Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[JujuLautre]

you mean the hall of fame?

There is. Go into your Civ folder, find the Replay folder (or walords/replay, or BTS/replay), and delete all the game you don't want to see anymore.

 

[NecroAngel]

Is this a good starting location? I mean, obviously the tundra and ice is bad. But do all the resources around make up for that? By the way there were two tribal villages right by me - Hunting, and Mysticism.

 

[GenocideBringer]

I am not some uberwtflolinternets master at Civ, but that looks like an excellent starting location as long as you can expand north.

 

[Ishkinae]

Hello all, this question may already have been asked, and I apologise if it has.
Civ IV, Warlords, and BTS. Are they separate games, or is it just a matter of downloading the patch. I have just downloaded 1.74 from 1.61. So if I wanted BTS, could I just download 302. or do I have to go and buy either warlords or BTS ?

 

[BrantleyL1]

Civ IV, Warlords, and BTS. Are they separate games, or is it just a matter of downloading the patch. I have just downloaded 1.74 from 1.61. So if I wanted BTS, could I just download 302. or do I have to go and buy either warlords or BTS ?

Warlords and BTS are "boxed" expansion sets for Civ4. You have to BUY them. The patches are downloaded.

From what I've heard, all of Warlords is in BTS except the scenarios. Sounds like a good reason to skip Warlords. There are two arguments for buying Warlords... (1) to gain the experience in it's additions. (2) to be able to play uploaded games (and "game of the month", etc.)

 

[BrantleyL1]

Is this a good starting location? I mean, obviously the tundra and ice is bad. But do all the resources around make up for that? By the way there were two tribal villages right by me - Hunting, and Mysticism.

Seems OK, not great, but it has possibilities. I'd be really interested in what was WEST... There are fish in the sea. I'd go for work boats REALLY soon and start reaping the benefits of that. The city should be able to grow nicely.

My only concern with so little info is that you might be on a small island. If that's the case, build cities to cover all the territory on the island - so that the barbs can't spawn...

 

[bushido]

Is this a good starting location? I mean, obviously the tundra and ice is bad. But do all the resources around make up for that? By the way there were two tribal villages right by me - Hunting, and Mysticism.

That's a good spot. Flooding plains on the West are a good point.
But you will need to discover fishery as soon as possible to extract the value of maritime resources.

 

[Roland Johansen]

So I tried some suggestions. Whipped my main cities' population to hell and back. I got loads of temporary unhappiness from this, and finally when it went down I had a city with equal happiness (8:8 or so) and with little population, making it quite unproductive. With all my new catapults and Berserkers, I declared war on Bismarck. The battles were a lot more tedious than I thought they'd be, I had some bad luck, and made a few silly mistakes so I had to re-capture a city a few times when I shouldn't have.

Anyway, I finally captured 3/5 of his cities (which took longer than you'd expect,) and I saw Shaka with a huge amount of units on my border. I guess he got pretty angry that I refused to give into his ridiculous demands earlier. The rest of my army was further to the North attempting to capture the German's fourth city... and even if they were back there to help the poor 2 Berserkers left to defend, I doubt I would've won. So at this point I know it's over. In any case, I continue. Shaka declares war, and immediately so do Suryavarman and someone else... I guess they became his vassals and I didn't notice. At this point it was about time to click 'Exit to desktop'

Better luck next time I suppose, and I'll make sure I pick a better starting location, map, and civilization, too.

Nice to see that you were able to conquer a significant part of Bismarcks empire. With the attack of the Zulu empire, things would get very tough so I can imagine that you'd rather start anew and try to do better from the start. Still a good job in one of your first wars.

A few pointers:

You said that you've build quite a few units in your capital, but your capital doesn't have a barracks. That's not good. A barracks gives your units more than enough experience for the first promotion and thus helps you to specialise them in the various functions on the battlefield. Personally, I value a unit with 1 promotion about 30% higher than one with no promotions, so the barracks is a pretty valuable improvement in cities that will produce units.

You don't want to leave your units outside of an enemy city for an eternity while you're bombarding the city defense bonus. So, the accuracy promotion is very valuable for catapults as it makes these units twice as effective at removing the city defense bonus. Furthermore, the city raider promotion makes these units very effective against city defenders, especially if you can get to city raider III promotion. The barrage promotions for catapults makes them especially useful to attack stacks of units in the field, but not especially useful to attack cities.

The forge would also have been a nice improvement in your capital. It increases the hammer output of your most productive city, also when you're poprushing. It also would increase the happiness by 2 because you have gold and silver.

Is this a good starting location? I mean, obviously the tundra and ice is bad. But do all the resources around make up for that? By the way there were two tribal villages right by me - Hunting, and Mysticism.

Looks ok. There are 6 different health and 2 different happiness resources available and they can all be improved and used by early game worker improvements. I would explore around the fur, deer, pig, gold and rice. The area around the pig and gold might be good settling positions. It might also be nice to build a city on the desert hill to claim both the rice and the sheep. And it's also interesting to build a city to claim the fur. That last city will probably be poor, but it does offer your whole civilisation access to the happiness bonus of fur.

The worker technologies to build a mine and chop forests are interesting to get the work boats build and the technology to build work boats is interesting to improve the sea resources. The technology to build the lighthouse is interesting to get extra food from the sea tiles. The slavery civic is interesting to get maximum production from the high food tiles through poprushing. The granary is interesting to regrow quickly after poprushing.

Then you probably want the technologies to improve the other resources in the neighbourhood.

Good luck with that game.

 

[wkndwrrr]

I have a quick question:

What are the things to look for (terrain-wise) when planning city specialization? For example, I know a good military production city is one that is built on/ around hills, so that one can build many mines to work. However, I'm unsure about some of the other types of city specialization. In other words, what would be a good location for:

a Science city

a GP city

a commerce city
(I'm a little less fuzzy on this one, and thus have a more specific question for it: Should they be inland near commerce-rich floodplains or by commerce-rich oceans/ lakes?)

a food city (or is this rather unneccesary?)

etc.

I usually generalize my cities, and build a decent array of farms, cottages, workshops and other things around every city. I hear this is less effective than city specialization, however, which is why I am asking this question.

I realize there is probably information on this elsewhere, but I thought I might as well ask the question directly, in addition to searching.

That was not as quick as I thought.

 

[Sisiutil]

I have a quick question:

What are the things to look for (terrain-wise) when planning city specialization? For example, I know a good military production city is one that is built on/ around hills, so that one can build many mines to work. However, I'm unsure about some of the other types of city specialization. In other words, what would be a good location for:

a Science city

a GP city

a commerce city
(I'm a little less fuzzy on this one, and thus have a more specific question for it: Should they be inland near commerce-rich floodplains or by commerce-rich oceans/ lakes?)

a food city (or is this rather unneccesary?)

etc.

I usually generalize my cities, and build a decent array of farms, cottages, workshops and other things around every city. I hear this is less effective than city specialization, however, which is why I am asking this question.

I realize there is probably information on this elsewhere, but I thought I might as well ask the question directly, in addition to searching.

That was not as quick as I thought.

We could spend a lot of time on this one.

The first thing to remember is that all cities need a source of food so that the city can grow and so that the citizens can work tiles that are low in food but high in other items (hammers or commerce or both).

Therefore, it's important to include some food resources--usually at least 1--in each city's fat cross. This is even more important with high production sites, since you anticipate working a lot of food-poor tiles in those, at least in the early game before watermills and workshops become viable sources of hammers.

A GP farm runs specialists, who don't work tiles, therefore that's usually a city with several food resources in its BFC. A captured capital is often ideal for this role.

Any city that's low in food will need farms. Commerce cities need to have citizens working cottages, so a low-food location is not ideal for them. Regions with flood plains and/or grassland riverside tiles are usually best, for the +1 commerce from the riverside tiles as well as the food production from the cottaged tiles (2 food from grassland supports the citizen working it; 3 food from flood plains gives you a +1 food surplus).

A science city is a variation on a commerce city in a cottage economy, though ideally it should have 2 or more good food tiles so you can run some science specialists. Capitals are usually ideal for this, especially with the Bureaucracy commerce boost (not to mention its hammer boost for building things like the Great Library, Oxford University, and other science and commerce multipliers). In a specialist economy, your GP farm and your science city are usually (though not necessarily) one and the same, since you'll usually be running a lot of scientists under Caste System.

Lakes and coast are good for commerce early in the game, and are better if you are Financial and build the Colossus. However, as cottages mature, they far surpass what you can get from water tiles. And the bonuses from Printing Press and Free Speech only benefit cottages. So long term, a stellar commerce city will contain as few water tiles in its BFC as possible.

Don't feel too bad about mixing improvements. It's rare to find an ideal city location, so a mix is sometimes necessary. Just try to lean as much as possible towards the improvements that support the city's specialization.

 

[wkndwrrr]

Thank you, that was the kind of response I was hoping for.

 

[ggganz]

Is this a good starting location? I mean, obviously the tundra and ice is bad. But do all the resources around make up for that? By the way there were two tribal villages right by me - Hunting, and Mysticism.

You need not worry about the Tundra and Ice because they are not in your fat cross. Everything outside your fat cross (except resources) may just as well be a Swirling Vortex of Terror.

 

[FLUKE]

There is a civic that allows spending of GP to rush production, can someone remember which civic that is and how do you spend your GP to rush production anyway?

Sometimes I have had plenty of money in the bank and seemingly nothing to spend it on.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

There is a civic that allows spending of GP to rush production, can someone remember which civic that is and how do you spend your GP to rush production anyway?

Sometimes I have had plenty of money in the bank and seemingly nothing to spend it on.

If by GP you mean Gold Pieces,(even though GP generally is an abbreviation for Great People on this forum), then I think you mean Universal Sufferage. This is available with democracy, or at any time if you build the Pyramids, and allows you to rush buildings with Gold. There is a button in the lower right hand corner of the city screen, that is highlighted if you have enough Gold to rush the current building / troop.

 

[Ymir9]

Hi, I haven't yet gotten into Civ IV, but I was wondering if Civ IV finally managed to get the "culturally-linked start locations" feature working. It would seem from some of the "stories" threads that the civs spawn pretty much randomly, irrespective of culture. I always found this really annoying. So, has this been fixed?

 

[JujuLautre]

no fix, and I must say I don't expect any. playing ethiopians and starting near japanese is all the charm of Civ imho

There is something a little bit related though, which is that when you spawn a colony in BTS, it's usually culturally linked (england spawning america for example). but it's not the same at all.

Also, you can play historic maps.

 

[gerraro]

I bought civilization 4 and when I'm trying to install it there comes text: an error has occured while running the setup.
please make sure you have finished any previous setup and closed other applications. If the error still occurs, please contact your vendor: Firaxis Games.

What is the problem?

 

[Common Humanist]

Hi All

Hopefully somebody can help with these:

1. Can anyone point me in the direction of good instructions for changing unit graphics - or for installing some of the excellant graphics that this site hosts in the DL section?????

2. What dop the Percentage figures next to a city name in the main screen mean?

3. Rhyse and Fall is JUST AWESOME! Has anyone thought to combine the superb concept there with the level of civ and unit detail found in Total Realism or Sevomod?

Cheers

CH

 

[Common Humanist]

Hi, I haven't yet gotten into Civ IV, but I was wondering if Civ IV finally managed to get the "culturally-linked start locations" feature working. It would seem from some of the "stories" threads that the civs spawn pretty much randomly, irrespective of culture. I always found this really annoying. So, has this been fixed?

I am fairly new myself but the superb Rhyse and Fall Mod has something approximating to what you want and is just great - really excellant gameplay. Am playing the Turks and currently supressing my third Persian revolt. happy days!

 

[Roland Johansen]

I bought civilization 4 and when I'm trying to install it there comes text: an error has occured while running the setup.
please make sure you have finished any previous setup and closed other applications. If the error still occurs, please contact your vendor: Firaxis Games.

What is the problem?

Welcome to civfanatics!

I don't know what the problem is.

You're probably better off asking your question in the Technical Support forum