Hi there,

Has anyone else played the quest where you have 100 turns to capture resources inside the boundaries of your enemy? I completed that one today for the first time, and I was seriously underwhelmed.

I hadn't been very warlike up to the time I got the quest (see post about cultural win), so I needed to make up for numbers with technology. I did it, and successfully had enough military to invade and take the city I was supposed to capture (the resource was underneath the city itself).

My reward? 4 macemen! I captured the cities with riflemen, cannons, and calvary! I think they could have come up with a better resolution than this, myself. Ideas for how it could be a more interesting quest? Or how the reward could be more meaningful?

The other quest I had this game was to build 7 blacksmith shops. I also thought this one was pretty lame. I mean, for the reward, I chose the extra "engineer". I suppose that isn't super-lame, but one of the other possibilities I had was to give all of my swordsmen "Cover". Swordsmen were already obsolete by the time I started this quest, let alone when I finished.

It seems to me that these quests need to be able to adapt changes in technology, because most of the time they aren't very useful.

Of course, that's just my opinion. Maybe others of you have made better use out of them?

One time I got the greed quest just when I was intending to attack the city with the resource anyway. Got me four swordsmen when I was still in the classical era and helped me finish the war. I imagine some of the time it's a lot of effort for not so much payoff.

I got a quest to capture the holy city of ollantaytambo when my stack was standing ouside and barraging the walls. Shortest quest ever. I did get to build the shrine without a great prophet, nice. I'd also just completed the harbourmaster event that very turn so all ships got +1 movement for eternity.

I have had a duff quest though... build 7 chariots before the classical age on a rainforest map... the only horses are miles away and I need Iron Working to clear the jungles that grow everywhere... so I passed that one.

that greed one lets you know that greed doesn't pay. Feel greedy ? Get some obsolete units with zero experience. These quests are not pro-rated based on future tech. They will reward you with things that you've teched at that point. If your general is greedy, only do it if you can see victory right away. If the target is well defended or far away, then I have learned to forget about it.

I got a quest that went obsolete with the discovery of a certain technology. I was like 3 turns away from finishing my research on that technology. Oh well... :rolleyes:

I got one that said to build 12 chariots. I don't know if I've ever even built chariots, let alone 12 of them. :mischief:

that one would've given a free promotion to all of those units. they keep the promotions when they upgrade. too bad.

The forge quest is pretty good, free specialist in a major city.
Greed is only worth pursueing if you would've attacked them anyway IMO.
Don't think I've ever completed the chariots quest, that many chariots is a waste unless you're the Eygptians or Persians. You have to complete it before the Classical Age and at that stage of the game don't have many cities so you'd pretty much have to give up building anything else.

I'm happy to learn that greed quests do not pay off :)

When playing Incas I got the quest to get the oil sitting around one German
city. Germans were a little bit ahaed of me, with huge territory. I just didn't
want to start war with them. Now I see that I've made right decision.

I became allied with Darius and he gave me the oil with no problem. So I could have nailed HRE :) And Germans didn't like me much during the whole game, but even though we were neighbours, we didn't have even one fight!

The forge quest is pretty good, free specialist in a major city.
Greed is only worth pursueing if you would've attacked them anyway IMO.
Don't think I've ever completed the chariots quest, that many chariots is a waste unless you're the Eygptians or Persians. You have to complete it before the Classical Age and at that stage of the game don't have many cities so you'd pretty much have to give up building anything else.

Completely agree with this. The only time I ever build chariots for this quest, was when I was playing with Eth. and my next door neighbour where the Native Ammericans....needles to say, I exterminated them quickly.

Other then that, chariots are useless 99% of the time

To me, quests is a flavour to the game that you easily can ignore if you want. I normally only pursue a quest if it coordinated with my overall goal for the game. Now, I haven't sneaked a peak in the quests files to see what all the goodies are from completing them, so I may be missing out on some things, but in general, the lost hammers building the requested unit, conquering the resource and such is from what I've seen so far not worth it if the quest doesn't fit my strategy at that time.

Just recently I got the quest to found a city on 10 or so different landmasses. Why on earth would I do that when it's still early in the game on a Big n small map where I'm on a big (I would say huge) continent, still having to conquer half of it before I got it all. I haven't even found 10 (or whatever the requested no of landmasses where) different landmasses yet... ;)

I got a quest to get a 'natural' source for all the grains used by Standard Ethanol before a rival did so (Natural being inside my borders instead of via trade).
I built a huge invasion force, only to see a rival complete the quest a couple of turns before I could sail over to a continent with rice.
However, the AI launched an attack on me a few turns later. IF I had not been loading up to attack b/c of the quest, I would not have been ready for the blow. As it was, I quickly destroyed the invaders, and then launched a counter-strike on my attacker, leaving me much better off than I would have been from killing off a tiny rival for the rice.

So the consensus seems to be that these quests are pretty weak most of the time. I mean, there have been a few good ones. I *LOVE* the carrier battle group quest. And I think it's rewards are worthwhile.

But most of these quests are not worth the effort. If you could change things, either in a mod, in the quest XML files, or in the next version of Civ, how would you do things differently?

Personally, I would like to make the quests more difficult, but also with higher rewards. I am not sure how I would do this yet, but I think adjusting for tech changes would be nice.

-- SJN

I posted this on another thread.


Here's a Quest synopsis with thanks to Warfreak's Great Manual.

CivIV BTS Quests

85% chance: Blessed Sea - Buddhism/Confucianism/Taoism State Religion
Holy Mountain - Judaism/Christianity/Islam State Religion

80% chance: Hostile Takeover - Need a Corporation

70% chance: Corporate Expansion - Need a Corporation

50% chance: Crusade - At War; Enemy has your State Religion’s Holy City

40% chance: Greed - Bronze Working

35% chance: Warships - Sailing, Metal Casting (Triremes)
Overwhelm Doctrine - Oil, Flight, Industrialism (Naval Group)

30% chance: Best Defense - Engineering (Castles)
Guns not Butter - Gunpowder (Musketmen)

25% chance: Horse Whispering - Horses, Animal Husbandry (Stables)
Harbormaster - Compass (Harbors)
Master Blacksmith - Metal Casting (Forges)
Sports League - Construction (Colosseums)
War Chariots - Horses, Wheel (Chariots)
Elite Swordsmen - Iron, Iron Working (Swordsmen)

20% chance: Classic Literature - Writing (Libraries)

15% chance: Noble Knights - Horses, Horseback Riding, Guilds (Knights)

So the consensus seems to be that these quests are pretty weak most of the time. I mean, there have been a few good ones. I *LOVE* the carrier battle group quest. And I think it's rewards are worthwhile.

But most of these quests are not worth the effort. If you could change things, either in a mod, in the quest XML files, or in the next version of Civ, how would you do things differently?

Personally, I would like to make the quests more difficult, but also with higher rewards. I am not sure how I would do this yet, but I think adjusting for tech changes would be nice.

-- SJN

Not weak, minor. Rightly so. Random events shouldn't have a major effect on the game. Theres a couple like the 1 that can give your entire civ +2 Health that offer pretty major rewards.

I got a quest that went obsolete with the discovery of a certain technology. I was like 3 turns away from finishing my research on that technology. Oh well... :rolleyes:

I got one that said to build 12 chariots. I don't know if I've ever even built chariots, let alone 12 of them. :mischief:

I got this one recently, too. I almost never build chariots but I did it to complete the quest and found out that I'd really been overlooking a unit that's more useful than I'd thought. They proved very useful as barbarian patrols and I could put 1-2 of them with a settler and send them out at full move rate, etc. Interesting how our habits can get set in how we play and make us overlook or underestimate various things.
Dick

Completely agree with this. The only time I ever build chariots for this quest, was when I was playing with Eth. and my next door neighbour where the Native Ammericans....needles to say, I exterminated them quickly.

Other then that, chariots are useless 99% of the time

I did get a chariot quest when I played Darius and had horse right in the capital FC. Juicy free combat I promotion means shock and medic I immortals came right off from my cities with barrack, which turned into quick destruction of everybody in my continent. So it is not necessarily stupid. :lol:

I hate the stables quest. 7 freaking stables? are you kidding me? I might build 1 or 2 stables max, there's no way i would ever build 7, if i even have 7 cities that early in the game.

If you're on a huge map, it's 11 stables. The ones I'm most likely to complete are the ones for forges or libraries, since I build those anyway.

The bigger the map you play, the lower the pay off is. If you play Tiny/Dual, you only need to make 2/3 of whatever and you get the bonuses most times. The bonuses don't change at all when you play against fewer Civs, just the amount of the building/unit you need to build to get the bonus, which makes it far more cost effective to go with Quests when you're playing fewer Civs because they're far, far easier to finish.

I posted this on another thread.


Here's a Quest synopsis with thanks to Warfreak's Great Manual.

CivIV BTS Quests

85% chance: Blessed Sea - Buddhism/Confucianism/Taoism State Religion
Holy Mountain - Judaism/Christianity/Islam State Religion

80% chance: Hostile Takeover - Need a Corporation

70% chance: Corporate Expansion - Need a Corporation

50% chance: Crusade - At War; Enemy has your State Religion’s Holy City

40% chance: Greed - Bronze Working

35% chance: Warships - Sailing, Metal Casting (Triremes)
Overwhelm Doctrine - Oil, Flight, Industrialism (Naval Group)

30% chance: Best Defense - Engineering (Castles)
Guns not Butter - Gunpowder (Musketmen)

25% chance: Horse Whispering - Horses, Animal Husbandry (Stables)
Harbormaster - Compass (Harbors)
Master Blacksmith - Metal Casting (Forges)
Sports League - Construction (Colosseums)
War Chariots - Horses, Wheel (Chariots)
Elite Swordsmen - Iron, Iron Working (Swordsmen)

20% chance: Classic Literature - Writing (Libraries)

15% chance: Noble Knights - Horses, Horseback Riding, Guilds (Knights)

I just got the Sports League quest in the last game with Persian, unfortunately I have no Statue of Zeus:mad:,so I missed the golden age and could only pick to add one more :) to the colosseums

i hate it when the "famous musician" quest comes before you can get the recording contract option, or when i get a quest that expires the next "age" - right when im 2 turns from the next age or get a quest for "9 of this building" when i have 3 cities.

I had the Corportation Greed quest late in the game I had infantry planes etc.

It was to capture Marble, Stone and something else. All of these resources were deep in enemey terrory I even had to declare war on 2 AI to complete the task.

What did I get ! 20 gold !

20 GPT or... do you mean... 20 gold coins...

Corporate Con Artists, never trust those Creative Construction guys... Sids Sushi has always been nice to me though :p

The stables quest is pretty nice, as if you are a warmonger the upgrades will apply to all new mounted troops you build later, and if you are a peacemonger you can get +1 food from each stable that DOESNT EXPIRE WITH ROCKETRY, unlike the stables itself (+2xp).