Recent content by Simon Appleton

Thanks for the quick replies. It seems I am now 10% richer for your advice. And quite a bit wiser.

I don't have much idea what to do with espionage in CivIV. I read one guide that said something like "if you don't want to worry about espionage, just put the slider 10% and leave it". That's pretty much all I do. Espionage in CivIV never seemed powerful (or comprehensible!) to me, so I just...

Thanks Crullerdonut - uploading the save worked without my realizing it had; thanks for looking at the save. Good tip about the forts acting as coastal cities for trade networks. This game has so much depth, I keep coming back to it.

Yes, I was referring to not being able to trade resources with my colony. It was peace and no privateers. After some years, the problem has gone away. I can't get the forum file upload feature to work - I can choose a file but no option other than close. The colony capitol was inland and was...

I am playing a Terra map and my colony in the New World is not connected to my trade network. (Nor is the other New World colony of a rival power). What do I need to be connected? I have astronomy of course (that's how I got to the New World). At first I thought it was because my colony was...

Thanks for the link. I don't claim to fully understand it all, but it seems that the thresholds for declaring war are not linked to anything in Anion's reference charts but are provided in DanF's LeaderHeads_317.zip. The power ratio stats for AIs are in the range 0.8 to 1.3. We need to scale...

Anion's notes say "attack courage" refers to "AI combat odds (extreme - more AI attacks at lower combat odds)". I interprete that to refer to tactical combat, so an AI combatant with above normal courage will actually tend to be a weaker combatant - suiciding units at bad odds. But you think it...

Where can we find the power thresholds at which the various AIs declare war? I've found Anion's downloadable reference charts very useful for seeing who declares at pleased, who likes who etc, but didn't spot anything in them about power thresholds for declaring war.

To echo the second poster, I found BTS made Civ4 run much better on my computer. Out of the box, Civ4 really overheated my computer, struggled with huge late game maps and had quite long load/new start times. With BTW, I have not had any such problems. The AI also seems much improved. Out of...

I've gone back to BTS and must say I am impressed with the improvement in the AI. It seems much more competitive than Civ4 or Warlords out of the box. However, I noticed that in the city screen, when you choose what buildings to construct, there is no longer any information on the effect of...

I'm just getting into BTS, but have been ignoring espionage as I don't quite understand it. However, I am now at war with the Zulus and their poisoning my city wells is having a devastating impact. Can anyone give me a few tips or a link to a pre-existing discussion of espionage? In response...

From the link you posted, wouldn't 100 give you the worst slot? And 10 the best? (It's the settler setting.)

With a good start, I can peacefully outtech the AI on Prince up to Chemistry or thereabouts. Playing Huge Terra as Lizzie, I head for Oracle and then Alphabet, Great Library and Liberalism. Monopolising alphabet can give you a commanding early tech lead, but eventually the AI research bonuses...

When I installed the card, I did worry about an extra power plug, as something like that was mentioned in the card manual but it did not appear my computer's power source had the required extra lead. But then it worked fine without it so I did not worry about it anymore. Do you think that...

That's my impression too - I only noticed it after Iraq War II. It seems particularly asinine, as the French were surely proved right about that fiasco.