Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Ah, thank you. At the moment, I usually play as Huayna Capac, and I've noticed that sometimes, a city I've conquered starts producing culture pretty much right away, although it has no religion and my culture slider is at zero, because the previous owner built a Granary that got turned into a Terrace when I took over.

 

Yes, that's one of the Inca's advantages. The granary in the city you just conquered is a non-culture producing building, and has a chance of surviving conquest. Then becomes a terrace and starts producing culture.

 

Yep, Terrace is one of those culture buildings that can survive because the base building (granary) does not produce culture. Odeon (Coliseum) is another example. Maybe the only two if I recall.

 

I got a nation I am trading 9 gold with for gold resource, they have 1 extra GPT to trade for. So I cancel the deal in order to remake the deal to get that 1 GPT, but suddenly they have zero GPT. I reload the game and checked again, they have extra GPT per turn to trade with me before canceling the deal where they pay me 9gpt, and 0 after. Anyone got an idea why? This doesn't make sense to me.

 

This happens very often but usually after a turn or two they have 10 gpt. But if they are in war or struggling it may not be the case. I don’t chase 1 extra gpt, should be a little more to cover risk. Also the 10 turn lock in period starts again. Perhaps something better from others are on the table in the meantime, or more useful are up (gifting to one you want to improve relations with for example). Look at it as a reasonable option price (1 gpt).

 

Well I am conquering everyone eventually, so good relations don't really matter, just don't want to defeat a new enemy till I get ride of the current one. I also have extra resources all over the place(my controlled area is huge and getting bigger. I got my pick of ways to win, kinda surprising for monarch difficulty with random map, nation, and no restarts). Should I trade another spare resource for that 1gpt then?

Is there a way to know if there is a risk of spare gpt vanishing after canceling a deal?

 

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/military/privateers-for-dummies/ to show I read some stuff before asking.
Privateers can't get money from blockading a enemy you are at war with? Is it the amount of ocean city tiles covered by the blockade that decides pirate income? So if you have a pirate that's covering half a cities ocean tiles, another pirate covering the other half will give you more income? Otherwise you won't get more income?

If you have a privateer you want to protect for money, if you put another ship on top of it that's not a another private, even a submarine, nonenemy nations can attack the privateer directly bypassing the stronger unit on top of it?

 

The gold per turn disappearing is from the ai reevaluating its finances when you cancel the deal. Selling a spare resource for a small amount may still be worth it, as 1 gold per turn is better than nothing. There's a trick to always get the full amount but most people consider it an exploit (gift a resource that you only have one of with as much gold per turn as possible; sell all your spare resources for full gpt; pillage the gift resource and end the turn).

I think the amount of pirate income is to do with the trade routes in the city blockaded rather than the tiles blocked. Multiple pirates blockading the same city won't increase the income. Yes, you can't protect your privateers at sea from attack by neutral civs. Submarines in general are bad escorts because they will only defend if visible to the enemy.

 

Can one privateer steal from two cities? So does it matter how many city ocean tiles are blocked regarding income? If it was about trade blocked, then most privateers would give nothing because even if you block all the city ocean spaces, there would still be land routes for the trade to come in by.

 

Yes one privateer can blockade multiple cities at once, it just needs to be within three squares of each city tile. There can even be land in the way as long as the city itself is coastal (the game I'm currently playing I blockaded a city on the opposite coast of a long thin island from where my privateer was that would have taken several turns for me to sail to).

A city blockaded by a privateer loses all trade routes, even land based ones. From super code-diver DanF: "The city's isPlundered flag is set to true and no trade routes are calculated, even if there are possible trade network connections".

Also from DanF regarding how much gold you get: "the amount of cash collected by one of your Privateers during peace is equal to the commerce this city would get for a trade route to itself, multiplied by the number of trade routes it can have. If Hannibal has built GLH and ToA in Carthage (with Cothon) this can be quite ."

 

So a city is considered pirated from if a privateer is blockading it's actual ocean adjacent city space, and no other spaces matter for the purposes of pirate income, just blockading other spaces prevents workers from working those spaces? And a city can only be pirated once a turn so more than one ship on a city is useless? But that website says "You need to be within 2 tiles of the city to completely cover all possible sea routes out of the city for maximum effect" so I could use a bit more clarification on this point.

Does a blockaded city lose access to resources, even land based resources? Like If I blockade a city with privateer or whatever else, can I cut a city off from iron so it can't build Swordsman?

Does regular blockades work like pirate ones minus you getting the gold? Like privateer blockades prevent any trade income for the enemy, and give you money, regular blockades prevent enemy trade but don't give you money? (AI never blockades me so I really don't have a good idea how it works)

Submarines can blockade neutral or allie cities, they just can't pillage fisherman spots or or attack their ships?

Can destroyers get the multiple attack promotion after having become destroyers?

 

yes

yes for plundering effects (it's still sensible to keep a couple of privateers together if they are at risk of attack)

That may be to do with disrupting the trade network. Can you show me where you read this?

Only if you cut off the trade network to that island, and they are getting the resource from a different island. To cut off the sea routes you would have to blockade all the coastal squares adjacent to every city square on that island; you have to get all the ports and there be no alternative route (e.g. by air with airports). That can be quite easy with small islands. Cutting off the capitol city on archipelago maps is particularly effective, as any resources the civ is trading for have to come through the capitol to get to other cities.

It's best to think of the privateer plundering as an extra effect: the privateer magically stops all trade routes even landbased ones when it plunders, but blockading a city with a non-privateer won't necessarily stop trade routes. If you cut off the trade network to an island, then trade routes will only be between cities on the island itself.

I don't use subs much. AFAIK they can pillage workboats, attack ships and blockade against only civs you are at war with just like most other boats. Using a nonprivateer to blockade a civ you aren't at war with won't really do much.

Yes destroyers can get the blitz promotion as long as you have researched Military Science.

 

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/military/privateers-for-dummies/
Do a page search (ctrl f) for this exact sentence as it's copy pasted from there.

So do privateers magically stop a city from getting all resources like iron too? Because it seems like you said two different opposite things, that you need to block all ocean paths via blockade and not have land paths, AKA block all trade routes, and that a privateer blockading a ocean touching city space will block all trade routes, including land ones. So does that mean a city blockaded by a Privateer, just the city space itself but other ocean spaces not blockaded and land routes, will lose say it's iron supply, or not?

 

There's a difference between trade routes and trade network. Trade routes need an unblocked trade network, whether by land, sea or air between the cities/civs involved. The privateer magically stops all the trade routes when it is plundering (within 3 of the actual city square) even if there is still an unblocked trade network. To stop resources from other islands, you have to completely cut off the trade network to the island. A privateer could do this but doesn't magically do it just by plundering the city. It's pretty difficult to take in, not least because of confusion in the terms used. Maybe some examples with pictures would help?

 

I know that some city construction carries over to next turn, but there seems to be limits and caps to this. Can anyone tell me what those limits and caps are?

 

IIRC you can not have more overflow than the cost of the previous build, e.g. an Axeman costs 35 Production so you can only get a maximum of 35 Production overflow into the next build. In my experience production modifiers like you receive from Forges and Factories don't get counted for overflow.

 

I'll add that anything beyond the cost of the previous build gets overflowed into .

Also, production modifiers don't get counted for overflow, but they do get applied back to the overflow if you build something they apply to. So for example, if you have a city that produces 20 building Great Wall with Stone and a Forge, you'll get +125% production (45 ). Any overflow will lose the Stone bonus, but will retain the +25% bonus for the Forge.

 

This rarely applies in the early game, but there is also the exception or rule that overflow can't be higher than base hammers. In the late game with many workshops and the like (and maybe Mining Inc), this can be pretty high. That's probably not good if you want to convert hammers to gold (via this bug/exploit/whatever), but it is good if you want high overflow into wonders or space parts.

 

I did a experiment where I set a city with 120 production to build a spy (40p) One spy was made next turn, with a mere 30p to carry over for next production. Which is less than the production of the spy and should be well less than any base production, so doesn't seem to fit into anything said so far.

I suppose its smart to wait to chop forests for when it doesn't create too much overproduction so it doesn't go to waste? (if you value production more than gold) Or does forest chops go by other rules?

What about the extra production of a military unit from a military academy?

 

When you say "a city with 120 production", I assume this has production modifiers? If you have 266% production modifier, the 80 hammers overflow will be reduced by this ammount, giving you 30.

Forest chops go by the same rules I think. You can use this with stone and the defensive trait to turn forests into ~3 times their hammer value in gold by overflowing building walls.