Quick Answers (formerly Newbie Questions)

[drewshark]

I guess my real question about the tech trading was.....how can I find out if a new tech is available to trade w/ out going through each civ one by one. The only way I know this is if a civ starts a new possible GW and, therefore they have the tech. I sometimes spend 10 minutes going through each civ to see what they have.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by drewshark
I guess my real question about the tech trading was.....how can I find out if a new tech is available to trade w/ out going through each civ one by one. The only way I know this is if a civ starts a new possible GW and, therefore they have the tech. I sometimes spend 10 minutes going through each civ to see what they have.

I agree it would be nice to have a tool, but I don't think it should take 10 minutes. I can cycle through a dozen opponents in a minute, 2 minutes at most. You can also just view it as a slight handicap for the human player (who has lots of other advantages) and just not check so often (especially if you are just playing on your own and not "competitively").

 

[Frisian Warrior]

Originally posted by drewshark
The only way I know this is if a civ starts a new possible GW and, therefore they have the tech. I sometimes spend 10 minutes going through each civ to see what they have.

You also know when you see new AI units run around. A Iroquois Infantry tells you they have Replaceable Parts.. and rubber.
10 minutes is a long time. The interface, eh, leaves room for improvement, but it shouldn't take that long unless you take notes and screenshots.

 

[Leha]

I agree with Drewshark ( I check not only new techs but
also new lux/resources available and active trades + try to sell
everything I don't need ) . It would be nice to have some screen
displaying all new things and not only lux/resources .

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by leha
I agree with Drewshark ( I check not only new techs but also new lux/resources available and active trades + try to sell everything I don't need ) . It would be nice to have some screen displaying all new things and not only lux/resources .

I assume you know that you don't have to check every civ for new resources that they can trade to you, because it's displayed on the F2 screen. I proposed in this thread in the Conquests forum to add a "lightbulb" symbol for each tech that the civ can trade to you. I think this would be a clean solution, but I doubt it will happen, as far as I can tell there's no one really actively looking through those suggestions and taking some for Firaxis to implement.

 

[Leha]

Since I got to cycle through all civs in diplomatic screen I check
lux/resources as opportunity . If I need to check only lux/resources available , yep , I do it in F2 screen . As for bulb ,
I like idea .

 

[Turner]

Originally posted by drewshark
I guess my real question about the tech trading was.....how can I find out if a new tech is available to trade w/ out going through each civ one by one. The only way I know this is if a civ starts a new possible GW and, therefore they have the tech. I sometimes spend 10 minutes going through each civ to see what they have.

You can d/l the Powerbar trainer utility, this will tell you what the AI is currently researching. While it won't (it might, I don't use it much) tell you what techs they have, you can get an idea by seeing what techs they're researching. So if they're reseraching, say, industrialization, you know they have Steam Power.

 

[Paroissien]

Ok. Is it actually possible to trade for cities? In all the games ive played ive never been able to, or seen, one civ trade away a city.

 

[Speaker]

In one of the older patches they made it impossible to trade for cities unless part of a peace deal because it was being used as an exploit. Welcome to CFC!

 

[Paroissien]

Thanks.
Do you really have to have the AI on the backfoot for them to consider this kind of trade then?

 

[Speaker]

Yup. You need to have thoroughly routed them in the war for them to give up meaningful cities. They will give up far-flung "colonies" if you have just given them a good thrashing.

 

[Peebo]

when another civ conquers one of my cities, they capture some gold. what determines how much gold they take from me?

 

[Sparrow3]

questions:
1) Is there anyway to get rid of the Sentry & explore buttons and still use the key board control for these functions?

2) What is the difference between Sentry and Fortify? (zone of control, wakes up when enemy approaches, etc.?) Why would I want to Set sentry over Fortify at a particular place?

3) I notice that some civs (Spain & Mongols) can trade workers. Can all civs do this?
Can any other units (warrior, spearman, galley) be traded?

 

[superslug]

1) I don't think so, but I don't know!

2) IIRC, Sentries do wake up when an enemy passes by, whereas Fortifies do not. I'm guessing Sentries would be used as an alert to yourself that someone is in that area...frankly, I've never used them. I'm too used to checking my borders often manually.

3) All civs can trade workers. The only prerequisite is that the only workers available have to be inside the civ's capitol when negotiations are taking place.
EDIT: No other units may be traded, with the exception of ICBM's, which I give AI cities as often as possible

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by Oddible
Seeing as how the search function is disabled, I'll throw this question here and see if anyone can point me to a thread or provide info.

It was just brought up in another board the question of what determines the length of time required for non-religious civs to change governments. I recall it mentioned that it has something to do with number of happy/etc. citizens. Is this true and are there other factors?

I also seem to recall someone saying that they butter their citizens up with the luxury slider prior to gov't changes.

Does this help?

Non-religious civs have a 1-8 turns lasting anarchy. Happiness is not important, but number of cities (respectively map size, it's probably OCN related) is. 0-3 turns of anarchy are actually determined by numbers of cities, an "additional" 1-5 turns come totally random.
However, the exact relation between city number and the 0-3 turns phase hasn't been discovered yet (AFAIK).

<edit: btw, on higher levels, it seems like an ai civ's anarchy lenght does not follow this rule>

Check out this post/thread.



@Daviddes: -> "When to change gov?" Because of the 1-5 turns that are totally random, it's sometimes possible to reduce the required turns of anarchy. If you draw a "bad" number (i.e. 5) when you just decided to change gov from the tech pop-up (either by the "we have learned a new type of gov... change?" thingie or by changing from F6 to F1 screen while choosing new research topic), you could immeditelly "re-new" the anarchy on your turn and hope to get the required lenght of anarchy down.
However, this *feels* exploitiv. Like Gainy bo, I prefer to change gov at the end of my turn (maybe I want to rush something right in that turn) and set the governour to manage moods.

What bothers me on this issue:
Is tech-choice pop-up prior to gov-choice pop-up (might come handy when researching republic at minimum: slip into anarchy 4 turns before republic is discovered and have it on the gov choice list in time)?

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by Sparrow3
questions:
1) Is there anyway to get rid of the Sentry & explore buttons and still use the key board control for these functions?

2) What is the difference between Sentry and Fortify? (zone of control, wakes up when enemy approaches, etc.?) Why would I want to Set sentry over Fortify at a particular place?

1) can't say for PTW, but in vanilla, these buttons are missing anyway. In vanilla, key-board control would be:
"e" -> auto-explore
"y" or "shift y" for the two different sentry commands
2) You would want to put units on sentry when you were a sloth-bear like me.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Grille

Because of the 1-5 turns that are totally random, it's sometimes possible to reduce the required turns of anarchy. If you draw a "bad" number (i.e. 5) when you just decided to change gov from the tech pop-up (either by the "we have learned a new type of gov... change?" thingie or by changing from F6 to F1 screen while choosing new research topic), you could immeditelly "re-new" the anarchy on your turn and hope to get the required lenght of anarchy down.

Good idea. Thanks.

What bothers me on this issue:
Is tech-choice pop-up prior to gov-choice pop-up (might come handy when researching republic at minimum: slip into anarchy 4 turns before republic is discovered and have it on the gov choice list in time)?

Interesting. Doing it 4 turns earlier seems too early, but 2 or 3 seems possible.

 

[Grille]

by Daviddes:
Good idea. Thanks.

<ethics discussion> I don't know if this would be allowed in tournament games (like GOTM). I actually don't use this method (but don't play tournament games either). On the other hand, enjoy if you can get along with your morality.

For the "anarchy-before-republic": We must get to know the # of city (or % of OCN) dependency. Then, we would know for sure if the anarchy phase would last at least 1 or even 4 turns. You are probably right that 4 turns is "unsafe" (as city number might be too low in the ancient) - or it's going to be a gamble.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Grille

<ethics discussion> I don't know if this would be allowed in tournament games (like GOTM). I actually don't use this method (but don't play tournament games either). On the other hand, enjoy if you can get along with your morality.

I don't see anything unethical about gambling on less anarchy (but taking the risk of more). Why would this be unethical? Certainly it's not forbidden in GOTM: there's a list of disallowed exploits, and nothing like this is on it.

 

[scotland_no1]

i wasnt sure where i should ask this question, but i thought i would get the quikest answer here, so... when you download a patch for you game, what does mirror1 and mirror2 mean, and which should i download, or both.