Newbie Questions - Ask here and get Answers!

[OneFastWarrior]

Thats a good start, I guess I could make up my own sheet off of this . But I would rather be lazy and have someone give me some of there hard work

 

[Grille]

Since I'm very lazy, too:
I figured that copy->paste might fit closer to being lazy than downloading...

Actually, I did put a printed version into a bottle and threw it into the Baltic Sea. I noticed there's river access to Ocean in Spokane. Maybe you dig a small hole near the river bed to revert the floating direction on short term. I guess you'll get it in about one turn, if we are currently at 50yrs/turn.

 

[Dr Alimentado]

And here's a text file with all years as turns

(I haven't double checked it, it's late... if it's wrong i'll fix it tomorrow )

 

[Grille]

Here's one with the *raw* data only,
ascii file format:
year turn

(-4000 is 4000bc etc)

 

[DaviddesJ]

I find it easier to use the formulas than to look in a chart, but YMMV of course.

 

[Grille]

... can make up some graphix like this

(only a very simple example , it may be more useful to make seperate pics for the years ranging from -4000 to 0, 0 to 1000 or whatever time periods)

 

[OneFastWarrior]

Thank you Dr. Alimentado, That was exactly what I was lookin' for

 

[mayakovsky]

Hello everyone! I have learned a lot on this board and my game play has increased dramatically. Although I am embarrassed to admit that I just got my a** handed to me on ......Chieftan.
All the other civs ganged up on me and I was in a war that lasted a long time. I would make a deal for peace and then the civ would renig (sp?) on the deal and attack me again. (Gandhi no less)

Anyway I have a couple of questions. What does UU mean? ANd what does SOD mean? I usually see SOD after a unit like swordsman. Thanks for answering my dumb questions.

 

[MadScot]

UU - Unique Unit (Immortal for Persia, Legionary for Rome, etc)

SOD - Stack of Doom/Death - the AIs' usual 'tactics' being to march a pile of (often obsolete) units around in a superficially threatening stack

And welcome - there are no dumb questions.

 

[mayakovsky]

Thank you.

 

[vincenzo]

I am in a situation where I have built all the available improvements in some cities - temples, libraries, universities, etc and there are no wonders to build right now - so I am just building some UU units to bring to young cities to disband for the shields. Is this a waste? Is there something better to do? Converting to wealth seems to bring very little gold.

Thanks

 

[morkaphi]

IMHO, this one of the best things to do.

Yes, it's a waste because you only get about 1/4 of your shields back when you disband your units in another city, but building wealth brings even less.

If you can foresee some wonders coming up and you have nothing better to build, you may want to prebuild them, by building palace or army.

 

[MadScot]

morkaphi and vincenzo

yes, that's a good thing to do. Things to watch for: build the largest shield cost unit you can in each city, if they are building a lot of shields. Try to build units at even multiples of 20 shields. It's all about wasting shields (or rather, not doing so).

Example: city producing 45 shields per turn. If you build a longbow, that's 40 shields, and 5 wasted. When you disband it you'll get 10 shields. If you build, instead, an infantry every 2 turns, that;s 90 shields with none wasted. When disbanded it'll be 22 shields - 11 per turn. Slightly more efficient. The only problem is that 22 shields may be too many when added to the recipient city. But if you fine tune the unit builds you'll have a nice mix of disbandments, and can mix and match between cities.

One other thing you could do, although it would depend on the game situation. If a lot of your core cities are running out of things to build, perhaps changing to communist would work? Instead of transferring units and disbanding them, you instead make the outer cities more productive, at the expense of the inner. If your outer cities are really corrupt, even in commie, consider pop-rushing in them, since food never corrupts you can get the population back quite easily in most cases. If you rush e.g. marketplaces and courthouses it may become productive (or more so) once you go back to republic/democracy.

Caveat: obviously, this is good for religious civs, but dreadful for others - two periods of anarchy will really hurt you.

 

[Hurricane]

After economics, wealth produces one gold for every 4 shields, so you could just run wealth in those cities, saving you of the hassle with fine-tuning all that production.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, but if a city is producing say, 40 shields/turn and builds 'Wealth' that equals 10 gold/turn. 10 gold can only be used to rush 2.5 shields. If you built a 40 shield unit and disbanded it, you would get 10 shields. So, in this case, disbanding is 4 times more efficient than building wealth.

And shield production-->Wealth gets rounded DOWN (minimum of 1 gold, though), so you could produce 7 shields and only get 1 gold. So building units to disband in other cities would be 7 times more efficient than building wealth to rush buy things.

A city producing only 1 shield/turn is the one case where it would be better to build wealth than to build a unit to disband. It actually would be equal, but by using wealth you save time moving the new unit, and paying unit support costs. (this is assuming you would never want any more buildings in that city, otherwise you should use something as a pre-build to start storing up the shields).

But, building units to disband can be tedious, and most of the time I don't do this, but if you do want to be efficient, don't build Wealth (except of course, in some cases, like balancing your budget for the short term).

 

[mayakovsky]

If I understand correctly, you can declare war on a civ and keep a good reputation with others as long as they attack first, right? And if that is true what constitutes an attack? Does the civ have to attack one of my combat units or can they just simply capture one of my workers? Thank You!!!!!

 

[Bamspeedy]

You don't need an attack, just a declaration of war. If you tell someone to leave your territory or declare war and they do declare war, then they are viewed as the agressor. Same thing if they catch a spy of yours and declare war on you.

If you are referring to Mutual Protection Pacts (MPP), then that is triggered by who is attacking in who's territory. If you are attacked by a unit in your territory, then MPP you have will take effect. If you attack the other civ in their territory, their MPP's will take effect. Just remember 'protection' as the key word in that. Attacking enemies in your own territory, or attacking in nuetral territory won't trigger the MPPs.

 

[mayakovsky]

Wow! THat was fast. I guess what I want to know is how to get into a war with a civ, which is really doing me no harm or tresspassing on my territory, and not lose reputation. In my current game, I share a continent with England. She has never sent a unit into my borders and we have no kind of deals whatsoever. I just want her land.


Oh, and I was also wondering if you suffer any kind of loss for not accepting peace. If I were able to be sucessful in war and England keeps asking me for peace, and is willing to pay a lot for it, and I keep turning them down, would I suffer a loss of reputation for that? (That sentence has to be grammatically incorrect )

Thanks again.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by mayakovsky
If I understand correctly, you can declare war on a civ and keep a good reputation with others as long as they attack first, right? And if that is true what constitutes an attack? Does the civ have to attack one of my combat units or can they just simply capture one of my workers? Thank You!!!!!

When you declare war (and I don't necessarily mean *automatic* war declarations due to MPP(=mutual protection pact) here) you rep will always stay fine, when you don't have any units on enemy's territory (troops must stay outside their borders -> even sea tiles) and when don't break any actual deal (=deals that have turn numbers when to expire in brackets on diplo screen). Possible scenario to start *honorable* war:
-check foreign advisor screen, if potential enemy has MPP(s) w/ other civs - just to ensure no other party needs to be taken in consideration
-eventually move all your units out of territory
-hit shift-d, pick civ and go to "active agreements" or such
-if no deals w/ brackets are shown, click on peace treaty (=renegotiate peace) and deny it (your advisor will ask twice for confirmation here)
-attack that civ where ever you want

These actions can be accomplished in one turn in that order to keep a fine reputation. But as said, MPPs can skrew up things.
PS:
The "capture the worker" thingie might be a guaratee to trigger your MPP - however, that worker must stay in your borders.

 

[pdescobar]

Grille, does that mean if you have deals which are past the 20 turn limit but still going (RoP or resource swap for instance), you don't have to explicitly cancel them before declaring war? I've always done that just to be safe...