a4phantom said:
Darn, doubleposted again. Oh well might as well make the best of it: If you start out with fishing and a seafood resource, is it better to build a worker or a work boat first? I always build the workboat figuring that since the city will grow while it's built I can more easily build a worker after. Could someone who crunches the numbers (yes Roland I have you in mind) or has more experience tell me if this is the smart way to do it? It occurs to me that 1. because it doesn't take food the workboat probably takes longer than the worker to build and 2. it only improves one square rather than one every few turns. Does the smartest build order change if you happen to also have corn or cows or another food source on land? I play on Prince if that matters, Warlords, unmodded.
This is not an easy question to answer and of course the answer is dependant on the situation (as always with civ
). The answer for me is mostly dependant on what I can do with the worker when it's finished. When the worker can only build a couple of roads when it is finished, then its value isn't that great. If it can build a farm on a corn resource when it's finished building, then it is often more intersting to build a worker first. The cow and pig resources are also great, however often you haven't finished researching animal husbandry when the first worker has been finished.
My comparison often looks like this (theoretical case):
Workboat: cost 30 resources, gives me +2 food + 1 health on the nearby crab resource (assuming that I already have the fishing technology). The movement on the crab is finished in the turn that I have finished the workboat (assuming directly adjacent crab resource). The workboat is finished faster than the worker and will start contributing to my city faster.
Worker: cost 60 resources (double that of the workboat). It will use food as a building resource meaning that the city will not grow but the worker is finished faster than twice the building time of the workboat. It really depends on the city if using food for production is good. Generally, you want to use food to grow and to whip population (slavery).
In this theoretical case, the worker will be able to improve a corn resource for +2 food if I start researching farming right now. I already can build mines, so I can let the worker improve a nearby plains mine for a 4 hammer tile. While mining the plains hill and farming the grasland corn resource and building some roads (+1 health for connecting the corn), I can research forest chopping so that the worker can chop some forests to add 20 hammers (normal speed) per chop to my city. While chopping away, I can research cottages to let the worker build some cottages for +x commerce (x variable as cottages grow).
The + 2 food (farm), + 2 hammers (mine), roads for faster transportation, forest chops for hammers, + x commerce from cottages is worth more than the + 2 food, +1 health from the workboat in this case. The workboat improvements are faster and the workboat costs only half the price, but the worker can do a lot more than add + 2 food, + 1 health from the workboat.
If I can see that the worker would have something to do all the time and a food resource is available for improvement directly when I've finished the worker, then I generally go for the worker.
pixiejmcc said:
I think it's not quite as simple as: a stack with siege units, when attacked will be defended by the strongest non-siege unit. Like I mentioned above a warrior won't defend the stack, but I also noticed that injured units won't defend the stack. Whether this is the case all the time I'm not sure.
Ah, ok.
I had read somewhere that artillery always defends last in Warlords and following the discussion it sounded pretty believable. Apparently, I should have questioned that information more. I now suspect that Firaxis programmed something so that artillery type units are considered relatively weaker when choosing a defender. For instance: catapults will only defend when there is no unit that is at least half as strong as the catapult.
About culture and cultural borders.
This subject is quite easy at first glance, but not so easy if you want to know the details. I'll first tell something about distance as the cultural borders have a distance to the central city tile and it's good to know how this distance is measured.
-Distance
Each horizontal and vertical tile that you move from the center tile is at distance 1. Each odd diagonal move is at distance 1 and each even diagonal move is at distance 2.
So if it takes 1 horizontal and 4 diagonal moves to reach a tile from the center tile, then this tile is at distance 1(horizontal move) + 1 (first diagonal move) + 2 (second diagonal move) + 1 (third diagonal move) + 2 (fourth diagonal move) = 7
-Area of cultural influence
The area of cultural influence of a city will extend to a certain distance from the center tile dependant on the amount of culture accumulated in a city.
At normal speed the values are as follows:
poor:0-9: distance 1
fledgling:10-99: distance 2
developing:100-499: distance 3
refined:500-4999: distance 4
influential:5000-49999: distance 5
legendary:50000+ : distance 6
The culture values are multiplied by 0.5 for quick speed, 1.5 for epic speed and 3 for marathon speed.
-Control of tiles
Each tile that has once at a time been within the cultural borders of a city has a cultural influence value of the corresponding civilization. This cultural influence value is closely linked to the cultural value of the corresponding city (cities), but it is not the same. The civilization with the highest cultural influence value in the tile and a city with a cultural influence area that encompasses the tile will control the tile.
Example: civ a, b and c all have cities that exert cultural influence over a tile. The cultural influence of civ a is 2000, of civ b 3500 and of civ c 4500 (total influence in the tile 10000). In this case, civ c will control the tile and when holding the mouse over the tile, it will show civ c, 45%.
Civ a conquers the only city of civ c that encompasses the tile. So now civ c doesn't have a city that can control the tile and will lose the tile. Civ b will now be the civilization with the largest influence over the tile. Mousing over the tile will show, civ b, 35%.
(The following information is from Krikkitone, a poster who often finds interesting pieces of information on game mechanics and has a lot of knowlegde concerning this game.)
A tile accumulates cultural influence from all of the cities which have the tile in their area of cultural influence.
A city will each turn give the normal city culture production as cultural influence points to every tile within its cultural influence area. But dependant on the level of cultural development, additional culture points will be accumulated in some of the tiles. These bonus cultural influence points are dependant and the distance to the city.
At poor culture level, there will be no bonus points.
At Fledgling level, the tiles at distance 1 get 20 bonus cultural influence points.
At Developing level, the tiles at distance 2 get 20 bonus points and at distance 1 40 bonus points.
At Refined level, the tiles at distance 3 get 20 bonus points, at distance 2 40 bonus points and at distance 1 60 bonus points.
At Influential level, the tiles at distance 4 get 20 bonus points, at distance 3 40 bonus points, at distance 2 get 60 bonus points and at distance 1 80 bonus points.
At Legendary level, the tiles at distance 5 get 20 bonus points, at distance 4 40 bonus points, at distance 3 get 60 bonus points, at distance 2 get 80 bonus points and at distance 1 100 bonus points.
The culture bomb just adds 4000 culture to each tile within the cultural influence are of the city (times 0.5 at quick speed, 1.5 at epic speed, 3 at legendary speed).
You can see, that the inner rings of the cultural area of a well developed culture city will not only have obtained large amounts of culture from the normal culture production of a city, but also huge amounts of bonus cultural influence points. A Legendary work from the great artist will not move these borders easily. The legendary work will probably increase the area of cultural influence of new cities and thus such young cities will start creating bonus cultural influence points in their inner rings. That can of course help move the borders over time.
-Culture flipping
There are three settings for culture flipping in a custom game setup.
The normal rules are that cities cannot flip back to the original owner when conquered in war. So you'll get revolts, but no flips. You can change the rules so that you will never get a culture flip (but you can still get revolts) or so that culture flips can even occur to cities captured in a war.
When a city is elligible for flipping under the rules, then it will surely flip on the second rebellion.
A city can only flip when another civilization controls the center tile of the city. You can then see a revolt chance inside the city, just under the cultural influence bar. By increasing the culture in the city, you could regain control over the center tile. You could also conquer the enemy city that is exerting control over the center tile. However, both measures may take a while. In the meantime, the chance of revolt can be reduced to 0% by placing soldiers in the city. With each unit that is added, you'll see the percentage drop until it reaches 0% and then the revolt chance will dissapear.
It's difficult to exactly predict how many units are needed to pacify the city. You can see how much one unit lowers the chance of revolt and use that to determine how many units are needed. There are a number of elements that influence this number.
-A city with your state religion is more loyal and will need less units to pacify it.
-A city that is 100% under enemy influence requires more units than a city that is 51% under enemy influence.
-Modern units are better at pacifying a city than ancient units.
-Big cities require a bigger garrison to pacify them.
-When a city is revolting, more units are needed to stop the culture flip than were needed to stop the revolt.
That's about all I can think of right now concerning culture, borders and flipping.