Episode: 4210
Title: HPR4210: Playing Civilization IV, Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4210/hpr4210.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:24:35

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,210 for Friday the 20th of September 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Playing Civilization 4 Part 1.
It is part of the series' computer strategy games.
It is hosted by Ahokad, and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, we start our dive into the mechanics of this game.
Hello, this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio.
Welcome to another exciting episode in our ongoing series on computer strategy games.
And I'm going to start digging into Civilization 4.
So we're going to take a look at the details of this one.
Now, first of all, it has to be said that Civilization 4 is where the Civilization franchise made a big leap in depth and complexity.
Of course, every version makes changes, but if you learned on the original civilization,
you could pick up the changes in Civilization 2 pretty easily and play the game with muscle memory from the first version.
Similarly, Civilization 3 made a few changes, but you could adapt fairly easily from Civilization 2 and get up and running.
But with Civilization 4, major changes took place.
That kind of pointed the way to how Civilization would develop in Civilization 5 and Civilization 6.
Now, that said, there are things that don't change.
You still start out in 4,000 BC with a tribe of nomads that is ready to settle down and make a city.
You will then need to make units to defend your cities or attack other civs.
You will build buildings to improve your cities, and you will use your worker units to develop your lands.
And you can still earn a science victory by sending a spaceship full of colonists to Alpha Centauri,
or a domination victory by sending your armies on a rampage of devastation among your enemies.
But the victory conditions have changed a little.
We've got new victory types here.
The first one is conquest.
Now, conquest is pretty straightforward, just eliminate all of the competition.
That's always been an option in Civilization.
But here's a new one.
Cultural have three cities with legendary culture.
That's a brand new one.
And there's domination.
Domination is different from conquest.
Have at least 30% of the world's population, and at least 65% of the world's land area.
Space race, right?
Again, this is one that we've had all along, and that's the first to land your colonists on Alpha Centauri.
Diplomatic.
That's another brand new one.
Be elected world leader by the United Nations, or in the beyond the sword expansion,
you can be elected by the Apostolic Palace, reflecting the increased importance of religion.
And finally, high score.
If no one has won by any of the other victory types, just mention the game ends in 2050 AD,
and this is what the highest scores the winner.
So, in looking at this list, three things tell you something about the new features.
The cultural victory, the diplomatic victory, and the Apostolic Palace variant on the diplomatic victory
reflect some of the changes in this version.
Religion in particular is starting to advance past the opiate of the masses that was originally in civilization,
and begins a development that will continue in civilization five and civilization six.
This is one of the changes we'll begin to.
Others include new tile improvements, expanded resources, an SB&R system,
and a whole civic system that modifies your government.
Finally, as Soren Johnson made clear in the quote that we looked at in the previous episode,
this game is made to be modded.
And I think that from civilization four on, you have to consider mods when you look at the game.
Now, a quick search for civilization four mods will give you plenty of leads on good possibilities.
Now, here's just a few that I found, and I've got some links in the show notes,
if you want to try any of these out.
So, first was a page I found is best mods for civilization four worth trying out.
Alright, so you get a lot of ideas there.
Another one, mod DB's civilization four beyond the sword mods.
Another page, civilization four beyond the sword mods.
Another one, five best mods for civilization four.
So these are all web pages that you know will give you then additional links to specific mods,
and you can try them out.
Now, the first thing to point out is that some mods actually ship with the game.
Now, when I'm playing Civ 4, I will play beyond the sword, which is the final expansion.
And when I start the game, I can click on advanced, then load a mod,
and I can choose from 12 mods that are already there.
Among them are final frontier, a mod that puts the civilization four engine in a space environment.
And there is also the very popular rise and fall of civilization,
which changes the game to more closely match the actual history.
Such that, for instance, civilizations arise and die at various times throughout the game.
These are examples of mods that alter the gameplay.
Others create fantasy environments, or recreate master of Orion 2 with the Civ 4 engine, and so on.
So you can see there's a lot to look at here.
The other category of mod is one that improves the interface.
Civilization games have a ton of information available, but it is not always easy to access.
That is one reason why modders have created these improvements.
Now, the one I recommend for any player is an example of this, and it is referred to as bug,
which is an acronym for Beyond the Sword, Unaltered Gameplay,
and a further development called BAT.
As implied, this does not change the gameplay in any way.
It just improves on the interface in ways that make the game easier to play.
Now, you can get both bug and bat mods from Source Storage.
But note that these mods are only available for the Beyond the Sword expansion.
This is because they are written in Python, and that capability was only added in Beyond the Sword.
In earlier visions of Civ 4, the mods available tended to be done as XML,
and you only needed to drop the file into the mods folder.
There is a useful download site for mods at Civ Fanatics, again, link in the show notes,
and this site also has instructions on installing mods.
So this is a good place to get up to speed.
I encourage anyone to check these out, but of course the game is perfectly playable without using any mods,
particularly if you go to the last expansion of the game Beyond the Sword.
But the wealth of mods available make this game infinitely replayable.
Note, installing the BAT mod on my Steam version of Civilization 4 has so far not worked for me.
There may be some trick I have in stumbled across on how to do that.
But I also have Civ 4 in my Good Old Games account.
Now, good old games can connect to Steam and pull all of your games into the Good Old Games Galaxy application,
and that is often easier to deal with.
Now, you can get this at Good Old Games Connect, link in the show notes,
and in Good Old Games I found it a lot easier.
I located the zip file for the mod at Source Storage,
copied it into the mods folder for Civ 4 and extracted it there.
Now, when I start a game of Civ 4 in Good Old Games Galaxy,
I can go to the advanced option when starting and load the BAT mod.
Okay, another thing we want to talk about, and this is a big change, tile improvements.
One of the issues with earlier versions of Civilization was that the only choice you had for tile improvements,
in most cases, was to either irrigate or mine the tile.
So you would plop one or the other down on every tile,
and the only decision was which one to build.
The Civ 4 team wanted to shake that up by introducing new tile improvements,
and they really did it in a big way.
Now, here are the improvements you can build in Civ 4.
The camp.
This is unlocked with hunting, and lets you improve sources of deer, firs, and ivory.
The cottage.
Unlocked with pottery.
This is an important improvement to build your economy over time.
Now, it does have to be worked.
In other words, you must place one of your population on it.
If worked, it grows over time into a hamlet, then a village, and finally a town,
and the commerce produced grows with each level.
So it may not produce a lot for you right away,
but if you make the early investment, it can pay off big in the later game.
It's never a mistake to have a very healthy treasury in any of these Civ games.
Farm.
Okay, we've had those before.
This increases your food yield, but it's also necessary to unlock the corn, rice, and wheat resources.
You have to build a farm on them to get the benefit.
Now, fishing boats, which is unlocked with the fishing technology.
This tile improvement is not built by a worker, but by a work boat unit.
Now, you need fishing boats to get the benefit from clams, crabs, and fish.
Also note that unlike worker units, work boats are used up when they create fishing boats or waddling boats.
See, I'll come back to that a little bit.
Forest preserves were added in beyond the sword.
That's unlocked with the scientific method, adds happiness, potentially some commerce, and may cause the forest to spread.
Fort, unlocked with mathematics, gives a defensive boost to units that are stationed in it.
Lumber mill, unlocked with replaceable parts, adds to the production output of forests.
Mine, unlocked with mining, increases production output, necessary to produce mineral resources like copper and iron.
Offshore platform, unlocked with plastics, necessary to utilize oil resources on ocean tiles.
Pasture, unlocked with animal husbandry, it improves cows, horses, pigs, and sheep.
Plantation, unlocked with the calendar, it improves bananas, dyes, incense, silk, spices, and sugar.
Quarry, unlocked with masonry, it improves marble and stone.
And roads and railroads, roads unlock with the wheel, and railroads unlock with railroads.
Mostly add movement, but railroads can add production to mines, lumber mills, and quarries.
Note that unlike earlier versions of Siv, roads do not add commerce any longer.
Water mill, unlocked with machinery, adds production, can add food or commerce when some civics are discovered.
The well, unlocked with combustion, and allows oil production on land.
Whaling boats, unlocked with optics.
They're the other thing that are built by workboat units, and they improve whale resources.
Windmill, unlocked with machinery, adds food and commerce.
Winery, unlocked with monarchy, it improves wine resources.
Workshop, unlocked with metal casting, it adds production.
Note that many of these improvements can have added effects when certain civics or technologies are discovered.
For the details, I recommend a page on the civilization wiki, and there are links in the show notes for this.
Also note that one of the changes in Civ 4 is that there are more resources, and many of these tile improvements are needed to take advantage of them.
For example, a key resource is horses, since mounted military units are both powerful and can move quickly.
So you want to make sure you're developing any horse resources you find by placing a pasture on them, and then connecting them to your cities with a road network.
Similarly, you want to develop your copper and iron resources by placing mines on them, and again connecting them to your cities via roads.
For this reason, our next topic will be resources.
Note, I want to again remind you you can only work tiles within the Big Fat Cross.
Remember we've talked about this, of 21 tiles for any city.
You may have other tiles that are within your empire, but if they're not in the Big Fat Cross, they cannot be worked.
You can put roads on them, however, to complete your road network.
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