Couple Specific Questions

I only play Babylon, science victories, cause all the other victories just...don't entertain me I guess

1. When I'm fiddling with my specialists, I notice that I can add ONLY all my science specialists, then run out of FPT, but then tick bank specialist, and I have 1.25 FPT, then untick banking and magically have 5 FPT...what is with this?

1b. If I uncheck manual specialists it allocates a TON more of them, yet I have 20 FPT even though I'm using more specialists, what is going on here?

2. Observatory...does this need to be in my capital or can I settle a new city near a mountain?
2b. Does observatory affect ALL my science or just for the city that it is in?
2c. Do the +25% science buildings and whatnot effect ALL my science or just the city that they're in?

3. I haven't been settling near fresh water, just on mountains with coast within 7 tiles, and I've been going straight for hanging gardens (after my Writing) and it's been working on King...does this still work on Deity or will I just have to be gardenless on Deity? (I'm not restarting a game 300 times to get a river, next to a mountain, near the coast, I restart like 3 times to find a mountain)

4. What the hell is Atilla's problem...seriously? I've gotten rushed at turn 60 so many times it's insane.

5. What's a fast way to make everyone my friend? (for RAs) I was thinking of trading out GPT but I only get 8 routes, and with 4 cities I'm using 2 food routes to my cap, and 2 to my last city which doesn't leave me much for getting a ton of GPT from trade routes so...not sure what to do about this. Most I've been able to do is 5 friends (this was during a game with 1 city)

This turned out to be more than a couple

#1 & 1b It's realocating your workforce.

I recommend always having manual specialists checkbox checked (but the city must have a building capable of holding a specialist before that box appears) and also locking your work force to the tiles you want in place.

#2 Observatory can be built in any city that's next to a mountain. If the city is a low production one you may need to cash rush all science buildings for it, including the Observatory.
Buildings only boost science within that city. (Both the science worked from terrain such as Trade posts with a Rationalism policy and some natural wonders & population based science)

#3 With BNW on Deity it depends upon if any of the AIs opened Tradition or not as Tradition opener is required to build Hanging Gardens. On Pangaea you might be able to meet all AIs in time for a go / no go decision but on other map types your only going to know about nearby civs when its time to make that call.

#4 Atilla is one of the aggressive AIs. As Babylon build Bowmen, which replace Archers but are almost as good as Composites. And cash buy Walls of Babylon to the threatened city.

#5 Shared embassies and not having a shared border are the only two positive modifiers you can have until the first of you getting a DOF or shared ideologies, so early on its a matter of avoiding negative modifiers.
Yes, you can't expect to have DOF with more than half the AIs pre ideologies as before ideologies everybody doesn't like anyone that's close to them due to land envy and while a DOF helps relationship with civs that are friends of him, they hurt relationships with those that hate that AI.
Post ideology, ideologies quickly trump most modifiers and so basically you'll become best friends with civs with a common ideology and worst enemies with those following the other two ideologies.
(In fact the DOF requirement for RAs introduced in G&K and continued in BNW was just to shut down the RA with every civ on the map tactic from Vanilla)

Haxxtastic said:

I only play Babylon, science victories, cause all the other victories just...don't entertain me I guess

1. When I'm fiddling with my specialists, I notice that I can add ONLY all my science specialists, then run out of FPT, but then tick bank specialist, and I have 1.25 FPT, then untick banking and magically have 5 FPT...what is with this?

1b. If I uncheck manual specialists it allocates a TON more of them, yet I have 20 FPT even though I'm using more specialists, what is going on here?

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If assigning specialists has this sort of impact on faith per turn, you must have faith-generating tiles. When you assign specialists, the city governor shifts around the remaining citizens working tiles, changing your FPT. The solution is to manually assign citizens to work desired tiles when you are assigning specialists.

2. Observatory...does this need to be in my capital or can I settle a new city near a mountain?
2b. Does observatory affect ALL my science or just for the city that it is in?
2c. Do the +25% science buildings and whatnot effect ALL my science or just the city that they're in?

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Observatory can go in any city, but its benefits are limited to that city. Same goes for other science bonus buildings -- they affect your beaker rate in that city only.

3. I haven't been settling near fresh water, just on mountains with coast within 7 tiles, and I've been going straight for hanging gardens (after my Writing) and it's been working on King...does this still work on Deity or will I just have to be gardenless on Deity? (I'm not restarting a game 300 times to get a river, next to a mountain, near the coast, I restart like 3 times to find a mountain)

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Hanging Gardens is quite hard to get on Deity.

4. What the hell is Atilla's problem...seriously? I've gotten rushed at turn 60 so many times it's insane.

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Most civs with early unique units (and Attila has two) are primed to make aggressive use of those UUs before they are obsolete.

5. What's a fast way to make everyone my friend? (for RAs) I was thinking of trading out GPT but I only get 8 routes, and with 4 cities I'm using 2 food routes to my cap, and 2 to my last city which doesn't leave me much for getting a ton of GPT from trade routes so...not sure what to do about this. Most I've been able to do is 5 friends (this was during a game with 1 city)

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Trade route dependencies is good. You can also make gifts to the AI -- minimum equivalent of 1 gpt, up to 4 or 5 gpt will have a positive impact ("we've traded recently" relationship bonus). Figure out who their enemies are and denounce them.

But keep in mind, given the friction and array of conflicts among the AI, 5 DOFs is actually quite good (even with OCC advantages).

Browd said:

Trade route dependencies is good. You can also make gifts to the AI -- minimum equivalent of 1 gpt, up to 4 or 5 gpt will have a positive impact ("we've traded recently" relationship bonus). Figure out who their enemies are and denounce them.

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The AI really doesn't care that you have trade routes with them when making a war declaration. It in fact enjoys auto-pillaging your routes.
But it normally avoids having one of its own trade routes with you if its thinking about attacking you and may in fact delay for its route to expires and relocate them away from you before it declares.

We've trading recently is so small as to not really help, in fact they very often forget that's you've "traded recently" the very next turn.

We must be playing different games <grin>.

Just fired up a new Deity game, sent Boudicca a trade route and a 5 gpt gift. Got a DOF offer by return mail.

Thanks for the info! =)

I've never seen a trade route diplo modifier come up. Is this a hidden diplo modifier? I've seen the "We've traded recently" diplo modifier for gpt and lux trades though.

If the AI has a trade route with you is this a reliable indicator he won't attack you?

jauggy said:

I've never seen a trade route diplo modifier come up. Is this a hidden diplo modifier? I've seen the "We've traded recently" diplo modifier for gpt and lux trades though.

If the AI has a trade route with you is this a reliable indicator he won't attack you?

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It's not a reliable one on its own. There are just many different diplo + and - modifiers, and after all is added up, will generally describe your relation with that civ. It can make the difference if your relationship is kind of neutral, but it won't save a bad relationship.

Haxxtastic said:

...2. Observatory...does this need to be in my capital or can I settle a new city near a mountain?...

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Settling next to a NW will also allow you to build an observatory.

I don't think the trade route is a diplo modifier per se (it certainly doesn't show up in the diplo tooltip when you hover over the AI attitude). But the trade route pretty clearly does affect how the AI prioritizes its reactions to various items, so sending a trade route to the AI enhances the likelihood that the AI will send a route in return, and the income (and perhaps beakers) from the routes seems to reduce the likelihood that the AI will act aggressively towards you.

Browd said:

I don't think the trade route is a diplo modifier per se (it certainly doesn't show up in the diplo tooltip when you hover over the AI attitude). But the trade route pretty clearly does affect how the AI prioritizes its reactions to various items, so sending a trade route to the AI enhances the likelihood that the AI will send a route in return, and the income (and perhaps beakers) from the routes seems to reduce the likelihood that the AI will act aggressively towards you.

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I've seen no evidence that sending a trade route causes AI to send its own trade routes to you.
But clearly if the AI doesn't like you its not going to send a new trade route to you. (It may however take a lot of turns for the existing route it had with you when it was at least neutral to expire so it can reroute.)
The AI does know that all its trade route units with you would get killed if it declares war on you. Most of the income involved is with the route owner, so the route owner loses a bunch more. (City owner just looses some income, trade route owner loses 2 to 3 times as much income plus has to build a new trade unit)