Recent content by ProbStat

My initial thinking, were I allowed to hand-pick defending units in a stack, would be to go with whatever unit has the best combat modifications against the attacking unit, even if this is not the unit most likely to win the combat. So automater's SAM would almost certainly be the defender...

Something that doesn't seem to be documented in the game (and possibly that is not correctly reflected when the computer chooses the "best defender" in a stack): a unit's effective combat strength is its base combat strength multiplied by its undamaged percentage. So a Swordsman who is 2/3...

I like the idea of mines. Some consideration would have to be given to maintaining balance, but I imagine Firaxis has done that sort of thing before. In old wargames, with cardboard tiles (yes, kids, we used to play wargames that way), mines typically gave a minor attack on a unit crossing it...

A recheck verifies that you are correct, DaviddesJ, and a resource comes into your trade network once you have the necessary tech to exploit it. Don't know what I did wrong when I checked that matter earlier.

I think it was something that needed a Pasture, and I built a Worker (to see if I could build a Pasture on the city square: no) and researched Animal Husbandry, and did not get the health bonus I would have gotten were it being fed into my trade network. I just started a game in order to quickly...

1. Picking defending units. I've had a stack in a city, with one well-promoted unit and several middling units, and had the well-promoted defend first and win but get beat up. Then, as more bad guys attack, and I'm thinking, "Good thing he'll be out of the rotation and the other units will give...

I'm pretty sure I had one instance where my settler started on a resource -- dyes, maybe? I didn't even notice it until my city was built on it. I think I read in another thread that putting a city on a resource is a good way to protect it from spy sabotage, but I question that: from what I've...

Thanks! I think I have my answer.

In looking at what kind of starting location would be best for a city, I first scrutinized whether or not there were any types of squares that would provide 4 (Food + Production) without Worker improvement: there are none. Then I started looking at whether or not the center square of a city...

Good comments, lilnev. Your argument against relying on religion for early commerce makes sense; in fact it takes 100 turns at Deity-Huge-Marathon to get a Great Prophet from a Priest. This might be a nice supplement later in the game, but almost certainly a miss-use of population early on...

I'm hypothesizing, after my Gandhi experience, two tracks that might have potential playing Deity-Huge-Raging (neither of which I followed very well): a "Coastal" track; and a "Religious" track. In the Coastal track, you would research Fishing and rely on the sea for your commerce, obviating...

Yes, I started to feel very stupid about my omission of Fishing (I had two clam squares) as my quest for Writing dragged on and on and on. My only excuse is that one of my neighbors offered me Open Borders (guess what tech he had?) just three turns after I discovered my first tech, so I felt...

To clarify, I don't generally play with the Incans, and I wouldn't focus on developing a strategy for playing them since it would likely have little value in a developing a strategy for other civilizations. But I do think that the Incans can, possibly uniquely, dispense with researching Archery...

To verify what's really going on (there is an awful lot in Civ IV that is not documented very well; sometimes not at all), you can look at the Combat Log tab in the Event Log (open either with <CTRL><TAB> or through an icon in the upper left of the game screen). This gives all combat modifiers...

Yes, the game does seem to have a propensity for starting you on South Georgia Island (an old whaling station near Antarctica) at deity level. I started a couple games as the Inca -- not my incliniation because the main Incan advantage (the Quechna) does not translate at all to other civs -- and...