Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Kallikrates]

Thanks guys for confirming the poor tundra uses (and good to have a comment from Sisutil--I just today read intermediate and early rush guides on my iPhone while traveling).

Having just played Fall from Heaven for the last 8 months I miss spring, vitalize, etc. I also miss terraforming from Civ II...

While I think the map should still have an effect, I would prefer more terraforming options. Although I do not know how much this would actually be used in practice, it would be cool to have at some stage more options after some tech. In Civ II "explosives" upgraded settlers to engineers who could transform terrain (although it took ages).
Tundra would still be worse than plains if one could build stuff on non-river or lake tundra tiles. Similar with desert. Why not irrigate desert to get one food, it would still be worse than most other tiles, but could at least transmit irrigation.

Right now in CivIV the tiles that profit from adavanced tech/civic options are often the ones that were the best to begin with, especially river tiles.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

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.

Glad to be of service. And yes, the active community does much to add to the attractiveness of the game.



As far as tiles go, I like the blocking effect of peaks, but tunnels -late game and extremely slow to build- would be an interesting addition. Railroads make them unnecessary in most cases though. How about a telescope tile improvement to generate beakers directly?

I would welcome more tile variety, cliffs (impassable coast tiles), swamp, canyon, and valley come to mind. That might not work at the scale of a standard map however, one does need to be able to move around a bit. Sandbars, reef, and similar water tiles would spice up ocean travel a bit, make routing more interesting.

 

[tonyt25]

Hi...

Can someone help me?

I want to edit unit capabilities, how can I do this? You can't do this in world builder....

Particularly, I want to create a transport plane.

Any help is appreciated.

thanks

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Have you looked in the Modding forum? I haven't a clue how to do that myself.

 

[Darth Fred]

Hi...

Can someone help me?

I want to edit unit capabilities, how can I do this? You can't do this in world builder....

Particularly, I want to create a transport plane.

Any help is appreciated.

thanks

I do believe Mec AntiKythera is correct and the Modding forum is the way to go. Careful over there though, you may get buried in code.

F

 

[Manco Capac]

Or completely ignored. So usual there if you're not a VIP of modding.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

Or completely ignored. So usual there if you're not a VIP of modding.

now that's not true.
i started in Modding forum 2 years ago being total noob and asked tons of newbie questions - I got TONS of help, specially from people liek The_J

 

[Manco Capac]

For ya. While me, asking SDK questions with a lot of details...but got almost nothing of replies. The_J is ultra active, so no surprises you got some answers from him.

I think two conditions are in play:
1) Be someone like Platyping (VIP), you got answers from modding friends no matter how small the question is in material.
2) Bring a lot of strong base stuff like your own code, references...a basis on which people will look at there.

My questions weren't modding, but better understanding of some game mechanics with occasional understanding how the code works in its logical format, but each time I had to made an agression on several users (PM's, visitor messages, etc.) to finally get an answer. And it's not I did not put a lot of work into my questions. Far from it.

I just got bad experience from there. Anyways, I'm independant now...so doesn't matter now.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

i think its a no brainier - the more complicated staff you ask about - the smaller is the number of people who have potential answers. And those people not always around. Where again I must give kudos to The_J who seem to be on the clock 24/7
By today I have enough modding knowledge to give answers on many things about xml settings, editing units, buildings etc, but I won't be able to tell you anything about Python or SDK.
I am sorry that you bad experience from there, but overall modding community was very helpful to me, on beginning to middle level modding.

 

[Darth Fred]

By today I have enough modding knowledge to give answers on many things about xml settings, editing units, buildings etc

Have you met Tony25? He wants to make a transport plane.

F

 

[papakapp]

Is it possible to harvest a resource on a one square island and still work the tile?
This seems like a rare situation, but what I found was a tiny island with aluminum right next door to another tiny island. I settled the non-aluminum island so that I could grab some fish. (The alum. was still in my fat cross)
I found that with a mine, my city would get the hammers but not the resource. With a fort it would get the resource but not the bonus hammers. Is there no way to get both? Perhaps if the non-inhabited island were 2 squares big you could mine the alum. and then road to a fort... can anyone confirm?

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

Is it possible to harvest a resource on a one square island and still work the tile?
This seems like a rare situation, but what I found was a tiny island with aluminum right next door to another tiny island. I settled the non-aluminum island so that I could grab some fish. (The alum. was still in my fat cross)
I found that with a mine, my city would get the hammers but not the resource. With a fort it would get the resource but not the bonus hammers. Is there no way to get both?

I don't know of any way other than the options you've described- that situation forces you to choose between hammers or getting the resource. You could also settle on the aluminum island- depending on the underlying terrain, this could turn the 211 into 221, or even 231 if it's sitting on a plainshill. (This obviously does nothing for your fishy island other than taking away its only source of hammers, but still...)

Perhaps if the non-inhabited island were 2 squares big you could mine the alum. and then road to a fort... can anyone confirm?

Yes, this works, but I think the fort has to be in your cultural borders, FYI. (Edit- see bottom of spoiler for proof.)

Spoiler islandfort experiment :

A quick-and-dirty experiment you can try is to start an Earth18 game as JC. Settle Rome in place and settle Sicily at the toe of Italy (on the goody hut). Wait for Sicily's borders to pop. Send a Worker to Sardinia and pasturize the sheep. Sicily will get the food from the sheep but your cities won't have the sheep resource. Build a fort on the north end of Sardinia (or Corsica if you're a fan of Napoleon). Build roads on the fort and the pasture. The turn that all this in place Rome and Sicily will have the +1 from the sheep.

I'm not saying this is a wise opening strategy as Rome. And you could always build a city on North Sardinia/Corsica to pick up the sheep anyway. Just a quick way to show how all this works. Oh, and if you try it, you might wanna WB all this instead of sitting around waiting for Mathematics.

SOME TIME LATER: Okay, I went back to confirm the fort-in-culture thing and yes, for the fort to connect the resource it has to be in your culture. I WB'd the fort tile to Spain and lost the sheep, even after I had OB with Izzy.

 

[bestbrian]

Is it possible to harvest a resource on a one square island and still work the tile?
This seems like a rare situation, but what I found was a tiny island with aluminum right next door to another tiny island. I settled the non-aluminum island so that I could grab some fish. (The alum. was still in my fat cross)
I found that with a mine, my city would get the hammers but not the resource. With a fort it would get the resource but not the bonus hammers. Is there no way to get both? Perhaps if the non-inhabited island were 2 squares big you could mine the alum. and then road to a fort... can anyone confirm?

Road the mine should get you resources and hammers, I'd think.

 

[Silv Something]

I've got this game (actually, my second with BtS) but I'm not sure how to win. I've got the AP but am about 100 votes shout of victory (I'm at 750 out of 850). My viable options are AP, UN, or SS. Can I get some advice?
Also, corporations? Can someone give me some pointers on those? I have some GEs lying around.
Thanks!

*Don't hate on me for automating my workers. After railroad I get lazy. But before that I gave them orders individually, I swear!

 

[Bad Cowboy]

I would like to organize my military units.I tried to add script to them using world builder but it doesn't show up when I revert to game mode.What am I doing wrong?

 

[s.bernbaum]

Road the mine should get you resources and hammers, I'd think.

Sorry Brian but no. Like TheMulattoMaker says, you can build the fort to act as a port to get the resource, or you can build a mine to get the hammers. Putting a road on the mined tile does nothing because there is no port on the one tile island.

 

[Jwitti]

The scripts are for telling the AI what to do with the unit. They do nothing for you. I don't know what you mean by organizing them, but you're going to have to do a little work

As for Corporations, you want to choose your corporation based off of what extra resources you have- if you have a lot of extra fish, crab, clam, and rice, then Sid's Sushi is the way to go. Extra metals (Iron, copper, etc) lend themselves to Mining, Inc. I'd look at the civilopedia for something more specific.
Closing note on Corps, spread them to foreign cities for more money, and build Wall street in your corp HQ (or vice versa) and courthouses in all of your cities (even if you don't do corps courthouses are good)

 

[mourndraken]

Hi...

Can someone help me?

I want to edit unit capabilities, how can I do this? You can't do this in world builder....

Particularly, I want to create a transport plane.

Any help is appreciated.

thanks

what do you want this transport plane to do ?

 

[dylanmeditates]

I used to play vanilla and it was totally killer to go liberalism>steel and then work towards artillery as i took over the world. but now in bts it seems that siege weapons do nothing but that... siege. i can't take cities the way i used to! could someone please explain how siege weapons work: how/why do they remove themselves from combat? do they ever kill anything?

 

[Ghpstage]

I used to play vanilla and it was totally killer to go liberalism>steel and then work towards artillery as i took over the world. but now in bts it seems that siege weapons do nothing but that... siege. i can't take cities the way i used to! could someone please explain how siege weapons work: how/why do they remove themselves from combat? do they ever kill anything?

Seige in BTS can only kill in self defense, when attacking they can only damage the unit they attack to their maximum damage before withdrawing. Seige is still immensly powerful, but it can no longer win wars without other units following to mop up.

They withdraw rather than kill as a much needed nerf, seige was seriously overpowered in vanilla. Though libbing Steel is probably better in BTS relative to vanilla, as vanilla Cavalry were in another league altogether