Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

TheMulattoMaker said:

If I'm running CreCon instead of Mining, and then I also found Aluminum Co, will the converted coal add to my aluminum bonus for CreCon?

Click to expand...

AFAIK (and if my memory serves me correctly) Yes but You wont be able to build Aluminium dependant units unless You have at least one "map" alu resource

Yes, the aluminum from Aluminum Co. increases the output of Creative Construction.

The weird thing about that aluminum is that it is only available in that one city. The corp can create multiple aluminum resource and they are all available only in that one city (the only use for there being more than one produced is to stack CC into the same city, since you can't trade them either), a map aluminum provides (in essence) one resource in every connected city - its almost the opposite. If the corp aluminum is the only aluminum you have, you can only build aluminum requiring units in the cities with the corp. The same sort of thing happens for the products of Standard Ethanol.

AdamCrock said:

AFAIK (and if my memory serves me correctly) Yes but You wont be able to build Aluminium dependant units unless You have at least one "map" alu resource

Click to expand...

The whole point of the Aluminium and Oil corps is to let you build units that need their resource.

damerell said:

The whole point of the Aluminium and Oil corps is to let you build units that need their resource.

Click to expand...

I know but You cant build Alu units in the city with Alu + CreCon corps (Cre will "eat" all alu)

EDIT: Very sorry I was wrong with unability to make units, tested it - yup You are still able to build alu units with no alu as a map "resource" in cities with both Alu corp and Creative Con. corp. Sorry if I misled someone.

Creative Corp. is competitive with Alu corp. for at least one resource. It is written in the Civilopedia.

Tachywaxon said:

Creative Corp. is competitive with Alu corp. for at least one resource.

Click to expand...

Nope. CC uses iron, copper, marble, stone, and aluminum. AC uses coal.

AC competes with Mining Corp, not Creative.

You can have Creative Construction, Sid's Sushi, Aluminum Co, and Civilized Jewelers all in the same city.

O rly?

Yes. Sushi, Cereal, and Ethanol all compete with each other. Mining competes with CreCon, Jewels, and Aluminum- but each of those three only competes with Mining.

The reason I was curious about Aluminum Co. when I already have aluminum is that the resources on my continent just kinda worked out that CreCon actually gives me more hammers than Mining, so I figured I might as well throw Aluminum in there too if I get a spare GS.

well.. today I had some strange situation.. I started new game... than regenerate map 2 or 3 times (well.. I just like to get atleast good start on deity before I lose ).. and than in 11th turn I... won conquest victory... because map generator somehow didn't place any AI on the map (there should be 17 AI not 0 actually).

Question - how do I celebrate this fastest win?

Interesting. Can we have the starting save plus victory save?

Why you did win on T11 is because the game only start to check victory conditions starting >T10 on every speed. I think it has to do with the human player starting with a moving settler that can settle elsewhere (whereas the AI always settles in place in the unmodded game) and when it's a dual player game (human vs AI), if the human tried to move its capital and lose a turn, the victory check will see one player without city and automatically gives conquest victory to the remaining player.

Now, why such a rare case of auto-win because no AI was spawned? No idea, but I vaguely remember weird cases like that during my warlord CIV4 phase where I did not patch the game at all. I clearly remember Stalin who died instantly first turn. 'twas >3 years ago.

Climb up on your balcony, scream "I won!! I won!!
Then jump out.

Save?

What determines the % of the Religion? Population?

If Judaism has 10% it means that the number of population of cities with Judaism is 10%? And it a city has Judaism and Islam, does it count for both?

Worldbuilder+place 2 cities and religion+change pop and see.

Scientific method.

I'm unsure of the concept of working citizens. At first I thought you received a bonus whenever you improved on land, such as building a farm or something so I was building multiple throughout my city. Is that a bad idea since I found out you can only work as many spots as you have citizens available?

Also, when I work a citizen on a spot that adds four hammers after a mine has been built, when I remove and add him to check what it adds, I'm only receiving three points overall in my production. I am confused about how this works.

Also, could someone explain the benefit of having a special citizen instead of having him work some land?

Thanks guys, I might have more questions pop up. I have been looking online for this answer, but have been unsuccessful. If you know a link I should check out to learn more about this, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Chris

Oh, when creating a worker or certain buildings, it shows a number of like sixty hammers. What does that mean exactly and how can I make that better or worse. I would really appreciate a pretty in depth guide to this all, even if it's quick. Just something to set me on my way.

Welcome to CFC, ChrispyChris!



Some of those questions are gonna be pretty complicated to answer, so I'll take them a chunk at a time. Edits to follow...

ChrispyChris said:

...when I work a citizen on a spot that adds four hammers after a mine has been built, when I remove and add him to check what it adds, I'm only receiving three points overall in my production. I am confused about how this works.

Click to expand...

When you remove a citizen from working a tile, he automatically becomes a "Citizen". It's a bit confusing with the names, because all of your people are generally considered your citizens, whether they're farming, working as a scientist, mining copper, what have you. But Citizens are a type of Specialist that don't really specialize in anything. Better expalantion forthcoming. Anyway, what a Citizen does is provide 1 (or 1 and 3 if you're running the Representation Civic). So when you take the guy off the Mine and make him a Citizen, you're losing 4 but getting one back.

Okay. A bit more in-depth on Specialists. This is probably more than you asked, but new players tend to be a little confused as to how Specialists work. (I know I was.) If you're playing BtS there's seven types of Specialist. From top to bottom as you see them on your city screen- at least I think this is the right order- you'll see Spy, Engineer, Merchant, Scientist, Artist, Priest, Citizen. Each one provides something to the city. Going off memory again- Spies give 41, Engineers 3, Merchants 3, Scientists 3, Artists 41, Priests 11, and Citizens 1. If you're in Representation, each of these provides another 3. Each of these (except for Citizens, which are marginal at best and rarely used) will help your city in their way- more money, more tech, more production, whatever. But where Specialists become very important is Great Person Point (GPP) production. Each Specialist (again, except Citizens) will give 3 in whatever category they are. (If you're running a Scientist, he'll give the city 3 towards a Great Scientist.)

I would really appreciate a pretty in depth guide to this all, even if it's quick. Just something to set me on my way.

Click to expand...

Just saw your edit. Apologies... I should've sent you here first. Sisiutil has transformed many a n00b into Deity-level civ smashers. Or, in my case, a lackadaisical Noble-level casual player.

I thought you received a bonus whenever you improved on land, such as building a farm or something so I was building multiple throughout my city. Is that a bad idea since I found out you can only work as many spots as you have citizens available?

Click to expand...

Well... this one's a tad complicated. First if all, it deals with some basic Golden Rules of Civ4:

Build a Worker first, except in very special situations.
Build more Workers than you think you'll need, at least until you get a good idea of the right amount.
Try to avoid working on unimproved tiles.
Food is more important than Production is more important than Commerce, especially in the early game.

Every single citizen in your empire costs you something. A bit of in City Maintenance and Civ Upkeep, for one. Also- and this is key- they all eat 2. Corn farmers, Silver miners, Artists, angry citizens that refuse to work, Merchants, all of them. So, you want them to be productive in some way or another. They need to earn that food you're giving them. A farmer working a 6 tile will still eat his 2, which means he's producing 4 for your city- him working his field feeds two other people and frees them up from farming. A citizen working a plains hill gold mine will bring in 2 and about 6 (these numbers will vary depending on game situation). He's eating up his 2, but he's paying for it in production and commerce. Right?

So. If you have someone working an unimproved Grassland, it'll give you 2, which that citizen will eat back up. Your maintenance and upkeep costs increase and your city is one pop closer to its happy cap, for nothing. You want to put a farm or cottage or workshop or something on that tile to make it pull its weight, or don't bother to work it at all.

As far as building Farms (or any other improvement) that you don't have enough people to work on, this is actually something you should be doing. Soon after beginning your game, you should have all your citizens working improved tiles (aside from Specialists you might be running), and your Workers should be improving tiles you plan on working soon. If you have, say, Incense close to one of your newer cities- a city which is pop 2 and is working a couple farms- go ahead and drop that Plantation, because that city will grow soon, and you'll get your commerce bump right away if you've already built it.

There is very rarely a benefit to using a Citizen type specialist, but the other types are good. A Citizen gives one production and nothing else (unless you do something that gives all specialists extra output). The Citizen is always going to be the worst option unless you absolutely need 1 more production per turn and there is no other way to get it, in which case you move a point of population off of some plot (or from some other specialist type) that gives no production to get the one extra (example: with 1 more production you can finish a wonder 1 turn sooner and you think, or can see, that someone else is building it too).

All of the other specialist types give you more, including 3 points per turn towards a great person. Great people are great. Also, the output from a specialist can sometimes exceed that of any plot you can work at the time even excluding the GP points (the value of which can be difficult to quantify in terms of food, production, or commerce).

The reason the 4 mine only increases your total by 3 is that the Citizen that the population point becomes when moved off of the mine gives 1.

One widely used strategy related to specialists is getting a Great Scientist as early as it is practical to do so. A library allows you to assign up to 2 Scientist specialists in that city, each of which gives 3 great person points towards a Great Scientist per turn. As soon as possible you build a library in one of your cities and then assign 2 population to be scientists (the city needs a population of at least 3, preferably 4 or more, to do this) to get a Great Scientist. Once you get the Great Scientist you can have it build an Academy in your highest commerce city for +50% research in that city every turn. That's the general idea for a very useful strategy, anyway. Note that, as with all things, there is a tradeoff: the city doing this will tend to have low production because of it (scientist specialists give no production) and this can therefore cost you in various ways due to getting fewer buildings built in that city or getting fewer units built which can make you vulnerable to an early attack or make it harder to do one yourself.

Anyhow, there are many threads and articles in the Strategy and Tips forum about this sort of thing.

Thank you so far, it has helped. I feel like my city is doing well so far haha. Maybe we could play online sometime or something. I'm going to check out this guide aswell, so hopefully I can become an alright player at this game !

TheMulattoMaker said:

Just saw your edit. Apologies... I should've sent you here first. Sisiutil has transformed many a n00b into IMM-level civ smashers. Or, in my case, a lackadaisical Noble-level casual player.

Click to expand...

ftfy

AZ is the one generating deity players, right?

Welcome to the dark side, and say good-bye to any social life you may have once had...

Haha luckily at this point in my life, I don't have much of one anyways.

How do I find hidden bonuses or detriments of certain tiles and things like that? Like if a tile removes happiness from my citizens, the flooded stuff or whatever, or if a tile makes my people walk slower through it?

Thanks for being patient. I may be flooding this topic with questions haha.