Being a reasonable Civ3 player I only just started to play Civ4 and have some questions that more experienced players can maybe answer.

After two games I'm still often surprised by the output of certain tiles. It's probably because the number of combinations of terrains and the large number of possible worker-actions. Plus effects that only appear later. Is there someone who has worked out all the combinations and put them in a grid (or Excel sheet)? On one axis I'd put all terrain-types, on the other the worker-actions and technologies affecting the worker-actions.

Has anyone ever built a temple? For some reason I have yet to find a reason to build a religious building, they don't seem to be worth the bit of culture or science they produce. They add happiness but so far health always trails happiness, so somehow I rarely need to actively boost happiness, and when I do there are always more advantageous ways to do it than building a temple. Or maybe I'll learn to appreciate them as I move up the difculty scale? (So far Chieftain and Warlord were too easy.)

Can Civ4 add up properly? I've had many occasions where the numbers just didn't seem to add up. For example: Stonehenge + Oracle = +2 gpp instead of +4. Another one was production after building ironworks: 22 base + 25% from buildings + 25% from state religion + 100% ironworks = 33 (It literally states this when hovering the mouse over the hammer). That should have been 55 of course. There were other occasions where the numbers surprised me, but then seemed to get 'fixed' a little later.

So far I must say this seems to be the best Civ yet! And surely the prettiest.

You will appreciate temples on noble and above. And did you patched up? There is a 1.09 out. Also seems strange that Stonehenge + Oracle = +2 gpp, you might want to post that at bugs forum.

Being a reasonable Civ3 player I only just started to play Civ4 and have some questions that more experienced players can maybe answer.

After two games I'm still often surprised by the output of certain tiles. It's probably because the number of combinations of terrains and the large number of possible worker-actions. Plus effects that only appear later. Is there someone who has worked out all the combinations and put them in a grid (or Excel sheet)? On one axis I'd put all terrain-types, on the other the worker-actions and technologies affecting the worker-actions.

Don't think anyone's done that yet. It's one of my todos, but then, I have a lot of pet projects related to CIV. :p

Has anyone ever built a temple? For some reason I have yet to find a reason to build a religious building, they don't seem to be worth the bit of culture or science they produce. They add happiness but so far health always trails happiness, so somehow I rarely need to actively boost happiness, and when I do there are always more advantageous ways to do it than building a temple. Or maybe I'll learn to appreciate them as I move up the difculty scale? (So far Chieftain and Warlord were too easy.)

Bingo. Plus you can't get a cathedral unless you build 3 temples (if you want to build 2 cathedrals, you need 6 temples, etc.). And if you're going for the cultural victory those cathedrals are key.

Can Civ4 add up properly? I've had many occasions where the numbers just didn't seem to add up. For example: Stonehenge + Oracle = +2 gpp instead of +4. Another one was production after building ironworks: 22 base + 25% from buildings + 25% from state religion + 100% ironworks = 33 (It literally states this when hovering the mouse over the hammer). That should have been 55 of course. There were other occasions where the numbers surprised me, but then seemed to get 'fixed' a little later.

So far I must say this seems to be the best Civ yet! And surely the prettiest.

Hmmmm, do you mean that Stonehenge and the Oracle were producing +2 GPP instead of +4 or vice versa? It's supposed to be +4.

For the Ironworks, did you have coal and iron connected? It only provides the 100% boost (50% for each resource), if you have access to that resource.

Req

I build temples in every city as a matter of course, cultural and border-expanding bonuses are immediate and cuts the AI off from available (and undiscovered) resources early on. Good if you want to make friends and money by trading them.

Also good if you've got that headcase Alexander on your borders, as they tend to be further from your cities so you see the loon coming way before he gets in amongst your townsfolk!

Building temples early on means you don't need to worry about whether you can build cathedrals later.

Has anyone ever built a temple? For some reason I have yet to find a reason to build a religious building, they don't seem to be worth the bit of culture or science they produce. They add happiness but so far health always trails happiness, so somehow I rarely need to actively boost happiness, and when I do there are always more advantageous ways to do it than building a temple. Or maybe I'll learn to appreciate them as I move up the difculty scale? (So far Chieftain and Warlord were too easy.)


As many point before me, temple are needed for cathedral-type buildings, which are very interesting.

Sometimes happiness in far behind health. Temple can be early era to late era interesting buildings, especially when others options are unavailable or exhausted.

Yep, you have to have cathedrals to do cultural victory, or culture assimilation. Each cathedral requires 3 temples (in different cities).

Usually I build temples as one of the last improvements, if then, and only if I still have an angry citizen or two.

Other religious buildings are far more beneficial. Monasteries and Cathedrals are both very useful. And the Wonders are extremely good for both culture and +GPP, plus give you oodles of $$ and expand the religion. (I realize you're probably not talking about these "buildings".)

As for math, I think the city screen only shows unmodified stats. So, that might be why the math isn't adding up. Beats me why in the world anyone would ever want to see the unmodified numbers.

Wodan

Temples are handy if you've founded a religion or three and really need a great prophet.

Here's a spreadsheet I put together with the stuff I kept looking up while playing.

There's a tab with the leader information: traits, nation, unique unit, and starting research. It also has the terrain info you were talking about. Not quite the same format, but hopefully it's easy to read. It's got base terrain, f/p/c values, defense bonus, and movement costs, then sections for secondary feature types, improvements, and resources.

The second tab has all of the buildings and wonders and their costs/benefits, notes, etc.

Hope it helps you out. :)

If you found a religion (or a few religions) and use Great Prophets to create the appropriate shrines in the founding cities, do you get the added gold commerce from religious temples you build yourself? I'm guessing you do, since the last couple of games I've played where I was able to found a few religions and get their holy shrines, I've ended up having drastically increased gold revenue compared to my games without the shrines. And I tend to build as many temples on my borders as possible to keep out neighbor's culture and to occasionally flip their weaker cities. If you can get gold, culture and happiness out of relatively cheap temples, that seems like a potent path to take.

The Shrines give gold based on the number of cities with that religion in it, not the number of temples. The temples/cathedrals do add to the income from one of the Wonders, however, that I can't remember the name of. But only if it's your National Religion (I wanna say Angkor or Spiral Minaret or Hagia Sophia... one of those things I usually wind up losing out on. :cry: )

Edit: Spiral Minaret. Gee, we're on CivFanatics and they have a Wonder List. Dur!

Is there someone who has worked out all the combinations and put them in a grid (or Excel sheet)? On one axis I'd put all terrain-types, on the other the worker-actions and technologies affecting the worker-actions.

As a matter of fact, I put together a comprehensive set of charts on all (or as many as I could think of) aspects of Civ IV. The charts include comparisons on terrain, improvements, and all of the resources. The links are in my signature. I hope they're what you're looking for!

kroYM