Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[lymond]

Enemy territory costs more than neutral? How much more in upkeep cost with these differences?

Just outside your borders vs. in borders..nothing else

 

[TruePurple]

How big a difference in cost outside border verses inside?

Could someone please explain the ins and outs of blockade and when it gets you gold? Do only privateers get you gold? Does the gold gotten disappear from the enemies coffers?
What else does blockade do/work? Do you need to have not moved the turn you use it? Do you need to be next to a city? Do you need to completely block water access with a line of ships?

 

[TruePurple]

Was my questions about how blockade works too difficult?

 

[lymond]

How big a difference in cost outside border verses inside?

I really do not know the finer details of this. I assume the cost fluctuates over the course of the game based on inflation. There may be some finite algorithm defining the costs, but I don't know it. I believe it is all a factor of the overall unit maintenance costs.

Could someone please explain the ins and outs of blockade and when it gets you gold? Do only privateers get you gold? Does the gold gotten disappear from the enemies coffers?
What else does blockade do/work? Do you need to have not moved the turn you use it? Do you need to be next to a city? Do you need to completely block water access with a line of ships?

I really don't know a lot about blockading. It's not that I never blockade stuff, but I really don't ever pay close attention to the finer details. It rarely if ever is of import to my strategies.

I do know that as far as ships are concerned, Privateers can always blockade - war or not - as they are considered neutral to the enemy. That is, they may try to attack your privateer but technically don't know who it belongs to..you don't have to be at war. Otherwise, all ships of war can blockade and possibly earn some coin based on the trade routes blocked. (Except the caravel unit which cannot blockade at all)

Gold earned is relative to the amount of trade routes blockaded in that city or cities. The civ being blockaded does not lose gold directly...just the trade route commerce for those turns the city(ies) are blockaded.

A ship can use the blockade button as long as it has movement points left. I'm not entirely sure that ship will earn gold that next turn if it had moved at all prior to clicking blockade, but it will cutoff the trade routes and sea resources in the blockade zone that turn I know.

I did some quick googling and found a couple of write-ups that you may find useful for basic info.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Blockade_(Civ4)

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/blockade-how-does-it-work.334685/#post-8443321

 

[Lennier]

I’ve never had a non-privateer earn gold from a blockade.

 

[earthy]

why would a great medic explorer defend a city against a pikeman when I have full health 2x promo cuirassiers in the same stack

 

[AcaMetis]

Because Pikeman get +100% vs. Mounted units, and Cuirassiers don't get defensive bonuses. That combined made the Explorer a better defender in terms of percentage chance to win, so he defended over the Cuirassier.

 

[lymond]

why would a great medic explorer defend a city against a pikeman when I have full health 2x promo cuirassiers in the same stack

Don’t upgrade scout medic to explorer

 

[earthy]

The city was freshly taken + in revolt so I don't think it had any defensive bonuses aside from terrain.. Let's be generous and say it was on a hill(I don't think it was), the explorer is still only 4+(.55*4) = 6.2 vs 6. Even a C2 cuirassier is (12+.2*12)= 14.4 vs 12. The cuirassier still has better odds and should take the fight...

@lymond I didn't upgrade, I could no longer build scouts when I first built a medic.

 

[lymond]

The explorer had combat 1, no?...and guerrilla

I would not bother building an explorer to be a medic. Just give it to one of your curs or an old chariot or HA. Exp is a waste of hammers. Point with scouts is cheapness plus timing plus weakness. ..like you start with one. Honestly, I very rarely use scouts anyway.

personally i like my medics to be able to fight

 

[AcaMetis]

The city was freshly taken + in revolt so I don't think it had any defensive bonuses aside from terrain.. Let's be generous and say it was on a hill(I don't think it was), the explorer is still only 4+(.55*4) = 6.2 vs 6. Even a C2 cuirassier is (12+.2*12)= 14.4 vs 12. The cuirassier still has better odds and should take the fight...

A Pike attacking a Mounted unit doesn't buff it's own strength with the +100% vs Mounted units, it debuffs the mounted unit's strength. I don't understand exactly how it works either, but point is that a Pike vs. a Combat II Cuirassier is a much closer battle than you'd think in terms of how closely the game judges their strength - 6 vs. 6.66 instead of 12 vs. 14.4.

 

[rah]

And I've seen some wonky picked defenders when attacking stacks.
Yesterday I was attacking with a series of cannons all promoted to CRII
The first one attacks a stack at 64% chance to withdraw. Good and it wins.
The second one attacks and it now 32%. HUH, Why didn't that unit defend on the first attack since it was obviously better?
So picking the best defender algorithm is obviously not perfect.
One might argue that the composition of the rest of your attack stack caused that to happen. But I consider that unlikely in this example since it was identical units attacking and the composition of the rest of the stack didn't change.

 

[TruePurple]

Is that which is got from the national wonder Wall Street, produce more commerce or more gold? Can the bonus stuff it produce be turned into research or espionage? I really get commerce and gold mixed up sometimes. Please help me sort out gold verses commerce with Wall street and any others like this I'm not thinking of.

Do forests within city fat plus but inside another nations culture boundary provide antipollution? Specialists from national park? Happiness if preserve?

Do units heal if upgraded but don't do any other actions? Does upgrading heal units itself, or just increase the max and heals keeping the same overall percentage?

 

[lymond]

Is that which is got from the national wonder Wall Street, produce more commerce or more gold? Can the bonus stuff it produce be turned into research or espionage? I really get commerce and gold mixed up sometimes. Please help me sort out gold verses commerce with Wall street and any others like this I'm not thinking of.

Commerce and gold are indeed two different things. Commerce comes from cottages, trade routes and certain resources (gold, gems, calendar resources). Commerce directly feeds and is manipulated by the research, culture and espionage sliders. Obviously, you are mainly going to be using the research slider unless playing some special type of game. And I will use the research slider for further discussion moving forward here.

Think of commerce as a symbolic representation of trade and economic activity in this game.

At 100% research, your empire's generated commerce is 100% committed to research. Once you lower the slider to X%, some of the commerce is turned into gold or gold per turn (gpt). At 0% research or what we call 100% tax, all commerce is turned into gold. (Play with your sliders and you will see this easily)

Wall Street, like its requisite banks, as well as markets and grocers, is a direct modifier/multiplier to the gold produce in the city in which it is built. A city might produce gold in the following wasy:

1) The city's commerce is turned into gold based on your slider. If the slider is at 100% tax, 100% of that city's commerce will produce gold. Wall Street will modify that.
2) Running Merchant and Priest specialists
3) Settled Great Merchants or Great Priests
4) Holy Shrine based on number of cities running that religion worldwide.
5) Corporations founded in the city
6) Religious buildings of your adopted religion if you build Spiral Minaret..only 3 possible buildings so only 6gpt max from that

So generally, if you are going to build Wall Street, which I rarely do in my games, you often look to build it in a city with a juicy Holy Shrine. Or a city that can run a lot of merchants, i.e.,food. Could be a cottage city but I would not use my OX Bureau cap as they run counter to each other. If going Corps in that game, you would found your Corps in the Wall Street city to max gold from that, as Corps also cost money as well..to spread and in maintenance.

Do forests within city fat plus but inside another nations culture boundary provide antipollution? Specialists from national park? Happiness if preserve?
No,No,No

Do units heal if upgraded but don't do any other actions? Does upgrading heal units itself, or just increase the max and heals keeping the same overall percentage?[/QUOTE]

No. Upgrading counts as an action so to speak. Notice that if your unit has movement and you upgrade all movement points are wiped out.

Upgrading does not heal a unit. It just increases the base strength based on the higher level unit you upgrade to. (I will often heal a unit first before upgrading since I'm healing at a lower base strength)

 

[TruePurple]

One spy in a city protects it against enemy spy actions more, but more spies in a city do not protect it any more? Do spies in cities help against enemy spies with the presence of a security bureau?

How does Spread culture espionage work? I thought culture was basically a comparison of which culture of a city is higher for deciding what is controlled etc. But it seems like Spread culture gives the enemy city more culture, that's very confusing.

 

[rah]

Spy or bureau provide same protection but having both doesn't double it.

For you second question, too long of and answer to go to this thread
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-complete-guide-to-espionage.638613/

 

[Grillo42]

Are there any mods that make cities/infastructure look more realistic? I know civ doesnt have districts a la endless legend but it would be cool for especially late game cities to become huge sprawling metropolises in appearance more than is already the case, spreading out over neighbouring tiles and sprouting realistic looking skyscrapers. Always loved watching them develop in the city view feature in civ 3

 

[Hamilton321]

So generally, if you are going to build Wall Street, which I rarely do in my games, you often look to build it in a city with a juicy Holy Shrine. Or a city that can run a lot of merchants, i.e.,food. Could be a cottage city but I would not use my OX Bureau cap as they run counter to each other. If going Corps in that game, you would found your Corps in the Wall Street city to max gold from that, as Corps also cost money as well..to spread and in maintenance.

Once in a space race game I had a double shrine city, I constructed bank, market, grocer, wall street, and spread my religions across the world, the income was something ridiculous, in the end I was making 300+ gold from that single city. It was a very interesting game, and kind of fun to do, realistically though, the effort I put into making the city so profitable was probably not worth it.

 

[Hamilton321]

Could someone please explain the ins and outs of blockade and when it gets you gold?

Blockade only earns gold when it is done by a privateer within range of a coastal city with trade routes that belongs to a civilization one is at peace with.

 

[6K Man]

Wall Street becomes almost compulsory when playing with Corporations, or you'll lose money with each new domestic branch founded (not accounting, of course, for building Wealth in cities with branches and running specialists in cities with branches).