Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[s.bernbaum]

interesting. If every civ has one city with the religion, couldn’t they all be a candidate?

No. In order to be a candidate, the civ must have the AP religion as the state religion. The only exception to that is whoever owns the AP. So, the two candidates are the owner of the AP and the largest civ (other than the AP owner) with the AP religion as state religion. If you keep getting AP leader elections and you are the only candidate then no one else has the AP religion as their state religion.

 

[Orion Pax]

Thanks, yeah think my problems were having more than 75% of the AP population. The religion was one I had founded, and it didn’t spread much to other civs. They all eventually got it. But not in many places.

 

[lymond]

Thanks, yeah think my problems were having more than 75% of the AP population. The religion was one I had founded, and it didn’t spread much to other civs. They all eventually got it. But not in many places.

AP reli is something that you generally control rather easily, depending on trade networks. If you are looking to speed run an AP win, you don't need many cities at all. You can spread to a nearby neighbors, but for AIs far off you can settle a city close to you with a missionary ready to infect it, and then gift it to those AIs

 

[Orion Pax]

Good call. Yeah wasn’t doing a speed run or anything. Just domination/conquest, but when I saw the remaining civ had my religion and I popped a random GE, I thought hey let’s give this give this AP thing a try. But my religion hadn’t spread much outside my borders because that hadn’t been my focus.

 

[mastrude]

Lymond, you said:

Civ IV has a memory leak problem that has never been resolved. The move to 64 bit some years ago helped a tad but there is not much that really can be done. The game is going to slow down after some time playing. Even an SSD does not provide much relief other than simply loading games a bit faster.

You mention a move to 64 bit. "What... when..." I sputtered. What move? When? There's something here I don't know about.

 

[lymond]

Lymond, you said:



You mention a move to 64 bit. "What... when..." I sputtered. What move? When? There's something here I don't know about.

Well, I'm first going to assume that you misconstrued my statement as being something that happened to Civ IV. I was just referring to the general move to 64 bit machines some years ago. IV does play a bit better on 64-bit machines within the confines of the fact that the game still does not utilize RAM well. In addition, it basically got rid of the old MAF errors we used to encounter, if you were playing the game at the time on old 32bit.

Nothing has changed on the Civ IV end..ha..it's still your good old reliable memory hogging game

 

[mastrude]

You said: "Well, I'm first going to assume that you misconstrued my statement as being something that happened to Civ IV. I was just referring to the general move to 64 bit machines some years ago."

Your assumption is correct. I couldn't see how this could have happened to Civ IV, and it didn't.

 

[6K Man]

I could probably test this, but in the interests of time:

If I'm experiencing a slave revolt and playing a Spiritual leader, will switching out of Slavery (to Caste or whatever) end the revolt?

 

[AcaMetis]

I don't think it would end the revolt that a city is already in, but IIRC one of the event options says something like "do nothing (revolts may continue)"? If you swap out of slavery it'll probably not revolt again because the event can't trigger again, because you're not in slavery. Unless the follow-up events don't require you to be in slavery, which would be weird.

Needs testing to be sure, but I think that's how it'd work.

 

[6K Man]

Another one: Do AIs ever break ceasefires? I don't use them often, but am trying to use them more as a pause button while my attack force heals in a newly conquered city. I have never had an AI break a ceasefire, though. Does that happen?

 

[lymond]

Another one: Do AIs ever break ceasefires? I don't use them often, but am trying to use them more as a pause button while my attack force heals in a newly conquered city. I have never had an AI break a ceasefire, though. Does that happen?

There is no "breaking" cease fires. Cease Fires are not a peace treaty. You or the AI can immediately attack each other, even on the same turn of the cease fire.

I use cease fires specific for that purpose...to allow me to attack again in a turn or 2 to heal or avoid a precarious position.

 

[6K Man]

Thanks Lymond. So I guess technically a cease fire is the ending of a war but without a peace treaty? Returning the state of relations to what it was before the war started - at peace, but able to begin a war at will?

 

[lymond]

Thanks Lymond. So I guess technically a cease fire is the ending of a war but without a peace treaty? Returning the state of relations to what it was before the war started - at peace, but able to begin a war at will?

Yup...

 

[AcaMetis]

When you broken peace between two AIs you're actually not negotiating a peace deal, you're negotiating a cease fire. That's something to keep in mind if you really don't want an AI to fight another AI, because if you broken peace they can start plotting war and DoW again within a few turns

 

[lymond]

When you broken peace between two AIs you're actually not negotiating a peace deal, you're negotiating a cease fire. That's something to keep in mind if you really don't want an AI to fight another AI, because if you broken peace they can start plotting war and DoW again within a few turns

I assume you mean "broker" peace. Yeah, that was not something I was aware of until after some years playing the game, though it generally does not affect me much.

 

[R82]

In a recent game, I accidentally noticed that one of my cities was producing two more hammers than it theoretically should have, according to my count. After looking around a bit, I discovered what was going on: the city contained the Kong Miao, and in the city screen, it was listed as producing two hammers. Now, I never heard of anything like that. Was it a bug or some obscure game rule I wasn't aware of? I was using the Buffy 3.19.005 mod, if that matters.

 

[lymond]

In a recent game, I accidentally noticed that one of my cities was producing two more hammers than it theoretically should have, according to my count. After looking around a bit, I discovered what was going on: the city contained the Kong Miao, and in the city screen, it was listed as producing two hammers. Now, I never heard of anything like that. Was it a bug or some obscure game rule I wasn't aware of? I was using the Buffy 3.19.005 mod, if that matters.

The Apostolic Palace (AP) gives +2 hammers to all religious buildings of the AP religion.

 

[R82]

Ah, that explains it. Thank you.

 

[R82]

I'm not sure if this really counts as a newbie question or as more of an intermediate question, but I'm not sure where else to ask it: on levels Noble and above, with all victory conditions enabled, and all other settings "standard" as well, does anyone ever get a time/highest score victory? Seems to me that under those conditions, it's pretty much unavoidable that someone will launch a spaceship before 2045. Except perhaps if you choose not to built any spaceship parts yourself, and you're powerful enough to force everyone else to focus on defense against you. And if you're that powerful, you should probably be powerful enough to win a domination or even conquest victory before 2050.

 

[lymond]

I'm not sure if this really counts as a newbie question or as more of an intermediate question, but I'm not sure where else to ask it: on levels Noble and above, with all victory conditions enabled, and all other settings "standard" as well, does anyone ever get a time/highest score victory? Seems to me that under those conditions, it's pretty much unavoidable that someone will launch a spaceship before 2045. Except perhaps if you choose not to built any spaceship parts yourself, and you're powerful enough to force everyone else to focus on defense against you. And if you're that powerful, you should probably be powerful enough to win a domination or even conquest victory before 2050.

I'd say "deliberate" Time victories are not very popular at all. The CFC Hall of Fame (HOF) does have a category for Time victory and occasionally we include a competitive type challenge game with this condition.

Deliberately achieving a Time condition on levels above Noble generally requires some coordination of various factors to actually reach 2050 before you are an AI achieves some other victory condition. (I can't say what difficulty level it is most assured that the AI will likely achieve at least Space or Culture Victory before 2050...barring any conflicts...I'd guess Monarch level is probably a decent benchmark). Anyway, achieving a Time victory in general, on most levels, likely involves disrupting the AI enough to prevent them achieving a Culture or Space Victory. Also, the human may possibly back into a Culture victory before 2050, so that needs to be monitored. (It has happened to me) Space obviously can be avoided, and you can disrupt AI plans in that regard simply through warfare...same with Culture. Just take their cities, especially their capital.

So, yeah, if I was intent on achieving a Time Victory I would usually attempt to dominate the world - without triggering the Domination conditions. (I have never deliberately backed into a Time Victory as a last resort, even when I was pretty bad at the game..ha)

If you are interested in learning more about how to play Civ IV, highly recommend our Strategy & Tips forum here:

S&T

You can get a lot of good help there, and participate in some of the games going on like Noble's Club or shadow games.