Dead civs with no cities won't die...

[SwedishChef]

Remember back in some previous version of Civ there was a "situation" (bug or feature?) where a civ that lost it's last city would not be eliminated if they still had a settler somewhere (say, in a transport near the arctic)?

I wonder if there's something going on like that these days in Civ4. I'm playing a one city challenge game on warlord (patched to the just-released 1.09). It's a standard island map with few tiny islands and 1 big island per civ. By the time I could go for a diplo win it didn't look like I had enough friends - and on OCC you get so few votes - so I felt compelled to become violent once I was attacked by another civ.

I have a significant tech lead and so have now "eliminated" two civs - they have no cities left. I have the "Satellites" tech, so the world map has been revealed. Yet both civs are still listed in the scores at the lower right and are contactable via diplomacy.

(All victory options were on when I started the game.)

I suppose I can provide a save, if necessary. Is there something new in Civ4 where the dead civs live as exiles in some other civ? (I presume not, but I'm grasping at straws. I don't really want to try to search the whole map for some straggler unit.

Suggestions welcome.

 

[Civivist]

Maybe you can get more information about the other civs if you open the worldbuilder (ctrl-w).

 

[angeleyes]

Remember back in some previous version of Civ there was a "situation" (bug or feature?) where a civ that lost it's last city would not be eliminated if they still had a settler somewhere (say, in a transport near the arctic)?

That's still the case and it's a very normal feature imho.

In the year 4000 BC there exist no city at all, only settlers and civilizations....

Asperge

 

[Carewolf]

The new thing is that it appears they are hiding settlers in the cities of neighbours they have open borders agreement with. You will have to eliminate those to get to them.

 

[SwedishChef]

I still don't know for sure whether settlers count or not, but I found out what my problem was.

I presumed that when satellites revealed the whole map that something as large as a city would show up. They don't. You just get to see the terrain.

I traded for the map of the one civ that would trade theirs with me and found both "dead" civs had one more city on tiny islands far from everything else. I do not know whether those cities existed when I took their last capital or not.

I have now instituted the practice of talking to a civ before taking their last city (usually they want peace at this point so they'll talk). That way I can check their city to list to see if their capital is going to pop up somewhere else.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

 

[MrCynical]

The settlers must still count as keeping a civ alive or every civ would be wiped out on turn 1. It's perfectly logical that you have to clear up the stray settlers since they could theoretcally rebuild the civ.

 

[angeleyes]

In Civ3 once my first and only city was destroyed by another civilization,
just after i had build my first settler, and i could go on playing the game !
I hope now you are convinced ...

(nomadic civilizations are civilizations too ...)

Asperge

 

[eg577]

I seem to recall the manual explicitly saying settlers won't keep your civ alive. Of course the manual also explicity says wonders go obsolete when any civ discovers the right tech.

Edit: Very bottom of p. 105

 

[MrCynical]

Hmm, I can't find the reference, but I'm not looking through all 200 odd pages to find it. Page 105 is smack in the middle of the resource statistics tables in my copy, so I'm afraid that doesn't help. The manual is, as you point out, wrong in other places so I don't trust it that much.

I suppose you could program it like that by making the first settler a different unit to the normal settler, and it's the only one which can keep a civ alive. It doesn't make sense from a gameplay point of view though. In Civ 3, though it was admittedly rare, I have seen a civ come back to be a major power from a stray settler, and it's certainly not beyond the ability of a human player if the capital loss occurs early on. I therefore hope they haven't tweaked it so this is impossible...

 

[Renata]

I seem to remember hearing that dead civs could still have cities flip back to them, though I haven't seen it myself. (Only played three games so far, and haven't killed off any civs.) If so, maybe the civ is 'alive' only for accounting purposes, so to speak? On the off chance a captured city of that civ flips back, then the civ's score would begin to accumulate again.

 

[angeleyes]

I seem to recall the manual explicitly saying settlers won't keep your civ alive.

I did a short experimental game and indeed, the game was lost when my only
city was destroyed although i did have a settler, so that has changed.

Asperge

 

[MrCynical]

I guess they felt that the irritation of tracking down stray settlers outweighed the loss of the small possibility of a civ rebuilding from a lone settler. It's a little disappointing, but I suppose it was a very rare occurence.

 

[angeleyes]

.... the irritation of tracking down stray settlers ....

They indeed have tried to get rid of everything players felt as irritating.

Asperge