I have been playing Civ4 for about 2 weeks after about 2 years off since Civ3. Pretty good game. I have some questions that I have not seen addresses in other thread.

Land:
1. can you use work boats to cultivate resources outside of your shaded area?
2. are worker automated trade routes the best trade routes?
3. do automated workers do a good job? do they go back and upgrade square when new things (windmills etc) are discovered

Military:
4. the book states that the defending unit is chosen as the best to defend against the attacker. but how is the order of the attackers decided?
5. how do you best use collateral damage and keep your units (catapalt, artillery, etc) alive?
6. is it better to upgrade military units each time you can or if due to game specifics factors you can afford to wait and do a double upgrade? is there any money difference?

Great People:
7. what are the best use of great prophets?
8. after your land area is pretty mature and your are kicking out new buildings quickly, what use are great artists and engineers? is it best to make them super specialists?

Diplomacy:
9. what is the best way to turn an enemy (minus from religion and trading with their enemy) happy enough with you to open borders to get your missionairies in?
10. why do the other civs keep the "-1 you attacked our friend" even after you convince them to attack their friend too?
11. will small gold or resource or technology gifts affect another civ's view of you?
12. can you stop trading a resource with a civ when demanded by another stronger civ and then just start it back without any penalty?

In Response to your questions:

Land:
1. I do believe that aquatic resources still need to be within your cultural borders.
2. I am not 100% sure how trade routes and networks work. As long as a trade route is established, whether by road, river, coast (with sailing I think), or over the ocean (with whatever one does this, astronomy?), you will get a trade route. I suspect the value of gold that you receive has to do with the distance between cities.
3. I have found that automated workers do a decent job that will maximize land production. There is an option such that automatic workers do not replace current improvements. I am not too sure about that back upgrading but I tend to automate most of my workers and keep a few to tweak the landscape as I like (ie. more windmills on hills for food, or watermills (which get awesome later in the game)).

Military:
4. My guess is that the computer would do one of a few things. Take the best odds, or I am not sure if they consider keeping higher level units back untill the defeneder is weaker. Sorry, not much of an answer here.
5. Artillary units do have a chance to withdraw. I normally get a group of 2-4 catapults or canons, bombard the city defence down to 0, then first attack with the siege units to have collatoral damage. Some might win, some might retreat, more then likely they will die. It depends what you want to use the units for. I use them for the collatoral damage so my other units can take the city. Maybe in a future patch their withdraw % will increase or they may be able to gain the flanking ability.
6. I am not sure, I would assume though that if it takes x amount to get from a to b, and y from b to c, that to go from a to c, it would be x+y.

Great People
7. The best use of Great Prophets is creating a religion's unique building. This gives you gold from each city that has that religion, and also spreads it faster. Then besides saving for a golden age, great prophets as a specialist give gold and production, so I either put it in a good city or in a coastal one that needs a boost.
8. Depending on the game, Super Specialists are generally what I do. You can also save Great Artists to drop a "culture bomb" if you are attacking somone and are close to their borders. This either takes a recently captured city and prevents a counter attack my impeding enemy movement or even might steal some of their resources away from them.

Diplomacy
9. Trading, gifting, same relgion, helping when they ask. That's all I can think of now.
10. Not sure??? Maybe this needs fixing.
11. Yes, but it takes time. I have seen "We appreciate the years that you have supplied us with resources." after I have gifted a resource. I would assume the same thing would happen for gold and technology.
12. You can restart trading without penalty I think. You would still enrage whoever it was that you stopped trading with, but I dont think it would get the other guy angry.

Hope this helps. Anyone else with some ideas.

Land:
1. No, and similarly workers can't build things outside your borders. The exception is roads/railroads and chopping forests/jungles; both can be done in neutral or even enemy territory.
2. Trade routes are binary; they're either there or they're not. That said, I prefer to control my workers manually, so I wouldn't really know how good the trade network they create is. Of course, the AI only uses automation, and their cities generally link well enough.
3. Again, I don't automate them, so I can't say. It seems like the AI is a little crazy about cottages, and also likes to cut forests. Whether those are bad or good things to do, I don't know.

Military:
4. I'm pretty sure that it'll select the unit that has the best odds even if the defender picks the best defender (which they will). So if you have a swordsman with City Raider and a horse archer attacking a city, it will normally attack with the swordsman. But if there's an axeman in the city, it will attack with the horse archer instead.
Of course, you can always ungroup the units and attack individually. Sometimes you want your weaker units to go first if you know they'll die. For example, if I have two swordsmen, one with 9 XP and city raider II and one with 0 XP, and I'm attacking a single unit in a city with a total strength of 10, I'll send the 0 XP guy in first. I know he'll die, but hopefully he'll damage the defender enough that the other one will win. If I do it the other way, I have a chance at not losing either unit, but not a very good one.
5. You don't keep them alive, usually. Get used to sending suicide catapults to their doom; often it's the best (and only) way to break up a strong stack of units. In general, though, you need a lot more attackers than there are defenders to take a city.
6. I believe it's a bit cheaper to wait, but I could be wrong. Also, upgrading resets XP to 10 if it was higher than that, which is bad if you have 16 XP but good if you have 17.

Great People:
7. Usually shrines. However, make sure to check what tech it'll give; I've grabbed Theology from an early Great Prophet that way. If nothing else, settling them in a city is far from a waste; 2 hammers and 5 gold are quite good.
8. Artists are always always always useful for culture bombs, unless you're doing OCC. In fact, one of the best ways to use them is in a war, to immediately convert a captured city. You can also take cities with them if you have proper placement. Engineers are worth about a thousand shields, so they're pretty useful too.

Diplomacy:
9. It's hard. Giving them stuff doesn't always help much. Do any trade you can with them; I think that helps. You may never get back on their good side, though.
10. Buggy AI.
11. Rarely. Much more important is to give them what they ask for when they ask for it. Of course, sometimes you don't want to do that, but no one said diplomacy was easy. I certainly find it harder than just smashing them.
12. Yes, but typically the civ you broke trades with is very very mad at you and may not even talk. They'll keep a penalty vs you the rest of the game, at any rate.

Don't post questions in the article forum please.

Here i go with my currently still pretty limited knowledge of the game since i've only had it for 10 days. Most of this i know from reading this forum, which proves your initial statement incorrect (i.e. not addressed in other threads).

1. can you use work boats to cultivate resources outside of your shaded area?

No.

2. are worker automated trade routes the best trade routes?

Wouldn't know, i never automate. I like micromanagement and i'm too much of a perfectionist to let the AI do anything remotely suboptimal for me.

3. do automated workers do a good job? do they go back and upgrade square when new things (windmills etc) are discovered

Same as point 2. Yes, they will make new improvements on top of old ones, unless you uncheck that option (or check the option to disallow it, can't remember).

4. the book states that the defending unit is chosen as the best to defend against the attacker. but how is the order of the attackers decided?

The attacker chooses which unit to attack with first. This is not Civ 3; there are no armies anymore.

5. how do you best use collateral damage and keep your units (catapalt, artillery, etc) alive?

You can't. You will lose them, but on the upside, this will help keep your other units alive once they attack after your siege units.

6. is it better to upgrade military units each time you can or if due to game specifics factors you can afford to wait and do a double upgrade? is there any money difference?

The cost is a base cost plus one that is directly proportional to the difference in hammers between the two units. By waiting and upgrading once instead of twice, you pay the base cost only once, but the other part of the cost stays the same. Bottomline : don't upgrade until you use them.

7. what are the best use of great prophets?

To build shrines for your religions, and to discover new religions.

8. after your land area is pretty mature and your are kicking out new buildings quickly, what use are great artists and engineers? is it best to make them super specialists?

Great artists, used in border cities, decrease cultural pressure put on them by the AI and allows you to put pressure on them. It shift the borders more in your advantage. You can also do culture bombs. Finally, you can save them up and use them all at once on the last turn of a cultural victory.

Great engineers are great for rushing wonders.

9. what is the best way to turn an enemy (minus from religion and trading with their enemy) happy enough with you to open borders to get your missionairies in?

Don't trade with their enemy. Switch to their religion to make them happy, then switch back (especially if you're a spiritual civ, which means no anarchy). Try gifts. Or take them over militarily and get the missionaries in once the cities are yours!

10. why do the other civs keep the "-1 you attacked our friend" even after you convince them to attack their friend too?

Because the formula for diplomacy bonuses is stupid, especially with regards to how long some modifiers apply.

11. will small gold or resource or technology gifts affect another civ's view of you?

It gives bonuses (+1 or more). If the gift is too small, no impact (that i know of).

12. can you stop trading a resource with a civ when demanded by another stronger civ and then just start it back without any penalty?

Yes, i think. But you can only stop a recuring trade after it's been going on for 10 turns.

If they ask you to convert to their religion, and you don't want to, you also have 2 choices : say no and get a -1 in relations, or say yes, get a +1 (for a net +2 differential), and switch back 5 turns later while keeping the bonus in relations.

Land:
6. I believe it's a bit cheaper to wait, but I could be wrong. Also, upgrading resets XP to 10 if it was higher than that, which is bad if you have 16 XP but good if you have 17.

Actually, it's never a good thing to reset at 10. If you're at 17, your next upgrade will be at 26. If you upgrade, you'll go down to 10, but your next upgrade will still be at 26. So basically, you're now 7 points farther from your next upgrade. So if your unit is already at 10 or above, you can't use this for an argument for upgrading right away instead of waiting, because whatever XP you gain in your new form will be lost anyway.

Basically, i say always wait unless you're going to use the unit. Even then, it might be better to wait. For example, in my current game, i have an archer at 36 XP (and you get an upgrade at 37). I'd like to get the 1 XP before upgrading, because after upgrading, it will be hard to get back to 37. So getting the 1 XP now at least ensures that i get the promotion. It also means getting the promotion faster and being able to use it for longer. The plan for me is to get 1 XP and then upgrade, and forget about getting anymore promotions with this unit (as he'll then need to go all the way up from 10 to 50).

Don't post questions in the article forum please.

Wassup M'lord Chambers? Why no questions?

Whoops, I think that was a question! Actually 2 questions.

Anyhow, if not here, where do we post questions?

Damn, a 3rd question. No more, I promise.

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

Post your questions in the strategy forum. This forum is for posting articles only, as the name clearly states. This is not an article.