Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

That picture doesn't reveal too much, aside from the fact that it happened.

Was your Bomber stationed in Paris? If so, then the reason for the loss to a Pikeman is fairly simple. There wasn't a unit there in Paris to defend it. If an air unit is stationed in a friendly city, but attacked by an land-based enemy unit, then it will always lose. To avoid this, you must provide a defensive unit of your own in order to protect the air unit. You cannot rely on an ally's defender to protect air or naval units.
The same thing happens to naval units when attacked by land units.

The exception to this would be if your ally/open borders civ is also at war with the same civ as you, and the enemy attacks your ally's city. In that scenario, the ally's defenders will be attacked before your bomber.

scienide09 said:

That picture doesn't reveal too much, aside from the fact that it happened.

Was your Bomber stationed in Paris? If so, then the reason for the loss to a Pikeman is fairly simple. There wasn't a unit there in Paris to defend it. If an air unit is stationed in a friendly city, but attacked by an land-based enemy unit, then it will always lose. To avoid this, you must provide a defensive unit of your own in order to protect the air unit. You cannot rely on an ally's defender to protect air or naval units.
The same thing happens to naval units when attacked by land units.

The exception to this would be if your ally/open borders civ is also at war with the same civ as you, and the enemy attacks your ally's city. In that scenario, the ally's defenders will be attacked before your bomber.

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Defensive unit of my own is what I don't think I did ...Excellent comment.

Thanks for the fast reply scienide09!

John

This can also happen if you have a aircraft in an neutral city and an enemy boat enters it, then the aircraft is destroyed.

Anyway different question:
Do you get any bonus from having an extremely healthy or happy city?
Besides from no unhealtyness and no unhappy citizens ofcourse.

And yes, what is worse, unhappiness or unhealtyness? and why?

sweetpete said:

Anyway different question:
Do you get any bonus from having an extremely healthy or happy city?
Besides from no unhealtyness and no unhappy citizens ofcourse.

And yes, what is worse, unhappiness or unhealtyness? and why?

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1. An extremely happy/healthy city might have a better chance of a "We Love the ____ Day!", but that's about it. There's no carry over of extra health or happiness to your other cities.
Extra happiness, I suppose, could allow you to whip (using slavery) or draft (using nationhood) more units than in a moderately happy city. But if you keep doing it, the city will no longer be extra happy.

2. I would say this depends on the individual city and what you use it for.

Unhappy citizens go on strike, slowing production/commerce/growth. If you need that city to be generating all of these things, then you've got a problem. Also, an unhappy city might be more likely to undergo a cultural revolution (not too sure about this one).

An unhealthy city will stop growing, and if the problem persists, will even start shrinking until it meets a balanced level where food used equals food lost. Population decline means a citizen is lost, meaning one less tile is worked, and thus less production/food/commerce. If you need this city to grow, then unhealthy hurts.

The difference lies in the fact that an unhappy, striking citizen is still using up resources (food), but not contributing anything to the city. However, when you solve the unhappiness problem, not only is that food no longer wasted on a striking citizen, you also get the benefit of the previously unhappy citizen now working a tile again. For this reason, you might say that solving unhappiness is better than worrying about unhealthiness.

cheers scienide! Yes the we love the "me" day... didnt think about that one

JohnYoga said:

Thank you Lost_civantares!!!

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Hey JohnYoga,
How did you get the other civs' attitudes to display next to the scores? Is it a mod?

TIA

Mab

mabellino said:

Hey JohnYoga,
How did you get the other civs' attitudes to display next to the scores? Is it a mod?

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Its Sevo's Civfanaticfusion mod, great mod! download it

Does anyone have the numbers on how many cities cost how much upkeep?

Also, has anyone figured out how to make artillery work as in Civ3? I'm in New Orleans and have been out of touch.

cities cost varying amounts of upkeep, but they will raise upkeep in 3 main areas
1)actual maintenance of the city- this is the number at the bottom of the upper left-hand box and will be the cost of distance to palace costs and number of cities cost
2)they raise other cities maintenance- because the number of cities has increased
3)they increase civic costs- their increase will be larger if you have more expensive civics

if by make artillery work as in civ3 you mean lower the HP of actual units, you can't do that anymore. however, if you attack the city and get a message saying something like "your artillery has caused collateral damage (3 units)" or something like that, know that you have damaged other units defending the city. You can also no longer destroy city improvements, but you can bombard a city to reduce its defensive bonus. There is also no longer a way for artillery or a boat to bombard improvements, you must pillage like any other unit.

a4phantom said:

Does anyone have the numbers on how many cities cost how much upkeep?

Also, has anyone figured out how to make artillery work as in Civ3? I'm in New Orleans and have been out of touch.

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There have been written some strategy articles on city upkeep and civic upkeep which both determine the maintenance costs of cities. The answer is not something easy like each city costs 4 gold, the formulas are somewhat more complicated.

The articles can be found here and here.

Note that some of the information in these articles uses quite some mathematics while other parts are easier to read. The article on city upkeep starts with some graphs but also has some formulas in post 68. The article on civic upkeep also mentions a link to a calculator for city + civic upkeep using an excel spreadsheet.

Anyone that know the answer to this question? please reply if you know. Thanks, anyway.

ybbor said:

if by make artillery work as in civ3 you mean lower the HP of actual units, you can't do that anymore. however, if you attack the city and get a message saying something like "your artillery has caused collateral damage (3 units)" or something like that, know that you have damaged other units defending the city. You can also no longer destroy city improvements, but you can bombard a city to reduce its defensive bonus. There is also no longer a way for artillery or a boat to bombard improvements, you must pillage like any other unit.

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I know this well, and it's my main complaint about Civ4. But some people have been trying to fix that with a mod and I'd hoped they'd succeeded while I've been out of touch.

Roland Johansen Quote: There have been written some strategy articles on city upkeep and civic upkeep which both determine the maintenance costs of cities. The answer is not something easy like each city costs 4 gold, the formulas are somewhat more complicated.

Darn. It drives me crazy never knowing how much upkeep is going to cut into my research if I build or capture another city.

a4phantom said:

Roland Johansen Quote: There have been written some strategy articles on city upkeep and civic upkeep which both determine the maintenance costs of cities. The answer is not something easy like each city costs 4 gold, the formulas are somewhat more complicated.

Darn. It drives me crazy never knowing how much upkeep is going to cut into my research if I build or capture another city.

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Then use that calculator that I talked about in the above post. You need excel, but it can be useful. I don't use it myself as I've obtained some feeling about the worthiness of building a certain city. But I took a look at this excel spreadsheet and it's not too difficult. You need to fill in some data in the excel spreadsheet and it will give you an upper bound for the cost of the next city.

To quote if needed:
If I was guessing it would probably just be in the order that the game checks for each one, but then again I'm no programer.

Gold, the cash you get and don't spend on science, what can you do with it?? I know maintainance has to be paid and that you can upgrade units for a sum of gold. Can you speed production with money somehow? What else?

Clownfish said:

Gold, the cash you get and don't spend on science, what can you do with it?? I know maintainance has to be paid and that you can upgrade units for a sum of gold. Can you speed production with money somehow? What else?

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You can rush production with money if you are in Universal Suffrage.
You can buy things from the AI, most important for me is be able to add a little money to a tech for tech deal that they would not otherwise take.
You can pay spys to sabotage things, production or tile improvements.

I think that about covers it, if you include being able to turn up your science slider in "maintainance".

Rush buying is so cheap that you must try it if you haven't done it. It's one of the things in this game that is overpowered in my opinion. Note that rush buying is cheaper in cities that have a large production bonus (forge, factory, organized religion for buildings, etc.).

Even cheaper with the Kremlin! Save those great engineers.

Remember not to use slavery/rush buying for the first turn of a new production (if you can help it). There's a penalty for that which goes away once you have at least one hammer invested.

What does "Doesn't receive defensive bonuses" actually mean ? Does it mean the same as "immune to defensive bonuses" ?

no, like the "+25% def bonus for hills" or the one for forests...basically, when attacked, the unit doesn't recieve defensive bonuses from teh tile its own like other units do