Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Lord Parkin]

No, unfortunately it does not what I meant am whether I as in civ3, which can affect barbarians with movement or units. If I place e.g. a unit here or there, the barbarians run in such a way or in such a way.

I think I understand what you mean. In Civ3 Conquests, there was a "NoSentry" option which meant that the AI barbarians could only move in certain directions. Is this what you are referring to, Dudj?

If so, you should know that in Civ4, the barbarians are not restricted in their movement in any way, so they can move or attack from any direction. The only exceptions are barbarian animals, which are restricted in that they cannot enter any civilization's territorial borders to either move or attack. I hope that clarifies the answer for you.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Another thing you might want to keep in mind about barbarians and their movement is that they are attracted to resources. They will much rather go and pillage a resource (near the cultural borders) than go and suicide themselves against a city, so if you see a barbarian near your borders and also near a tile-improved resource, that's probably where he's headed.

 

[Eristotle]

what exactly is a trade route? i can't find any info about it in the civlopedia or in teh instruction book. is just trading goods for moeny with another civ or something?

 

[a4phantom]

Yes, plenty of laptops will run it. Just check out the system requirements in C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Readme. The requirements for Warlrods are exactly the same. One reason they will work well on laptops is that it is not very demanding of a processor (only 1.8 GH)!

Yeah, the key I think is having enough RAM (512mb min, 1g much better) and a dedicated graphics cards.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

what exactly is a trade route? i can't find any info about it in the civlopedia or in teh instruction book. is just trading goods for moeny with another civ or something?

Trade routes are just that - routes between two cities that bring in commerce. Cities start out with one trade route, but this will increase with certain civics and technologies (e.g. Currency provides cities with an extra trade route). They can be between two cities in the same country, or, if you have Open Borders with another civilization, between two countries. Foreign trade routes (because they are further away) are more profitable, though. Also, keep in mind that you can't choose where the trade routes go.

You can view a list of trade routes a city has by going into that city's screen. They'll be listed on the left-hand side.

 

[a4phantom]

Trade routes are just that - routes between two cities that bring in commerce. Cities start out with one trade route, but this will increase with certain civics and technologies (e.g. Currency provides cities with an extra trade route). They can be between two cities in the same country, or, if you have Open Borders with another civilization, between two countries. Foreign trade routes (because they are further away) are more profitable, though. Also, keep in mind that you can't choose where the trade routes go.

You can view a list of trade routes a city has by going into that city's screen. They'll be listed on the left-hand side.

This abstraction is a huge improvement over the early civs where you had to build a caravan and send it to the city you wanted a trading route with. Ick.

 

[Dudj]

I think I understand what you mean. In Civ3 Conquests, there was a "NoSentry" option which meant that the AI barbarians could only move in certain directions. Is this what you are referring to, Dudj?

If so, you should know that in Civ4, the barbarians are not restricted in their movement in any way, so they can move or attack from any direction. The only exceptions are barbarian animals, which are restricted in that they cannot enter any civilization's territorial borders to either move or attack. I hope that clarifies the answer for you.

yes that is exactly what i ment. Thx.

I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

 

[a4phantom]

Is it true that the +15% healing from a Warlord Medic3 actually combines with the medic2 bonus for a +25% healing rate? We're having it out on the Unit Healing thread.

 

[frankcor]

I haven't worked out the math but the super-medic promotion is quickly becoming my favorite use for a Great General. They heal units fast fast fast.

The trick I've learned is to give it to a weak unit, avoiding any strength promotions so that your super medic doesn't defend if its stack gets attacked. I am currently playing as Cyrus and have a "General Beast" Immortal riding along with Infantry and Cavalry. He's up to 65 experience points so far by always taking those opportunities to finish off one of the last, badly wounded enemy garrisons in a city.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I haven't worked out the math but the super-medic promotion is quickly becoming my favorite use for a Great General. They heal units fast fast fast.

The trick I've learned is to give it to a weak unit, avoiding any strength promotions so that your super medic doesn't defend if its stack gets attacked. I am currently playing as Cyrus and have a "General Beast" Immortal riding along with Infantry and Cavalry. He's up to 65 experience points so far by always taking those opportunities to finish off one of the last, badly wounded enemy garrisons in a city.

It's a good idea to give the medic promotion to a weak unit. A favourite unit of mine is the explorer, weak enough to never be attacked. Another would be a unit out of the cavalry tree because it upgrades to the very fast helicopter. Speed is an ideal trait for medics. You want to get a medic to a spot where it is needed the most.

Of course it is cool to have a unit with a massive amount of experience. But if you're only going to use it to defeat weak units that could have been defeated by any unit, then the experience is essentially wasted. You're not using the promotions that you add to the unit. The experience from finishing of those weak units could also have been used to make other units stronger which increases their success rate against strong enemy units. If you're playing a game where the enemy poses no threat at all and you're just having some fun, then go ahead and try to make a god-like unit with all the promotions that are available.

There's a good chance that I won't be posting here a lot because of the holidays. So I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.


And just because they look so cute:

 

[Welnic]

I like using a mounted unit as a medic and trying to promote it after it gets the Medic 3 to where it can have Sentry.

 

[Silo24X]

1. Religion Spread - Do other religions spread to a holy city? I have two cities under my control right next to one another (neither were conquered - I built both from scratch). One is a Hindu holy city and the other a Christian holy city. Neither religion seems to spread to the other. I can manually do it with a missionary, however.

2. What is "Love the Monarch Day"? This happens sometimes in some of my cities - a big yellow happy face shows up to call my attention to it, and then fireworks are visible for the rest of the turn. What does this mean?

3. What are people's strategy with great people generation? There's so many wonders that increase GP points and their corresponding influences on what type is born. I find it difficult to setup one city to generate great artists and another to generate great scientists etc. It also seems (since every time a new person is born it takes all the other cities +100 to achieve the next one) that it's difficult to balance it out. I usually have one city that keeps producing great people and upping the anti every time. The other cities cannot catch up. Does everyone usually devote only one city to great people generation? Seems rather risky to put all of your wonders in one city.

 

[Sisiutil]

1. Religion Spread - Do other religions spread to a holy city? I have two cities under my control right next to one another (neither were conquered - I built both from scratch). One is a Hindu holy city and the other a Christian holy city. Neither religion seems to spread to the other. I can manually do it with a missionary, however.

2. What is "Love the Monarch Day"? This happens sometimes in some of my cities - a big yellow happy face shows up to call my attention to it, and then fireworks are visible for the rest of the turn. What does this mean?

3. What are people's strategy with great people generation? There's so many wonders that increase GP points and their corresponding influences on what type is born. I find it difficult to setup one city to generate great artists and another to generate great scientists etc. It also seems (since every time a new person is born it takes all the other cities +100 to achieve the next one) that it's difficult to balance it out. I usually have one city that keeps producing great people and upping the anti every time. The other cities cannot catch up. Does everyone usually devote only one city to great people generation? Seems rather risky to put all of your wonders in one city.

1. Religions do not spread on their own to a city that already contains a religion, and since a holy city by definition already contains a religion, the answer is no. Missionaries are the only way to do it.
2. This means you pay no maintenance for that city for that turn. For this to occur, the city cannot contain any unhappy or unhealthy citizens; other than that requirement, it's random.
3. There are a variety of strategies here. Some people are fond of having a "GP Farm" where you farm most of the available land and then rely on specialists more than wonders to get your Great People. Myself, I prefer to have the cities' wonders and specialists align with their overall specialization. Thus, I will build the Great Library and Oxford and run science specialists in my best science city (usually the capital). I will try to avoid building other wonders there that contribute towards other types of great people (though I often build the National Epic there and sometimes get a Great Artist as a result). Likewise, I may build Stonehenge and the Oracle in another city to get Great Prophets, and/or the Great Wall, the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens, or Hagia Sophia in another city to generate Great Engineers. (I can't usually build all of those wonders in the same game, by the way, unless I'm Industrious and have access to both stone and marble).
   As for dealing with competing GP-generating cities, I usually find that once a city generates its GP and its GPP total goes back to 0, another city, which will produce a different type of GP, is in a good position to generate the next great person. You can also manipulate this by adding/ removing specialists to hurry/slow GP generation in each city. Since the patch, the Warlords city screen now indicates how many turns to go before the next GP appears, which makes it even easier to control this.

 

[Welnic]

1 Religions only spread on their own into cities that have no religion.
2 Love the whatever day means that that city pays no maintenance that turn.
3 Early Wonders work great for generating those first couple of GPs. After that it is probably better to just plan on generating them using specialists in a GP farm. That gives you more control over the kind of GP that you get. Your big production city can generate GE just going about its business, as your science city can generate some GSs. I don't worry too much about the effect that wonders have on this. Other than building National Epic in the GP farm and wonders that generate GE points in the production city.

 

[BlueSoxSWJ]

I was ready to read through and see if this had been answered, then I realized how many pages that meant ...

When I have universal suffrage, how do I then spend gold to finish production? I couldn't find the option to do this anywhere, and it's not in the civilopedia...

 

[a4phantom]

It's a good idea to give the medic promotion to a weak unit. A favourite unit of mine is the explorer, weak enough to never be attacked. Another would be a unit out of the cavalry tree because it upgrades to the very fast helicopter. Speed is an ideal trait for medics. You want to get a medic to a spot where it is needed the most.

Yeah, I stick my warlord on a chariot (long after chariots are obsolete) with at least 6 xp, to make sure he gets to level 6 (or is it 5, whichever costs 26xp) and I can build West Point. Then I give him Medic2, Medic3 and the one that adds movement. As time goes by, I can freely upgrade him to knight, then cavalry, than gunship, always making sure there are tougher units to do the defending.

Can anyone answer whether Medic3 units give +15% or +25% healing? (question bumped from the unit healing thread)

Happy Holidays guys!

I was ready to read through and see if this had been answered, then I realized how many pages that meant ...

When I have universal suffrage, how do I then spend gold to finish production? I couldn't find the option to do this anywhere, and it's not in the civilopedia...

It's in the lower middle-right part of the city screen, above all the orders you can give the governor (emphasize food, production, etc) and next to the whip button for slavery.

Hey, I got one!

 

[Lord Parkin]

Can anyone answer whether Medic3 units give +15% or +25% healing? (question bumped from the unit healing thread)

The Medic3 promotion gives +15% healing/turn in the same tile and adjacent tiles. However, as a prerequisite for Medic3 you'll need Medic1 and Medic2, which give +10% healing/turn in the same tile and adjacent tiles. The Medic3 bonus stacks with the other two Medic bonuses, so you'll be getting +25% healing/turn in the same tile and adjacent tiles.

That means, your units which qualify for the Medic3 bonus will all be getting 25 extra hit points of healing per turn. That means, even in enemy territory, all units will be gaining 30 hit points per turn (5 HP naturally + 25 HP from the Medic promotions). Which means that the longest possible time a wounded unit will take to fully heal will be 4 turns, and most often 3 or less.

 

[LingMac]

4 - In Civ 3, I remember you could watch combats between AI players within your vision range. Now even though I have "Show AI moves" on, the combats don't show. Is there any way to enable that? It's very hard to make sense of foreign wars without being able to see who's killing whom.

5 - I'm having trouble with the "Aggressive AI" option in Warlords. If you don't turn it on, nobody ever declares war on anybody, the game consists of 6000 years of complete peace and you're bored out of your mind. If on the other hand you do turn it on, the AIs still don't fight each other, except now some three or four of them all gang up on you at some point and you're frustrated out of your mind. Is there any way to have the AIs stop discriminating against the human player, while at the same time being aggressive, exactly like it used to be in Civ 3 (Yeah, I still like Civ 3 better so far)?

 

[Lord Parkin]

4 - In Civ 3, I remember you could watch combats between AI players within your vision range. Now even though I have "Show AI moves" on, the combats don't show. Is there any way to enable that? It's very hard to make sense of foreign wars without being able to see who's killing whom.

I don't believe there is a way to watch AI to AI combat. (At least, I've never figured it out.) It isn't really much of a big deal though, in my opinion... most of the time it's fairly easy to work out what went on where anyway.

5 - I'm having trouble with the "Aggressive AI" option in Warlords. If you don't turn it on, nobody ever declares war on anybody, the game consists of 6000 years of complete peace and you're bored out of your mind. If on the other hand you do turn it on, the AIs still don't fight each other, except now some three or four of them all gang up on you at some point and you're frustrated out of your mind. Is there any way to have the AIs stop discriminating against the human player, while at the same time being aggressive, exactly like it used to be in Civ 3 (Yeah, I still like Civ 3 better so far)?

You're probably just not playing the game in the right way to encourage wars. There are many things you can do to "fix" this without bothering with Aggressive AI.

A few suggestions:
- Knock up the difficulty level. Noble is the minimum for decent AI, and if you want some serious competition and aggressiveness then you'll need to notch it up even further.
- Crowd the maps a bit more. If you're playing in wide open spaces with plenty of room, nobody's going to feel much of a need for declaring war on one another.
- Play with leaders like Montezuma and Alexander. If they don't declare war on anyone during the course of a game, I'd be very surprised.
- Keep up your military. In Civ3, it was very easy to maintain a minimalistic military while holding the AI at bay. In Civ4, that is no longer the case - if your military is significantly weaker than another civ, they'll notice you right away, and will instantly start picking on you - demanding this and that. A few turns of keeping that up and they'll eventually just take advantage and declare war anyway. (Sometimes you won't even get the warning demands first.)
- Finally, every game is different. Some seem to naturally lead to peaceful ways between most of the civs, while others end up as massive dogpiles and greedy domination. Don't think that Civ4 is "all peace" just because you've had one or two such experiences.

 

[BlueSoxSWJ]

4 - In Civ 3, I remember you could watch combats between AI players within your vision range. Now even though I have "Show AI moves" on, the combats don't show. Is there any way to enable that? It's very hard to make sense of foreign wars without being able to see who's killing whom.

5 - I'm having trouble with the "Aggressive AI" option in Warlords. If you don't turn it on, nobody ever declares war on anybody, the game consists of 6000 years of complete peace and you're bored out of your mind. If on the other hand you do turn it on, the AIs still don't fight each other, except now some three or four of them all gang up on you at some point and you're frustrated out of your mind. Is there any way to have the AIs stop discriminating against the human player, while at the same time being aggressive, exactly like it used to be in Civ 3 (Yeah, I still like Civ 3 better so far)?

My friend who's a Civ3 veteran (I'm not) had the same problem. One thing to note is religion. His problem with diplomacy turned out to be that he underestimated how important religion can be. If you anticipate being ganged up on, consider converting to the religion of a couple of the more powerful players to get them friendly with you, so you can call them in to help you if/when you get attacked.