newbie questions

[saaye]

hi guys, am a newbie to the civ series- have just been introed to it by a friend and boy is it great.

unfortunately my ability at understanding and winning strategy games is close to nil so i've some questions here:

1) How do you work a village/city/hamlet etc?
I think it's got something do with the white circles in your city managerial screen. Do they represent the tiles being worked? If so, I assume they have to be shifted to cottage tiles instead of farms/mines etc?

2) How do you get your city to grow?
At the city managerial screen, there's a bread sign with a brown bar next to it. I assume this is the growth bar? In any case, does population growth correlate to the expansion of cultural borders?

3) How do you convert your roads to railways?
Is there a promotion button like for units or do you have to demolish the roads?

4) What resources need to be linked to your city?

5) How do you actually win by any other victory apart from time victory?
I think I'm probably doing something wrong here. So far, I've won three games - 2 from settler and 1 from chieftain- all through time. The conditions for acheiving any other victory seem to take very long to attain. I've tried warlord level but I've lost all games. If it is of any significance, I'm playing on Civ4 Warlords, fractal map, random climate and standard sized map.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

1) Page 52.

2) Page 52. Page 63.

3) You improve the tile with a worker.

4) All of them.

5) Page 105.

 

[MrCynical]

1)You've got the basic idea. One of the white circles (indicating where a city's population points are working) must be using the tile with the cottage/hamlet etc.

2)The surplus food that your city generates is added to this growth bar. When the bar is full the city grows a population point. Each existing pop point requires 2 food per turn to sustain, so only any surplus beyond that can be used for growth.

3)You build them just the same as roads with a worker.

4)All of them. Resources are of minimal use when unconnected.

5)The game tends to go faster at the higher difficulty levels since the AI civs aren't crippled, and space race is usually the normal win, not time. You can deactivate time victory in custom game setup if you like, in which case the game simply keeps going until a different victory condition is reached.

 

[Proteus]

Which is the reason why many people (including myself) deactivate space race victory, as the AI seems to go for space race victory as soon as possibler, meaning that with this victory activated you normally spend only a short time in modern times before you are forced to go for space race victory becauise the AIs start building their spaceships.
(Unless you are a warmonger and have severely crippled all of the AIs so that they don´t have the means to build a spaceship)

 

[Sisiutil]

There are other ways, Proteus, to prevent the AI from achieving a Space Race victory.

I find Spies to be very useful. Not only do they give you information on how far along a rival civ's space building is, they can also perform sabotage. If the AI is standing a strong chance of completing the space ship, I'll have that little pleather-clad redhead blow up their sole source of aluminum to slow them down. Repeatedly.

You can also go to war with them or even bribe another civ to war with them.

saaye, there are several victory types to pursue, all of them achievable and fun to boot. Besides reading the manual thoroughly as VoU seems to be suggesting in his own cheeky way, have a read through the forum, especially this one's Strategy Articles subforum, and...ahem...my beginner's strategy guide (link in my sig).

Oh, and welcome to CFC and your new addiction!

 

[Proteus]

Yes, I have done so on numerous occasions (i.e. slowing down the spacerace of the AI via sabotage) before I decided to switch the spacerace off.

But if the AI is on a similar techlevel as yourself you have to start very early with sabotaging as the AI tries to enter the spacerace as soon as it has the necessary tech to do so.
So, if you don´t want a spacerace victory and you want to play along without getting a spacerace victory for yourself you have to finally start war, as you can´t delay the AI building spaceship parts indefinitely and the other AI civs will finally get the necessary techs for the spacerace, too, and sabotaging all civs that acquire spacerace would be too expensive.
So you are forced to war, even if normally (if spacerace were deactivated) you wouldn´t want to start a war against this particular civ (for example because you have rather good relations to said civ [whereas you are enemy to other civs]) but as this particular civ is nearing the completion of its spaceship, despite your efforts in sabotage, you have to start the war.

Therefore I normally find it better to deactivate this type of victory completely (although I agree that preventing the space5race of another civ without trying to obtain the spacerace victory for myself is a challenge by itself; maybe I´ll keep it activated it in one of my future games, as with Civc Warlords I´m less peaceful than I was with Civ Vanilla and therefore might be more inclined to start a modern war to prevent someone from obtaining the spacerace victory)

 

[Sisiutil]

I find the AI is very good at starting the Space Race but not so good at finishing it.

The AI will bee-line to the initial SR techs (Rocketry, Satellites), build the Apollo Program, and will build the cheaper space ship parts (casing and thrusters). All this will probably make you quite anxious; it has that effect on me.

Then, however, the AI gets bogged down researching the other, more expensive SS techs with all their pre-reqs (Fusion in particular, I find, takes the AI forever). The AI often detours into non-SR techs, especially military ones, at this point; it's obviously programmed for balanced research, but this is not optimal. The AI also has a harder time, in my experience, building the more hammer-intensive SS parts (Docking Bay, Engine, Stasis Chamber)--partly because of the research, partly because the AI just isn't that good at city specialization, or at changing an economy from a focus on food or commerce to hammers.

I know all of this largely thanks to my spies, in case you're wondering. I love those little pleather-clad vixens.

So even when the AI starts the space race, I find I usually have plenty of time even without sabotage or war to pursue my own victory condition.

 

[cabert]

about space race, i must (otherwise, i would blow )say 2 things

1) i've yet to see an AI launching
Even without spies (which are good + sexy, but expensive, so i usualy don't even build scotland yard) there is a victory screen, just checking this can tell you what to do!

2) The AI doesn't look at the settings of the game.

edit : deleted stupid statement

 

[MrCynical]

2) The AI doesn't look at the settings of the game = it will build SS parts even when space victory is out! That's a cheap trick, IMHO.

Er, what version of the game are you playing? If space race is deactivated spaceship components aren't available for construction, whether the civ in question is AI or not.

 

[Sisiutil]

Even without spies (which are good + sexy, but expensive,

Spies are pretty cheap--only 80 hammers, which in the late game is nothing. My Scotland Yard city is never one of my best production cities but it can nevertheless usually churn out a spy in 1-2 turns at most. The information you get--not just about the space race--is invaluable, and the option to do some strategic sabotage is useful as well.

Usually, though, if I reach a point where victory is at hand, I park the girls in the some of the AI civs' capitals and leave them there.

 

[cabert]

Er, what version of the game are you playing? If space race is deactivated spaceship components aren't available for construction, whether the civ in question is AI or not.

ok
well, hum...

my point should have been : the AI is coded to go for space race, and it will, not actually checking the settings (and i must admit i never deactivated any victory condition, because it feels like cheating to me)

I will edit my previous post, accordingly

 

[cabert]

Spies are pretty cheap--only 80 hammers, which in the late game is nothing. My Scotland Yard city is never one of my best production cities but it can nevertheless usually churn out a spy in 1-2 turns at most. The information you get--not just about the space race--is invaluable, and the option to do some strategic sabotage is useful as well.

Usually, though, if I reach a point where victory is at hand, I park the girls in the some of the AI civs' capitals and leave them there.

true enough about the cost of the spy.
But:
- you need the tech (communism is far in the tech tree, and if you don't plan to go state property nor universal suffrage, it's useless)
- you need to build scotland yard (500 hammers, for a soso production city is a lot)

All this is not so true, if you use US and the kremlin, of course, but i rarely do US before the very final domination rush, for airport and culture in the very recently captured cities (and even then, slavery is good enough, most of the time).
It's doable to switch to US if i'm spiritual, though, but then it's the final countdown anyway, and i won't spend 1500 + 240 bucks on a spy that won't even see enemy land.

Of course, if you're going for the space race yourself, you could want to rush buy some useful things (laboratories!) and use state property to have a less costly empire (needing communism). In this situation, i can see how you would have communism and US anyway, and could use some spies.

The only time i used spies (and was happy to) is in the desert war scenario. Good to see those enemy units... before they cause any trouble.