Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Well each temple will give 1 point of happiness regardless of your current state religion. Under free religion each extra religion in a city gives a point of happiness anyway. In Civ 4 it is always beneficial to have multiple religions in a city, and I would usually expect most cities to get at least two or three.

That's very nice! Thank you.

But now what if you are at war with somenody who has as a state religion one of the religions in your cities: will there not be unhappyness? Or is it insignificant compared to the happiness you will enjoy in peacetime?

Yes, that will create unhappiness, but it's a relatively unusual and shortlived situation compared to peacetime, and in any case the temples and the happiness boost they give partially compensate it anyway.

Cobus J van Wyk said:

That's very nice! Thank you.

But now what if you are at war with somenody who has as a state religion one of the religions in your cities: will there not be unhappyness? Or is it insignificant compared to the happiness you will enjoy in peacetime?

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I belive not. If you are the same state religion as them you get unhappiness, but not just from the city having the religion. But does a city that does not have your state religion get the unhappiness if it does not have the religion?

I am sure this question has been asked a million times already. Either that or I am the only one who doesn't get it.

I understand from the manual that only the 21 squares forming the fat cross around a city can be worked in by the civilians and that changing the tiles being worked affects the commerce, production, etc. for that city.

Which city, if any, reap the benefits of improved tiles that are:
1. outside the city's radius,
2. is inside my cultural borders, and
3. is connected by roads

I'm trying to figure out if all the improvements I have been making are actually having a positive affect or are just consuming resources. I guess another way of asking the same question is, "Is there any advantage to improving tiles that are outisde the fat cross?" if so, "Which city gets the advantages offered by that improved tile?"

I've only played the game twice and I know I have a lot to learn which will come over time but getting the fundementals figured out sooner rather than later is probably a good thing.

Cheers, Max

Welcome to Civfanatics.

There's almost no point in improving tiles that are outside the fat cross of every city of yours. None of your cities are using the tile, so it's quite pointless. You can see inside the city screen how production, commerce and everything else is accumulated from the tiles that the city uses and the specialist that have been employed. So the tiles outside the fat cross are of no influence.

Exception 1: Sometimes, there are special resources outside the fat cross of all of your cities. When these resources are inside your cultural borders and have a (road/river/sea) connection to your empire and have the appropriate improvement, then your civilization will still have access to that resource.
Exception 2: It can be useful to have roads and railroads on squares outside of the fat cross of your cities, but inside the cultural region of your civilization so that your units can travel fast.

The above of course means that it is good to minimize the productive tiles that are outside the fat cross of every of your cities.

Thanks, Roland. I've basically built a bunch of useless improvements then. I guess I can build more cities to make use of the resources though. Still, next time I play I will be able to plan my cities with more thought.

Can you give me an example of Exception 1?

HibsMax said:

Which city, if any, reap the benefits of improved tiles that are:
1. outside the city's radius,
2. is inside my cultural borders, and
3. is connected by roads

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In addition to the advantages given by Roland Johansen, irriagtion can be chained on tiles outside of your cities fat cross but inside your boudries.

HibsMax said:

Can you give me an example of Exception 1?

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If you have any of the special resorces (wheat, iron etc) inside your cultural boudries you can build the relavent improvement on it and get access to that resorce.

HibsMax said:

Thanks, Roland. I've basically built a bunch of useless improvements then. I guess I can build more cities to make use of the resources though. Still, next time I play I will be able to plan my cities with more thought.

Can you give me an example of Exception 1?

Click to expand...

Don't worry about not playing optimally the first two times you play this game. It's not that easy. City planning is very important though and not very easy. To close and you pay extra maintenance for lots of cities that use the same tiles (overlapping flat crosses). To far apart and you will miss some productive tiles which are within none of the fat crosses. Access to fresh water, access to the ocean, not placing cities on top of resource tiles, stupid mountain tiles that are exactly there where you'd like to place your city, culture zones from enemy cities, it can be pretty tricky to place your cities perfectly (if such a thing as a perfect city placement exists). The strategic overlay which can be accessed when you zoom out can be helpful in planning your city placement.
I tend to have a little overlap between my cities and try to use every useful tile. Some people might disagree with that however and like to have every city be able to use 21 tiles. I'd rather have 9 cities using 16 tiles each, than 5 cities using 21 tiles each.

I try to avoid the situation where a resource tile is not within any of my fat crosses of my cities. Resource tiles are the best tiles and you should try to use them with one of your cities. However, sometimes, due to enemy city placement or other factors, I can't place my cities to use every resource. Sometimes, the whale resources, which are far from the coastal tiles, can't be within the fat cross of any of my cities. So then I expand the culture of the city closest to the whale resource until it is within my cultural borders and build a fishing boat to use it. Note that I do not get the food, production or commerce of the whale. But I do get the happiness bonus from having a connected whale resource within my empire.

Not to ask the obvious but with Granary where / how is the 50% of stored food used? Is it used the following turn? Inquiring minds need to know...

Thank you.

MitchCJ said:

Not to ask the obvious but with Granary where / how is the 50% of stored food used? Is it used the following turn? Inquiring minds need to know...

Thank you.

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From the moment it is finished, it will start to store food. This happens in a way that is not visible to the player. When your city grows, you can see that the city doesn't start with 0 food but with a certain amount of food in the box.

Example: You build the granery when your city had 20/40 food in its foodbox. The city produces 2 food per turn and after 10 turns it grows. Now it has 10/42 food in its foodbox. The 10 is half of the 20 that was needed to grow.

Now, you start to use a better food tile and grow 4 food per turn. After 8 turns your city has 42/42 food and grows again. Because the city had a granery during all of this growth, half of the 42 food is stored and the city now has 21/44 food.

Thank you! The building is a bit more powerful than I thought... nice for growth.

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

Can you gift a Great Person to another Civ?

im not totally sure but may i ask why you would want too?

In a multiplayer game it would have it's advantages for an ally, especially if you discuss how to use it.

In games with the AI, I am not sure you'd want to since the AI might do something stupid with it.

ChicagoCubs said:

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

Can you gift a Great Person to another Civ?

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Never tried it. I would suggest to save your game before you try it.

Yes you can.

Cultural borders without cities?
While in single palyer,at the first stages of game, I see, the AI oponents are cowering plots (wih valuable resources, sure ) with cultural borders of irregular form, seperate from they main area, even without creating cities there. How it is possible? Or is it bug?
Thanks for answers!

If they found a city in the fog of war, even in an area which you have previously seen, it will not appear on your world map. When you send a unit back to that area though, you will first see the outer culture radius that the new city has generated, while the city itself is still not visible. This can give the impression of cultural borders without cities, but this is not the case. There is a city there, but no unit has been close enough to it's location to see it since before it was founded.

Also something that is new for civ4 is that the AIs can not see the map until the actually explore it, unlike civ3 where the AI's ability to see the whole map lead to exploitation by the human player.