QUOTE (Mack Kilimaro @ Jun 5 2009, 16.00)

I bought this game today because I was bored and I remembered seeing this thread recently. I loved Civ 2 and never got around to playing Civ 3, so I figured what the hell.

After a couple of hours, I realized my default tendency to constantly research new stuff needed to be balanced with some semblance of a military. Having Sparta be leveled by the barbarian hordes was a bit embarrassing. But dammit, at least I had the Church of the Nativity, the Oracle, the Hanging Gardens and the Great Lighthouse.

Definitely take advantage of the military. Greeks in particular have some great early era infantry units. At least they do in the mod I play and I'm pretty sure their national unit in vanilla is pretty bad ass.

WOOT!! Just solved my MAF problems too. (Memory Allocation Failures which crash the game and are a chronic problem late game on super large maps. Found a fix. It works.)

QUOTE (Grim Shady @ Jun 5 2009, 17.02)

The thing that gets me is, I've watched some youtube gameplay videos and people demonstrate how they play a particular strategy and they'll rush to a faction's early unique melee unit and take an enemy city with like 2-4 units in a stack. Without losing any. I try the exact same thing, same settings, same faction, same unit...and every single one of them dies. It's like I'm being rickrolled without the rick.

I tried out one of the scenarios yesterday. It was the mesoamerica one where you play either an aztec or mayan city-state and have to put up with the Spanish arriving. It's tough. The Spanish bring diseases. I tried two matches and got pummeled in both. I haven't figured out the strat yet. It doesn't end at 2050 but has a later time deadline of like 2160 or so. The other civs seem to expand a lot faster than I can even on an easy setting.

Given the history that scenario is supposed to reflect, I think it would be prohibitively difficult for the natives.

QUOTE (Brude @ Jun 8 2009, 14.13)

Makes me miss the Planet Buster unit from Alpha Centauri.

Those were awesome. A little less terrain/worker micro management, better automation, and a few other minor tweaks and Alpha Centauri could have been the greatest Civ game ever. The leaders had actual variation and personality, being interesting characters in their own right. The game was cynical, amusing, even irreverent. Had an edge to it that no Civ game since has really touched. The new techs and discoveries were fresh and imaginative, starting at the period when most Civ games stopped. It pioneered a whole hell of alot of the game features that have become stock on later installments. I could do without the customizable units, just a tad too much there. But otherwise, I love that game.

Awesome game. Topped only by Civ4 I think. With a bit more tweaking, it could easily have been better.

QUOTE (Ser Greguh @ Jun 8 2009, 17.52)

BTW, with regard to chariots attacking axemen, yes they get a +100% bonus. This means that when attacking an unfortified, unpromoted axeman while not crossing a river and on a 0% defense. you have 8 strength against 5, putting you at a significant advantage. However, if there are any defensive bonuses in play at all - you're attacking across a river, the axeman is in a forest, whatever - and it's reduced to just about even. When attacking a fortified axeman in a city with, say, a 40% cultural bonus, you're going to be at an enormous disadvantage.

They're still nice as attackers, though, because you have early access to them, they're cheap to build, and they have access to the "Mobility" promotions that give them very nontrivial chances to retreat. General tactics with them are to punch into an enemy and immediately pillage any copper or iron mines, to limit the number of spearmen that can be built as a response (even one spearman in a city is death to chariots). You just have to have mass numbers - you're not going to take any city of consequence with just 3 or 4.

Try playing with Persia and just spamming the hell out of Immortals, which have bonuses against both axemen and archers - they're an amazing early Blitzkrieg civ.

Chariots (and really all other horses for that matter) are also good in the open field. Shadow a stack or small group of enemy troops until they get to land with no defensive bonuses than slaughter as many of them as you can. Not good city assaulters, worthless defenders, and even a lowly warrior might be too much on a great defensive position, but they can be great to weaken a stack before it reaches you. Or if on the offensive, to take out the various stranded forces that aren't in good positions or in cities.

Immortals are probably my favorite early era unit. Versatile as hell, get them early, and useful against anything up til iron units. Top early units still probably go to the Roman legions, which destroy everything in sight, and the Inca warriors (forgot the name) with start with what often can be a decisive early advantage. If you don't take a neighboring city in the first bunch of turns with them, you're not playing the Inca's right. I usually send a few out for discovery, spam the Quecha (looked it up) til I get a small stack, than assault the closest neighbor with a nice plot of land.

QUOTE (Triskele @ Jun 8 2009, 18.01)

Pardon my ignorance but what are you guys talking about when you say "spam?"

Just constantly building a bunch of cheap units and (sometimes) throwing them at the enemy like a godamned zerg rush.

WARNING: Really Long game summary ahead. Read only if you're morbidly curious and have WAY too much time on your hands.

Surging ahead pretty well in a Monarch game, Total Realism, real world map. Got most of Europe all the way east to Moscow and eyeing the fertile crescent/Mideast for my next expansion. Out of the blue the Mongols declare war on me. No big deal cause its still fairly early in the game and I know they didn't expand that far, that fast. I was right, one lone straggler 'invasion'. But it pissed me off cause it took a stack of my workers. So I decided to launch a punitive invasion. Built up a stack of horsemen and sent them through northern Siberia, may as well have been the arctic, and slowly slogged my way one move at a time to Mongolia.

The computer doesn't defend outlier cities all that much, so I started razing shit left and right. At this point Genghis was begging for peace, but I wasn't finished til I massacred every inhabitant of their capital, destroyed the city and salted the ruins. My stack couldn't handle the entire Mongol Army, so I destroyed as many cities of opportunity as I could and than made a quickly for the capital. Smashed through, tore it apart, and sued for peace immediately after to avoid the reprisal.

Job well done I think. Of course about 200 turns later, I start seeing China leaping ahead of the pack. Really, REALLY far ahead of the pack. I guess in past games the Mongols were always strong enough to resist and balance out China. With them crippled, China repopulated most of the territory and picked up all the slack. No worries, late game showdown than. Preferably with my tanks vs. their horses. Just to be safe I built a few more stacks of knights.

Cruising along, building and discovering. Long since taken Persia and the Mideast. Good friends with Gandhi and Egypt, so the only front I really need to arm is the Turks up north. (they occupied the long front of Siberia east of my borders, but I had a huge culture cushion so would have more than enough time to react to an attack) They're low scoring nobodies so I really had no worries. China was moving on up by leaps and bounds, but both the Turks and Gandhi served as fine buffers. I wouldn't share a border with China for quite a while.

Than within a small sequence of turns, China wars with the remnant Mongols, the Turks, Gandhi and submits them all. They're all vassals. Hannibal (I've got 2 cities in north Africa, bordering Hannibal) becomes their vassal just for the hell of it. So before I know it I've got a warmongering rival not too far behind on tech, who naturally outnumbers me better than 10 to one, with friends who share a border with me starting from the arctic circle down to the Persian Gulf. Figured I still had a few turns, so I dropped all building production, placed everything on research except for a few cities which could manage to build a curraisur (horse) every turn. Got the Cavalry tech, and upgrade everything quick as hell. Shot as quick as I could to railroad and quickly railroaded the entire front, plus one rail routes back to the heart of the empire. After a while, thought I might be overreacting a bit and cut horse production.

No sooner did I breath a sigh of relieve than the Chinese invaded. The main thrust of the invasion comes from what I surmise would be central Kazakhstan, coming straight south. Pretty much a narrow invasion corridor stuck between the Aral Sea in the west and mountains in the east. I've got a sizable cultural buffer, railroaded front, a mostly cavalry army, and almost all of it's located near there, so I figure I'm in good position. Also have one stack covering the Indian border and a short stack covering the Siberian front. Figure I'm in good position. For a while, I was.

I begin a strategy of wearing down China's super-stack as it marches down towards my city. I move up full stacks of cavalry, attack with each one, than remove the survivors back to a safe distance. Since I had a decent enough tech advantage and my first assaulters were well promoted, there were alot of survivors. I repeat this turn after turn, retreating the severely injured troops to cities (complete with a healer unit) to rest and recoup. India seems reluctant to invade (we were buddies and all), so I take most of that stack north and keep pounding the lumbering Chinese invasion force. Finally I destroy it with relative ease and start to get cocky.

I place my artillery next to their city (my culture extends right next to it and its where all the invasion troops flowed from). Its still loaded to the hilt with their units, but I figure its time for an assault. I bombard the defenses to nothing, attack with more cannons to get all the collateral damage, and send succeeding waves horsemen against the city, attack and retreat as always. I place a bunch of riflemen on the hilled/forted spots bordering the cities to withstand a counter attack, and figure in another turn or two I'll wipe out that army and take the city.

China had other plans. Apparently I underestimated their force and as the next turn tolled, they destroyed every stack near the city. A good and bad proposition. Bad because I lost all my artillery, a most of my infantry, and a decent amount of horses. Good because the Chinese lost/injured a TON of troops, and 2 turns later I was finally able to take the city with my horses. I jump in, Great Artist it to get the borders, destroy small pockets of stragglers, and one or two lightly defended nearby city and get ready to heal up and go on the offensive.

My spies show me that India is lightly defended, has some of the best cities anyway, and so I surge my troops down south. I keep a significant force near the captured city to destroy any counter-attack and move against any lightly defended stack or city I can find. India is going well, China has another mass of troops just north of the key captured city, but appears less of an invasion than a defensive force. I'd lose too much assaulting it, so I don't bother, just slaughtering anything that comes into my borders.

By this time I'd already taken out Hannibal and the Turks, both weaklings, and I figure this war is going pretty well. That's when I noticed the 'The enemy has been spotted near Moscow' message that'd been bleeping for the last few turns. Apparently China had pulled a Hannibal over the alps bit and sent a FRIGGIN HUGE stack of troops across the northernmost arctic to the border of my barely defended heartland and were just about to Finland now. I immediately took every horse near full health, set all my cities to producing horses and aimed them up there, and hoped I had enough time and troops to avoid losing too many cities. This Chinese super-stack was full of mostly obsolete units, even by their standards, and so every attack was a kill. But even if you've got a machine gun and they've got rocks, if you don't have enough bullets for all of them, your ass is gonna get stoned.

The journey for most of my horses was pretty far, even with railroads, so I couldn't do the attack and retreat strategy. I was gonna take losses. And I did. Every horsie that ended the turn adjacent to the uber-stack died. And each turn I'd throw everything I could at them and they kept surging. I finally got enough horses near there to pull attack and retreat, but it got to the point where I was attacking with units at a fraction of their normal strength and hoping for the best.

I matched their human wave tactics with my horsie wave and the results were appalling. A generation of young men cut short. Their bones forming an eternal graveyard that no amount of snow or ice could cover. Stretching Finland to Moscow. So many dead horses lying with the broken boys of both sides that archeologists a thousand years from now might believe centaur legends.

But nothing can match an empire at the height of its industrial revolution devoting its full manufacturing capacity to war. Young men were simply another cog in that awe-inspiring machine along with horses and guns, all sent to the grinder. Eventually their super-stack was vanquished. And the fearless leader (me) was annoyed. I exacted a price for China's impudence that future generations will still speak of in muted whispers. No quarter. No capture. Everything in sight was destroyed. Cities razed. Mothers watched helpless as their children were trampled underneath Greek hooves. The new morality of the Enlightenment seemingly had no effect on these merciless soldiers. And could you blame them? So many of their brethren cut down in a war we did nothing to provoke.

Soon everything south of (and including) Beijing lay in ruins. Everything from the eastern edge of the Gobi desert north to Siberia Destroyed. China was isolated to a pocket of land that called Korea its southern-most and Mongolia its Western-most point. Historians will say that the great Pericles (me) saw the destruction he wrought, and though fully righteous and just, was still appalled by the horror of it and sought peace rather than extermination. But that is a lie written by the victors. War had exhausted his empire. Even surprise attacks can only unify the population for so long. Once the war turned from a defensive struggle to an offensive slaughter, the people had their fill. Unhappiness spread far and wide. Angry Mobs reigned in the cities. Production grinded to a halt. Pericles had the army to continue the conquest, but only at even more severe losses. The lines were over-extended and any more slaughter would only be bought with buckets of blood.

And so peace was sued. The ruins left as they were. All of India annexed. The frontier expanded several more cities in the north. The weary soldiers returned home to bore their children with sanitized war stories, baffle them with thousand mile stares, frustrate their families with frequent bouts of uncontrollable weeping, and bankrupt the healthcare system with their shellshock and PTS.

Historians will again strike a narrative. Historians will again be wrong. Much will be made of the dastardly surprise attack. The thoroughly unprovoked nature of it. But the fact is a clash was inevitable. Greece's entire history was one of swift conquest interspread with FAR longer periods of uneventful peace. All a potential target need do is be nearby and weak enough to make the outcome quick and inevitable. China's day on the chopping block would come sooner or later. With each subsequent generation they were bound to fall further behind, making the conquest all that much easier. They struck at the peak of their strength, with allies and vassals spanning thousands of miles of Greece's border. It was always a longshot, one that indeed missed. But the alternative was waiting idly, having 'peace in our time', only to be shoved aside at some future date of Greece's choosing.

Atrocities indeed were rife on both sides, but the lions share was on the hands of the civilized greeks. A complete genocide of 80% of the Chinese empire. Tens of millions dead. Not for actions of their own, but of their leaders. Even that justification wore thin as mountains of bodies exceeded the Himalayas. But this is a history that won't be told because the victors will not tell it. It will simply be known that in the Year of Our Lord Ahura Mazda 1706 the Chinese invaded. In 1748, after 40 years of hard fighting, an armistice was reached. Peace reigned on earth and the Chinese menace was vanquished forever........or was it?

QUOTE (Yoadm @ Jun 13 2009, 05.51)

I've been eyeing the 'total realism' mod for months, but I cant find its Beyond The Sword version. Does one even exist?

Sadly no, not yet. And by not yet I mean they've been promising one since BTS came out, people have been begging for one since BTS came out, yet there's been nothing remotely approaching an announcement at anytime, just more Warlords updates. So if you want to play the mod (and its a damned good mod), its gotta be on Warlords.

QUOTE (Papirolle @ Jun 13 2009, 18.44)

The biggest tech-whore in the game is Mansa Musa though. If you see him early on, attack! Left to his own devices he always becomes a problem further down the line.

Its that damned Financial Trait, easily the best in the game. Makes any Civ a potential tech superpower.

Total Realism adjusts a few of the other traits to make them more competitive. Also a huge fan of charismatic, since I tend to get a few Great Generaled units Super-promoted. (the early happiness bonuses are great as well when you're playing a higher level game) TR also changes the Industrious trait back to its Civ3 form (an extra hammer on squares with 3 of them), making it one of the best in the game as well.

Bah...been spoiling myself playing the Civ's best located to succeed. Playing Carthage right now and not getting my ass kicked, but its tougher than any other game in recent memory. Africa is tough to play generally, but this is a pain in the ass early game. I've got the entire Sahara between myself and the next worthwhile place to found a city. BIG maintenance costs early on. I've got to conquer Egypt (which I did) to catch a whiff of stone or marble for early wonders. The Barbarians are a pain in the ass. (in this mod just about everything between Egypt and Shaka is loaded with Barbarian cities and they're near impossible to take with pre-Iron working units)

Everyone seems to want to war with me even when they can't get to me and I've had to cultivate allies like few other times playing the game just to keep afloat. Still leading in the score and have a decent tech advantage. Just got Code of Laws (COURTHOUSES baby!) so my maintenance should be lowering shortly. Still, controlling most of north Africa and parts of the middle easy is costly and my tech is hovering at 50% (and still losing money).

Been spoiling myself for too long playing France, Germany, Persia, China, etc. Wish I would have gone Mansa Munsa now that I think about it though. Far better leadership traits.

QUOTE (Ser Greguh @ Jun 17 2009, 11.41)

The few times I've played around with Hannibal on the TR earth map I've found it beneficial to go Naval from the start and turn my ire toward Spain. Italy makes a tempting target as well (as it was to them in real life) with the goal of conquering Europe before turning your eye to the rest of Africa.

That's an idea, but not really practical with the latest patch of TR. Barbarians rule the seas (they've got triremes before you have fishing boats, alot of them, and they'll attack anything immediately that leaves the shore) at least until you get triremes. Besides, the AI doesn't do naval warfare or landings all that well, so it makes a good natural barrier between myself and Europe. Then again, much of my early frustration was the bad city options in Africa, so Spain or Rome would be quite nice. Spain masses alot of troops early since they've got nothing to do with them (Tribal leaders blocking their entry into the rest of Europe, on the latest patch), but Rome is possible, easily defensible, close, and at an ideal location. I can also land troops there without risking the wrath of barbs.

Something to consider next game.

QUOTE (Triskele @ Jun 17 2009, 12.16)

OK, the Civ 4 n00b needs a little more guidance from the experienced players (I have never read the instructions).

What are some of the factors that impact how quickly and how large a city can grow? I know that one needs to use workers to an extent. Building improvements, lumber mills, water mills, oil rigs, etc...

But even so I sometimes have cities that just won't grow for shit. Is this usually because they have too many surrounding tiles that have no resources to offer?

Also with regards to workers...Sometimes I notice that a bunch of my workers will just settle in a city and not to jack. I believe (though I'm not 100%) that these are workers who were formerly given the "improve closest city" command. What confuses me about this is that there are almost always more improvements that they could have still done like building a lumber mill for example. Can anyone explain to me what's at play here?

Merci

First, automated workers are never a good idea. Sometimes if the worker doesn't consider any further improvements worthwhile, they will settle into a city until something pops up that they deem 'worth doing'.

Each person within the city requires 2 foods to maintain. City crosses with with alot of food increasing bonuses (wheat, pigs, fish, etc) will grow larger, quicker. The more food, the more growth and the higher top limit. Two other things alter that. Health and happiness. The greenish face that looks like its about to vomit tells you your city has some health problems. The red face equals unhappiness. Within the city screen, top and right of center will show you your health and happiness meter. If the ones on the left (crosses and happy faces) are higher than the ones on the right, you're good. Nothing slowing growth. But for each vomit face that exceeds a health cross, you lose one of your total food production in that city.

So if you have a 5 person city producing 16 food, 5 people takes 10 food to maintain, leaving you 6 surplus food that contribute to further growth. However if your unhealthy vomit faces exceed your health thingies by 3, that subtracts 3 of your food, leaving only 3 surplus food and much lower growth. Population adds vomit faces (1 per population), so do buildings (forges/factories/etc), and so do flood plains and jungles (yet another reason to cut those things down immediately). Some buildings (recycling center, wells, acqueducts) add health thingies, some civics do, some techs, etc.

The other thing that stalls city growth is unhappiness. Each unhappy person equals a city square not being worked. If its not worked, you don't get whatever extra resources you might have gotten, including often food. Got to keep the yellow smiley's on the city's happiness meter above the red faced angry ones. Buildings do this (theater, temples), so do some resources (dye, gold, incense, wine), having the state religion in town, some civics, etc.

Edit: Granaries and smokehouses are pretty much essential to growth. They add health thingies AND automatically bring you up to half food storage each time you grow. So, pretty much build granaries everywhere.

QUOTE (Ser Greguh @ Jun 17 2009, 15.58)

Yeah, I would call Financial the easiest of the traits to use to its full effect, but it's not necessarily the best by any means. Philosophical becomes more useful the higher your difficulty level (as commerce-heavy economies become more difficult to maintain in the face of pillage-happy enemies and more difficult to sustain an edge over AIs that are granted substantial mathematical bonuses), as does Aggressive (since the AI's ability to wage war is flat with respect to difficulty level, and thus a human's theoretical tactical advantage is a great equalizer). Spiritual is often overlooked as well, but is amazingly powerful when used correctly; watching good Spiritual players ping-pong their civics around can be pretty impressive.

Every trait certainly has its virtues and if you know how to exploit them, can be damned good. But whether beginner or expert, financial still pretty much reigns supreme. Any flat piece of land by a river is damned near instantly 4 coins worth of money or research (once you get a cottage), your choice. Even quicker if there happens to be a luxury resource. Colossus makes any ocean front property a researching super-power. Less money concerns early and vastly quicker research, again especially early game. You see the HUGE early research bump that a lucky gold supply at your capital gives ya. Now several squares can give you almost the same thing. Gives you a damned near insurmountable leg up.

Although on TR, Productive just might trump it since it goes back to Civ 3 stats for the trait. (Any two shields gives ya a third...or maybe its any third a fourth) Charismatic's early happiness (Hugely important in the latest TR patch, as happiness hits ridiculously quick on Monarch) and faster promotions (you kill ALOT of shit in a TR game) are great as well. Agricultural (again TR) for the food bonuses and quicker workers (and I think quicker granaries/smokehouses) are great as well.

Hell, I'm so used to the TR game, I couldn't tell you what trait does what if it differs at all in vanilla.

724 AD: Cyrus (Persians) invades out of the blue.....

......716 AD: I got knights.

Someone's about to get fucked up.

I usually turn off the cultural victory option. They're never satisfying and too often I'm in the middle of a good, long game and I get one without even realizing it.

Game Update: Carthage just got revenge on Rome...Scandinavia, Russia, Germany, and France. Came up through the Bosphorus, with a small amphibious contingent up through the Italian penninsula by boat. Changed the Civics to Aristocracy/Theocracy (+2 exp bonus each, at least in this mod) and just spammed Chivalry promoted (a military doctrine in Total Realism that amongst other things allows you to use enemy roads and heal quicker) knights, got about a hundred of them, and flooded Europe like a damned Mongol horde.

Almost waited too long, as the Romans and Germans had recently developed longbowmen. When they're in a defended city attacked by horsemen, the horses pretty much get raped. But they didn't have time too build too many of them, so once I took out the one or two per city (and lost several knights in the process), the rest of the defenders were relatively easy pickings. Just took stock of my invading forces, 100 (or so) knights built. 63 left. Europe taken. Well worth it.

I think I need to start playing BTS, cause I can count on one hand the number of games where we're all tech equivalent late-game. Those sound like fun games. Got one close to that at the moment. Indians are just a bit behind me techwise. Total Realism does tech sharing via open-borders. You got open borders with a guy and they already have a tech that you're researching, it doubles your rate of research for that tech. I've had open-borders with India for most of the game, since I had a tougher starting spot (Carthage) and needed a bit of a leg up.

Now they're annoyed with me, have a huge army, and are almost equivalent as far as military techs go. If I close off the borders, they'll almost certainly invade. So I'm making a mad rush for tanks before I do so and in the meantime, bombarding my border cities with them with mini-great artists (special unit for the Zoroastrian religion, use that with a spy and cultural takeoevers can be a viable game-winning strategy), hoping to take their main cities without a fight til the point where I can safely cut them off.

QUOTE (DJDonegal @ Jun 29 2009, 01.19)

And finally, EHK - where did you get the Total Realism mod from? Do I need any of the official patches for vanilla Civ4 to run it or can I just download it and run?

You need Warlords and the latest patch. The game and all the threads on it can be found at Civfanatics. If you have any problems running it, the guys who made the mod do answer those sorts of questions. (and if you browse the threads, you can see other people answering those questions as well)

This is the main thread for the latest version of Total Realism. Alot of questions should be answered in that first post, links to the download are there, as well as links to a separate forum devoted tot he game: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=239520.

This is another forum (not used alot) devoted specifically to Total Realism on Civfanatics.

Off topic parts of the Civfanatics forum are also pretty active, including an occasionally interesting History forum and a very busy politics forum, mostly full of idiots.

Fair warning though, this is a BIG map. If you're running low RAM and/or Windows XP, you may have some late game problems. I've got the RAM/OS to avoid those, but late game turns still get a bit long. I've modified the map (Removed the Americas, Austrailia, Indonesia, and every island except for England and Japan. Never liked sea-based games anyway) You could do the same. Just jump into map editor and turn that shit to sea.

Bunch of other mods at Civfanatics as well. I've played a few, like TR the best and stuck with that. But never hurts browsing a few more. Let me know if you find a really good one.

Got a confession. I FUCKING HATE dealing with hundreds of workers. Which is exactly what you'll need to railroad a large empire at that period of the game. After all the worker micromanagement throughout the game, you get a long break of peace and quiet and then WHAM, you're whole fucking empire needs a railroad facelift.

To ease the pain of the ridiculously annoying process, I altered the railroad tech to increase worker speed 6,000%. Basically anything they do, whether building a plantation on a jungle or a railroad anywhere, takes one worker, one turn. So I automate them all individually and send them off to railroad the empire so that I can ignore them.

Of course this is a tech based improvement so it is open and accessable to every other civ in the game, though they take forever to get railroad.

I ask you...is this cheating?

Gonna try to play a game without a single save and reload. I think Monarch JUST MIGHT be too tough with that condition.

QUOTE (karaddin @ Jul 3 2009, 02.50)

I grabbed Total Realism and tried a game after reading EHKs recommendation here, and the changes really are quite good and even better the map is truly awesome. It's disappointing that its not available for BtS as the AI definitely does seem inferior. However the biggest problem for me is that it seems really unstable. I've had quite a lot of random crashes, one of which it kept crashing at the same spot until I moved a unit to a different location and it finally got through it.

Now the Roman Empire has conquered France, Germany, Greece and Carthage and was moving into Egypt (who decided to turn on my once I conquered Carthage) and after taking 1 city I am at a spot I can't get past, it just keeps crashing every time I end a particular turn I was really enjoying the game so its really annoying, but I cant seem to get past it.

Have you had any trouble with it EHK? I'm wondering if its the graphics enhancement thing, and if I reinstall it without it then it might be ok? It runs pretty poorly by comparison to BtS as well, each turn was taking ~30sec even at the very start, compared to near instant for BtS.

PS: Loved that long story of the Greek genocide vs the Chinese before, great work!

The problems are pretty much endemic of any VERY large game on Civ4 or Civ4 Warlords. Its a flaw in game design that Firaxis doesn't think is a flaw because you generally need one of those super-big mods to get to that point. I believe its fixed in BTS, but I'm not sure as I haven't played any HUGE BTS mods. Basic problem is that the game is just too friggen big, sucks up too much memory, and leads to frequent collapses.

Solutions really depend on what kind of system you're running. The keys being your OS and your RAM. If you're running VISTA 64 bit and have 2+ gigs of Ram, the solution is easy. Simply download a quick program that allows you to allocate more RAM to the game, allocate it, and all is fixed. (at least that's what I've done and I haven't had a game collapse yet) The link for that solution is found here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=224178

That is the solution I used (running Vista 64 with 6 gigs of Ram) and I haven't had a MAF (memory allocation error, the shit that collapses the game) since. There's also material there if you're running a 32 bit OS and/or XP, but I haven't tried it.

Can also browse for other solutions on the Total Realism forum here: http://www.civ4.houmie.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5&sid=a1d418c7cd874eb5c2d1fe9ee9fa3816

The thread I got the fix info link from: http://www.civ4.houmie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=504

Other tricks involve lowering all the detail. Also, you can go into map editor and delete the Americas, Australia, Indonesia and all the islands, save the map and play all your TR games from there. This is only if you don't mind skipping those continents, which I really don't.

Again, these CTD's/MAF's are present late game in any REALLY big mod. Civfanatics is rife with potential solutions, tweaks, workarounds and complaints about them. The Civ people simply didn't design the initial game to handle maps and games of that size. There's also something in the framework of Windows XP that doesn't allow anymore than 2 gigs to be devoted to a single program. So once you get to the really large savegames, shit starts getting unstable.

If you're running XP with minimal RAM you can also disable the auto-save (most of the collapses happen during saves) by modifying one of the main Civ files, which I did on my old computer (32 bit XP with 1 gig of Ram), but I forgot exactly which file to adjust.