Episode: 4270
Title: HPR4270: Playing Civilization IV, Part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4270/hpr4270.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:19:40

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,270 for Friday the 13th of December 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Playing Civilization 4 Part 4.
It is part of the series' computer strategy games.
It is hosted by Ahu Kahn and is about 16 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, we continue our look at the mechanics of this game.
Hello, this is Ahu Kahn, welcome to you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our ongoing series on computer strategy games and I'm continuing our look at Civilization
4.
Now, what we want to talk about this time is the idea of the leaders of the various civilizations
in the game because that's an important advance in Civilization 4 and it continues to develop
as we move into Civilization 5 and Civilization 5 and Civilization 6 and we'll eventually get
around to talking about.
Each leader will have two attributes that provide bonuses to your empire and so it makes
them important in a way that you look at the leaders in earlier versions of Civilization,
they were kind of interchangeable.
It didn't really make a whole lot of difference which one you picked.
It starts to make a lot of difference in Civ 4 and that will continue.
Now, note that the Beyond the Sword expansion which is what I'm talking about because that
is the most developed part of the game, that's when they stopped work, that's when that
came out.
And that added things beyond what was in the original version so you know, that's what
I'm giving here.
So what you have for leaders is different categories that they can fall into.
One is aggressive and aggressive leader will provide free promotion to combat one for
all melee and gunpowder units and the barracks and the dry docks have half the production
cost.
So obviously oriented towards combat.
A creative leader will add two culture per turn for each city and libraries, coliseums
and theaters have half the production cost.
So that would be a good one if you were going for a culture victory.
Plus two health per city and the granary and harbor have half the production cost and
workers are produced 25% faster.
A financial leader gets one additional commerce on any space that generates at least two commerce.
So if you can, if you would normally get two, now you get three.
And industrious leader gets a 50% production bonus on building wonders and can build the
forge at half the production cost.
An organized leader, 50% less civic upkeep cost and factories, courthouses and lighthouse
have half the production cost.
A philosophical leader, you get plus 100% great person generation and the university has
half the production cost.
A spiritual leader, no anarchy when changing civics and the temple has half the production
cost as does the Christo Ridentor wonder.
Charismatic leader plus one happiness in each city and 25% less experience needed for
unit promotions and plus one happiness from the monument or the broadcast tower.
An imperialistic leader, double the rate of great generals appearing plus 50% to settler
production.
A protective leader, archery and gunpowder units receive free drill one and city garrison
one and wall and castle have half the production cost.
Now these traits are assigned to specific leaders and that's what matters because some
of the civs have several possible leaders.
For example, the Americans can have George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt
and the British can have Elizabeth I, Victoria or Winston Churchill.
In addition to the traits and attributes peculiar to each leader, each of the civs has
starting technologies that they begin the game already knowing.
For instance, a number of civs start the game already knowing mysticism and mysticism
is the only prerequisite for researching meditation and the first person to research meditation
discovers Buddhism.
So one of those civs will be highly likely to get Buddhism and if you're not one of them,
your chances are very low.
Remember, we talked about religion in the last episode.
Even though the unique units, each civ gets a unique unit which takes the place of one
of the regular units in the game and is more powerful than the unit it replaces.
For example, there is an early military unit called the Axeman that all players can get.
But if you are Greece, you get the phalanx as a replacement for the Axeman and it has
an added 100% defense against chariots which are the main offensive units in the ancient
era.
And there is also a unique building for each civ which will provide some added benefits.
Finally, each leader has a favorite civic and this is important in diplomacy.
A leader will tend to be more friendly to other leaders who adopt his favorite civic.
So with 34 civs and 52 leaders available in the game, there is a lot to consider.
An in-depth examination of each possible leader would take up a lot of space so I will point
you to a table that summarizes all of these and it is on the civ fanatic site and the
link is in the show notes.
Some study of this would repay your time and improve strategy.
But the main thing is that there are 52 different options for starting a game and each one
can either help or hinder your strategy.
If you want to pursue a particular strategy, you should pick a leader that fits.
Or if you let the random chooser pick your leader at the start, you need to carefully consider
how to maximize the benefit by choosing a strategy that fits with that leader.
Here is an example, suppose you want to conquer the world as soon as possible.
The first thing I would do is take an aggressive leader.
Among these are Alexander, Alexander combines aggressive with philosophical.
Montezuma combines aggressive with spiritual, Hamarabi combines aggressive with organized,
Budhika combines aggressive with charismatic, Tokugawa combines aggressive with protective,
Genghis Khan combines aggressive with imperialistic, Kubla Khan, aggressive and creative, Stalin
aggressive and industrious, Ragnar aggressive and financial, and Shaka aggressive and expansive.
So we have ten possibilities here, no two of them are the same.
You can build a strategy around any of them, but it would not be the same strategy.
Well, what about the unique unit?
Alexander has the Falanx, which is a good ancient unit, but is somewhat more defensive
than offensive.
The Zulu's Impi is another ancient era unit that is interesting.
It isn't stronger than the spearman it replaces, but it has double the movement.
With Stalin, you have the Russian unique unit, the Kassak, which replaced cavalry.
Now that's kind of a mid to late game unit.
The cavalry starts to show up in the second half of the game.
So if you want to conquer early, Stalin might not be a really good choice.
Now when you combine the traits of some interesting possibilities emerge, no one of them is definitively
superior, it's just a matter of adapting your strategy to take advantage of the possibilities.
For instance, just by picking an aggressive leader, you can build Barracks at half the production
cost, and Barracks means the units you produce start out stronger, which is good.
But there is more to consider.
There is the saying that amateurs talk about strategy, but professionals talk about logistics.
If you want to be successful, keep that in mind.
For instance, there is upkeep, and armies cost you money every turn.
They cost even more each turn if they're outside of your territory, which represents
the cost of keeping them supplied.
The mathematics of how this is done can be complicated, but if you want to look into it,
again, the Siv fanatic site has a good explanation, and again, the link is in the show notes.
But knowing this and knowing that finance is really important, an interesting combination
might be aggressive plus financial, and there is one leader with that combination, Ragnar.
The Vikings' unique unit is the berserker, which replaces the mace man, so it's probably
closer to medieval and to ancient, but it comes with amphibious capabilities.
On an archipelago map with lots of islands, this starts to look like a very interesting
option.
Another consideration is that you need to build roads to move your armies around quickly,
and that requires workers.
So the expansive trait here might make Shaka a good choice.
And he has the MPS's unique unit, which is also very mobile.
The point is that each of these leaders can fit some strategies and circumstances, but
no leader fits all strategies and circumstances.
And of course, we just looked at the possibilities for a conquering victory.
Because you wanted to be more peaceful and maybe go for a culture or a science victory,
then I would start by looking at leaders with the protective trait.
These are Saladin, Protective and Spiritual, Mao Zedong, Protective and Expansive, Qin
Shi Wang, Protective and Industrius, Churchill, Protective and Charismatic, Charlemagne, Protective
and Imperialistic, Tokugawa, Protective and Aggressive, Wang Kong, Protective, Financial,
Sitting Bull, Protective, Philosophical and Gilgamesh, Protective, Creative.
So again, we have nine possible leaders and no two alike.
Now the reason you might want to go with a protective trait is so that you can protect
your empire while focusing more on either culture or science.
Now just having the protective trait is not enough, you need to build up your armies to
a sufficient strength that they deter aggression from other players.
And you also need to continually upgrade your forces to keep up with the other players.
You don't want to be defending with axemen when the others are attacking with cavalry.
If you're going for a science victory, you will naturally be researching the new technologies
that give you more powerful units, and that suggests maybe a combination of protective
with philosophical, which sitting bull has might be a good choice.
But another way to look at it is to pick industrious as your second trait, because you'll want
to build all of the science buildings as fast as possible.
And when you have researched a new military technology like gunpowder, you can use your
forge to crank out the new units.
Now culture is an interesting option that appears here for the first time.
As in Civ 3, culture expands your borders and gives you more territory.
And another holdover from Civ 3 is that cities can flip allegiance from one player to another
when there is a large imbalance in culture.
And cities get a defensive bonus as the level of culture goes up.
The victory condition is to have three cities with legendary culture, which on normal game
speed would be 50,000 culture.
On epic or marathon, it goes up.
But knowing you need to get three cities to this level means you have to be strategic
about earning culture and not spread it willy nilly over your empire.
So the starting point is to pick a leader that gives you advantages, and generally that
means you want to go with a creative leader.
Two leaders get added to culture per city, and that's two per turn, so it does add up.
And they get production bonuses for libraries, two additional culture per turn, and theaters,
three additional culture per turn.
Now these leaders are Willem von Orange, creative financial, Hatshepsut, creative spiritual,
Zara Yakhub, creative and organized, Louis XIV, creative and industrious, paracles, creative
and philosophical, Sir Yavarman II, creative and expansive, Kublik Khan, creative aggressive,
Catherine, creative imperialistic, and Gilgamesh, creative protective, again nine leaders,
all different.
So when you look at the culture bonuses from religious buildings, Hatshepsut looks like
an attractive choice.
But another very reasonable choice is philosophical because you get more great people, which is
a source for a lot of culture as well.
So paracles is also a good choice if you're going for a culture victory.
And wonders can be a great source of culture, so the bonus from industrious makes Louis XIV
a good choice as well.
So to sum it up, you can win with any leader, but picking one that fits your goal makes
it easier.
Learn to modify slightly what you do for each leader, therefore.
If you go with Hatshepsut, you need to commit to heavily invest again in promoting religion
as your primary strategy.
Whereas with Louis XIV, you will be preparing to build wonders and you want to orient your
strategy that way.
But that isn't all we need to consider.
So the next time, we're going to talk about civics.
So this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support
free software.
Bye bye.
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