Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[hrhomer]

Playing my first game now. I intentionally founded Hinduism, and converted. I inadvertantly founded Judaism, which is fine. In a different city, I completely accidentally founded Confucianism. Also fine, except that it gave me a Confucian Missionary for free. I don't want him, I am building a Hindu Missionary in another city, intending to spread Hinduism. Not Confucianism.

Is there anything worthwhile to do with the Confucian Missionary?

 

[rah]

Yes, send it to a civ that doesn't have a religion yet. If it gets there first, that civ will convert to conf and hopefully provide some discord between them and all neighbors of a different religion.

 

[God-Emperor]

Just spread it to one of your own cities, like one that already has your state religion in it. Having multiple religions in your cities means you can build multiple temples and monasteries and cathedrals for greater benefits. The extra monastery for the extra religion still gives +10% research, for example.

In regular un-modded Civ4 there is no down side to having extra religions in your cities except that other civs who end up with that religion as their state religion, if there are any, will sometimes ask you to switch religions and refusing gives a diplomatic penalty.

 

[hrhomer]

Just spread it to one of your own cities, like one that already has your state religion in it. Having multiple religions in your cities means you can build multiple temples and monasteries and cathedrals for greater benefits. The extra monastery for the extra religion still gives +10% research, for example.

In regular un-modded Civ4 there is no down side to having extra religions in your cities except that other civs who end up with that religion as their state religion, if there are any, will sometimes ask you to switch religions and refusing gives a diplomatic penalty.

Gracias, this sounds like a plan!

 

[dalamb]

A good place to send your confucian missionary is your science city, often your capital. Building a monastery gives additional until Scientific Method.

 

[damerell]

A good place to send your confucian missionary is your science city, often your capital. Building a monastery gives additional until Scientific Method.

And a large city has more use for extra temples; a large city has more use for the extra culture from a potential Cathedral.

 

[DaveQ]

I don't understand trade routes. How do they come about and how do I get more of them? They don't seem related to the negotiated trades under diplomacy. Are they and I just don't understand how?

 

[nerdfighter13]

Welcome!

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

I don't understand trade routes. How do they come about and how do I get more of them? They don't seem related to the negotiated trades under diplomacy. Are they and I just don't understand how?

I'll take a quick stab, but my answers may be incomplete as there are kids scattered about the house, and it's really distracting me from Civ4 and CFC. It might come an edit at a time.

Trade routes are completely unrelated to trading resources/technologies/maps/money/whathaveyou. Those things are done through diplomacy and have to be arranged and agreed on. Trade routes are commerce that happen automatically in each of your cities as soon as they're available. At the beginning of the game you won't have any, as you'll only have one city and it's not connected to any other empires. As soon as you found your second city (if it's connected to your capital through roads, rivers, or coastline) both of your cities will have 1 with each other.

You start getting trade routes with other empires (which are usually more profitable than with your own) when you have Open Borders with another civ and their cities are connected to yours.

As far as getting more trade routes in your cities, there's several things you can do. Let's see...

Having the Currency tech gives you +1 in every city.
Having the Corporation tech gives you +1 in every city.
Having a Castle in the city gives you +1 in that city.
Having an Airport in the city gives you +1 in that city.
Running the Free Market civic gives you +1 in every city.
Owning the Great Lighthouse wonder gives you +2 in every coastal city.
Also, if playing as Carthage, their UB is a harbor that gives an extra trade route.

There's probably another one or two that I'm forgetting.

Okay, here's some ways to make trade routes bring in more commerce. It's not just having more routes per city- at the beginning of the game they're only worth 1 but it's not unusual for them to be around 10 by late game. (More experienced players than me have probably seen quite a bit higher than that.) First of all, the bigger the two cities, the higher the income. It might also have to do with overall commerce in the cities or something, but higher pop = more from trade routes. Foreign cities are usually better than your own. Cities on different landmasses give more, and intercontinental routes bring even more than that. Harbors and Customs Houses increase income. So does the Temple of Artemis wonder.

Kay that's all I can remember- but like before, there's probably a couple other ways.

Random thoughts... keeping in mind that this is not exactly strategy-guide-level material here, and it's all jumbled...

If you run the Mercantilism civic, you can still trade resources and such with other civs, but your trade routes with them will disappear. If each of your cities has four trade routes, they'll still have four trade routes, it'll just go from being four foreign trade routes to four amongst-your-own-cities trade routes. (Which will bring your overall commerce down, possibly by quite a lot.) Oh, that's another thing- you don't have to micro-manage your routes, the computer does it for you. It'll pick the most profitable routes for each city each turn to bring in the most moneycommerce. If you found a city on another continent that'll give the city of Nottingham 3, it'll drop the 2 route that Nottingham has with London. Also, just becuase Nottingham has a route with London doesn't mean London has one with Nottingham. If London's best three routes (assuming your techs/civics/buildings give you three trade routes) are Washington, Timbuktu, and Cahokia, London won't trade with Nottingham.

Okay, that reminds me of another thing. Each of your cities can trade with any of your other cities- i.e., in the previous example, York can trade with London even though Nottingham is trading with London too. But York won't be able to trade with Timbuktu because you can only have one trade route anywhere in your empire for any foreign city. Early in the game, before you've discovered many foreign cities (or if they haven't settled many yet) a lot of your routes (especially in your smaller cities) will be with your other cities.

I hope all that made sense. So much for "a quick stab".

 

[Sisiutil]

That was a pretty good rundown on trade routes from TheMulattoMaker. I only have a couple of things to add...

• Another reason to hate barbarians: they wreak havoc on your trade routes. A barb city in the wrong place, or even a barb galley randomly blockading every now and then, can cause your early economy to fluctuate wildly, as either one may cut off all trade routes that "flow" through that area. No wonder the AI often seems so hell-bent on travelling half-way across the map just to raze a barb city. And it just makes Metal Casting (and Triremes) an even higher priority...
• Given the right map conditions, you can set up a "trade route economy" in the early game that can give you a big boost. Specifically, if you find yourself in contact with several other civs and you have several decent coastal city sites available, building the Great Lighthouse and, if you can manage it, the Temple of Artemis can give a tremendous boost to your economy--especially if one or more of the other civs are on a separate land mass (but obviously not separated by ocean tiles). On such a map the GL alone often allows me to raise the research slider 20-40%.
• Mercantilism can be a real pain in the middle game as most of the AIs seem to adopt it and become very reluctant to move out of it, even after they have access to Free Market. If you adopted the "trade route economy" I described above, you may suddenly start noticing a huge drop in income from one turn to the next as each foreign civ adopts mercantilism. Even if you bribe them to switch to FM, they'll often switch back a few turns later. The AI also seems inordinately fond of Environmentalism, so bee-lining Medicine and trading that to them is a possible solution.

 

[Old Hippy]

just a quick question, do Ice tiles disapear like forrest tiles do, as I just had one appear and block my only port from the sea (it's in a Mod, RI, so I don't know if its specific to that or a general thing)

 

[s.bernbaum]

Ice tiles do not come and go in the unmodded game. They are either there or not there from the beginning and don't change. You probable ought to ask in the thread for the mod that you are using.

 

[Old Hippy]

thanks that is all I need to know, it just came as a surprise...

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Four more small points about Trade Routes to add to the extensive posts above.

1. Trade Routes to an AI Civ do not give any diplomatic bonuses as trading resources does. However, to have Trade Routes to an AI you must have Open Borders with that Civ while you can trade resources to an AI without having signed an Open Borders agreement. Don't ask me how that works, but it does.

2. Trade Routes generate Commerce (along with the Palace and worked tiles), not Gold. That means that Trade Route income is subjected to the Bureaucracy bonus in the capital and can be converted to Beakers, Culture, Gold or Espionage via the slider. Income from Resource Trades can't, that is just gold and isn't subjected to modifiers.

3. Trade Routes are predicated on peace. Don't bother trying to establish a dependency on them if you anticipate long and ugly wars with your trade partners. Vassals, though, do make good trade partners so if you get to that stage you are back on track. As I understand it extended peace with a Civ increases the value of the trade routes to that Civ.

4. Astronomy opens up the ability to trade to overseas continents. It can increase your commerce by quite a lot in certain circumstances.

 

[AdamCrock]

Regarding the trade routes - Under Mercantilism civic You can still have trade routes with foreign cities when they are Your vassals - So if You have many vassals switching to mercantilism can be a nice alternative to free market, not sure if the same applies to UN Resolution "OPen markets - trade with all foreign cities" but I think it does work for mercantilism too.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Good points. UN comes late in the game but vassals are possible from early on.

 

[DaveQ]

Thank you. Your answer was very helpful.

I'll take a quick stab, but my answers may be incomplete as there are kids scattered about the house, and it's really distracting me from Civ4 and CFC. It might come an edit at a time.

Trade routes are completely unrelated to trading resources/technologies/maps/money/whathaveyou. Those things are done through diplomacy and have to be arranged and agreed on. Trade routes are commerce that happen automatically in each of your cities as soon as they're available. At the beginning of the game you won't have any, as you'll only have one city and it's not connected to any other empires. As soon as you found your second city (if it's connected to your capital through roads, rivers, or coastline) both of your cities will have 1 with each other.

You start getting trade routes with other empires (which are usually more profitable than with your own) when you have Open Borders with another civ and their cities are connected to yours.

As far as getting more trade routes in your cities, there's several things you can do. Let's see...

Having the Currency tech gives you +1 in every city.
Having the Corporation tech gives you +1 in every city.
Having a Castle in the city gives you +1 in that city.
Having an Airport in the city gives you +1 in that city.
Running the Free Market civic gives you +1 in every city.
Owning the Great Lighthouse wonder gives you +2 in every coastal city.
Also, if playing as Carthage, their UB is a harbor that gives an extra trade route.

There's probably another one or two that I'm forgetting.

Okay, here's some ways to make trade routes bring in more commerce. It's not just having more routes per city- at the beginning of the game they're only worth 1 but it's not unusual for them to be around 10 by late game. (More experienced players than me have probably seen quite a bit higher than that.) First of all, the bigger the two cities, the higher the income. It might also have to do with overall commerce in the cities or something, but higher pop = more from trade routes. Foreign cities are usually better than your own. Cities on different landmasses give more, and intercontinental routes bring even more than that. Harbors and Customs Houses increase income. So does the Temple of Artemis wonder.

Kay that's all I can remember- but like before, there's probably a couple other ways.

Random thoughts... keeping in mind that this is not exactly strategy-guide-level material here, and it's all jumbled...

If you run the Mercantilism civic, you can still trade resources and such with other civs, but your trade routes with them will disappear. If each of your cities has four trade routes, they'll still have four trade routes, it'll just go from being four foreign trade routes to four amongst-your-own-cities trade routes. (Which will bring your overall commerce down, possibly by quite a lot.) Oh, that's another thing- you don't have to micro-manage your routes, the computer does it for you. It'll pick the most profitable routes for each city each turn to bring in the most moneycommerce. If you found a city on another continent that'll give the city of Nottingham 3, it'll drop the 2 route that Nottingham has with London. Also, just becuase Nottingham has a route with London doesn't mean London has one with Nottingham. If London's best three routes (assuming your techs/civics/buildings give you three trade routes) are Washington, Timbuktu, and Cahokia, London won't trade with Nottingham.

Okay, that reminds me of another thing. Each of your cities can trade with any of your other cities- i.e., in the previous example, York can trade with London even though Nottingham is trading with London too. But York won't be able to trade with Timbuktu because you can only have one trade route anywhere in your empire for any foreign city. Early in the game, before you've discovered many foreign cities (or if they haven't settled many yet) a lot of your routes (especially in your smaller cities) will be with your other cities.

I hope all that made sense. So much for "a quick stab".

 

[DaveQ]

Thank you. And thanks to Sisiutil and Mec AntiKythera too. I'm glad there is still an active Civ IV forum. Sometimes the older versions get no interest after the sequel comes out.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

Thank you. Your answer was very helpful.

No prob.

Thank you. And thanks to Sisiutil and Mec AntiKythera too. I'm glad there is still an active Civ IV forum. Sometimes the older versions get no interest after the sequel comes out.

Shoot, there's still an active Civ1 forum on CFC. Not very active, but still.

 

[AdamCrock]

In one of my games I've noticed that my worker is able to build a cottage on top of a hill Is it normal or maybe it's a bug ? If it's not a bug just when and where workers are able to build cottages on hills ????

Running unmoded bts 3.19 just with the flag decals mod

Below is a screenshot :

Spoiler :

in case You're wondering how I've found Islam - I'm playing with the option "choose religions" checked