Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[HeliosDisciple]

Is there some other way of taking a garrisoned city other than throwing wave after wave of your own men at them? Like a "lay siege and starve them out" option I'm missing? Catapults don't seem to do anything.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Is there a way to set the default zoomlevel to a higher one? So the game starts with it each time?

Maybe take a look at the .ini.

Is there some other way of taking a garrisoned city other than throwing wave after wave of your own men at them? Like a "lay siege and starve them out" option I'm missing? Catapults don't seem to do anything.

Maybe provide a screenshot of your exact situation so we can better help you, because Catapults do in fact a lot.

 

[Ghpstage]

Is there some other way of taking a garrisoned city other than throwing wave after wave of your own men at them? Like a "lay siege and starve them out" option I'm missing? Catapults don't seem to do anything.

Catapults do do a lot, you are, after bringing down defenses, sending in some some catapults suicidally in order to cause collateral damage to defending stacks right?

You can't expect to win wars without taking at least some losses!

 

[HeliosDisciple]

Catapults do do a lot, you are, after bringing down defenses, sending in some some catapults suicidally in order to cause collateral damage to defending stacks right?

Uh...no. I've been using them to bombard the city. You're supposed to send catapults in to get killed?

 

[Ghpstage]

Uh...no. I've been using them to bombard the city. You're supposed to send catapults in to get killed?

Yes.
As silly as it seems suiciding siege drives war costs right down! This applies to stacks battles outside cities too!

This is due to their collateral damage ability, which allows a unit (mostly siege units) to damage units beyond the one it attacks. Injured units defend far less effectively so doing this allows you to mop up with very few losses and is a very important concept for 1 move stack warfare. Obviously it requires you to be building disproportionate amounts of siege compared to other units!

 

[HeliosDisciple]

Well that'll change things. Whenever the opposing civ didn't have walls, I didn't use siege weapons; when they did, I just used the Bombard action.

...that's really counter-intuitive, though. Why doesn't Bombard do collateral damage?

 

[Ghpstage]

Well that'll change things. Whenever the opposing civ didn't have walls, I didn't use siege weapons; when they did, I just used the Bombard action.

...that's really counter-intuitive, though. Why doesn't Bombard do collateral damage?

It is certainly odd.
I think it was a reaction to what happened in civ 3 where siege had ranged attack, and the AI simply couldn't handle it, to the point that once you reached Replaceable Parts for Artillery the game became very hard to lose!
A very similar thing happened in civ 5 too where the combat AI is truly loltastic.

Mods do exist to give units ranged attacks, if your interested you should ask in the creation and customisation forums.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I always explain it by assuming the damage or death of siege units when attacking represents excessive use of ammunition.

 

[Tristan_C]

An attack costs: (%chance to lose unit)*hammers. Well-balanced in the way that a defense costs this, too. Realistic, I guess, in the sense that the basic fact of this matter does not change until air units.

Extra tidbit: hammer tradeoffs explain why people aren't happy attacking AI once longbows arrive, despite the diversity and coolness of medieval units. There is still a good window for catapults pre-longbow.

But Bombard doesn't cost anything, so it would throw the whole mechanism out of the window, I imagine.

 

[shpeka]

A quick one.

If two cities are poised to create a great person on the same turn - which city gets the priority?

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

I don't know, but I would guess the oldest city. The only other logical answer I can think of would be the city that has the most GPP on the turn the GP is created. But that could easily be the same for both cities while the oldest city could never be a tie. One city is always created before the other, even if they are founded in the same turn. But this is pure guessing, I yield the floor to someone who actually knows the answer.

 

[1889]

I built the UN but the AP is still passing their annoying resolutions. How do I put that thing out of business? Do I have to gift Mass Media to the AP resident or something.

 

[Lennier]

Gifting Mass Media to AP resident will kill the AP. As would conquering the AP city.

 

[hello_world_]

What is the difference between Civilization IV Complete, Civilization IV Gold and other versions?

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

Well hello, hello world! Welcome to CFC!

There's three basic versions of Civ4: the original game (which we call vanilla), the Warlords expansion, and then the last expansion was Beyond the Sword. Most of us here consider BtS to be the "finished" version. I think Civ4 Gold was all three of these versions in one box. About a year after BtS, they re-made the old Colonization from the '90s as Civ4Col, which was a standalone game that you didn't need any version of Civ4 to play. Civ4 Complete is vanilla, Warlords, BtS, and Civ4Col. Make sense?

 

[Lennier]

The Mac version of Gold only has Vanilla and Warlords.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

Has anyone seen the AP go all screwy with its vote schedule? The last three games I've played (at seemingly random times throughout the game) the AP votes don't always happen when they're supposed to, and sometimes the Resident vote comes up two or three times in a row. Sometimes it works exactly like it's supposed to, then it'll just go off the rails. Does this ever happen to anybody else?

 

[Ghpstage]

Has anyone seen the AP go all screwy with its vote schedule? The last three games I've played (at seemingly random times throughout the game) the AP votes don't always happen when they're supposed to, and sometimes the Resident vote comes up two or three times in a row. Sometimes it works exactly like it's supposed to, then it'll just go off the rails. Does this ever happen to anybody else?

Votes will be skipped when there are no issues that can be voted on, and leadership votes would come up in the next vote any time a current AP resident would no longer be a legitimate candidate (i.e. not the owner and swaps religion!)

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

That's the thing though, just about everything except maybe "give city back" would be an option.

...I wanted to dogpile that heathen swine Monty...

 

[Lennier]

Did Monty have a peace treaty with one or more of the AP members? That would stop the holy war before it got started.

I'm not sure, but I think the "holy war against heathens" option requires one or more of the AP members to be at war with the said heathen first. And it may also require (again, I'm not sure) the AP members to be at peace as well. And the option to enforce "stop the war against X" will only come up if two or more of the AP members are at war with each other.