<p>PLEASE tell me I'm not the only CivFanatic here!</p>
<p>Oh, Hell yeah!</p>
<p>Infact, I was just playing 2 hours ago!</p>
<p>YESS!!! Finally someone else!</p>
<p>Are you a member of CivFanatics? I have about 4,000 posts there. lol</p>
<p>I am a member there, but I don’t have 4000 posts (I think I’m something like 100). I was an active member of Apolyton a while ago, but I haven’t been there for years.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, that site’s been dying over the past few years.</p>
<p>Anyway, glad to see someone here with similar interests! 
Anyone else?</p>
<p>General Keleso reporting and awaiting orders.</p>
<p>I need you to crush Shaka’s stack of 50 riflemen, 25 cavalry, and 40 cannons please.</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter, Willem van Oranje already won Space Race.</p>
<p>CRAP! 
A bit shocking, because he goes for culture wins a lot, as shown by obsolete’s games (pics are deleted from his threads because of the hacker there a couple of years ago).</p>
<p>I think I’ve seen a culture victory once (and don’t remember who it was, but it wasn’t me). Him and Mansa Musa are usually the top two for techs.</p>
<p>Yeah, these AI’s are known for techs:</p>
<ol>
<li>Mansa Musa</li>
<li>Pacal II</li>
<li>Gandhi</li>
<li>Willem van Oranje</li>
<li>Pericles</li>
<li>Zara Yaqob</li>
<li>Hannibal</li>
<li>Huayna Capac</li>
</ol>
<p>however generally, overall, it is the balanced AI’s that do the best (ofc, all is start position dependent).</p>
<p>I’d rank the best overall AI’s:</p>
<ol>
<li>Zara Yaqob</li>
<li>Huayna Capac</li>
<li>Willem van Oranje</li>
<li>Gilgamesh</li>
<li>Catherine</li>
<li>Julius Caesar</li>
<li>Pericles</li>
<li>Hannibal</li>
<li>Mehmed II</li>
<li>Louis XIV</li>
</ol>
<p>whoa this is what I missed</p>
<p>most annoying AI’s that always attack you with so many old tech units that you die:
Aztecs
Mali
Persia
Zulu
Celts <- mega d******</p>
<p>Your list seems ok but why is Mali on the list? Mansa Musa almost never declares war and when he does his units aren’t obsolete unless he was crippled in the early game. That’s why he’s a great trade partner. :)</p>
<p>lol Mali is always the one person that has all my tech, and then he invades and pwns me. I need to build units instead of wonders all the time. :/</p>
<p>Charlemagne is annoying too</p>
<p>Mansa Musa is, IMO, the AI who can best handle an isolated start.</p>
<p>Charles is annoying. I believe he can declare war at pleased, his unit production % is high, and he is PROTECTIVE so all his archers are beefed up! The problem with him for the human is that the only reason anyone would pick him is to use his UB, which is the best in the game.</p>
<p>WHich is why in a multiplayer game now (Pitboss), I chose Darius of the HRE (unrestricted leaders). Darius = fantastic traits, and HRE = fantastic UB (UU is meh), a great combo. :)</p>
<p>OMG UGH I WAS ABOUT TO BUY THE GAME FOR $13.99 ON STEAM DURING ITS HOLIDAY SALE BUT I CHICKENED OUT.</p>
<p>how good is its multiplayer? how many multiplayer games are there at a time? and do they last for 3-4 hours long? (and even longer?) is it possible to play a decent game for 30 minutes? I’d like a game with a multiplayer community as active as Age of Empires, but I read from some sites that a recent patch really hurt the game (though this was 2008). also, do you have to have the same expansion pack as others to play the game?</p>
<p>lol i have civfanatics account too but only like 5 posts =P</p>
<p>also is the civ4 AI better at sea? I remember on civ III i would ONLY play the huge pangea maps cuz the Ai sucked SO much on the sea maps</p>
<p>multiplayer is a little more involved than Civ III, but you can join in place of a computer mid game, and I think you can leave for one also</p>
<p>I’ve never been pwned by AI navy, but I dont know if that’s because they aren’t good or not.</p>
<p>Personally I find the multiplayer awful. I never play it. </p>
<p>The AI is way better overall in Civ4.</p>
<p>Multiplayer is awesome for civ but ONLY if you use the pitboss/pbem [play by email] versions (which I do).</p>
<p>benefits:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You play at least 1 turn a day, but almost never more than 3 for a single game, so you are not staying up late all night to finish a game like you could with single player. Why? When you play pitboss/pbem multiplayer you are forced to wait until either everyone is done with their turn (pitboss) or when the turn goes back to you (play-by-email). Thus, you may resume your studying practically uninhibited. This personally is how I was able to survive throughout high school.</p></li>
<li><p>The slower paced games of pitboss/pbem allow more planning, diplomacy, and true civilization leading. For instance, in CivFanatics, they are just finishing up a multiplayer pitboss games that lasted for about a year. There were 5 teams, each with about 20 players each (I was on team #2 and one of the most active members on the team). Our forum, total, has about 5,000 posts total on the game discussion. If you thought that was a lot … well, the 2 best teams have about 200,000 posts (from what I asked someone) in their board alone … talk abotu all of the planning and discussion that must have been going on! There are tons of decisions to make about civ. :)</p></li>
<li><p>The skilled humans are always better than AI’s (the only exception is early in the game, such as before 1AD, on deity and to some extent immortal due to the bonuses the AI gets) in terms of trading, warfare, diplomacy, etc. For instance, in that same multiplayer game I mentioned before, for point #2, team 1 declared war on team 3 and moved a stack of units worth a total of 670 hammers. (For anyone unfamiliar with Civilization, “hammers” = cost of producing something, for instance, a monument in the game “costs” 30 hammers to produce on normal speed.) However, team 3 was able to use advanced tactics to eliminate all those units worth 670 hamers at the cost of just 140 hammers of their own! That’s like having an army of 67 people take on an army of 14 people, with the 14 winning! The defending team used defensive bonuses, siege weapons, etc. to their advantage.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>PS: If anyone here wants to get started in a play-by-email multiplayer game, I’d be more than happy to start one.</p>
<p>1 last thing … the AI armies CAN be very powerful. This screenshot is from a deity game that I played but abandoned due to lack of time (why does school do this to me???). Someone else played this game and won a space race. But … if this AI had declared war on the human, the AI [Julius Caesar] would have won. Take a look at the SIZE of that army he has [paratroopers, mechanized infantry, tanks, etc.]!!! If JC wanted to go overseas, he would build eabout 50 extra ships. No human would be able to match that production of a powerful deity AI with factories, plants, etc. The screenshot doesn’t even show all of JC’s units as evident by the arrows on the screen.</p>
<p>**there is a mod in use for that screenshot by the person playing the game (the mod simply gives extra info, doesn’t change gameplay at all), which explains why the scoreboard looks different. Also, the “0.0” means that this mod thought the player had 0% of the power that the deity AI had. Insane. :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://i154.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/s256/dirk1302/JCStack.jpg[/url]”>http://i154.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/s256/dirk1302/JCStack.jpg</a></p>
![http://i154.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/s256/dirk1302/JCStack.jpg[/url]](http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s256/dirk1302/JCStack.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>^The more I look at that army, the more I marvel at how Julius Caesar can get powerful. The largest army I ever created for civ before was probably 120 modern armor. The stack above is probably 200+ units.</p>
<p>***! I know I’m being a total nerd, but how did he afford all of that??? Did he like not build city improvements or something???</p>
<p>I’m pretty bad at Civ IV, I need to be more Machiavellian and ruthless, esp. toward civs I know will betray me (<em>coughcough</em> boudica <em>coughcough</em>)</p>