Questions from Civ II player

[rafisher]

Having been an avid Civ II fan for many years, I decided to give Civ IV a try this week. Been exploring around at settler level and have been puzzled by a few things:

1. How do you get off a land mass? I've built galleys but they can only go around the perimeter of the mass. There don't seem to be any ships (at least not at the earlier stages) that can go across ocean squares. Even the triremes in Civ II could get to adjacent land masses.

2. Is there a way to play the game at a distance much like the "standard zoom" view in Civ II?

3. How do you minimize the game screen to temporarily do another task (like answer e-mail? I've checked the manual but can't find the key.

Thanks!

[Steve2000]

1.) Early ships cannot cross open ocean, they must stay in coastal squares or cultural borders, whichever is farther out. Caravels are the first ship that can cross ocean (you get them with Optics). Galleons are the first ship that can cross ocean and carry military troops (you get them with Astronomy).

2) You can adjust the zoom with the scroll wheel on your mouse. You can also turn the camera angle to the side so that it gives you the 45 degree angle like in Civ 2, by clicking I think Ctrl and right or left arrow (or it might by shift, or alt).

3) One easy way to minimize the game screen is to click the button on your keyboard that looks like the Microsoft Windows symbol. Be warned though, minimizing Civ4 can be a big problem for certain machines. Some people found that it would take several minutes to return to the game after task-switching.

[Excl]

Originally Posted by rafisher

1. How do you get off a land mass? I've built galleys but they can only go around the perimeter of the mass. There don't seem to be any ships (at least not at the earlier stages) that can go across ocean squares. Even the triremes in Civ II could get to adjacent land masses.

If I remember correctly, in Civ II, there was a chance your trieme would be lost at sea if it didn't end a turn on a sea square. The only way to get to other land masses was to be close enough to land that you had maybe one turn of being in an ocean square. Even then, it seemed like you would lose your boat most of the time. In Civ IV, you'll just have to wait until you can get Caravals ... which is a lot more realistic, in my opinion. You can still circle your continent and look for sea squares that might bridge out to another land mass. Sometimes you can get lucky.

2. Is there a way to play the game at a distance much like the "standard zoom" view in Civ II?

If you have a roller mouse, you can roll back, and the view will zoom-out until you have somewhat of a satilite view of the map.

3. How do you minimize the game screen to temporarily do another task (like answer e-mail? I've checked the manual but can't find the key.

Hit Alt-Tab, and Windows will switch out of your game to another application. (You will have to have one open though) I think Alt-ESC will also minimize your game to the Windows Desktop. Although you might not be able to use these commands if you have a weak processor speed or video card. Sometime this will cause the game to crash or the graphics to render weird when you go back to the game. I experienced this a lot on my older system with other games, but on my new computer, I don't have this problem anymore.

[rafisher]

Thanks - Alt-Tab does the trick for minimizing the windows.

The scroll does zoom in/out, but it also changes the angle of view (straight down view when zoomed out). I was hoping for a view similar to the standard view in Civ II which let me see a larger portion of the area I was in.

Thanks.

[Andrei_V]

If you see an island nearby, but cannot cross the sea with Galleys, you may build a city on your coast as close as possible, then make it expand cultural borders enough. Once the cultural border hits the island's seashore, you can move your Galleys there.

The trick is that Galleys can move anywhere within the cultural borders, not only along the coast.

[Steve2000]

Open the Civilization4.ini file and find the line that says

; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 0

Change the 0 to a 1.

Start Civ4, and click Ctrl-Alt-F. You are now in camera flying mode, and when you scroll the wheel you can get all kinds of new camera angles. Ctrl-Alt-F disables the mode again if you need to.

[rafisher]

Thanks -- but there is no Civilization4.ini file. At least, not in the version I have (did a search...). Where should this file be?

[PieceOfMind]

Originally Posted by rafisher

Thanks -- but there is no Civilization4.ini file. At least, not in the version I have (did a search...). Where should this file be?

For me it's in My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4

It's called CivilizationIV.ini. You might have tried Civilization4.ini.

[rafisher]

Thanks. Found the file. The line
; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 0

wasn't in the file so I added it. However
the CTRL-ALT F action didn't produce any
changes.

[PieceOfMind]

Originally Posted by rafisher

Thanks. Found the file. The line
; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 0

wasn't in the file so I added it. However
the CTRL-ALT F action didn't produce any
changes.

Do you have the patch v1.52? If not you probably need it, and should be playing with it because it was a pretty important patch overall. If you need it you can download it from civfanatics. Or you can use the game's "check for updates" feature.