I downloaded this http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=civili...n+4&ext=&op=and
version of Civilisation 4. It was a folder, with heaps of weird constituent rar file parts. I am now unzipping each of the several within the rar file into a single folder, as they all seem to be holding seperate parts of some .MDF file? Am I doing this right, because it says it's going to take 12 hours...

There should be one key file that you extract and it then extracts all the others. I think it's the one that ends in .rar rather than .001 or .002 or whatever. What decompresser are you using?

WinRaR. Oh fuck, it looks like you're right, hold on.

It usually does the whole lot .. you just need to decompres single file (usually)


--- what oob said.

Excellent, cheers comrades! Just been playing the game for a couple of hours. I still don't get how to ethnically cleanse my population though, because all the Indians in my city of Berlin are moaning to rejoin the homeland!

You essentially have two options for genocide:

1) Raze the city when you capture it. This is usually a bad idea, but is recommended if the city is in a really shitty location, as the amount of maintenance you pay per city increases for every city you have. They're really starting to push the idea of 'quality over quantity' when it comes to cities, if you spam out too many cities at the start of the game you may find you have to set your science rate very low so you can cover the maintenance costs.

2) Increase the culture of the city as soon as you capture it, so the inhabitants will gradually change to your ethnicity (eugenics?). The three best ways to do this are:
A) using a 'great artist' to create a great work, which immediately gives the city 4000 culture points (a great option if you have one, but you won't 99% of the time).
B) building a theatre (fairly cheap building, gives 3 culture per turn, which is probably the best bang for your buck in that regard), if you don't have theatres then you can build an obelisk or use a missionary to establish your state religion, that way you'll get 1 culture per turn.
C) increasing the amount of artist specialists (each produces 4 culture per turn IIRC). The caste system civic option (F3 for your civics) is good for the latter, otherwise you need to build stuff which allows you to increase the amount of artists, which means either a theatre or some wonders... the only other building I can think of which increases the cap is the broadcast tower, which comes way late in the game.

Unlike previous civs, you need certain buildings to raise your specialist cap, for instance a factory allows you to have 2 engineers, a forge 1 engineer, and of course forge + factory = up to 3 engineers. With the caste system civic however, you can have as many artists, merchants, and scientists in a city as your population can support (it's 3 types anyway, I think it's those 3). Priests and engineers are still limited by your buildings.

Do make sure you raise the culture of a city you capture, because if it becomes too 'foreign' it can revolt and come under the control of an enemy ('culture flip'). This can also happen to cities that are enveloped by foreign borders, so pay attention to culture especially for your border cities. You should also have one of your core cities specialise as a 'culture city', where you build the Hermitage (+100% culture) and other culture producing buildings.

Can you tell I've been playing this game a lot? ^_^

Alright, thanks for that advice, I'll definitely use it to wipe out all the whinging foreigners in the city. I didn't realise how important this cultural thing is (Having been used to the system in Civ1).

We've got to play some multiplayer sometime too.

Make sure each city has enough culture to get the whole city radius rather than just the squares adjacent to the city (10 culture needed). In the very early game, your options for this (that I can think of) are:

* Establish a religion there, preferably your state religion (I'm not sure if non-state religions give culture on their own), which will give the city 1 culture per turn. For this reason, it's important to be the founder of a religion, since you benefit more from spreading your own religion than that of a foreign nation.
* Pick a leader that has the creative ability, which gives all your cities an extra 2 culture per turn. There's a list here amongst other info, search for George Washington to find the right part. Of the Germans, Frederick has this ability, Bismarck does not. I myself am not a fan of the creative ability however (there's a description of the abilities and their effects on that same page).
* Build an obelisk for 1 culture/turn. These become obsolete when calendar is discovered, so this is only an option in the very early game.
* Build Stonehenge, which gives all your cities (as well as those you found later) a free obelisk. Also a good way to have a core city with a lot of culture at the start.

I have two outsiders who are keen to play the game, I'll have to give the game to one of them but he lives near me (so I'll probably just drive it to him or get him to drive here) and is a veteran of previous civs. Steveo is just getting into it now, so if we can get the 5 of us and one of the others who were interested that gives us 6, which would be ideal for 2 teams of 3 or 3 teams of 2.