Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

ChicagoCubs said:
Don't ask me why I thought of this, but...

Can you gift a Great Person to another Civ?
It is useful in multiplayer. For example, a Phi civ gifting his second scientist to his Fin ally.
 
So there I was: playing India, six towns and just finnished researching writing and all the other basic techs up to iron working. 3 units in each city and about 6 workers doing their thing, as well as about 10 other units for scouting, defending and raiding purposes. But I could only afford research of about 30%!!!! I had most improvements in all towns... where should I start looking to cut costs in my next attempt at world domination?

Thank you!
 
When culturepoints have expanded a new city's borders so that you have the Big Fat Cross, and when people are far from unhappy (perhaps becuase of resources the empire has in other places), what is then the point in increasing your culture production, i.e. build theatres, temples for new religions etc?

Is it possible to push away an enemy's border (that overlaps with your Big Fat Cross) by beating them with more culture?
 
Cobus J van Wyk said:
So there I was: playing India, six towns and just finnished researching writing and all the other basic techs up to iron working. 3 units in each city and about 6 workers doing their thing, as well as about 10 other units for scouting, defending and raiding purposes. But I could only afford research of about 30%!!!! I had most improvements in all towns... where should I start looking to cut costs in my next attempt at world domination?


Far, far less units. Take a look at your F2 screen and probably units are eating a fair share of your income.

But maybe you're also missing one of the main economic structures the developers put into this game. They wanted to create a game where you could expand some time, but then you had to develop your empire. Build improvements, grow your cities, develop the right buildings in your cities, etc.
After the economy of your empire got a bit more powerful, you would be able to expand further.

In order to do this, they created an upkeep linked to each city. The more cities you build, the faster this upkeep rises. You can see the gold per turn income drop significantly when you build a new city. Not only the costs of this new city are added, but also the costs of the other cities increase. There is however a maxmimum to these costs per city, so you can eventually settle/conquer the whole world, but you'll have to develop your cities to sustain the city upkeep.

Once you know about this game mechanic, it is clear what you have to do. You'll have to build money making improvements around your country (cottages) and work them with the people living in your cities so that they may grow. You develop courthouses and build them in your cities, to decrease the upkeep of these cities. You trade with your neighbours by using open borders so that the trade income of your nation may increase. You develop currency so that you can have more trade routes per city and so that you can build marketplaces in your cities to increase the income part of your economy.
By developing luxury and food resources, you make your cities healthier and happier so that they may sustain a larger population. You can also trade for these resources once you have a connection via roads or sea with other nations. A larger city working more commercially interesting tiles will improve the generation of commerce in your cities.

If you are new to this game, then the biggest mistake is probably that you have build too few cottages and have not developed them by working those tiles with your cities. The cottage is the most used improvement by most players and it is worth it when you develop them.
 
Clownfish said:
When culturepoints have expanded a new city's borders so that you have the Big Fat Cross, and when people are far from unhappy (perhaps becuase of resources the empire has in other places), what is then the point in increasing your culture production, i.e. build theatres, temples for new religions etc?

Is it possible to push away an enemy's border (that overlaps with your Big Fat Cross) by beating them with more culture?

Yes, you can push back the culture of the other nations. You'll have to generate more culture then their cities for a while and then your cultural influence in the contested tiles will become bigger then theirs and slowly push them out. When your cultural influence reaches their cities and you get more than 50% cultural influence in their center city tiles, then these cities can even 'culture flip' to your side. A large number of units stationed in the city can however stop this culture flip.
You can view the cultural influence in the contested border tiles by mousing over them, a percentage will be listed. If you watch how this percentage changes over the years, then you know which nation is winning the cultural war.

The pressure at the borders is mainly generated by cities at the borders. The cities in the center of your empire are too far away to expand their borders to meet the enemy borders.

The Great Artist can generate a lot of culture in a city at once. He/she creates a great work, but it is more well known on this forum by the name culture bomb. It expands the borders enormously, but is only really powerful when the cities on the border are young and haven't really developed their culture yet. It's not that useful against old cities with a strong culture.

Another reason to develop the culture of your cities is because for every cultural expansion of your cities, the cities get a 20% cultural defence bonus. You can view this as the connection the people have with their mother country and the willingness to defend it.
 
Clownfish said:
When culturepoints have expanded a new city's borders so that you have the Big Fat Cross, and when people are far from unhappy (perhaps becuase of resources the empire has in other places), what is then the point in increasing your culture production, i.e. build theatres, temples for new religions etc?

Is it possible to push away an enemy's border (that overlaps with your Big Fat Cross) by beating them with more culture?

Roland gave some great points. To add to his...

Reasons to keep expanding your cultural borders:

1. To access all the tiles in the fat cross of the city.
2a. To deny the AI the space, namely, the AI can't build a city in your borders during peace.
2b. To guard areas in the hopes that future resources will pop up there.
3. To gain access to resources outside of your city's fat cross.
4. To satisfy the domination land % requirement.
 
Thanx Roland and ChicagoCubs! :) That explains a lot! Judging from your replies, if a city is in the middle of my empire, and the people are happy enough, the point with culture is to make my defense stronger (which is cool - I didn't know that!)
 
lost_civantares said:
FYI, this is how you can see the bonus in the game

Is that the cultural defense bonus or the total defense bonus (including walls etc)?
 
My friend and I want to start a PBEM game. We are both new to PBEM. We had thought we could avoid a long slow start up by playing one of the scenarios, but we can't find how to start a scenario in multiplayer.

Can anyone help?
 
When the city is celebrating does it grow each turn provided there is sufficient food, as it used to in Civ II ?
 
How can you find an enemies city?

There I was whopping some Hatty, and I attacked (what I thought was) the last city. Hatty's score didn't drop to zero and I didn't get the message that his civ was destroyed. Ok, so there is another city out there.

I proceed to trade maps with every other civ out there. I already had satellites. I check all of the small islands not covered in someones cultural borders.

After spending a long time scrolling the map looking for the city, I just bribed all the other civs in the game to declare war on him. He was eventually killed off.

Is there a way i can find his last city more easily?
 
@Ferenginar: No,a city that is celebrating just doesn't cost any maintenance that turn.

@ChicagoCubs: Well Hatty must have had a city somewhere, but satellites only reveal terrain, not cities. There isn't really any quick way of tracking down stray cities beyond trading maps, but I'd have thought there wouldn't be that much neutral land left it could be hiding in at that stage of the game.
 
The satellite comment went with the 'checked all the small islands' comment. The small islands were all of the neutral territory left; therefore, I sent destroyers to check them.

My only conclusion is that Hatty had a city that wasn't doing great culturally; therefore, his color didn't show up well in the mini-map. Since it was so small, I must have breezed over it when scrolling.
 
To find that last city, you could try zooming out to the planet view, and then using the :culture: toggle (above the mini map). There's a chance that the lone city will show up on the culture 'radar'.

However, I can't say that this will work for sure. I've read elsewhere that as along as a civ is still active, the culture from its lost cities will still linger. Is this true?
 
ChicagoCubs said:
How can you find an enemies city?

There I was whopping some Hatty, and I attacked (what I thought was) the last city. Hatty's score didn't drop to zero and I didn't get the message that his civ was destroyed. Ok, so there is another city out there.

I proceed to trade maps with every other civ out there. I already had satellites. I check all of the small islands not covered in someones cultural borders.

After spending a long time scrolling the map looking for the city, I just bribed all the other civs in the game to declare war on him. He was eventually killed off.

Is there a way i can find his last city more easily?
It's also possible that the civilization has no cities but has a surviving settler. This can make the civ extremely difficult to finish off.
 
Hi all
I am very new to Civilization and Civ4 is the first Civ game I have ever played.

I tried that by mistake I moved a fortified Warrior away from the City. Does anyone know how could I cancel/revert the command I made?

And, let say in the middle of the turn I found out that my strategy is going wrong, is it possible to restart the turn?

Thanks
 
bad-aries said:
Hi all
I am very new to Civilization and Civ4 is the first Civ game I have ever played.

I tried that by mistake I moved a fortified Warrior away from the City. Does anyone know how could I cancel/revert the command I made?

And, let say in the middle of the turn I found out that my strategy is going wrong, is it possible to restart the turn?

Thanks

Once the unit is moved, there is nothing you can do to undo your action. If you used the "goto" command, after the first move, you can click back on him and tell him to move back to the city, but you have to wait until next turn for him to return to the city.

You can always reload a previous save. I don't know how often the auto-save backs up the game, so you might have to repeat a turn or three.
 
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