How many civs have "hidden abilities"?

[Athenaeum]

I learned the other day that Greece has a hidden ability, which is not identified on the game itself. They can pass through neutral CS territory without losing influence, and even heal in it as if they're in friendly territory. Are there any other civs that you knows of that have hidden abilities like this?

 

[wayneb64]

Are you sure that wasn't caused by a barb nearby and a quest up for the CS? I occasionally have seen a unit get a turn or two grace period if it gets 'involved' like being attacked or attacking a barb, but sooner or later the CS will complain.

 

[Athenaeum]

No, I read about it and tried it myself and it worked. I also healed 20HP per turn.

 

[claudiupb]

I don't know about civs hidden UA, but Entrepreneurship from Commerce, gives +1 movement for embarked units.

 

[ThorHammerz]

So essentially, listing out "abilities" that were not explicitly stated in the tool-tips/civilopedia...?

 

[docbud]

I read about Greece's abiilty to heal in CS's as well a while back. I don't recall where.

 

[historix69]

<Leader_Traits>
	<Row>
		<LeaderType>LEADER_ALEXANDER</LeaderType>
		<TraitType>TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP</TraitType>
	</Row>
</Leader_Traits>

<Row>
	<Type>TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP</Type>
	<Description>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP</Description>
	<ShortDescription>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP_SHORT</ShortDescription>
	<CityStateFriendshipModifier>100</CityStateFriendshipModifier>
</Row>

 

[docbud]

^^For those unfamiliar with coding--what does that mean?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've known for a while that Greece can camp units in city-states without losing influence. I didn't know about the healing thing.

 

[Athenaeum]

So essentially, listing out "abilities" that were not explicitly stated in the tool-tips/civilopedia...?

Yeah pretty much.

 

[NeoNio]

like the gandhi local happines that get's converted to global happines and i still don't understand?

 

[Lord Alexander]

I believe Siam has an ability where any units he gets gifted from city states will have some XP already on them.


Also I think when Hiawatha gets railroad his ability where his forest tiles act as roads will now have the effects of a railroad. But idk this is sort of a given not really hidden ability.

 

[Amrunril]

like the gandhi local happines that get's converted to global happines and i still don't understand?

Local happiness refers to the idea that buildings in a city (including happiness added to buildings by religion, social policies and ideological tenets) cannot provide more happiness than a city has population. A colosseum, circus and theater, for instance would only add 5 happiness, instead of 6, in a city with 5 population. This would be exactly enough to cancel out the 5 unhappiness from population that the city would produce, but to cancel out your unhappiness from number of cities, you would need a source of "global" happiness not limited by city population. Global happiness sources include luxuries, wonders, and mercantile city states.

As India, happiness from buildings is still capped by a city's population, but while each point of population allows buildings to generate one point of happiness, it only generates half a point of unhappiness. In the example above, the collosseum, circus and theater would still produce 5 happiness, but the city's population would only produce 2.5 unhappiness, leaving 2.5 points of "global" happiness over and above what's necessary to cancel out the unhappiness from population.

This isn't a big deal in the early game- in fact due to the negative part of India's UA it takes 3 points of global happiness just to break even. Once you get into ideologies, though, you could easily have a city with 12 population producing 12 happiness from buildings but only 6 unhappiness from population. The excess building happiness in this city would be enough to counteract not just India's happiness penalty but all of the associated unhappiness from number of cities. This means that, while India is generally thought of as a tall civ, it has the potential to go wide very effectively in the late game (the catch being that you have to expand slowly so that your cities can grow to the point where your UA is no longer a handicap).

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

I believe Siam has an ability where any units he gets gifted from city states will have some XP already on them.

False. Whether a CS-gifted unit starts with a certain amount of XP depends on what buildings the CS has built in its city: if the CS has a Barracks and an Armory, all units it gifts to major civs start with 30 XP.
Nope, you're right, I'm dumb.

Also I think when Hiawatha gets railroad his ability where his forest tiles act as roads will now have the effects of a railroad. But idk this is sort of a given not really hidden ability.

Also false. The game uses a "route finder" to check for a railroad leading from the capitol to the city before enabling the industrial production modifier. Thing is, this "route finder" treats city connections over water as if the two cities were located right next to each other, which means cities connected via Harbors will instantly get the industrial production bonus.

As for actual "silent abilities", here are the ones I can think of:

• Carthage automatically gets the railroad production bonus in coastal cities. This is because city connections through harbors count as railroad connections.
• A "hidden downside" of Denmark is that Civ5's pathfinder is not properly equipped to deal with their UA: when moving a unit who is not currently embarked, it will not realize that the unit can disembark for one movement point, so the game will often generate suboptimal routes when your units would benefit from only using one movement point to disembark.
• Germany's UA for converting barbarian units when capturing camps applies to the last barbarian unit that died in the camp. You can freely kill camp defenders with archers, pillage the empty camp with another unit, and still get a chance at spawning a copy of the camp defender.
• Iroquois' road UA lets you cross rivers on the way to a friendly forest or jungle as if there were bridges on the river before you have bridge building tech.
• A "hidden downside" of Iroquois' road UA besides the fact that it doesn't work when moving from a friendly forest to a road is that it is not affected by any tech. This means that the movement bonus you get from friendly forests is not increased by Machinery (ie. friendly forests will still take 0.5 movement points to cross even after you've researched Machinery, while roads would take 0.33 movement points).
• A "hidden downside" of Mongolia's UA is that the 30% combat strength boost does not taken into account when attempting to bully a CS.

 

[ThorHammerz]

False. Whether a CS-gifted unit starts with a certain amount of XP depends on what buildings the CS has built in its city: if the CS has a Barracks and an Armory, all units it gifts to major civs start with 30 XP.

Siam (or whoever gets modified yields from CS as part of their Civ trait) does get units with extra experience according to whatever MAX_EXPERIENCE_PER_COMBAT in the Defines is set to.

As for the CS buildings (armoury/barracks/etc), those should be irrelevant as far as the unit it gifts are concerned.... the game initializes those units without looking at the CS's city buildings.

void CvMinorCivAI::DoSpawnUnit(PlayerTypes eMajor)
{

   // code to determine unit type

   if(eUnit != NO_UNIT)
	{
		CvUnit* pNewUnit = GET_PLAYER(eMajor).initUnit(eUnit, iX, iY);

		// If player trait is to enhance minor bonuses, give this unit some free experience
		[B]if(GET_PLAYER(eMajor).GetPlayerTraits()->GetCityStateBonusModifier() > 0)
		{
			pNewUnit->changeExperience(GC.getMAX_EXPERIENCE_PER_COMBAT());
		}[/B]
                
                // (code to jump to valid plot)
}

 

[reddishrecue]

Well I guess you could say that Germany has a hidden ability in a way because barbarian encampments kept appearing around me when I was Germany. I increase power quick with a mixture of brutes, bowmen, spearmen, hand axes and later swordsmen and composite bowmen. I needed to expand to be able to command so many units which were upgrade able.

 

[Plumfairy]

[*]A "hidden downside" of Iroquois' road UA besides the fact that it doesn't work when moving from a friendly forest to a road is that it is not affected by any tech. This not only means you will never get a "bridge crossing" movement pattern when moving between friendly forests separated by a river, but it also means that the movement bonus you get from friendly forests is not increased by Machinery (ie. friendly forests will still take 0.5 movement points to cross even after you've researched Machinery, while roads would take 0.33 movement points).

This isn't quite accurate. Forest road "connections" within the Iroquois' border always have the bridge crossing movement bonus... even if you haven't researched Engineering yet. I think you're right about forest roads not being affected by Machinery, though. (I'm currently playing a game as the Iroquois, but I haven't quite reached Machinery yet.)

Also, I'm not quite sure what the rules are about moving from forest roads to normal roads & vice versa. Sometimes they seem to act as a seamless road connection, while other times units suddenly lose all their remaining movement points. It's very peculiar.

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

Siam (or whoever gets modified yields from CS as part of their Civ trait) does get units with extra experience according to whatever MAX_EXPERIENCE_PER_COMBAT in the Defines is set to.

As for the CS buildings (armoury/barracks/etc), those should be irrelevant as far as the unit it gifts are concerned.... the game initializes those units without looking at the CS's city buildings.

Ah, my mistake, I misremembered the code. I'll edit my original post.

This isn't quite accurate. Forest road "connections" within the Iroquois' border always have the bridge crossing movement bonus... even if you haven't researched Engineering yet. I think you're right about forest roads not being affected by Machinery, though. (I'm currently playing a game as the Iroquois, but I haven't quite reached Machinery yet.)

Also, I'm not quite sure what the rules are about moving from forest roads to normal roads & vice versa. Sometimes they seem to act as a seamless road connection, while other times units suddenly lose all their remaining movement points. It's very peculiar.

Iroquois' UA follows a rather simple algorithm in the original game: as Iroquois, if there is no road connection between the original tile and the target tile and the target tile is a forest or a jungle in the player's territory, apply default road movement to the unit. Now that I've had another look at the code, it seems that this happens regardless of whether there is a river crossing on the way to the target tile, so "bridge building" is actually enabled for this purpose from the very start; I'll edit my original post. Code is in CvUnitMovement::GetCostsForMove() for those interested.

 

[Plumfairy]

Iroquois' UA follows a rather simple algorithm in the original game: as Iroquois, if there is no road connection between the original tile and the target tile and the target tile is a forest or a jungle in the player's territory, apply default road movement to the unit. Now that I've had another look at the code, it seems that this happens regardless of whether there is a river crossing on the way to the target tile, so "bridge building" is actually enabled for this purpose from the very start; I'll edit my original post. Code is in CvUnitMovement::GetCostsForMove() for those interested.

More information on this: (I've been trying to figure out the road algorithm in my Iroquois game)

Something that's rather counter-intuitive about the forest roads: although they count as roads when you attempt to enter the hex, they don't count as roads when you're leaving. So if your "road" goes from a forest (without a road built on it) to an unforested hill (with a road built on it), it costs your unit 2 movement points; as far as the game is concerned, you just moved from a hex w/out a road to a hill, which always costs 2 movement points.

 

[Mudrac]

There are certain Civ abilities that are for some reason not mentioned in the UA's description (or there is also more to the UA than it seems), but have been confirmed in-game. Zigzagzigal made a list of all Civs tricks, secrets and clarifications. Here's a link:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=326411722

All the info you need is there. Enjoy!