Deity Gliese #5, Willem Van Oranje

^There isn't and there really should have been a way to do this. I modded the interface in python a year ago to fix things like this and amongst a lot of other things (a worker stops chopping a forest one turn before the chop's complete for instance) i provided a way to split stacks in 1/2,1/3,1/4 etc by just typing the number of stacks you wanted.

I could play renaissance and modern wars much faster after with these modifications. Unfortunately i always take a game from the forum nowadays if i play so i can't use the mod anymore. I may one day make the mod more user friendly and maybe it can be incorporated into bugmod then.

royal62184 said:

I just wish there was an easy way to split a stack. Maybe there is and I just don't know it. Hit one button and evenly split the stack based on promotions and seige. It would be so great.

Click to expand...

Have the entire stack grouped together, then hold SHIFT and click on whichever little icons you want to de-select from the group. Then move the entire grouped stack you have left, and go and re-select the remaining units. I still have the select which units I want by hand (I wouldn't want to automate that anyway, don't trust the AI) but I can do so in a matter of seconds and its pretty convenient.

^If you mean holding shift and click on all the units you don't want that works but is tedious as hell, means clicking 20 times in a 40 unit stack and it takes forever to click just one in the modern age. Or do you mean some way in bugmod. I know you can make visible/invisible units with bug but as far as i know this doesn't select/deselect groups of units.

As it is now i pre divide big stacks on different tiles.

Good tip Joshua. i will use that in the future. That alone will save me time instead of doing it one at a time.

Dirk1302 said:

^If you mean holding shift and click on all the units you don't want that works but is tedious as hell, means clicking 20 times in a 40 unit stack and it takes forever to click just one in the modern age. Or do you mean some way in bugmod. I know you can make visible/invisible units with bug but as far as i know this doesn't select/deselect groups of units.

As it is now i pre divide big stacks on different tiles.

Click to expand...

Yeah, you still click 20 times. But it only takes like ten to fifteen seconds, not exactly my definition of tedious.

BUG mod can make things simpler, as it lets you easily see things such as damage from the little icons. Typically the most common reason I split a stack is for the healthy to move on while the damaged stay back a few turns.

The BUG mod also has various different settings to only show the icons of specific types. This makes sorting healthy/weakened/etc easier, but it's somewhat misleading -- the disappearing icons are merely hidden, not unselected, and will move along with the group. You still have to shift-deselect by hand.

Yes I find late game wars tedious, but splitting stacks isn't really a big reason for that. Reinforcements to a constantly moving battle front are more annoying, expecially before railroads or flight.

^Yes but in the modern age this clicking takes a long time. And my computer isn't even very slow, i have no problems with the turns taking forever and all that. Moving reinforcements is another thing that is tedious. In my mod i could mark a spot on the map with one function key, also with another function key i could send groups of units to that spot (often a city but didn't have to be one). I could quickly pile up lots of units on specific places on the map. Now i have to drag the mouse while the screen scrolls. Civ4 generally has much better interface than Civ3 but Civ3 did at least have gotocity.

the prob.(at least here) is that sometimes, when you hold shift pressed and you start deselecting, randomly, at a certain point, it reselects everything!

now imagine you almost managed to split a 50 units stack, according to promos after 30 secs... and bam, back at the start. One of the things that made me switch many games to space - way less time... at least when you don't have to eliminate someone as a must.

and now when I more or less moved to normal speed... zomg, microing is even more important; bleah... at least on marathon you could've screw up from time to time...

^True Snow sometimes the group reselects, that's very tiring also. I remember messing that with that group selecting python code. it works very anti intuitive, criteria for selecting, deselecting are vague and i'm actually not surprised that it actually reselects everything sometimes.

SnowlyWhite said:

the prob.(at least here) is that sometimes, when you hold shift pressed and you start deselecting, randomly, at a certain point, it reselects everything!

Click to expand...

Yeah, that seems to happen if I click on something else and leave the split group sitting on top of each other... I make sure to move my army onto a separate tile immediately after organizing them and I don't seem to run into any trouble.

SnowlyWhite said:

the prob.(at least here) is that sometimes, when you hold shift pressed and you start deselecting, randomly, at a certain point, it reselects everything!

Click to expand...

you can avoid this completely (in my experience anyway) by first selecting all the units on a tile (using alt) then clicking the ungroup button

thanks for the tip; didn't think to try that

@Perplexity, same problems here i think, ungroup then select one by one, sometimes still 15 units can be selected at once. It's like some units still think they belong to an earlier group. This may have some reason but it's very anti intuitive.

I think it's only fair here to repeat that i think Firaxis made a great game, it's better than any other game i know, best of the Civ series sofar imo. It's a pity that they didn't put more thought in interface and also in ai development, that could have been better too. On the other hand the game would have cost 100 + euro's or so in that case and no one would have bought it.

The game is fully moddable and there's fair support to do it. The problem is that we can't all play the same game from the forum here if we all have our favorite mods. This will always be a problem with moddable games and is of course no fault of Firaxis.

Perplexity said:

you can avoid this completely (in my experience anyway) by first selecting all the units on a tile (using alt) then clicking the ungroup button

Click to expand...

I can confirm that this works. I did a modern era war on a giant earth map (about 3 times larger than a huge map) and I constantly "Grouped" and "Ungrouped" to split stacks.

Of course, an even better time saver was to always attack with at least 2 stacks.

Oh Gliese, were art thou?

Bumping this to avoid decay. I'm planning on finishing this game at some point when I have the time.

<Post reserved for future update>

@Dirk1302

As far as the flaws of Civ IV vs the rest of the series I completely agree.

Overall I think the game has very few flaws but some significant ones.

First off the balance is fantastic on paper even though every civ/leader combo is pretty unique in their advantages both early and late and their susequent play style.

However, When one plays the game the biggest hole is the AI. I know I've said this before on the forums but the AI's complete lack of an ability to wage war is seriously detracting from the game. Early on the AI is 'ok' at war as it tends to build large stacks of units with lots of artillery early and doesn't suffer from the 'one unit at a time' strategy of older games. However, it still fails to take advantage of the opportunities presented and spends too much time pillaging and going for pointless targets but these are all minor details, especially on higher settings.

The biggest issue is once the modern era is approaced the AI has absolutly no concept of how to fight. It ruins industrial war really. The AI never specifically tries for air superiority and never builds a lot of fighters. It also, for some unexplicable reason, never masses tanks. It builds mostly AA, artillery and infantry with a 'few tanks and bombers here and there' The result is that its not hard to isolate every city with bombing runs and tank rushes to take them out one by one (and even a few a turn really). The AI also never adjusts to tactics in this era. If you build a lot of tanks, fighters and bombers and are constantly on the offensive against an AI (even one of higher score and power rating) It still doesn't build excessive anti-tanks and fighters to counter the threat. Just a smattering here and there that are easy to shoot down.

Usually an AI masses its UU to a degree but I haven't even seen Germany mass panzers before (though I can't say I've fought Germany too often in the industrial era before not that they haven't had high scores in games I've played).

There's something in the programming that the writers decided, 'how do we mask our inability to create a comprehensive and adaptive wartime AI?" (Not that this an easy task by any means, building a war time AI that can go somewhat toe-to-toe with a human in an evolving chaotic system but still possible with the economic advantages it receives). The programmers answer was, "we need some formula to war that works pretty effectively through out the eras and present a pretty significant challenge at least sometimes when implemented right." The formula was the siege weapons and the large, balanced rock-paper-scissors unit stack. This of course works pretty well early but completely breaks down against tank and fighter war. And ruins a lot of the fun of industrial wars.

BTW if the AI was strong in modern wars the panzer could have a game changing effect similar to the praetorian (probably ditto, to a lesser degree, for Cossacks). But alas its a relatively useless unit without a lot of tanks to kill and a hell of a let down to wait all game for.

^Overall i agree with you here. Ai also builds far too much Mobile Sam and not enough Mobile artillery. It certainly should build tanks more too. It does build quite a lot of fighters against me though.

But in the end Civ4 indeed does indeed have very few flaws..... There just comes a time when a company like Firaxis has to move on, to have all things perfectly adjusted the game would have to be much more expensive. So it's normal to leave these things to the mod community.

Round 6, 1400 AD - 1720 AD (54 turns):

Wow alright, so I've decided to finally post round 6. Now I played this round before taking my long break from this game so I'll mostly rely on trying to decipher month-old cryptic notes and old screenshots.

So at the end of the last set I had colonized the islands and gotten Oxford's up in Amsterdam and was teching toward AL+Artillery in preparation of an invasion of Darius & Wang on the Taoist continent just to the east of my start. I was teching Corporation at the end of round 5.

1410: Great Artist born in Amsterdam, I save him for later. Kremlin BIDL (Churchill).

1420: Put research to 100% again after saving up the 1300 gold needed to deficit research AL. I didn't want to get Corporation earlier than absolutely necessary here since it obsoleted the GLH but now I needed it to get started on AL.

1430: Corp -> AL.

1450: H asks me to DOW Wang, I refuse. Broadway BIDL (Hannibal).

1480: I scout Darius closest city, the capital of Persepolis with a caravel. It contains 7 LBs, 6 Mace, 2 Spears, 3 Cats and 1 Caravel.

1500: AL -> Physics. Darius gets Replaceable Parts and is 1 tech from rifles.

1505: Switch research from Physics -> Railroad after trading SP for Steel with Churchill. I kept monopoly on Steam until now but Pacal got it the same turn so I decided to trade.



I start my second GA.



1520: Hannibal switch to State Property (causing us to fall to cautious?).

1530: Darius gets Rifling and spend 2 dollars upgrading his army. Hannibal gets AL.

1540: Trade with Churchill again, hit WFYABTA with Gandhi. Discover two sources of Uranium within my own borders.



1545: RR -> Artillery. Pacal voluntarily becomes Hannibal's vassal and is dragged into the war against Wang.

1550: Switch research from Artillery -> Fascism. Trade with Pacal and Hannibal. Eiffel BIDL (Gandhi).





1555: Trade with Churchill for Artillery and upgrade some cannons. Time is running out on the invasion window since Darius now has Steam Power.



1565: R & R BIDL (Gandhi). He's clearly going for cultural at this stage which is great, space would have been worse.

1570: Fascism -> Democracy. That's an interesting evolution don't you think?
Pentagon BIDL (H).

1580: Democracy -> MS after trading with Churchill again, Hannibal hit WFYABTA. Cristo Redentor BIDL (Gandhi).



1585: Hannibal completes Apollo Program.

1590: Gandhi becomes WHEOOHRN. I revolt to Emancipation and State Property.

1595: Churchill completes Apollo Program. I DOW Darius.

1600: The invasion force starts bombarding. Pacal completes The Apollo.



1605: MS -> Combustion. Darius has 14 rifles and 3 catapults in Persepolis, the first attack wave kills 9 rifles and 1 catapult.

1615: Capture Persepolis.





1620: Combustion -> Flight after trading with Pacal, Churchill becomes WFYABTA. A silver mined is discovered in Amsterdam's BFC.



1625: GG #2 born in Amsterdam. I create a military academy in Amsterdam.

1630: Churchill no longer WFYABTA. I capture Pasargadae which contains 2 settled GS.



1645: Pacal becomes a free state. I wipe out Darius by capturing Susa (containing a settled GS and a settled GE). I think I hardly lost a unit during the whole campaign, artillery vs rifles are so fair. Next up is Wang.



1655: Hollywood BIDL (Gandhi).

1660: I go on a begging round and get 40 gold each from Pacal and Churchill.

1665: Flight -> Industrialism, hoping to trade for it with Pacal. I DOW Wang. Start on Mt. Rushmore in Rotterdam. Most cities are building health and production boosting infrastructure.

1670: Gandhi completes Apollo Program. Churchill is WHEOOHRN, possible targets are Wang and Pacal. I capture Namp'o.



1675: Gandhi no longer WHEOOHRN.

1680: UN BIDL (Gandhi). The first vote is between Gandhi and me. Pacal and Wang make peace via mediator event.

1685: Industrialism -> Radio after trading with Pacal. I have no Aluminium and neither have Wang.



I win the UN vote with Gandhi and Wang losing out against me backed by Churchill Pacal and Hannibal.



Pacal asks me to cancel agreements with Gandhi and I'm not happy about it but I accept since I need to keep Pacal at friendly in order to trade with him and I'm planning on attacking Gandhi in the future in any case.

1700: Third GG is born and I airlift him to Middelburg on the central dye-island to create a military academy there. Gandhi is closing in on a cultural victory.



1705: I capture Pusan.



1710: I get to propose a UN agreement but choose none. Wang capitulates to Hannibal ending the war on the eastern front, I can't remember if I took peace with him first but I suppose so in case that is required for me and Hannibal to keep the peace. I remember feeling the pressure of Gandhi closing in on cultural however and was starting to build up armies in the west at this point.

1720: Finish Radio and end the set.
Techs, Gandhi and Hannibal are WFYABTA.



Demograhpics, with Wangs capitulation to Hannibal the latter has advanced to second place in population pushing me off future UN elections.



I'm cue-building units in preparation of making a coastal assault on Gandhi to raze one of his cultural cities. I currently have 34 turns to go. Middelburg is building a submarine to help me determine the best target.
I haven't looked into what techs to get from here, I basically have all the unit techs that I need for now I think. I guess I could go for a tech advantage there though or I could go for Internet or Superconductors. I usually don't continue games into the modern era so I'll admit I probably suck at this stage.

Churchill is still in WHEOOHRN so I guess his target is Pacal since he wont attack Wang now that the korean leader is the vassal of Hannibal?

As you can see from the last two pictures my new monitor is making it hard to view details in pics, I really need to find a better page than photobucket for pictures of this resolution if people are going to be able to follow a 7th round in this game or future games.

OMG, i remember this game from ages ago.

Internet will be extremely tricky, Han has computers, while he's not the biggest wonderbuilder he'll probably have internet (it's not even a wonder) queued up somewhere. Ghandi has a big score but all the land he has isn't really impressive. I think you'll ultimately need to conquer Ghandi and Han. So i would forget about internet and just research towards plastics, then laser/composites/stealth etc. Then just take them out, Ghandi'll fall if you have sufficient military. Once Ghandi's gone Han'll be far to small to resist you. Since your empire looks rather strong i think you're favorite from here but it'll be a tedious (but satisfying) ending.

It isn't on now but war between Ghandi Han would help a lot. There may come times that Han thinks there's something to gain in attacking Ghandi, be sure to catch up on that opportunity if it comes.