Civ IV Tip #2: Check the Cultural Points on the Victory Screen

From your Medieval period on, be sure to check the Victory Conditions screen often, especially for the cultural point leader among your opponents. Number one reason is that the screen will list the opponent most likely to win a cultural victory over you.

Once a Civ gets three cities with Legendary status (50,000 culture points) the game ends.Whether you are going for a cultural victory yourself or not, while planning your own victory, a secondary task would be to prepare for a war against that cultural leading opponent, perhaps centuries down the line. If they look like they’re getting close to a cultural victory, attack. 

Secondarily, since there are only three cities that count toward a cultural victoy, you can check this list for your own three leading cities. This would be so that you can concentrate your cultural efforts in those cities alone. Build the cultural wonders there. Don’t even bother building culture-contributing improvements in any other cities for the purpose of contributing culture, unless the improvement gives something the city needs to maintain order, productivity or something that contributes to your entire Civ (knowledge or gold.) For instance, a Theatre contributes culture only to the city where it’s built (and one Great Person point .) You ‘ll not want to use resources or time building them in cities that are not candidates for cultural bringing cultural victory. Except you will have to build enough (five) to qualify for the Globe Theatre national wonder.

Civ IV Tip #1: Beware the Culturally Strong Vassal Civ

[This is the first in a series of gameplay tips on the peerless grand strategy game  Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. See below for series details.]

A rival civilization can win a Cultural Victory even it’s a vassal.

Even if it’s a CPU Civ and even if it’s your vassal and even if you lead in all other victory categories, you can lose. So check the victory condition screen often, not just to prepare for an attack on a potential cultural rival, but also so you know who notto take on as a vassal should the opportunity arise. This also implies that a vassals can win other victory type too, like a Space Victory. 

CIV IV: Destroyer vs. Galleon. No contest

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Note: This is the first of a series of tips in no particular order. We are coming to the end of a cycle of Civ IV play, started last year, when we realized we went through all of 2008 and part of 2009 without playing Civ I4. That was the year of Steel Panthers.  

The game set-up basis for these tips: Large, techtonic map, all options on and six CPU civs, Noble level difficulty, Ancient start and Standard speed.

Click the “Civ IV Tips” category for more (when as they arppear). These tips may appear irregularly but may also continue indefinitely, for what they’ll be worth. We may be playing this version of Civilization for years to come and we sense that this may be true for other gamer hold-outs as well. The next version, Civilization Vwhether it has hexes (interesting) or ranged fire (puzzling) or not, may get a look-see but we’re not optimistic about following it upgrade after upgrade as in past versions.  Even though there will likely be a store/disk version marketed, it sounds like you will have to registrer it online to play, and log in online every time you play, so this may very well be the last Civ version we play regularly after all these years.

2K games is shifting Civ V to Steam for DRM and bonus content. The DRM mean Digital Rights Management, translated it means  they will control the software in the name oif anti-piracy. We’ve seen Steam and recognize its advantages, especially for a game company. But we are not a member and may not become one. Perhaps it’s a bit old-school but we’re not attracted to the need to be connected to the network to be able to play a computer game on our own computer. Steam/2K Games and whoever else they share information with don’t need to know every time we fire up some title or other.

Once you sort out the installation of a software, should you have to depend on the speed and reliability of phone lines, the network, your ISP, the software company’s hardware and network, their ISP and who knows what all else to be up and running to work or play? This is the same reason we never installed “Final Draft” for writing.

Along with the blockbuster syndrome now infecting computer gaming, this may be a sign that, for us, the activity has hit the wall.