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?

Land:
1. can you use work boats to cultivate resources outside of your shaded area?
No. Only within your cultural boundaries.
2. are worker automated trade routes the best trade routes?
They are pretty good, but I prefer to do the job myself.
3. do automated workers do a good job? do they go back and upgrade square when new things (windmills etc) are discovered
I'd recommend doing it all by hand. This will help you get a good feel for the game and for the way resources and different tiles work. To answer the question, however, they will upgrade tiles as they see fit unless you select the box for them to not build over old improvements (under options.) They do a fairly good job--much better than previous civs--but not good enough to automate and let go, in my opinion.

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?
What the AI considers to be the strongest attacker. This isn't always the case, however. For example, sometimes it is best to let your catapults/cannos/artillery suicide against a stack in order to inflict maximum collateral damage.

5. how do you best use collateral damage and keep your units (catapalt, artillery, etc) alive?
See above. As well, I've read convincing arguments that having Drill 1 and Drill 2 upgrades for these units is the way to go. I haven't experiments with that myself.

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?
Cheaper overall to upgrade from low to high with no in-between states. For example, archer->longbow->rifleman is more expensive than archer->rifleman. I've heard conflicting thoughts on the upgrades, but my opinion is that it is generally better to spend the money on something else and use antiquated units as cannon fodder unless the unit has multiple upgrades.

Great People:
7. what are the best use of great prophets?
Depends. If you have a city that discovered a faith, I'd hit F7 and see how big that faith is. Also consider how much effort you want to put in spreading it. If it is, or you ancitipate it will be, a wide-spread faith, then I'd use the GP to build the shrine. The shrine itself helps spread the faith, too.

I've also used them to discover a faith like Theology or Divine Right later in the game to grab a religion first. Using them as a Super Specialist is usually the best bet late in the game, especially if you have something like Representation or the Sistine Chapel.

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?
If I have Representation, I usually make them specialists. Great Artists are good for a newly-conquered city as well--make a great work and suddenly you have a solid cultural bulwark. This works especially well in Terra scenarios, when you have a New World you want to claim as your own.

Great Engineers are useful just about down to the end of the game--by the point you can't use them, you might as well use them as 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?
Giving them techs and gold is helpful (note that it can never get above +4, however). Granting their requests or demands is as well.


10. why do the other civs keep the "-1 you attacked our friend" even after you convince them to attack their friend too?
A screwy aspect of the AI. :(
11. will small gold or resource or technology gifts affect another civ's view of you?
How small? It has to be substantial enough to affect their view. Slide the mouse pointer over their names on the right hand of the screen to see the exact current + and - modifiers.
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?
I'm not sure. I've not tried that myself.

1: No, assuming "shaded" means "culture"
2: ?
3: I dislike automated workers, but they're better than civ3. They will redo existing improvements by default.
4: Not sure, but I assume you mean when attacking with several units selected; I would guess it picks the best ratio, but I select my attacks one-by-one anyway.
5: ?
6: ?
7: Shrines if you own a holy city. Otherwise people like to save them for a golden age (consumes two great people), but I'll add them to a city as a super specialist
8: Either use for golden ages or super specialists; there is debate as to which is best.
9: Perhaps go no religion yourself for a while; maybe gift them something. I'm not sure, though.
10: They're schizzo
11: ?
12: In the F4 active trade screen it will tell you if the deal has a number of turns to be cancelled. If there is no number you should be able to cancel the deal by clicking on it or going through the negotiation option.

EDIT: Cross-posted with previous post.

EDIT 2: I think I misread question 12 and answered an entirely different question.

Land:
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?

No clue since I don't automate. You make more gold off of trade routes with other civs, which requires open borders, otherwise it seems to be pretty static and only affected by structures (like harbors increase revenue of trade routes).

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

No clue, I don't automate. You can select an option in the options menu to have automated workers leave worked tiles alone - but I don't know if they keep track of tiles they worked vs tiles you manually alter. You can usually get by with far fewer workers in Civ IV than you could in Civ III, so manually controlling them isn't quite so taxing.

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?

There's a debate of sorts on what the AIs do to choose thier attacker sequence. As a player I typically select each unit individually, check the odds, and pick my own first attacker(s). When you have a stack of units they seem to get ordered by how much xp they have (which somewhat makes sense since promotions affect their strength and the computer can't know which modified strengths to use til the situation demands it). If you group your units and attack I'm not sure what would be selected and I wouldn't advise doing this!

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

You often simply have to accept the loss of suicide siege and treat as if you just used a LOT of ammo, and resupply or bring lots. At certain times you can often give your siege city raider promotions and they can survive. The cool thing is that you have decisions to make - do you increase collateral damage for a one shot suicide siege unit or try to promote them so they might survive but do less collateral. Etc.

The other thing is that you don't HAVE to do collateral damage - so only use as much as is needed to get as much advantage as you want. Mileage varies - sometimes you need to suicide a lot of siege into hopeless odds just to have any chance at victory. Sometimes your city raider promoted units can win with zero softening up via collateral suicidal siege.

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?

I recenlty read that upgrade costs are a base cost + difference level cost, so that would indicate that repeatedly upgrading is more expensive since you'd be paying the base cost more often.

Great People:
7. what are the best use of great prophets?

Opinions vary. If you have founded (or captured) religions/holy cities then building a shrine is often a good use, particularly for your main/state religion because it's the most likely to be spread throughout your empire. A shrine gives you 1 gold for EVERY city that has that religion. This stacks if you have multiple shrines for different religions. So you could have 3 religions spread in your empire, shrines for each, and a hefty income. Check out the "cuban isolationists" succession game thread for an extreme example of shrine income.

Beyond that I personally like to incorporate them as super specialists because they add production and gold forever - two things you can always use. I almost always incorporate them in my capitol where you get the most natural income and production boostage (just because, and/or due to civics, etc).

And of course, you can always save them to start a golden age. I personally rarely do this but there are times when it can be handy. A timely golden age during space race, for ex, can be a nice boost, and since at that point the game is nearly over it's a good use of a GP.

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?

I love great engineers. There are a few later wonders that I really like and I almost always save my great engineers for them. Statue of Liberty, Pentagon, and Three Gorges Damn. All 3 are so beefy that a great engineer will only partially complete them. All three give huge benefits. Sometimes I'll use them earlier for other wonders I really want but if I expect a game to have a significant late/modern era I'll save them.

Great artists can be used to push your borders to try to flip AI cities. They're awesome if you're a warmonger since they instantly end resistance in conquered cities and can establish some "ground" via border push. If you're going for a cultural victory then can be big for that too. They're very flexible. I almost always save them for war (but I like to go to war a lot) or until it's so late that I'm done warring and then I'll use them to put cultural pressure on a bordering civ - maybe take over a resource via push, etc.

In general, there is a huge amount of flexibility with great people and you really have to try different things and see what works for YOU - because everyone is going to have different preferences with them.

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?

I haven't had much luck with this - and I like it. Diplomacy is far less prone to cheese than in Civ 3. Gone are the days of repeatedly gifting 1 gold to "control" AIs. I also suck at sucking up to AIs. If you give in to their incessant crackheaded demands, switch to civics they like, adopt their religion, etc - they'll like you more. Since you're probably not going to do that just realize that sometimes AIs will simply never like you that much.

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

No clue. AIs have lengthy memories and at the time you did attack their friend. It doesn't matter that they're not friends anymore - what matters is your behavior. Doing something they don't like makes them trust you less even if they adopt your behavior later.

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

In my experience, not that much. Again, this isn't Civ3 where you can cheese the AIs into submission (and thank fricking goodness because I hate cheese unless it's on food). I haven't tried this much except when trying and failing miserably to win via diplomancy, but I have seen a bonus develop over time for repeatedly giving away tech.

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?[/quote]

I don't think there's a penalty for the action itself but eventually you will take some kind of hit with one of the civs. If you re-establish something one AI asks you to break they will almost always ask you to break it again after a while. So either you upset them by not breaking or you upset the other AI by breaking, and in my experience, repeatedly and suddenly breaking those kinds of arrangements will highly upset the AI that you're doing the making and breaking with. I've had AIs completely refuse to speak with me after repeatedly breaking and re-establishing like that.

Land:
1. Work boats can't cultivate resources outside of your borders.
2. No idea. I prefer manual workers.
3. See 2.

Military:
4. By the attacker, of course. If you send an entire stack to attack, I assume it chooses the attacker/defender pairing with the best odds in the attacker's favor.
5. They call them "kamikaze cats" for a reason.
6. You might save a little money by doing a little upgrade. Personally, I only upgrade units when needed. Keep your options open. In a recent game, for example, I saved a city because I could afford to upgrade an Archer to a Crossbowman.

7. Holy city shrines, if you've founded some. If you need to found a religion, using one to speed up the next religious tech can be useful. Their hammer output's nothing to sneeze at either.
8. Great engineers can still speed up wonders quite a bit. Great artists should either be teched or specialists, depending on late in the game it is.

9. Quit trading with their enemy. Or, if you feel like you need to be on friendly terms with everyone, you can give them techs & gifts to brownnose them.
10. No clue. A bug?
11. Yes. I've heard you get the most bonuses from gifting them on first contact. You know what they say about first impressions.
12. I'd assume you'd just get the "you trade with our worst enemy" penalty with them again.