Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Civbowl]

Is there any way to tell if an AI Civ is trading with another AI Civ. For example, I am at war with Monty, and I have seen all his territory and he has one sourse of iron and one of copper. I have pillaged both mines, but is there any way I can tell if he is trading for these goods, other than seeing him to continue to build iron units.

The power graph is a good way to get approximate military info, is there something similar for trading.

I know that you can try to get other Civ's to boycott them, but it is hard to get them all to boycott.

 

[a4phantom]

Is there any way to tell if an AI Civ is trading with another AI Civ. For example, I am at war with Monty, and I have seen all his territory and he has one sourse of iron and one of copper. I have pillaged both mines, but is there any way I can tell if he is trading for these goods, other than seeing him to continue to build iron units.

The diplomacy screen (with all the heads) will tell you who he's trading with (green lines or blue lines or something, there's a key) but as far as I know there's no way to know what. The AI does not like to trade away iron though, at least not to human players. Can you see both pillaged mines? Because repairing them would be his highest priority if you wrecked and left them.

PS Monty doesn't have iron units until knight and pikeman I think, his jaguar sword replacements are lousy but resource free.



Gherald I suggest you make an image of the CD/DVD and mount it with something like Daemon Tools (I use the old 3.47 non-adware version) or PowerISO, etc.
This is perfectly safe (downloading NoCD cracks from warez sites is very risky), easier to maintain (NoCDs have to be re-downloaded for every patch), and ethical -- not to mention legal.
The only downside is the image for Civ4 is around 1.5 GB in size, but with today's hard drives that's not unreasonable.

Sounds good, can you explain more about how that works and why it's legal?

 

[Gherald]

can you explain more about how that works

I suggest you try www.google.com first and come back if you still have questions.

and why it's legal?

Well it'd be the same as if you were to buy a book, magically type the whole thing into a document instantly, set the book on a shelf or whatever, and proceed to read it on your computer.

 

[StarWorms]

What decides which city becomes the holy city when you found a religion?

 

[MrCynical]

What decides which city becomes the holy city when you found a religion?

It's random, though skewed by some factors. High culture and already present religions in a city make it less likely for a religion to be founded there. It is also very strongly biased against your capital. As a result religions will usually, though not always, be founded in your more recently found cities, with little or no culure or existing religions.

 

[a4phantom]

I suggest you try www.google.com first and come back if you still have questions.

Fair enough, I just don't know anything about the matter and don't trust everything I randomly find on the internet (I mean the google results not you).

 

[Roland Johansen]

Is that the general case among the superstar players? I rarely build either (as you say the conversion rate is bad, does it still improve when you discover economics?), but sometimes there are no buildings to build, no workers needed, and a new military unit about 10 turns in the future that will obsolete what I'd be building now. In a city with library, university, laboratory, academy and maybe oxford, wouldn't the bonuses make 'building' science significant?

In my personal opinion, I don't think that building science or wealth is very useful. As I said in my earlier post: if you consider building science or wealth, then you're better off changing some production tile improvements into commerce tile improvements.
The best hammer bonus that you can get is +3 hammers from a mine lumbermill or workshop (under state property). The best commerce bonus that you get is + 7 commerce, + 1 hammer (from a town under free speech and universal suffrage).

Lets compare a city producing science and a 100% science rate using both tiles. The city has a 100% production and science bonus.
-The hammer tile gives: 50% of 3 hammers = 1.5 base science. 1.5 science + 100% of 1.5 science = 3 science (the +100% production bonus has no effect)
-The commerce tile gives: 50% of 1 hammer + 100% of 7 commerce = 7.5 base science. 7.5 science + 100% of 7.5 science = 15 science.

So it's clearly better to use commerce tiles to generate your science.

I never find myself in a situation that there is nothing to build. As long as you haven't won the game then there are still units to build to conquer the world (don't obsolete units in your build queue automatically change into modern units when you advance in science..).
The only reason to build wealth or science is if you don't want to conquer more cities, if you want to win peacefully.

Also does your total culture still affect diplomacy, as it did in Civ3 when you were told if another civ was awed by your culture of contemptous of it (with major effects on how they treated you?) If not, is there any real reason to care about the cultural level in your core cities (the ones that won't be engaged in setting borders) if you're not going for a cultural victory?

The culture value in your core cities is only important when they are attacked in war (not a good sign) or when you're going for a cultural victory or when your core cities are on the border (you expanded in a certain direction and one of your core cities is on the border). So no, their culture value is not very important.

 

[Bozno]

This question is more to do with programming rather than gameplay.

I'm seriously addicted to this game and keep wasting too much time during my weekends on it. Is there a programme or mod that automatically shuts the game down after a specified time limit so that it can only played once a day?

Thanks

 

[a4phantom]

(don't obsolete units in your build queue automatically change into modern units when you advance in science..).

Yes they do.

The culture value in your core cities is only important when they are attacked in war (not a good sign) or when you're going for a cultural victory or when your core cities are on the border (you expanded in a certain direction and one of your core cities is on the border). So no, their culture value is not very important.

Thanks I didn't think so. I wonder why they decided to stop culture from having a diplomatic role? Now you can be as cultured as Rome or China, and if you can't keep up in the arms race it doesn't do a thing to keep the primative savages from conquering you.

Oh yeah . . .



New rather urgent question: If I am at war can I create a city on enemy territory as in Civ3? I'm about to cross the oceans to invade the #2 Civ, the Incas, and am very dependent on the armadas of stealth bombers I've built. I haven't even researched artillery, and I don't have many cannons. The coastal city I want to strike first has a defense of 80%, which my battleships could knock down pretty easily in two turns (the turn I declare war and my troops land next to the city, and then the next turn before they attack), but I've become somewhat addicted to using my airforce to carpetbomb enemy units half to death virtually unopposed, and I have about ten irreplacable Mech Infantry with City Raider 3. I can't base them from a neighboring civ because only Buddism was founded on that continent so all four civs are Buddist and love eachother, and I'll lose my open borders agreements as soon as I attack one.

Second less urgent question: What happens to aircraft based in a city if you lose Open Border's with the city's owner? What if the city is conquered by a civ you're not at war with? What if the city is razed?

 

[Matty R]

Is there an image anywhere that shows each stage of the expansion of cultural borders?

 

[a4phantom]

This question is more to do with programming rather than gameplay.

I'm seriously addicted to this game and keep wasting too much time during my weekends on it. Is there a programme or mod that automatically shuts the game down after a specified time limit so that it can only played once a day?

Thanks

Civ addiction is a dangerous thing, and as far as I know there is no software solution. Some people have resorted to marriage to put a break on how much they can play.

 

[Red Door]

This question is more to do with programming rather than gameplay.

I'm seriously addicted to this game and keep wasting too much time during my weekends on it. Is there a programme or mod that automatically shuts the game down after a specified time limit so that it can only played once a day?

Thanks

Go to this site.

 

[a4phantom]

Hey Matty I found another reason not to focus on founding all the religions - you don't want the rest of the civs forming around the few religions you miss. Basically you want to be part of the strongest religion and have that holy city, but you want all your potential victims to be alone in their religion so they don't have natural allies. If I found everything but Buddism, a lot of the world is going to be buddist and all those civs will cooperate, trade techs, and hate me if i attack one. This is what happened in my current game, on a huge world with two continents. The East is backwards, so only Buddism was founded there, and as a result as soon as I attack one of the four civs over there (only India still exists on my continent) I'll have to deal with all of them.

 

[bbuddles]

Hello. I am wondering why spies don't work. I want to delay production but that window is faded so I can't do it. Spies are useless. he rule book is useless too since it tells me absolutly nothing.

 

[Gherald]

Hello. I am wondering why spies don't work. I want to delay production but that window is faded so I can't do it. Spies are useless. he rule book is useless too since it tells me absolutly nothing.

You probably don't have enough money. Mouse over and read the popup.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Yes they do.

Yes, I thought so too. So any obsolete unit that you're building is not a waste as the production transfers to the newer more modern unit, not?

Thanks I didn't think so. I wonder why they decided to stop culture from having a diplomatic role? Now you can be as cultured as Rome or China, and if you can't keep up in the arms race it doesn't do a thing to keep the primative savages from conquering you.

I can't remember culture influencing diplomacy in civ3 a lot. There was a small effect but it was so small that it never made a change in the game for me.

You could have an influence of culture on diplomacy in a version of civ. But would a strong culture be a positive or a negative thing in diplomacy? Do they despise your strong culture or admire it?

New rather urgent question: If I am at war can I create a city on enemy territory as in Civ3?

No, they removed that option in civ4 because it could easily be exploited in civ3. You could create a healing point and pocket of your culture by building a city in enemy territory in civ3. That allowed you to use the railroads already present in that area and with enough settlers that allowed a kind of blitzkrieg that was virtually unstoppable. (You could use a settle/disband city trick to use enemy railroads anywhere.)

I'm about to cross the oceans to invade the #2 Civ, the Incas, and am very dependent on the armadas of stealth bombers I've built. I haven't even researched artillery, and I don't have many cannons. The coastal city I want to strike first has a defense of 80%, which my battleships could knock down pretty easily in two turns (the turn I declare war and my troops land next to the city, and then the next turn before they attack), but I've become somewhat addicted to using my airforce to carpetbomb enemy units half to death virtually unopposed, and I have about ten irreplacable Mech Infantry with City Raider 3. I can't base them from a neighboring civ because only Buddism was founded on that continent so all four civs are Buddist and love eachother, and I'll lose my open borders agreements as soon as I attack one.

Sounds like an interesting conquest. Not all wars are easy and if they all would be easy then the game would get boring rather fast, not...
Maybe you want some Aircraft Carriers with fighters to bomb enemy units and shoot down enemy bombers. When you can move your own bombers to the conquered city, then you can use them to bomb the enemy and the fighters as defence against enemy bombers.

Second less urgent question: What happens to aircraft based in a city if you lose Open Border's with the city's owner? What if the city is conquered by a civ you're not at war with? What if the city is razed?

As far as I know:
1) The units will be rebased in your territory.
2) Then it depends if you have an open borders treaty with the civilization in which your aircraft are stationed now. If you have, then the aircraft stay there, if not, then they are rebased.
3) Destroyed, I guess. (I've switched off the city raising in the pregame options.)

 

[Raisin Bran]

How do you clear the cache?

My game is slow when loading mods and it takes a long time to unload.

 

[Gherald]

How do you clear the cache?

My game is slow when loading mods and it takes a long time to unload.

Clearing the cache won't help you with that. What's slow is your computer.

 

[Matty R]

Hey Matty I found another reason not to focus on founding all the religions - you don't want the rest of the civs forming around the few religions you miss. Basically you want to be part of the strongest religion and have that holy city, but you want all your potential victims to be alone in their religion so they don't have natural allies. If I found everything but Buddism, a lot of the world is going to be buddist and all those civs will cooperate, trade techs, and hate me if i attack one. This is what happened in my current game, on a huge world with two continents. The East is backwards, so only Buddism was founded there, and as a result as soon as I attack one of the four civs over there (only India still exists on my continent) I'll have to deal with all of them.

I've always thought that could happen. I've not seen it yet, but I founded all 7 religions on my last game and had 4 other civs convert to a single religion, making them allies. I'll have to be careful of this. Thanks.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Religion hoarding isn't a bad thing as such, but you have to get ALL of them for it to work properly (on most types of maps). Therefore, it really only works on Noble difficulty or less, and usually only with a Mysticism-start civ (unless you're on Settler or something). If it's a higher difficulty level, it just becomes far too difficult to ensure that you'll get all seven of the religions, and to prevent the AI from beating you to them. So on the higher difficulties, it's probably better to found only a couple of religions and let them spread around a heap, if only for the gold benefit (once you get shrines).

Also - don't underestimate the power of owning the only Shrine in the world. Even if you've founded all the religions, it may be better to hold off on building additional Shrines until much later in the game. The benefit of having a single one of your religions spread massively around the world is quite huge indeed.

Whatever the scenario, it's always good to try to found at least ONE religion. You can't go wrong with that.