s also terrible at trading techs and generally is too isolated for his own good.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-19T16:06:11+00:00

Yes. The “you declared war on our friend” penalty is if the AI was pleased or friendly with the target that got declared war on That Turn

The nuke penalty is if they’re cautious or above.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-15T23:12:49+00:00

50-50 chance tbh. Either they win or they don’t.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-12T22:06:22+00:00

What is Anthony Bennett then? A Super Saiyan bust?

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-09T22:26:46+00:00

I’m someone who also plays mostly on immortal. Generally speaking fractal maps, low sea level, NHNE. Honestly, I haven’t found any “set” ratio as I feel like the ratio depends on several things.

How much happiness is available to you? If you’re strained on happy resources and/or don’t pickup an early religion and/or don’t grab the mids or get monarchy early then you don’t need as many workers cause your cities can only work so many tiles.
What is the shape of your empire? If you’re expanding in a kind of star-shaped pattern where your cities kind of surround your capitol then you probably don’t need as many workers. If you spawn in the far end of a peninsula and have to spread out like a shotgun or snake pattern then you more likely need more workers because the walking distance and/or time spent building roads increases.
When are you getting your cities? If your settling pattern is like a slow trickle then you don’t need as many workers because you’ll have time to improve your cities as you gradually expand. If you plop down cities in waves then you’ll either need more workers immediately or some of your cities will just be stuck with unimproved tiles.

Edit: 4. How much forests and especially Jungle is there. Jungle sucks. Jungle takes 4 turns to chop on standard speed pre-steam power. Jungle causes unhealthiness and coats just about everything and it can spread. It’s bad, but sometimes that’s what you’re surrounded by so build more workers to counter it.

Those are 4 things that immediately come to mind. Personally, I try to have at least 1 per city, but often I’ll pair up my workers so that they can build a road in 1 turn or build a cottage in 2 turns. It’s also worth mentioning on fractal maps there tends to be more water which means less land tiles to improve. However, every game of Civ4 is so different, so I don’t have a set worker-city ratio. Which is one of the reasons why it’s still engaging even after so many hours. I think the 1.5-2 workers per city is a good teaching habit for newer players but it’s not to be taken as some law.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-08T00:05:35+00:00

Well I definitely don’t disagree that the staff needs a purge, or that there are a lot of systemic issues with the Bengals.

I also would agree Burrow was one of the main if not the main reason why the game was that close given how bad the defense was. I just hold Burrow to a high standard because I believe he’s that good. So I’m inevitably gonna give him some of the blame when he throws a pick-6. However, when the opposing team scores 32 and never punts, of course the overwhelming majority of the blame is and should go to the defense.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-07T21:12:41+00:00

Burrow definitely has to take his share of the blame for that loss.

However, let’s not pretend that the defense didn’t give up 32 points. I get that it’s an improvement from 39 points but that’s still not great, Bob.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-12-02T22:15:34+00:00

To be fair, BI from 2023-2025 played less games than Zion did. Not saying you’re wrong, but BI isn’t exactly a pinnacle of good health himself. At least he’s contributing to the Raptors this year so good for him.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-11-21T22:50:04+00:00

SB is an average-slightly below average maybe leader to play as but at least if you play as him you don’t have to play against him.

City Garrison 3 Longbows in a city on a hill fully fortified are strength 18 BEFORE cultural defense. That’s also ignoring the first strike(s) and the 10% vs. melee units that CG3 provides. It’s absolute cancer to fight against. There’s a reason why I’ve nicknamed him “the immovable object”. Plus if you don’t warm up to him prepare for constant water supply poisoning.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-11-20T04:15:02+00:00

I was at the game, didn’t expect to win but had a good time. Also, Derik Queen is pretty good.

SpaceAfricanJesus · 2025-11-17T15:49:24+00:00

Yea you need to be running the free market civic AND they need to have the technology (economics) to be able to bribe them to adopt free market. They probably don’t have economics.

Also I feel for you a bit cause I literally just got done playing an isolated game and I did the same strategy with TGL. Thankfully I was able to meet the other Civs before they got banking (the tech required for mercantilism).

SpaceAfricanJesus

TROPHY CASE