Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Lennier]

To expand on what Samson said:

Hello again!Now that I've introduced myself, I have a lot of questions about Civ IV, such as:
1) How and when can I spread my religion to a city belonging to another civ? Sometimes I move my missionary into one of them and the option is disabled.

If the civ is in Theocracy, you can gift the missionary to the other civ and (if they're an AI) they will attempt to use the missionary to add the religion to one of their cities. (The missionary may fail in this task if the other city already has one or more religions.) You can also found a "junk" city near their boarder, convert that city, then gift it to the civ in Theocracy.

2) What (if any)are the benefits of conversion to a religion?Specifically, is it possible to use it as a non- military weapon to win the game?

Besides the AP victory, if you control the shrine of the religion, you will get more gold from the shrine. (Shrines give 1 per city in the religion, multiplied by market/grocer/bank/Wall Street if they're in the city as well.)

Also, civilizations that share a state religion will get a boost to relations (and get a reduction in relations if they have different state religions.)

Having multiple religions in a city will mean you can build one temple (small religious building), one cathedral (large religious building, subject to needing enough temples built to build another cathedral (on a per-religion basis)) and (before Scientific Method) one monastery per religion.

3) How can I make a full alliance with another civ (I mean, offensive and defensive)?

And to be able to get a permanent alliance, at least one of the civs needs to know Communism and the civs need a total of at least 40 turns of shared war and defensive alliance time.

4)How many and which official expansions does Civ IV have so far?

Get BtS. The last official patch to BtS is 3.19.

5)Can I play Civ IV in Windows 8.1?

I haven't personally done it (I'm a Mac guy), but I've seen others on this site report they can play it in Windows 8.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

 

[Chosroes]

Thanks very much to everyone!

 

[Warhunter]

Do you mean the shortcut icon on your windows? If so right click it and go to properties, click change icon if its not looking in the right folder go to wherever your BTS is saved which is likely to be and click on one of the CIV BTS icons, if you pick one that has a square black background just try the others.

that was easy thank you very much

I have another question for this thread
how good does your economi have to be for it to be worth purchasing unit upgrades? Usually i don't purchase these before very late in game or if i got incredibly great economy which i tend to never get, am i doing wrong?

 

[plastiqe]

that was easy thank you very much

I have another question for this thread
how good does your economi have to be for it to be worth purchasing unit upgrades? Usually i don't purchase these before very late in game or if i got incredibly great economy which i tend to never get, am i doing wrong?

The best time to upgrade is ASAP when you've got a tech advantage. The most common way to do it in Civ IV is to upgrade mounted units into Cuirassier/Calvary. So you can build a bunch of Horse Archers or Knights before hand, do a research beeline to Military Tradition/Gunpowder and then upgrade en mass.

In order to get the a common tactic is to run a trade mission with a Great Merchant. You can also just turn off research for a bit and collect 100% taxes or get $ from deals with AI.

So when your economy is good enough that you're the first one to a new military tech and you have a good target to attack, that's when you should do a lot of upgrades.

 

[Warhunter]

tnx plastiqe
I have some free time right now so will try it right away

 

[Ghpstage]

that was easy thank you very much

No problem

I have another question for this thread
how good does your economi have to be for it to be worth purchasing unit upgrades? Usually i don't purchase these before very late in game or if i got incredibly great economy which i tend to never get, am i doing wrong?

Generally upgrading your troops as a matter of course is wasteful. against AI, most of your garrisons for example won't see combat and will provide the same amount of whether they be a warrior or a modern armour!
The cost is also very high, usually worth far more as research, and upgrading multiple times will cost even more (Warrior->Mace->Rifle costs more than Warrior->Rifle).
The way upgrade cost is calculated is difference in cost*3+20

You may want to upgrade highly experienced units, or upgrading defenders in a threatened city, but the best use of upgrades are as mentioned above, mass upgrading for offensive purposes.
Cuirassiers can be upgraded from not just horse archers and knights (you often won't have the techs for knights if you beeline cuirassiers directly!) but war elephants too, and other very popular mass upgrades are to rifles or to cannons.
Another useful upgrade is triremes->caravels for a head start on circumnavigation and exploration.

There are other times where a military advantage appears that you could press quickly using mass upgrades appear too.
Also this can also apply to buying a resource from an AI. At times you may lack the resources to build Cuirassiers (for example), but provided an AI has horses and/or iron available then massing earlier mounted for mass upgrades can still work, which is particularly entertaining if you declare on the one you borrowed the resources from and take it for good

 

[Tim Depp]

Although I have seen an equal success in away and home uses of Great People who join cities, sometimes I really wonder what is best for their full benefit.4

Given that no techs will get more than a 50% bonus from being researched by a GP or any WWs exist that engineers can finish, is it better to have GP settled into fledgling cities so that they can grow faster or should they be kept in larger ones to add to the higher rate of research/gold/productivity?

 

[Ghpstage]

Although I have seen an equal success in away and home uses of Great People who join cities, sometimes I really wonder what is best for their full benefit.4

Given that no techs will get more than a 50% bonus from being researched by a GP or any WWs exist that engineers can finish, is it better to have GP settled into fledgling cities so that they can grow faster or should they be kept in larger ones to add to the higher rate of research/gold/productivity?

Sorry, I don't understand what the red is on about, what 50% bonus? . Settled great people by the way won't increase the growth of a small city apart from through the food or hammer yield of a super specialist (+1 for GScientist, +1 for GMerchant or +3 for GEng).

In case this is whats being said, great people can instaresearch techs in their entirity, and GEngineers can built wonders outright, what they do is provide a lump sum thats modified by population and doesn't overflow.
As a result bulbing techs tends to be relatively poor in the very early game as techs are so cheap, and golden ages or corps tend to be much stronger i nthe late game, but in the mid game they are very strong indeed. There are of course exceptions, bulbing maths with a GS, while wasteful in terms of , can be very strong in allowing Oracling of Construction, or just from chop .
Effective bulbing does require foresight and planning, you will definately want to consult the GP tech priority lists in the war academy.

On settling, the only great person that directly increases growth of a city is a merchant, and thats just +1. Others help indirectly through but only a GEng is worth mentioning there (and would still be a massive waste). If your going to settle them your going to want to concentrate them in core cities with large multipliers, the most effective strategies involving settled great people usually involve settling masses of them in the capital, with a focus on great prophets as their gain the bureacracy bonus.

 

[Tim Depp]

Sorry, I don't understand what the red is on about, what 50% bonus?

The bonus I speak of is the large amount of production or research units a GP can generate when they are selected to be used for a tech or WW's production. It usually peters out to around 50% of the full cost during late game (usually when I begin having outlier cities that are growing slowly).

But if you think that the options are sound if well-weighed then I guess I'll keep to my strategy as is. Thanks!

 

[Ghpstage]

The bonus I speak of is the large amount of production or research units a GP can generate when they are selected to be used for a tech or WW's production. It usually peters out to around 50% of the full cost during late game (usually when I begin having outlier cities that are growing slowly).

But if you think that the options are sound if well-weighed then I guess I'll keep to my strategy as is. Thanks!

Sorry, I had assumed you meant a general GP strategy, which would focus on the earlier eras, where settle vs bulbing could be argued!

They aren't really well weighted, and their weights change dramatically through the game. In the later stages of the game settling is the absolute worst option you can choose the settled yield isn't going to speed up growth by any real margin as the improvements available at this point are very powerful, and a corp or golden age would provide a much bigger boost to this (and everything else!). The total yield gained from the settled great person would probably never even catch up to the initial boost from the bulb or wonderhurry either, let alone the snowball it would create.

 

[Warhunter]

thank you once again Ghpstage

 

[Olson]

To expand on what Samson said:
If the civ is in Theocracy, you can gift the missionary to the other civ and (if they're an AI) they will attempt to use the missionary to add the religion to one of their cities. (The missionary may fail in this task if the other city already has one or more religions.)....

"...in Theocracy"? Wouldn't that be, 'anything but Theocracy'?

Besides the AP victory, if you control the shrine of the religion, you will get more gold from the shrine. (Shrines give 1 per city in the religion, multiplied by market/grocer/bank/Wall Street if they're in the city as well.)

Clarification:
'... the shrine city of a religion collects 1g/city with that shrine's religion. This shrine income will be further modified by any market, grocer, bank, or Wall Street also within the shrine city.'

 

[Samson]

"...in Theocracy"? Wouldn't that be, 'anything but Theocracy'?

With anything but theocracy, you can use the missonary yourself. In thocracy you cannot, but if you gift it to the civ in question odds are he will use it.

 

[dalamb]

Or, you could try using a spy to flip them out of theocracy.

 

[Olson]

With anything but theocracy, you can use the missonary yourself. In thocracy you cannot, but if you gift it to the civ in question odds are he will use it.

I thought Theocracy prevents non-State Religion spread regardless of the circumstances. But your saying non-state religious spread can be accomplished (ie. Islam being the state religion), during Theocracy, as long as one is doing it within their own realm; with their own efforts, such as a foreign-built, but gifted, (ie) Hindu missionary? Hmm.

I've mistakenly and deliberately tried to spread a non-state religion, in Theocracy, within my own realm and it didn't succeed. I figured it was because of Theocracy. I guess it was coincidental odds of failure at work.

[Edit: after reading to Post #21099, I should mention C4W is my version of choice and with which I have the most play experience. I'll be aware and see what happens in future games.]

 

[UnforcedError]

^^When you try spreading a different religion to an AI running Theocracy, you have no chance to succeed, in fact, you can't even carry out the mission. You can, however, spread in your own cities even if you run Theo. You must have been unlucky there. Yes, gifting missionaries is the best way in this case. They will always try to spread in their cities, but of course sometimes they don't succeed.

 

[Seraiel]

Own cities or AIs cities has nothing to do with the Mission being available or not. Theocracy prevents spreading any other religion than the one that is run as State, it's like the tooltip says.

 

[Samson]

Own cities or AIs cities has nothing to do with the Mission being available or not. Theocracy prevents spreading any other religion than the one that is run as State, it's like the tooltip says.

I think there was one (or more) versions of BtS where you could not spread foreign religions to your cities if running thoelogy. In the latest version you can but others cannot.

 

[God-Emperor]

Own cities or AIs cities has nothing to do with the Mission being available or not. Theocracy prevents spreading any other religion than the one that is run as State, it's like the tooltip says.

I find it hard to believe that at your skill level you do not know this, but you are wrong.

If you are in Theocracy you can still spread any religion to one of your own cities (or the city of anyone on your team) via a missionary for that religion. If someone else is in Theocracy you can not spread a religion other than their state religion to one of their cities via a missionary - it does not fail, the mission is simply not available. This is true if "you" is the human player or an AI. It is done via the last check in the CvUnit::canSpread function which has the check for the city's owner having the "isNoNonStateReligionSpread" set inside a check to see who owns the city so that it only makes that check if the city does not belong to someone who is on the unit's owner's team.

This is why the well-known "gift them the missionary" trick exists. Surely you must have heard of it before. If they are in Theocracy and you want them to have some other religion in a city of theirs just give them the missionary and they can use it to spread the religion even though you can't.

Being in Theocracy does also stop the "natural" (i.e. without use of a missionary) spread of any other religion.

 

[alex15]

1) Interception only works if you defending tile/city?

2) Air strike city is only useful for bombers?

3) Air Strike with fighter is only useful for attacking tiles and not citys?