Newbie Questions - Ask here and get Answers!

[Renata]

Originally posted by drewshark
Can someone generally explain how you can take a finished SAV file and go over someones game. I mean, I know I can look at the cities and when they were founded; check out the finishing recap, but how do I get an idea of how things went and what decisions were made early on without a timeline? I ask this because people have discussed how they liked other's building strategies and stuff like that. How do you know when and how someone went about this?

This is just a guess, but since no one else answered I'll give it a go. You can't get any information about past decisions directly from the SAV file. But you can figure out a lot just by looking at the current situation. To use your example on building strategies:

Remember that each civ uses a fixed default list of city names. If the player hasn't modified them, then anyone looking can see which towns were founded in which order. So they can see where someone went for a strong core first, or for distant resources, or whatever. There's also the more obvious stuff: are cities placed for the most part on fresh water where possible? What's the city spacing - are all good tiles being used? How defensible is the territory? Stuff like that.

Hope that helps.

Renata

 

[drewshark]

@renata
Thanks, I figured it was something basic like that, but I wasn't sure. All this talk about checking out everyone's saved game files made me think I was missing something besides the obvious observation of the present situation. Everyone talks about builder strategies etc. and I thought "there is no way to know which tile was worked first, second, etc." Also, there is no way to know how war was waged except for which cities were captured in which order by checking the timeline after the game. I guess what I was trying to find out is if there is some external program or something else I was missing that people were using to view games.

 

[typing.monkey]

What do you guys do with your extra cash? Spend it or save it?

I tend to spend as much as I possibly can under the theory that money isn't doing me any good in the bank. I also spend alot BEFORE trading with other civs under the theory they might not expect as much if they "see" I have a diminished bank account.

I'm totally new to this and currently in my first warlord game, I have no idea if these theories are any good. Just checking for your opinions.

Thanks!

 

[anarres]

@typing.monkey:

- Money in the bank can be saved for expensive purchases, mass upgrades, buying expensive techs when your reputation is shot (so no Gold-Per-Turn (GPT) deals available)

- Having less in the bank makes no difference to the cost of buying from the AI

- Having less in the bank will mean the AI can not demand it from you in tribute, but IMO they will just demand something else instead, like a tech, so this is not a tangible benifit.

- If you are not getting enough GPT then the AI will not offer you the deal.
For example, you have 20% going to the treasury each turn, giving 8 GPT, and maybe 10 gold in the bank already.
You want a tech from the AI, and they say no.
You set your tax rate to 100% and are now getting 40 GPT.
You can go back to the AI and they may now offer the tech for (say) 10 gold and 35 GPT.
So, they will only offer you a deal if you can pay for it. Note that if you had 3000 gold in the bank and 8 GPT the AI will not accept a deal for > 8 GPT. Silly really...

Sorry the example was over complex and not written very coherently, but it is friday afternoon after all.

 

[Poulin]

No gold

I have played many games. I noticed that there is no penalty forhaving a zero gold trasury for as long as you want, except the fact that if I have no gold, I cannot buy anything. Is it a bug, or a feature of the game? It allows to progress very quickly, because I allow around 20% for luxury, and the rest to search. I never had to sacrifice a building or army unit.

 

[morkaphi]

This only happens at Chieftain level. For any upper level, one city improvement and one military unit will be disbanded if you have 0 gold treasury and run a deficit.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by typing.monkey
What do you guys do with your extra cash? Spend it or save it?

I tend to spend as much as I possibly can under the theory that money isn't doing me any good in the bank. I also spend alot BEFORE trading with other civs under the theory they might not expect as much if they "see" I have a diminished bank account.

I'm totally new to this and currently in my first warlord game, I have no idea if these theories are any good. Just checking for your opinions.

Thanks!

Once you build Wall Street, you get interest on your bank account, 5% a turn, to a maximum of 50 gpt. So it may be worth your while to keep your treasury above 1000 gold (the point at which the per-turn interest maxes out) from this point on except for emergencies.

Renata

 

[anarres]

What do I have to do to complete a land trade route?

From the Civ manual, I think you have to have a road connection between two cities to make a land trade route. Ok, I build a road from one of my cities up to the border between my Greeks and the AI Aztecs. At the border I am greeted with empty tiles between my road and the nearest Aztec city. Don't see any way to urge them to build a road in their territory to meet my road. Do I simply have my worker just keep on building the road right thru their territory and into the fat X boundary of their city until I complete the intercity connection? Do AI civs allow this?

Answer (to bold text): Yes, the AI will allow you to terraform their territory without penalty, even if they demand you to leave. You must make sure to have no units with attack value in their territory to avoid the unit explusion/attitude hit.

Killer, can this be added to the FAQ please?

Edit: Capitals need to be connected, not your city to an AI city, but I think this must already be in the FAQ.

 

[anarres]

Can cities flip to a rival civ if there are no rival cities (hence no Palace or FP)?

 

[morkaphi]

Are you talking about cities flipping to a civ with settler(s) only?

Say, you almost destroy a civ that has a very strong culture, then your cities flip to them even that civ has no cities... Sounds very unlikely, but I guess it's still possible.

 

[ERIKK]

Originally posted by anarres
Can cities flip to a rival civ if there are no rival cities (hence no Palace or FP)?

AFAIK when the civ is not dead it still has it's old culture. If that is much higher then yours I think the mechanism still compares your culture with that of the almost-destroyed-civ. So, cities can still flip IMO.

 

[ERIKK]

Originally posted by morkaphi
This only happens at Chieftain level. For any upper level, one city improvement and one military unit will be disbanded if you have 0 gold treasury and run a deficit.

Ha ha!!!
....nice to know when all PBEM games are automaticly set on Chieftain!

The bugs grows bigger and bigger.

I consider it a cheat in a PBEM game!

 

[anarres]

I agree, it would be a cheat ERIKK.

 

[typing.monkey]

Thanks for the treasury advice. This is a great game, it's so complex.

 

[redhulkz]

how do i transfer my screenshot jpg file onto the forum to be seen by people?

 

[hbdragon88]

Military unit and an improvement? I don't so - either a unit or a building. My gotm15 and gotm16 experience in nearly - and sometimes, actually - killing my treasury has shown that only one improvement/unit gets disbanded per turn.

redhulkz, if the jpg is below 100kb, you can upload it directly from the forum attachment feature. If not, you have to upload it. Go to the bottom of any page on these forums and click on the Upload File link. A window will open and ask you to upload a file.

After you're done uploading, just link to the jpg by using the link:
http://civfanatics.net/uploads(#)/filename.jpg where the # is the uploads folder number and the filename whatever you named the file.

 

[MadScot]

image tag syntax:

just to add to hbdragon88's post:

you link to the file by using the syntax:
[img*]http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/filename.jpg[/img*]
where you don't include the * - I put them there to stop vBulletin from trying to use the tag in this post - and the "3" is the currently active upload folder.

Also, if the image is online elsewhere, you can link to it directly, just put the right URL in the place of the civfanatics one above

And finally, you aren't limited to jpegs, although it's best to stick to highly compressed formats, since people may be downloading on dial-up and don't want to wait for your mulit-hundred-kB bitmap The upload and attachment features tell you what kind of files you can link to.

 

[cromagnon]

I couldn't find an answer to this elsewhere. I was under the impression that Small Wonders are destroyed if the city is captured (eg FP).

I don't think the same holds for Espionage Center, because in my current game, both the capital and the Spy Center shift every time I take an enemy city.

DOes this also hold true for Apollo, Heroic Epic, Military Academy, etc?

 

[MadScot]

@cromagon

I've never noticed that, but it may be that the Intelligence Agency is treated differently because it performs a game function. Otherwise what would happen to existing spies?

For that matter, embassies also jump when the capital does, I suspect for the same reasons.

 

[Bäver]

Have anyone ever managed to loan some money?