Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Yep, I use it often just to get OB for inter-continental trade routes. You have traded with our worst enemies should fade away rather quickly, too.

 

Which units can barbarians built?

 

Barbs can't build chariots. Or nukes. In the support files somewhere there is a list of available barb units.

 

Have seen barb maces too.

 

If you are in Theocracy without a state religion (!), can (foreign) religions spread to your cities?

 

Yeah I just lost to a random AP victory. Buddhism spread in one of my cities, I was the last Civ to be "infected" and the vote was called in immediately. I'm looking for options to stop this kind of thing from happening reliably in situations like that, even if it means running Theocracy and forfeiting the Free Religion bonus. If everyone else has the AP religion already, the game can be lost in the blink of 2 turns that way

If you want, please have a look at the game here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/standard-deity-playthrough-2.612288/page-4

Going to try WB this then and see if I find something. Just thought there might be a consensus on this already . If it doesn't work, I could still adopt a random religion and switch into Theocracy, that would be foolproof. But also not desirable if it means switching into an outsider religion because of the diplo penalty.

 

Alright, I put myself next to Gandhi, gave him all religions and adopted Theocracy without a state religion (or any religion in any of my cities). Opened borders, roadad into him. No religion spread for 100 turns and he didn't send missionaries. The moment I switched out of Theocracy, he converted all my cities and auto spread hit aswell.

So that's it then. Just run Theocracy no matter what if there is an impending danger of an AP victory. Lesson learned.

 

If you're in Theocracy and don't have the AP religion, it can't spread to you. If you already have the AP religion in your empire, you're already a member of the AP.

 

Looked in the faq, and searched a bit this morning for something about this, but I kept getting returns on CiV 5 only.

My question:
What is the criteria for getting the option "wait, let me examine the city first..." when capturing a city?

I never (as in, I can't recall the last time it ever happened) get the option though I have seen it plenty of times watching videos of TMIT or AZ, or looking at write ups here on the forum. I only ever get the option to raze or not on the spot, and can't even look around at the terrain at that point to make a more informed judgement, even forging peering into the city. Obviously this gets quite annoying as I'm not meticulous enough to look directly at the city trying to study what might be in it when I'm more focused on paying attention to defender matchups. This isn't just me complaining about accidentally razing wonders or to look at maintenance costs; I know how to spot them easily enough and it's pretty easy to know ahead of time which city they might be in in the first place, and I already know you can't look at happiness/health/maintenance until the city is out of revolt anyway. It's more about wanting to see things like the city's workable tiles (since they often overlap or are blocked by enemy culture/units) an the culture breakdown before I decide to keep a border city that'll just revolt the instant it comes online unless I leave my entire army in it.

Does it have something to do with espionage (such as, you must have city vision or investigate city unlocked already)? Your own culture in the city? Mods ( I only run BUG, but I'm sure I've seen TMIT playing without it and got the option)? Game version (I play 3.17)? Difficulty (unlikely)?

My guess is the EP one, but as I've had games where I run early, late, short or long wars all at different times I can't really associate anything to back it up myself. I've been unable to pin down the answer so far. Any help understanding is appreciated. Thanks.

Theocracy prevents any religion, other than the one you are running as state religon, from spreading. Period. If you are running no state religion, it's the same as any other religion--with no benefits, or detriments, diplomatically or otherwise... No state religion IS your state religion as far as the game is concerned, and thus Theo blocks the spread of anything else at that point. This is how I got my head around Theoracracy (that it was a blocker) and how it works, but I had to find out the hard way that it also blocks YOU from spreading around any extra-state religions to your own cities for their benefits

Theo seems like one of those things that's put in for isolationists like Mercantilism and Hereditary Rule, but often I only use it for the XP bonus at war. AP is nasty though, I usually make it a mission to raze that thing before it causes problems. I understand that's not always possible, and higher difficulty lets the AI run rampant.

 

Uhm, do you own the Beyond the Sword expansion?

 

Are you running a mod? I've never had problems spreading non-state religions inside my empire while in Theocracy. Just the occasional standard failure a bad RNG roll can give.

 

I’ve been playing Civ4 for over 10 years and until last night, had never accepted or proposed a cease fire. I did that yesterday to avoid the certain loss of a city to an Egyptian stack.

How do cease fires work? As far as I can tell, the fighting stops, but there is no 10-turn enforced peace treaty, so there’s nothing to stop either of us from attacking the other one if/when we’re ready. Is that correct? And if I attack Hatty, will I get a diplomatic malus for “declaring war on us/our friend” even though I never signed a peace treaty with Egypt?

 

I guess I'm thinking of things like the December 1914 ceasefire, when British and German troops spontaneously stopped fighting on Christmas Day and exchanged pleasantries in no-mans land. The war was still on, but both sides mutually decided to take a break.

I've noticed that I don't get the option to extort money or techs from the AI when I offer a cease fire... I suppose that's another difference?

 

From player view Cease Fire can use to quick re-groop troops IF diplo won't be damaged more with 2nd war declare. I have used this to prevent Triremes from destroying all sea food at coast or... after AI by surprise unload 2 chariots next to now just warrior defended city (because everybody went to attack)

 

Updating to 3.19 seems to have done the trick. Funny, BUG ran fine otherwise on 3.17, but apparently it was causing this one irksome effect by not having the latest patch.

Thanks.