Not-so-frequently asked questions

1 - I'm in a city that has done some population rushing, and is getting larger now, and one or more of the citizens becomes unhappy. I click on one of the unhappy ones, and it gives me a little pop-up box. 83% cannot forget how cruel I've been in the past, and 16% think it's just way too crowded. Exactly where do these numbers come from? I can't seem to find any correlation yet.

2 - When I use population rushing, some of my citizens become unhappy. The manual or civ-pedia says for each citizen I use for pop rushing or conscripting one other citizen will be unhappy for 20 turns. I can use garrisoned troops, happiness improvements, luxuries, and entertainers to keep the city happy, but how do these unhappy people stack up? As long as the city is small size, it doesn't seem to be a problem. If I continue to pop rush units every 2 or three turns, but the city is only size one or two, does it keep unhappiness queued up 40, 60, 80 turns in the future? Or does all the unhappiness end 20 turns after the last pop rush?

3 - Has anyone ever gotten a great leader from winning a sea battle with an elite ship unit?

4 - In the year 600 A.D., I plopped a city down next to a barbarian encampment, and assimilated it. In the year 610 A.D., three other barbarian encampments produced 24 horsemen each, and attacked me. Were the barbarians retaliating because I took out the encampment, or does this always happen in 610 A.D.? Or is there something else that triggers massive barbarian invasions?

5 - What's the deal with getting great leaders from barbarians? The FAQ says it doesn't happen. Tetely says he got 4 in one game, and he devotes quite some time and resources into "mining" the barb camps for great leaders. Of those 72 horsemen that attacked me, 22 made it to a city, 9 were killed by regular or veteran troops, and 41 were killed by elite units. Not to mention the other tens of barbarians my elite units have killed. No great leaders. Is this something that only happens at Deity level? Has anyone else ever had barbarians spawn great leaders?

6 - I could see that I wan't going to be able to stop one stack of horsemen from getting to my city. I had 405 gold at the time. To minimize my losses, I tried to trade gold to my opponents in return for gold/turn payments. I've done this before, and sometimes I can get about 105% back over the next 20 turns. Well, this time, they wouldn't give me squat! They wouldn't even trade me 5 gold per turn for 200 gold! (What leader in their right mind wouldn't take a loan for -50% interest?!?) They were all polite and everything. What makes the difference? Culture color? Do the Zulus and Babylonians just not like the English that badly?

As a side note, it looks like each barbarian horseman that made it to my city ransacked 3.5% of my treasury. Rounded up. Those 22 horsemen took 55% of my gold. Grrr.


7 - If you run out of money, one of your city improvements gets sold to cover costs. Which one? How does it decide? Is it the oldest one? The one with the most culture? Random? Does it ever sell wonders? Are some improvements immune to being sold off?

8 - When I bombard a city, I can get one of several results. It's pretty easy to understand when it hits the defender, destroys an improvement, or kills off population. But sometimes, I get a "bombardment failed" message, and sometimes I don't get any message at all. What's up with that? Does no message mean I targeted the defender and missed? Does the failed message mean I targeted citizens but it's already down to population one? Or that I targeted improvements but there are none left?

9 - When an attack is made on a stack of units, how does it decide which unit will be the defender? Certainly all other things being equal, the unit with the highest defense rating. But how does current health and ability to retreat work into the equation? Is an elite full health fortified archer considered a better defender than a one health regular spearman that isn't fortified? How about expense? Will the veteran warrior defend before the veteran longbowman?

3. Is not possible.

8. Failed means no damage was done. No message means it has done something but it wont say what it is.

9. It choses the one most likely to win overall. See the combat calculators. I.e. choses the one with the highest chance to succed against that enemy.

Excellent Questions. Hope someone smarter and more experienced than me knows the answers because these are almost exactly the same questions I have

For barbarians though I'm 99% sure you can't get a great leader directly from them. I have a feeling what Tetley did was get a lot of elite units by camping in front of the barbs and then using the elites on another civ to get the GL's. Maybe Tetley could clear this up for us

1. Cities have "unhappiness faces" that are not visible. The percentage numbers are the percentage of unhappiness faces that are caused by each different circumstance. THIS CAN BE VERY USEFUL because you can figure out exactly how many unhappiness faces a city has by figuring out which FRACTION a given percentage corresponds to. i.e. if something has an unhappiness percentage of 91% then it is likely that there are a total of eleven unhappiness faces. (10/11ths is the only fraction that could possibly yield 91% AND which has a bottom number lower than 20.) The reason that knowledge of how many faces there are is important is because you can figure out how much longer a city will be having trouble from "oppression".

2. Personally, the longest unhappiness I have ever had for past oppression was from about 500 B.C. until 1620.... (don't ask... I deserved it.) The answer is YES, unhappiness stacks up forever. Under the way that I understand it, the best way to get rid of unhappiness backup from oppression is to make the city AS LARGE as possible so that you have a lot of citizens working on decreasing the backup. The only thing that I am not sure about is whether or not specialists help drain off the unhappiness. I tend to think that specialists do not, (as an expert in oppression, I have had a lot of experience,) but I am not sure.

4. When there is a "massive barbarian uprising", ALL existing barbarian camps produce humongous numbers simultaneously. Not just all of the ones in one area or on one continent, but ALL of them.

(These are just educated guesses, but I am pretty confident about them.)

As regards barbarian-generated leaders and simultaneous possession of more than one leader, I am pretty sure that there are a few folks out there who are just lying about it. No source that I trust has ever seen either of these things happen. I am not 100% sure that they are lying, but I am 100% sure that they are incorrect. slight retraction: it is always possible that a mod that they had installed changed either of these things either intentionally or inadvertently

4. these barb(arian) invasions happen randomly to me, but it may be that assimilatinf or destroying one of their camps might be a factor

5. I don't beleive you can get great leaders from a defensive attack. YOU have to attack THEM, and I don't think you can get leaders from barb battles

8. it means the message has come slow, and ur screen has moved b4 u even saw it, so it could be anything...probabl just failed bombardment tho I think

Thanks for the input so far. It helps a lot.

Bakant:

Any rationale for your assertion that it isn't possible to get a great leader out of a sea battle?

> It choses the one most likely to win overall. See the combat calculators. I.e. choses the one with the highest chance to succed against that enemy.

I'm not so sure I agree totally with this. Maybe they would be ambitious enough to put a stripped down combat odds calculator in the code, but I don't think it has anything to do with THAT enemy. The defender doesn't seem to change depending on which unit I attack with. Is it possible for a different defender to be better against different attackers?

FullOfHoles:

Thanks for the input. I think I'll keep better track of how many citizens I pop rush with, and when I did it, and see if I can figure out exactly how it works. Any idea if it's turn based or years based? Early on, 2000 years isn't quite so bad. After 50 A.D., that would be the entire rest of the game! You'd NEVER get out of unhappiness.

Rhodry:

Ah yes, I forgot to ask if anyone has had a great leader come from a defensive battle. I think I've seen that question addressed on the message board, but I don't remember what the answer was. I know all the few great leaders I've ever seen were results of me attacking AI civs.

One other question:

10 - I've seen in the editor where tech advances are assigned a "cost" number. How does this relate to number of turns it takes to research it? Is there a simple relationship between your science spending, the cost of the advance, and the number of turns it will take you to research it? And has anyone pulled all the tech costs out of the editor and put them in a tech chart somewhere?

Originally posted by Rhodry

5. I don't beleive you can get great leaders from a defensive attack. YOU have to attack THEM, and I don't think you can get leaders from barb battles

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You can indeed get great leaders from defensive battles. I've gotten one. My elite unit was attacked and won and the great leader showed up. Then a second unit attacked my elite unit and finished him off and I lost the great leader. Before I ever got to move him too

5. I have seen the enemy get a leader from winning a defensive battle. (You can not actually see the leader generated, but when you kill the defensive man with a further attack in the same round, there he was. The leader was certainly generated during the round because the unit that was defending started the round at sub-elite status but wiped out a LOT of my attackers. I suppose it is always possible that a great leader just happened to be sitting in the same city from previous turns, so my experience here is not entirely proof.)

and as to turn-based or year-based, yes, unhappiness is turn-based. I changed my previous post to indicate that the city was discontent from about 500 B.C. to 1620.

Originally posted by mark1030


You can indeed get great leaders from defensive battles. I've gotten one. My elite unit was attacked and won and the great leader showed up. Then a second unit attacked my elite unit and finished him off and I lost the great leader. Before I ever got to move him too

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Hehe, had that happen too, 2 horsemen where in a city, massive enemy attack followed, horseman nr1 was killed, nr2 made a leader, then died, and the AI took my city and i lost my leader.. Really pissed me off

And having two leaders at once DOES happen. I've had it once so far, used both to rush 2 wonders.
Had it only once though, never again.

4 - I've often 'popped' a camp by establishing or expanding a town, and never got a barbarian breakout. My experience led me to believe it emanates from an area you explored then abandoned for a long time.

6- I've noticed a pretty consistent 10% interest rate on GPT (Gold Per Turn). IOW 20 Gold = 1 GPT + 2 Gold. Once I bought something from Russia for 6 GPT, upon first contact with a scout, then immediately killed the scout. 2000 years later, no civ will let me pay for anything with GPT!

The reason for not having a sea battle generated leader is because a leader appear where the unit is and a leader is a land unit

Usually if you conduct a bombardment and you are not next to the target (meaning a range of 2 tiles) the program will not tell you if there are damages on not. However, the program always tell you if you failed

8. My reading of the bombardment thing (and unfortunately it's only a guess) is that no message means that I hit a defender. My only rationale for this is that when you get down to the pointy end of the take-over the defenders can start to pop up "pre-wounded".

I've also never actually taken a city (by arms or culture) that had any pre-existing buildings left in it. The only ones that I have found "left standing" were in fact placed there by my Wonders and did not correspond with what was in the pre-captured city(e.g. granary from Pyramids, barracks from Sun Tzu, etc. ) . So I tend to take the messages that say "You destroyed the Cathedral" as meaning "ha ha sucker you missed". Is there in fact ever a modest random chance that you can capture a building improvement intact (as opposed to roads, population, irrigation etc.) ?

I get cities with buildings left in it all the time. If you continuously bombard the city, you'll probably destroy most of the buildings (naturally). Also none of the cultural buildings like temples cathedrals, etc make it through that I've seen. But I've taken cities with a factory and a hospital still in them which is quite nice.

I believe that the shorter the assault is, the more buildings are left. When I was able to take a city (in one turn) without having lost any attackers, I got more buildings. When I lost a number of attackers along the way (still in one turn) hardly any buildings were left.

If I am correct, then this would be another positive of using armies. I am just guessing based on my experiences.

It looks as if there might be some sort of correlation with late-game buildings (?). I've never found any buildings at all, but then the cities I've captured never had hospitals etc, just the earlier Temples, libraries etc. I checked a city - before and after - that I'd just captured by cultural absorption (so not a shot fired) and everything was wiped including marketplace, temples, etc.

I shall have to watch more carefully when (if!) I take any in a game that's progressed to a more advanced level.