Just wondering.
Do units get different rates of experience depending where they fight?
I noticed in enemy borders one of my units got 2 exp points for a kill.
Can anyone confirm this? It was late when it happend, and I didnt get chance to check.
Yes, units can get varying levels of experience for a kill, varying from 1 to 10. Even retreating from a battle gives you 1 exp (and none for the defender).
The amount of experience that you get for attacking is 4*(opponent strength)/(your strength) rounded down. The strength values are the values adjusted for terrain, promotions and other bonusses.
The amount of experience that you get for defending is 2*(opponent strength)/(your strength) rounded down.
Example: your swordsman (strength 6 no promotions) attacks another swordsman with the combat 1 promotion standing on a forest (adjusted strength 1.6*6=9.6). If you manage to win (against odds, only 4.4% chance to win), then you get 9.6/6 * 4= 1.6 * 4 = 6.4 experience (6 rounded down).
You won't see the higher amounts of experience often because you typically only attack when the odds are in your favour and then the amount of experience is not that high. You might see it when you suicide a catapult against a city defender and get lucky and win.
I thought of that (as what "fog busting" probably meant) but it seemed too unit intensive.
You shouldn't fog bust very early in the game because then you only have 1 city and better things to do. Also, no barbarians have appeared at that time (only animals) so there is nothing to fog bust. But once you have a few cities (say 2-3-4), the barbarians begin to appear and after a while will start to attack your cities. At this point, you typically also have better units like axemen, chariots and archers. However, the barbarians will not always come at regular intervals, 1 at a time. Sometimes they come in bigger numbers all at once at a weakly defended spot of your empire. It is costly to put enough defenders in every single one of your cities to deal with such an attack that early in the game. I must say that this will happen more on the bigger maps where there is a lot of unsettled land for the barbarians to appear in.
Now there are a few good reasons to have a few sentries around your cities at this time:
1) You will see any attack of barbarians and rival civilizations coming before they are next to your cities. This gives you time to react and combine your forces to meet the onslaught. Maybe you need to rush (slavery) some defenders if the attack is very big, but at least you have the time to do so. If you have an axeman placed on a forested hill, then a (single) barbarian must be very lucky to win if it attacks.
2) Any tile that you can see will not spawn barbarians or barbarian cities. This means that if you see an ideal city location, you can prevent the appearance of a barbarian city (which is not placed as ideally as you'd like) by placing your sentries close.
3) At some time a few guards are needed to escort a settler to a settling spot. 1 archer might not be good enough if you happen to meet 2 axemen. Even 2 archers might not be good enough. These units will also slow down the settler because they can't move as fast as the settler. However, if you have a few sentries in the area (placed on hills preferably), then you can see every tile of land and thus know that there are no barbarians around. So the settler can safely move to the settling spot without any escort and at full speed. The units that will guard the city are already there and a few new sentries will be needed.
In the early game (3-4 cities and expanding), I ideally have 1 city defence archer in my cities (minimal defence needed to surpress unhappiness). A mix of archers and axemen (some 3-5 units altogether) spread around my cities in such positions that they can intercept attackers, remove the fog of war from a lot of terrain and move back to defend cities in jeopardy. The archers will defend the cities that are going to be founded. And a few chariots close to the cities that can move from one city to the next as a quick defence/counterattack force. Often I have less units than this and have to improvise when an attack occurs.
This is quite a minimal defence force (and probably insufficient in multiplayer games), but I can get a quite sizeable force in a single city by the time an attacker would reach that location. The low number of defenders means that you will have an optimal amount of research.
You generally don't want more than 5 units outside your borders (in peacetime) because if you have more than 5, then they will start costing supply costs and you need every gold and research point that you can get in the early game.
I play on huge maps with high difficulty levels. On smaller maps with a lower difficulty level, the barbarians are less of a problem. There is just not enough land between the various players to spawn barbarians and at lower difficulty levels, the barbarians appear later. I usually only lose 1,2 maybe 3 units to barbarians and usually don't get pillaged at all.
1. If I upload a short game (Confucism was just founded somewhere) will someone good take a look at it and critique my opening game?
2. How does one upload a game?
I'll take a look and post some comments. But one cannot see everything about how a player plays by just looking at a savegame.
A question for you by the way, Roland - do you play multiplayer Civ4 at all?
If so, I'd be very interested to challenge you to a game at some stage! (PBEM, Pitboss, Internet [preferably with no turn timer, and sequential turns if you'd like], or whatever you'd like.) Regardless of who wins, I'm sure that we'd both be able to pick up quite a few hints and tips during the game, and learn a lot more about Civ4 from each other. (Also, I bet some of the regulars from the Question Thread would be interested to keep up with such a game.) What do you think?
Oh man, the day we all feared has finally arrived . . . when one of you has been vanquished and cast out of the Civilization community in disgrace, it will take twice as long to get a definitive answer on this page!
To prevent this cataclysm, I'll sacrifice myself. Why don't you both play against me, and then you can compare notes as you go. "Yeah, we could have beat him in 3994 BC using your fishing boat of death strategy".
Heh, hardly... it'll just mean that we'll
both be able to give even
better answers, I hope.
Oh, and I can play more than one game at once, so I can play with you too if you'd like. (Or alternatively, we could all be in the same game.
)
I have never played a game of civilization multiplayer, so I'm a newbie at that front. For instance, I have never heard about the "fishing boat of death strategy" and never knew that the multiplayer game started with 6 year turns (3994 BC?).
I have played a few shooter games (bad at those as I never play them singleplayer) and real time strategy games (quite ok at those) on LAN parties and over the internet and that was quite fun. But I've always considered civilization to not be as suitable for multiplayer because of its turnbased nature. I have a tendency to play the game very relaxed, thinking about various options, sometimes even watching TV at the same time or posting a message at this forum. I wouldn't like to play the game with a turn timer and a human opponent would thus become very frustrated at my slow gameplay. I'm possibly not the most 'fun' multiplayer opponent.
Maybe play by email is an option as you aren't waiting on the other player for your turn. But I don't exactly know how play by email functions. I guess that the game is send to the other player through email after each turn. But would that mean that you don't see your opponents moves in your line of sight (because they happened while you weren't watching)? Play by email would at least avoid the frustration about waiting for the other player, but it would be a very slow game.
Playing with multiple human players (and maybe some AI players) would be fun. Then the strategy would involve human pacts against the strongest player, so I would welcome other players. Even if they know about mean plans like the fishing boat of death strategy.
From what I've heard, multiplayer games are very aggressive games focussed on (early) military action. In my games, I usually play on very big maps where early military action is not very effective. So I guess, I'll have to learn a lot if we ever play a multiplayer game. Are you an experienced multiplayer civ gamer?
