Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Is it possible to save data, where is stored "hall of fame", so when I reinstal game, could just copy them, and again have "old" hall of fame in new instalation of Civ? I hope u understand what I want
 
Is it possible to save data, where is stored "hall of fame", so when I reinstal game, could just copy them, and again have "old" hall of fame in new instalation of Civ? I hope u understand what I want

yes! click on link for how :)
 
Is it possible to save data, where is stored "hall of fame", so when I reinstal game, could just copy them, and again have "old" hall of fame in new instalation of Civ? I hope u understand what I want

:band:Welcome to CFC [party]:dance:

just save the "Replays" folder (as in ...\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Replays and ...\My Games\Warlords\Replays) the replay files are what is used to calculate your HOF ingame... You then have to put those back after reinstalling.

Edit: KMad was faster :sad:
 
I've been a long time civ fanatic.. since civ1 on my awesome 286... Anyway my question to everyone is when I first played Civ4 on noble and above, I noticed that other countries declare war much more often than before. Is that the major difference? I don't recall if that was the major difference. Its ridiculous how everytime there would be seriously 3 to 4 civs declaring war on me at the same time that weren't friendly with each other. It just becomes overwhelming and frustrating. I just purchased civ 4 and I never read the manual. (I know, but since civ1, its relatively easy to understand the mechanics after the first round) Is that that one of the main differences? There wasn't much in the manual when i ran through it.

Thanks!
 
I've been a long time civ fanatic.. since civ1 on my awesome 286... Anyway my question to everyone is when I first played Civ4 on noble and above, I noticed that other countries declare war much more often than before. Is that the major difference? I don't recall if that was the major difference. Its ridiculous how everytime there would be seriously 3 to 4 civs declaring war on me at the same time that weren't friendly with each other. It just becomes overwhelming and frustrating. I just purchased civ 4 and I never read the manual. (I know, but since civ1, its relatively easy to understand the mechanics after the first round) Is that that one of the main differences? There wasn't much in the manual when i ran through it.

Thanks!

The war declarations you get is a clear sign of a low power. On the very lower levels, you can be a big power with less troops.
Build more units, get more cities.
 
I've been a long time civ fanatic.. since civ1 on my awesome 286... Anyway my question to everyone is when I first played Civ4 on noble and above, I noticed that other countries declare war much more often than before. Is that the major difference? I don't recall if that was the major difference. Its ridiculous how everytime there would be seriously 3 to 4 civs declaring war on me at the same time that weren't friendly with each other. It just becomes overwhelming and frustrating. I just purchased civ 4 and I never read the manual. (I know, but since civ1, its relatively easy to understand the mechanics after the first round) Is that that one of the main differences? There wasn't much in the manual when i ran through it.

Thanks!

:dance: Hello [party] and Welcome to CFC :band:

In Civ 4 War is triggered exclusively by a random roll when war is allowed. The question whether war is allowed is simply a matter of
a)Attitude (the better the attitude of an AI towards you the higher the chance that a doWar roll is vetoed)
b) Power, as explained here - if your power rating is above a certain threshold then there will be no war declaration (this threshold is different for each AI Leader).

Also the game massively favors dogpile wars, i.e. if you are at war with an AI the chances are much higher that others will enter on the stronger side...

In effect: If you are a builder and neglect your army at the beginning you'll see more declarations of war, if you build your army early you will be the one to declare :evil: but might loose on the tech or build front... Once you are in war you should either be the strongest or buy allies to prevent them dogpiling on you...
 
The war declarations you get is a clear sign of a low power. On the very lower levels, you can be a big power with less troops.
Build more units, get more cities.

Well I don't feel that is the situation b/c it states that I am 2nd or 3rd on the most powerful list and I wiped out a civ that wasn't close to anybody. I guess i have to understand the AI attitude towards me. However, when looking at their points towards me, it seems ok and they're just cautious. Well thanks for the prompt reply
 
:dance: Hello [party] and Welcome to CFC :band:

In Civ 4 War is triggered exclusively by a random roll when war is allowed. The question whether war is allowed is simply a matter of
a)Attitude (the better the attitude of an AI towards you the higher the chance that a doWar roll is vetoed)
b) Power, as explained here - if your power rating is above a certain threshold then there will be no war declaration (this threshold is different for each AI Leader).

Also the game massively favors dogpile wars, i.e. if you are at war with an AI the chances are much higher that others will enter on the stronger side...

In effect: If you are a builder and neglect your army at the beginning you'll see more declarations of war, if you build your army early you will be the one to declare :evil: but might loose on the tech or build front... Once you are in war you should either be the strongest or buy allies to prevent them dogpiling on you...

I'm also sorry I didn't clarify if this is one of the major differences in the difficulty levels. Well I don't feel that is the situation b/c it states that I am 2nd or 3rd on the most powerful list (i forget) and I wiped out a civ that wasn't close to anybody. I guess i have to understand the AI attitude more towards me. However, when looking at their points towards me, it seems ok and they're just cautious and above. Well thanks for the prompt reply and the link. I'm a little late on buying civ4 b/c i was thinking the price would go down after a year.. $10 bucks for a year of putting it off. haha guess it wasn't worth it.
 
I've been a long time civ fanatic.. since civ1 on my awesome 286... Anyway my question to everyone is when I first played Civ4 on noble and above, I noticed that other countries declare war much more often than before. Is that the major difference? I don't recall if that was the major difference. Its ridiculous how everytime there would be seriously 3 to 4 civs declaring war on me at the same time that weren't friendly with each other. It just becomes overwhelming and frustrating. I just purchased civ 4 and I never read the manual. (I know, but since civ1, its relatively easy to understand the mechanics after the first round) Is that that one of the main differences? There wasn't much in the manual when i ran through it.

Thanks!

They're opportunists. They see you already under attack and they figure that makes your cities easy pickings. It's called "The Dogpile." And when Cabert says they're attacking you for no reason because you're weak, he doesn't mean your score, which is a measure of your civilization as a whole, but your military. I used to try and play peacefully in the early game and not build an army until I had a well established economy and tech lead. When I got away with it, it gave me a huge advantage, but often I would be attacked with no provocation apart from my military weakness. Now I build an army right away, and even though I have much worse diplomatic relations (because I've started wars) no one dares declare war on me. You need an army, whether you plan on using it or not.

And if the price didn't go up, you saved about another $10 due to inflation :)
 
Also, the leaders will all behave differently based on their pre-programmed personalities (unless you go with random personalities or whatever). In case you are interested, here is a link to a Leader Personality Matrix, which shows their various values for how much they covet various facets of the game. Specifically, note column X, DogpileWarRand, which I presume to be a randomization factor in how likely they are to declare war on you in a dogpile effort (i.e. after someone else is already warring with you). If you wind up near multiple dogpile-inclined neighbors, it is a good idea to keep your power up and perhaps befriend one or more of them, so you can attempt to direct the dogpiles rather than being on the receiving end.

I think that the opportunists label was an apt one, IMHO - some leaders will just jump on you whenever they think they've got an opening, regardless of how likely (or not) they are to succeed.

[Also note that the values in column X are likely inversely related to how likely they are to dogpile a civ. I am assuming as much just based on who have values of 25 and who have 100 - I guess my thought is that it's a pretty safe bet to start with that backstabber Montezuma and assume whatever value he has to be the "pinnacle of jerkiness". ;) FWIW, if that is correct, the most likely dogpile participants would be Catherine, Elizabeth, Montezuma, Qin Shi Huang, Roosevelt, and Tokugawa.]

OT: Did they figure WWII counted as a dogpile for FDR?!? :lol:
 
Ha! FDR got us entangled with the side that was being buried, and I've certainly seen an AI attack the empire that was winning the war.
 
Hi everyone! I'm new to this site, just bought Civ 4 and can't play it b/c my graphics card is under specs. I don't have a lot of $$$ to spend on a new one, does anyone know of a brand that is sufficient for this game, maybe $50 or less? I'm looking on E-Bay but not sure about quality there. Thanks!
 
Hi everyone! I'm new to this site, just bought Civ 4 and can't play it b/c my graphics card is under specs. I don't have a lot of $$$ to spend on a new one, does anyone know of a brand that is sufficient for this game, maybe $50 or less? I'm looking on E-Bay but not sure about quality there. Thanks!

Hi, and Welcome :)

By this, you possibly mean that you get the warning "your computer does not have the minimum spec for this game" (or something like that) at the start. This does not necessarily mean you can't play the game RAM is all important for CIV IV, graphics aren't.If you have at least 512 mg RAM, you should be able to play normal maps, 1gb large maps, and 1.5 GB any maps.

What you need to do, is edit the CivIV.ini file, (wherever you installed the game, default is my docs/my games/civiv).Find this line:-

; Don't show minimum specification warnings
HideMinSpecWarning = 0

and change the 0 to a 1 and save the .ini file.This does what it says, it bypasses the warning messages.

When the game starts, it will now run. Change all the graphics options to low and you're off and running.

You can also change this line again in the same .ini file :-

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

and again change from 0 to 1, this will save a little more memory.

If you've done all the above, and the game still won't run adequetly, then you need more RAM and maybe a new graphics card.

Hope this helps.....:)
 
I've been playing Civ on and off since Civ 2, but have really become more of an avid Civ4 player in recent months. (I've been on and off these forums since Civ 3, but this is my first post).

Despite having played the Civs for a while, the one thing I am bad at is cottage, farm, workshop, etc. placing. Despite reading many of the posts and stuff in the Info Center, I haven't come across something that explains the intracacies of the placement of these items. Am I just missing it? If so, can someone point me in the right direction?

I think my playing will take a step up once I understand those structures a little better. Thanks in advance for anything you can pass along.
 
Welcome to the forums [officially], Jondalar! [party] :band: [party]

For one thing, you'll pick these up more over time, so don't get too terribly worried about not 'getting it' for all of them immediately. This is a far more complex system than the old mine-or-farm days (and most (/all?) of the improvements improve over time as well, changing their relative values at different points in the game), so it can take a while to get the hang of all the options available. Also note that eventually, to stay competitive at higher levels, you will want to specialize your cities where you can, since commerce is no longer generic from simple roads a la Civ3. As such, most of your cities will wind up prioritizing either production (typically for military and maybe wonders; no need for commerce-enhancing buildings) or commerce (along with all the buildings that come with that, but typically sans barracks etc.).

Here are a couple articles from the Civ4 Strategy Articles section of the forums that may be helpful to you (with the latter being more in-depth and specific with regard to the various improvements you will be choosing from):

A Guide to City Specialization and Land Improvements

Th e Complete Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement

Good luck! :)
 
I've been playing Civ on and off since Civ 2, but have really become more of an avid Civ4 player in recent months. (I've been on and off these forums since Civ 3, but this is my first post).

Despite having played the Civs for a while, the one thing I am bad at is cottage, farm, workshop, etc. placing. Despite reading many of the posts and stuff in the Info Center, I haven't come across something that explains the intracacies of the placement of these items. Am I just missing it? If so, can someone point me in the right direction?

I think my playing will take a step up once I understand those structures a little better. Thanks in advance for anything you can pass along.

Another welcome to the forums! :dance: :beer:

Most terrain improvements give a specific benefit. One improves food (farm), another production (workshop, mine, lumbermill), another commerce (cottage) and some add a bit of everything (windmill, watermill). In general it is as simple as identifying what is the most needed resource or most beneficial resource in your city. However, that might be very difficult without a bit of experience in this game.

If your city won't grow any larger while using the most food producing tiles in the city radius and not suffering from unhappiness or unhealthiness, then it might need a few farms so that it can grow and use more tiles within the city radius.

If the city has a production of 3 and can't even produce stuff at a decent rate with pop rushing (using the slavery civic to rush production while sacrificing population), then it might need a few mines, lumbermills or workshops.

If the city has a decent production and food total, then it is very important for your economy to have a good commerce output so that you can research at a decent rate. So add some cottages. Most people consider the commerce output and the related science output the most important variable of your civilization.

Many civ players will also recommend you to specialize your cities. The idea is that a city that has a huge hammer output won't have to construct a library and other such buildings, while a city with a huge commerce output won't need a barracks for unit production but only libraries and such. I only partially agree with this line of thought.
A huge commerce city needs a library, university, observatory and research laboratory for research. A market, grocery and bank for civic, city and unit upkeep of your empire (at higher difficulty levels, a significant part of the total commerce output is needed to pay for these things and thus you better get a bonus on your gold output). Because it is large, it also needs the grocery and market for health and happiness bonusses. It also needs a harbor for health and trade route income, an aquaduct for health for its large population, a forge for happiness, a granary for health, etc, etc... There are actually only a few buildings that it doesn't need like a barracks and those are not very expensive. Those buildings don't appear out of thin air, you need hammers to build them. So in practice, even the large high commerce cities that I build will still have some tiles that give a decent production output. Most of the tiles may contain cottages, but some will be used for production output to be able to build the buildings that improve the city.

I do specially cities with the excellent national wonders. Oxford University increases the research output of a city with 100%. That is such a huge bonus that you'd have to be stupid not to place such a building in your (potentially) best research city and then improve that city further towards.

I'll give you some screenshots from my latest game as a non-financial leader. These are late game screenshots and the balance between the various improvements does change during the game. For instance workshops are (widely considered) useless before guilds and are (in my opinion) quite good in the late game with chemistry and the state property civic.

(Actually, these screenshots are from a game with slightly modded rules and I'm playing a financial leader. But the tile outputs are virtually identical to a game under normal rules for a non-financial leader. So just assume it's a non-financial leader.)

Technology level is industrialism and every tile has all the late game bonusses. At the start of the game most tile improvements are less beneficial. I'm using state property which adds 1 food to watermills and workshops and I'm using free speech and universal suffrage which add 2 commerce and 1 hammer to towns (fully evolved cottages).

This screenshot is from a random inland city (click link and enlarge to full size to be able to actually see the values of the city). It's not perfect. But we don't need a screenshot of a perfect city, we want a realistic city. I added some signs so that you can see which improvements I have in each tile.
cot=cottage
work=workshop
plant=plantation
wm=windmill (on a hill), watermill (on a river)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Random_inland_city.JPG

This is an inland city and those are usually decent for production. I improved a few tiles with a workshop as the city didn't have any good production tiles except the horses + pasture. Still most tiles have cottages which have evolved into towns and also add 1 hammer thanks to the universal suffrage civic. Usually hills are used for production but if those are not available, then workshops can be quite ok in the late game (with the state property civic). 1 cottage is not evolved. It used to be a camp on top of the ivory resource, but ivory got obsolete, so I build a cottage at the camp site.

The city has an 85% research bonus (library, observatory and seowon (Korean unique building replacement for the university)) and a 100% tax bonus (marketplace, grocery, bank) and a 100% production bonus (forge, factory, coal power plant). I'm researching at 80% science, 20% tax. 32 gold per turn, 106 science per turn, 54 hammers per turn; a good city at this point in the game, fully improved with buildings. Not the greatest city but quite good.

Now for a random coastal city:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Random_coastal_city.JPG

This city has a river and I build a watermill on it, maybe the best late game terrain improvement if you are using the state property civic. They can however only be build on one of the two sides of a river and are not that great in the early game. The city has a few extra production improved tiles because the water tiles don't add any hammers at all. 1 of its cottages is again not fully developed yet. Because it is a coastal city with a harbor, it has far better trade routes than the previous city. It's total hammer, gold and science output is very similar to the previous city with the same bonusses applied to gold, science and hammers.

A city that shows some windmills:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Some_Windmills.JPG

This city is a bit more poorly located and has trouble finding enough food from it's tiles. The farm (on rice) and the pasture help a bit, but the city couldn't sustain mines on the two spots where I build windmills. Windmills add 1 food compared to mines and thus the city could use every tile. It's again a city that is suffering from a bit of overlap with other cities. Still it's science and gold and hammer output are quite ok. It seems to have a very high hammer output but that is a bit distorted. It has a drydock and is building ships and therefore gets a 150% production bonus. When it is building anything else than ships, it produces at a rate of 58 hammers per turn. Quite similar to those other two cities. It has the same buildings with the same gold, science and hammer bonusses.

This is a bit poorly located city and some people might wonder if it would be worth building:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Poor_city.JPG

But with a bit of patience it grew to use all the water tiles. I tried to improve the land tiles to give some hammers and used the high food output to get some engineers, but with that many coastal tiles it's hammer output is clearly lower than the other three cities. Still 80 science per turn is quite ok, who wouldn't want this city in his/her empire.

Now for some specialist cities. First the so-called great person farm:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Great_Person_Farm.JPG

Heh, why would it be called that way? This city is optimised for food so that it can use a huge number of specialists and thus add a large number of great person points each turn. Sadly, I didn't have the option in this game to get some great wonders in this city. That would have been nice to further increase the output of great person points. This city also has two small wonders (maximum number of two small wonders in one city): Globe Theatre and National Epic. The first removes all unhappiness from the city, allowing it to grow to such a huge size. The second doubles all the great person points produced in the city. So each specialist adds 6 great person points per turn (would be 9 for a philosophical civilization and 12 for a philosophical civilization running the pacificm civic). At 70 Great Person Points per turn, it is doing ok. It will produce more when some buildings that improve health are discovered and I can add even more specialists to the city.

An ideal great person farm has a lot of special food resources. This one has only bananas and sugar, not too great. The special food resources would allow it to employ a large number of specialist even in the early game. This city is benefitting from the large amount of food that farms give after the biology technology is developed but that is quite late in the game. So while it doesn't have the great wonders and doesn't have many food resources, it is still an ok great person farm. The best one that I could build in that particular game.
I just don't happen to be a philosophical civilization and I don't like the pacificm civic (it just isn't me). Great persons are very nice, but I won't turn my whole civilization in a great person factory. But I'm willing to let one city produce lots of them. It's the most cost efficient way to get great persons.

Now the unit production city. I wonder what people who say that workshops are a useless improvement think of this city?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/31106/Unit_Production.JPG

This city is clearly optimised for production. With state property and chemistry, workshops add 3 hammers to a tile and that makes this city very productive. It also has some other good production tiles and uses a lot of tiles, no overlap with other cities here. We try to optimise a single city and not the whole empire in this case. Now why is this city producing units at 210 hammers per turn?
First it gets 60 hammers per turn from the city tiles (could get slightly higher when I get some buildings that solve the health problems). Then it gets a 100% production bonus from the forge, the factory and the coal power plant, another 100% production bonus from Heroic Epic while building units and another 50% production bonus from the military academy while building units. As a second small wonder, the city has West Point which adds 4 experience to a unit. The city also has a barracks (3 experience in Warlords) and a Great Military Instructor (another 2 experience) and my civilization owns the Pentagon great wonder (2 extra experience in every city). I'm not running any civics that improve the experience level of my units because those civics also have some drawbacks and I can do without them in this game. This city is producing units with 11 experience (level 4, 3 promotions) at a rate of 210 hammers per turn. I will be able to improve it to 241 hammers per turn once I solve the health problems and don't need the sugar from those plantation tiles anymore (reimprove with workshops). That is pretty good for a unit production city. You can get better if you have an ideal city position, but this is pretty good.

People also usually build a specialist city for science. You should have lots of evolved cottages (towns) and good trade routes + the small wonder Oxford university and any other building that improves science.
Another specialist city is a gold city. This usually involves a holy city with a shrine of a well spread religion + the small wonder Wall Street and any other building that improves gold. This city also has lots of well developed cottages (towns), but the shrine is more important. It will add its gold even if you're having a 100% science rate and thus the power of the Wall Street small wonder is always used.

Tile improvements are clearly not the easiest part of this game and in different eras of the game, the balance between the various improvements can be different. Still, I hope the screenshots can help a bit. Happy civving. :)

edit: uhm, post became a bit long, heh :rolleyes:
 
^^roland, nice post.
Didn't read it all (sorry, but it IS long), but I wanted to say that VoU made a very nice article about production cities running workshops.
and here is another example of this kind of production cities.
1884_ironwheat.jpg


note it's not perfect either :
I'm at my health cap, and growing isn't doing me any good, so I should have put another workshop instead of a farm + I left 1 town instead of a workshop. It could be 4 base hammers better, for little loss (I believe it didn't change anything in the outcome, this was the last space part).
 
Hi, and Welcome :)

By this, you possibly mean that you get the warning "your computer does not have the minimum spec for this game" (or something like that) at the start. This does not necessarily mean you can't play the game RAM is all important for CIV IV, graphics aren't.If you have at least 512 mg RAM, you should be able to play normal maps, 1gb large maps, and 1.5 GB any maps.

What you need to do, is edit the CivIV.ini file, (wherever you installed the game, default is my docs/my games/civiv).Find this line:-

; Don't show minimum specification warnings
HideMinSpecWarning = 0

and change the 0 to a 1 and save the .ini file.This does what it says, it bypasses the warning messages.

When the game starts, it will now run. Change all the graphics options to low and you're off and running.

You can also change this line again in the same .ini file :-

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

and again change from 0 to 1, this will save a little more memory.

If you've done all the above, and the game still won't run adequetly, then you need more RAM and maybe a new graphics card.

Hope this helps.....:)

non civ-related, but
normally can other games be tricked that way? (i.e no minspecwarning?)
 
Thanks for the posts regarding cottages, farms, etc. They helped me understand their usefulness a bit better. I'm hoping to use what I learned in my next game - hopefully it will make a difference!
 
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