Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[frankcor]

If you have enough money, then that will be all of them, but if you don't, then some of the units will be selected at random and they will get the upgrade until you run out of money.

Roland, is it certain the order of upgrading is random? I have observed that there is a pattern but I can't identify the pattern exactly. It appears to be in the order in which the units were created (newest units first).

It may even be in the same order that units are displayed or listed when a stack of units is selected or when you hover the cursor over a stack. For example, all grenadiers at the same experience level are grouped together in order of their age.

When doing mass upgrades in situations where it will take two or more turns at reduced research to earn enough gold to complete the upgrades, I select what I believe to be the oldest unit of that type that will be upgraded. (using Ruff's Mod Pack or something similar that adds numbers to unit names makes this easier; 1st Infantry of Madrid, for example). As that unit becomes active each turn, I use the Alt key when selecting Upgrade and then select Skip if the unit is still un-upgraded. I repeat until the unit finally gets upgraded. If he was indeed the oldest of the units, he is also the last to be upgraded and I know it is time to notch the research slider back up to complete the process. (hmm, maybe this should be in the hints and tips topic instead).

Thanks Roland, as always, for another complete and thoughtful answer to questions here in this topic.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Roland, is it certain the order of upgrading is random? I have observed that there is a pattern but I can't identify the pattern exactly. It appears to be in the order in which the units were created (newest units first).

It may even be in the same order that units are displayed or listed when a stack of units is selected or when you hover the cursor over a stack. For example, all grenadiers at the same experience level are grouped together in order of their age.

When doing mass upgrades in situations where it will take two or more turns at reduced research to earn enough gold to complete the upgrades, I select what I believe to be the oldest unit of that type that will be upgraded. (using Ruff's Mod Pack or something similar that adds numbers to unit names makes this easier; 1st Infantry of Madrid, for example). As that unit becomes active each turn, I use the Alt key when selecting Upgrade and then select Skip if the unit is still un-upgraded. I repeat until the unit finally gets upgraded. If he was indeed the oldest of the units, he is also the last to be upgraded and I know it is time to notch the research slider back up to complete the process. (hmm, maybe this should be in the hints and tips topic instead).

Thanks Roland, as always, for another complete and thoughtful answer to questions here in this topic.

When I start to upgrade units, I want to have good units at certain spots first and so I want to choose which units I upgrade first. I have rarely used the mass upgrade method with the ALT button, allthough I know how it works.
There could be some pattern in the order in which the units are upgraded, I just never observed it. It's unlikely to be the order in which one would like the units to be upgraded.

 

[frankcor]

It's unlikely to be the order in which one would like the units to be upgraded.

LOL, I do believe that's the First Law of Civ. I use mass upgrading for things like upgrading all my garrisoned Archers to Longbowmen, principally to beef up my power rating when it looks like an AI is moving troops to my border in advance of an invasion. It sometimes can put them off.

 

[Roland Johansen]

LOL, I do believe that's the First Law of Civ. I use mass upgrading for things like upgrading all my garrisoned Archers to Longbowmen, principally to beef up my power rating when it looks like an AI is moving troops to my border in advance of an invasion. It sometimes can put them off.

It's true that AI controlled civilizations will be unlikely to declare war on a (seemingly) strong opponent (based on the powerrating). However, there is a moment when they make the decision to declare war and from that moment on, it doesn't matter if your power increases tenfold over theirs, they are going to declare war, they are just moving the pieces to do it. So whether or not it is useful to upgrade troops to stop a declaration of war totally depends on whether they have really already decided whether or not they are going to declare war.

 

[FLUKE]

Hi guys, I bought the game recently and have been having a blast with the game but I just have a quick question that I know is going to sound stupidly obvious.

When a tile is being "worked", a cottage for example, what exactly do I have to do to "work" it? Just put settlers on it? or something else?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hi guys, I bought the game recently and have been having a blast with the game but I just have a quick question that I know is going to sound stupidly obvious.

When a tile is being "worked", a cottage for example, what exactly do I have to do to "work" it? Just put settlers on it? or something else?

Welcome to civfanatics!

This question touches the basics of the game and as such it is a very good question. Without the answer to this question, you would not really know how cities work. You won't know why cities produce a certain number of hammers, food and commerce.

If you enter a city (double click city square), you'll see some white circles on the terrain that is within the cities borders. The center tile of a city, always has a white circle. The white circles are the tiles that are being worked.
If you click a white circle, then it dissapears and a citizen specialist appears in the lower right corner. The number of white circles (minus the center one) plus the number of specialists employed in your city is always equal to the size of your city. By clicking on another tile, you will remove the citizen specialist and work that tile. If some other specialists are available (not greyed out), then you can also enable one of them instead of the citizen or the tile by clicking the plus sign next to them.

The sum of all production produced by the tiles that are worked (the center tile included) and the specialists is your base production. You can get some bonusses on this base production because of the availability of certain buildings or resources.
The sum of all food produced by the tiles that are worked (the center tile included) and the specialists is your base food. There are no buildings that increase the base food in the unmodded game.
The sum of all commerce produced by the tiles that are worked (the center tile included) and the specialists and the trade income from trading with other cities is your base commerce. It is divided over science and gold (and later in the game culture) depending on the settings of your science-gold-culture slider. Some bonusses due to buildings are then applied to these base gold and base science numbers.

The above is only the basics of how a city works. A lot more can be said about it, but this should help you getting started, I hope.

 

[FLUKE]

thanks Roland, that helped enormously - now I understand what was going on when I clicked those circles , before that explanation I was just clicking and hoping!

 

[iamnleth]

Quick question: When it comes to early war and the Specialist Economy, which is a better way to prevent myself from running out of gold:

1. Currency (for markets)
2. Code of Laws (for courthouses)

 

[ash05]

I have a quick question that I couldn't find the answer to by doing a search of the forum.

Is it possible to build units that are obsolete? (besides destroying resources that the newer units require)

Sometime I would like to be able to build units that are obsolete (like build a marine instead of mech infantry). Is this possible?

Thanks!

 

[Lord Parkin]

Quick question: When it comes to early war and the Specialist Economy, which is a better way to prevent myself from running out of gold:

1. Currency (for markets)
2. Code of Laws (for courthouses)

Well, as with all things, it depends. However, I can offer a few pieces of advice.

Currency is nice in that it works without you having to do anything - all those new trade routes will automatically start generating more gold for you as soon as you research the technology. Currency is a particularly nice option if you have many different foreign cities reachable by trade this early in the game. It's not so great for small island starts with just two or three players, but is still helpful even in this kind of situation.

For Code of Laws to be effective, you will not only have to research the technology but also to invest many hammers into building the Courthouses. At this early stage in the game, it is not likely that you will save more than 2-3 gold per turn per Courthouse per city. This is only slightly more than the trade routes from Currency might yield you, and for a lot more effort. Courthouses might be very difficult to build in some of the smaller and recently captured cities of your empire, since their production may not be up to scratch. The cities that can best produce Courthouses will most likely be near the core of your empire anyway (and therefore have less maintenance to be saved). An additional factor is that while you are building Courthouses, you cannot simultaneously be building a unit in those cities, which potentially slows down or brings to a halt your military campaigns.

Overall, in a general situation (though no such thing really exists), I would probably personally have a preference for Currency over Code of Laws for bettering my empire's economy. However, other circumstances could of course tilt the decision (for just one example, Organised leaders get double production speed on their Courthouses, which is a heavy incentive for getting them).

I suspect that other people might have different (and equally valid) opinions on this matter, and I'm sure they'll point them out to you. Of course, perhaps the best answer is to just get both of the technologies that you mentioned, to maximise your economy's potential.

I have a quick question that I couldn't find the answer to by doing a search of the forum.

Is it possible to build units that are obsolete? (besides destroying resources that the newer units require)

Sometime I would like to be able to build units that are obsolete (like build a marine instead of mech infantry). Is this possible?

Thanks!

No, it is not possible to do this without denying yourself resources. However, at certain stages in the game it is possible to research technologies in a strategic order so that you can keep your options open. For instance, by making a beeline towards Chemistry but waiting a long time to get Rifling, you will be able to build both Grenadiers and Macemen for a considerable period of time (which is great, since you can choose to build Macemen, give them city raider promotions and then upgrade them to Grenadiers for a small amount of gold).

 

[cabert]

Quick question: When it comes to early war and the Specialist Economy, which is a better way to prevent myself from running out of gold:

1. Currency (for markets)
2. Code of Laws (for courthouses)

You need both!
since currency is a prereq for CoL, I suggest currency then CoL.

currency is good for a couple of reasons:
1) +1 trade route
2) allows building markets (which allow merchants for your SE)
3) allows trading for gold = extortion!
4) allows building gold = last hope trick.

CoL is good for another set of good reasons:
1) allows caste system and thus scientists and merchants for your SE
2) allows building courthouses and the forbidden palace
3) can give you confucianism
4) is a prereq for philosophy = the path to liberalism

I have a quick question that I couldn't find the answer to by doing a search of the forum.

Is it possible to build units that are obsolete? (besides destroying resources that the newer units require)

Sometime I would like to be able to build units that are obsolete (like build a marine instead of mech infantry). Is this possible?

Thanks!

don't thank me, it's not possible.
I don't understand why marines get obsoleted by mech inf, though.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I don't understand why marines get obsoleted by mech inf, though.

Possibly so that you can't keep building Marines and paying to upgrade them to Mech Infantry, thereby building up a powerful Amphibious army. But I don't know.

 

[cabert]

Possibly so that you can't keep building Marines and paying to upgrade them to Mech Infantry, thereby building up a powerful Amphibious army. But I don't know.

marines shouldn't be upgradable

 

[Ben E Gas]

A technical question:

Sometimes in the late game I get an error that reads something like this: 'Not enough Virtual Memory'. Then the game crashes. It happenes when I play on huge worlds such as the Earth map with like 18 other civs

I'm running Warlords with the Total Realism MOD. But it has also happened to me when using vanilla civ during later stages of the game with like 18 other civs. By the later stages of the game many of them have been wiped out but the remaining civs have built up tons of units, myself included. In my current game I launched a huge armanda at the new world. But I get this annoying virtual memory message and a crash. I did raise my virtual memory at one point a while ago.
But what is the best setting to avoid this?
Has anyone else ran into this?
Is just raising the virtual memory the best thing to do?

I have a DELL with windows XP, 2 gigs RAM, 100 GB hard drive space(37 Gigs available), 2 ghz processor, NVIDIA GeForce GO 7800 GTX.

In the virtual Memory menu: (what does all this mean?)
Page filing size:
Initial Size is 2046
Maximum size is 4092
Total Page filing for all drives:
Minimum 2 MB
Recommended 3070 MB
Currently Allocated 2046 MB

There are other visual settings to I can click on and off or click 'optimize for best performance', or have windows manage the settings, but I leave it as is.

I will try to change my page filing size to 3500. Will that even help? What does that even do?

Thanks,
Ben E Gas

 

[smartus]

How do you distinguish between a session and a reload/replay? I mean when you have the savegame from the end of the game or the saved replay.

 

[rebakan]

i wished somebody someday could make a reference chart of the smileys and icons that appear in the city screen.It's still very hard for me to know by heart about them. If there is one, where can I find it?
please forgive me for my bad English!

 

[ggganz]

I have a quick question that I couldn't find the answer to by doing a search of the forum.

Is it possible to build units that are obsolete? (besides destroying resources that the newer units require)

Sometime I would like to be able to build units that are obsolete (like build a marine instead of mech infantry). Is this possible?

Thanks!

Well, as with all things, it depends. However, I can offer a few pieces of advice.

Currency is nice in that it works without you having to do anything - all those new trade routes will automatically start generating more gold for you as soon as you research the technology. Currency is a particularly nice option if you have many different foreign cities reachable by trade this early in the game. It's not so great for small island starts with just two or three players, but is still helpful even in this kind of situation.

For Code of Laws to be effective, you will not only have to research the technology but also to invest many hammers into building the Courthouses. At this early stage in the game, it is not likely that you will save more than 2-3 gold per turn per Courthouse per city. This is only slightly more than the trade routes from Currency might yield you, and for a lot more effort. Courthouses might be very difficult to build in some of the smaller and recently captured cities of your empire, since their production may not be up to scratch. The cities that can best produce Courthouses will most likely be near the core of your empire anyway (and therefore have less maintenance to be saved). An additional factor is that while you are building Courthouses, you cannot simultaneously be building a unit in those cities, which potentially slows down or brings to a halt your military campaigns.

Overall, in a general situation (though no such thing really exists), I would probably personally have a preference for Currency over Code of Laws for bettering my empire's economy. However, other circumstances could of course tilt the decision (for just one example, Organised leaders get double production speed on their Courthouses, which is a heavy incentive for getting them).

I suspect that other people might have different (and equally valid) opinions on this matter, and I'm sure they'll point them out to you. Of course, perhaps the best answer is to just get both of the technologies that you mentioned, to maximise your economy's potential.

No, it is not possible to do this without denying yourself resources. However, at certain stages in the game it is possible to research technologies in a strategic order so that you can keep your options open. For instance, by making a beeline towards Chemistry but waiting a long time to get Rifling, you will be able to build both Grenadiers and Macemen for a considerable period of time (which is great, since you can choose to build Macemen, give them city raider promotions and then upgrade them to Grenadiers for a small amount of gold).

Actually if you are Inca then you can still build Quechuas (UU, replaces Warrior) after you have copper or iron. They do not disappear until macemen or pikemen.

 

[Lord Parkin]

How do you distinguish between a session and a reload/replay? I mean when you have the savegame from the end of the game or the saved replay.

As far as I am aware, there is no specific difference but it is usually pretty obvious from the context. If there are a lot of "Session X begins..." notifications on the replay all on the same turn or within just a few turns of each other, then that points quite strongly towards reloading. When you're just loading up Civ4 on another day to continue with your game, you'll usually play for a decent amount of time, you never play for 2 minute bursts. Thus, reloading is almost always blatantly distinguishable from merely playing a new session of a game.

I hope that helps to answer your question.

 

[smartus]

As far as I am aware, there is no specific difference but it is usually pretty obvious from the context. If there are a lot of "Session X begins..." notifications on the replay all on the same turn or within just a few turns of each other, then that points quite strongly towards reloading. When you're just loading up Civ4 on another day to continue with your game, you'll usually play for a decent amount of time, you never play for 2 minute bursts. Thus, reloading is almost always blatantly distinguishable from merely playing a new session of a game.

I hope that helps to answer your question.

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. So occasional reloading/replaying might be suspicious when the session starts before capturing a city, but a reload in peace times might go unnoticed.

 

[cabert]

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. So occasional reloading/replaying might be suspicious when the session starts before capturing a city, but a reload in peace times might go unnoticed.

why do you ask?
cheating is bad