Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

whenever i build a worker,i always automate it to improve the surroundings...is it a good way to use this method automate?or DIY?

If you don't care about worker efficiency and want to concentrate on the other parts of CIV4, then worker automation is ok. However, terrain improvement is one of the most important parts of the civilisation series and it got even more important in CIV4, so it will make a serious difference to the development of your civilisation if it is done efficiently. The AI will of course perform with limitid efficiency as it has a limited level of 'pre-programmed intelligence'.

Things the human player can do better:

1) Focus on the tiles that need to be improved first,
2) Choose a better distribution of the different tile improvements: the right amount of farms, cottages, workshops, etc. ,
3) Create specialist cities (cities that are good at one thing to the exclusion of other elements) like:
-cities that focus on food for specialists,
-cities that focus on hammers for wonders or military units,
-cities that focus on commerce for research and gold,
4) Protect the workers from enemies (it's fairly easy to capture AI workers),
5) Look into the future and determine the future optimal distribution of the various improvements for this city.
 
6) Use tiles in unconventional ways: sometimes it might be worth to cottage grassland hills or to mine grassland pig hills ( or a myriad of other options, like farming or cottaging Calendar resources or to lumbermill a uranium forest.... )
 
Whenever I try to update or install a patch or something, nothing happens. Theres no progress bar or anything, but the game claims to be updating itself. I might let it rip for 3 hours and come back, and nothings happened. Am I doing something wrong?
 
Whenever I try to update or install a patch or something, nothing happens. Theres no progress bar or anything, but the game claims to be updating itself. I might let it rip for 3 hours and come back, and nothings happened. Am I doing something wrong?

The ingame updating process used to work ok, but something is wrong with the latest updating process of Beyond the Sword. It just keeps on going without actually doing anything. The best thing to do is just end it and download the patch from this site and execute it. You can find it here.
 
Is it generally best to go with the suggested settlement spots the computer indicates?
 
Is it generally best to go with the suggested settlement spots the computer indicates?
Not always - and perhaps even not often. It's better to use your own judgment. If you think it'd be better to found a city in a different spot to pick up a different resource mix, or to fit in better with your existing or planned future cities, then go with your intuition. ;)
 
Generally, there are better spots than the blue circle. However, the blue circle is almost always at least a decent city. When you're learning the game though, the blue circle is fine. Just don't rely on it to much. Eventually, you'll be able to spot better city spots.
 
Blue circles follow a very peculiar logic.....

In fact, they show what would be the best arragement possible for settling if you had:
-infinite settlers
-infinite movement of the settlers ( or alternatively, instant settlers in the blue spots )
-no maintenance :p
-No trade routes or bonuses for being coastal or riverside
-If possible, maximize defense ( aka cities on hills )

As you can imagine this are not real conditions in most games, so you should always take the blue circles advice with a grain of salt or two.....
 
In my domestic advisor, between the traingle/arrow thing (trade routes?) and the great person column, there is a column headed by a red circle. What is that? I can't even hazard a guess. And why aren't there tool tips for each column heading?
 
First time post.

I'm playing in 1947 or so and just built a city on a lake and seem to have no option to build any kind of vessel. My other cities on other lakes have options to build all sorts of ships. What's up?
 
You can build a ship in a city only if it has access to the sea. A lake is not enough.

Perhaps you can build a ship if a lake is sufficiently big, but I don't know that; in any case, at 10 tiles wide it becomes the sea.
 
You can build a ship in a city only if it has access to the sea. A lake is not enough.

Perhaps you can build a ship if a lake is sufficiently big, but I don't know that; in any case, at 10 tiles wide it becomes the sea.

Thank you! I'm going to like this site.
 
reason for that change i believe was that AI loved to play with a ton of ships in a fishpond :p
 
Does Beyond the Sword include Warlords or do you need to buy them both?
BTS includes everything in Warlords except for a few (minor) scenarios. You're far better off just getting BTS rather than both. ;)
 
I have a quick question regarding modding;

were are the files that dictate the leaderheads? I go to civ 4 -> assets -> art -> leaderheads -> and then once I open up a certain leader's folder, all I see is a file that says "(leader's name)_eye_shadow". Were are the files that dictate the rest of the leader head?

I have the Civ 4 Gold version, so it's just vanilla civ 4 packed with the warlords expansion, if that helps clearify my question any.
 
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