Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[JujuLautre]

you can also have trade routes with other civ's cities. These trade routes are more profitable than domestic trade routes, hence the limitation of mercantilism. The importance of trade routes is related to the size of the cities: the bigger the city, the more profitable the trade routes. The program automatically assign trade routes so that the most profitable are created (so, expect to see trade routes between the biggest of your city and the biggest of an opponent's city).

BTS adds three things:
- intercontinental trade route more beneficials
- trade routes can be blockaded
- on the foreigner advisor, in the part "informations" (I think), you have a column with the amount of commerce you gain via trade routes. This amount can be very important, so think a little bit before switching to mercantilism.

 

[Sisiutil]

That sounds about right, that's my understanding of it as well.

A while back aelf played one of his Emperor Masters' Challenges as a trade route game. This was shortly after Warlords came out and he was leveraging the new Temple of Artemis wonder (as well as building the Great Lighthouse). It was, apparently, quite powerful for the early game.

To see the power of trade routes, try this in the late game: check to ensure that practically all civs are running an economic civic that allows trade routes, including you--preferably Free Market with its +1 trade routes per city. Basically, anything but Mercantilism.

Now switch to Mercantilism and watch what happens to your GPT. (It helps if you're Spiritual or have the Cristo Redentor and can see the effects immediately.)

 

[jray]

I recently noticed that I have a -2 penalty on all my Confucian buildings. I tried changing religions, but it was still there. Where did this come from? Can you get rid of it (either on existing or future buildings)? Do monasteries still have the penalty after they go obsolete?

In case it's relevant, Confucianism was the religion of the Apostolic Palace builder, and my state religion for most of the game.

 

[ggganz]

Did you defy a resolution? I heard that if you defy a resolution all religious buildings get -2. As you can imagine, this is a problem if you only have 1 to start with (you would have -1 and losing production. Something needs to be done about that).

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

I recently noticed that I have a -2 penalty on all my Confucian buildings. I tried changing religions, but it was still there. Where did this come from? Can you get rid of it (either on existing or future buildings)? Do monasteries still have the penalty after they go obsolete?

In case it's relevant, Confucianism was the religion of the Apostolic Palace builder, and my state religion for most of the game.

Did you defy an AP resolution? when you do the bonus hammers will be canceled.

 

[Tanktunker]

EDIT: nvm.

 

[jray]

Did you defy a resolution? I heard that if you defy a resolution all religious buildings get -2. As you can imagine, this is a problem if you only have 1 to start with (you would have -1 and losing production. Something needs to be done about that).

Nope, I definitely didn't defy any AP resolutions.

 

[jray]

Did you defy an AP resolution? when you do the bonus hammers will be canceled.

What do you mean by "bonus hammers"? I never had any bonus hammers in the first place. They were just normal temples and monasteries for years, and then after seeing the bug report about the -1 hammers on here, I went and checked in my game out of curiosity, and to my surprise all my Confucian buildings were listed with -2 hammers.

So was I getting some sort of hammer bonus previously without realizing it, and the -2 just cancelled it out or something?

 

[ggganz]

I have no idea. Maybe a screenshot or a save would help.

 

[Boozie]

This has probably been covered plenty of times before but I was looking at the BTS info thread and couldn't get any luck about 20 pages in.

If I have vanilla and buy BTS I get everything in warlords BUT the scenarios right?

Another noob question: MP currently for me is BW/horses/(IW if i dont' have either), then basically straight to cats (picking up basic techs like ag/pot as needed). Then from there I usually go pick up monarchy after I have my cats. I almost always have money problems after I pump out a bunch of cats since my units are out of my territory attacking.

Should I pick up currency before I go for monarchy techs? Or should I just be working more cottages or something?

 

[jray]

If I have vanilla and buy BTS I get everything in warlords BUT the scenarios right?

Yep, you are correct.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Another noob question: MP currently for me is BW/horses/(IW if i dont' have either), then basically straight to cats (picking up basic techs like ag/pot as needed). Then from there I usually go pick up monarchy after I have my cats. I almost always have money problems after I pump out a bunch of cats since my units are out of my territory attacking.

Should I pick up currency before I go for monarchy techs? Or should I just be working more cottages or something?

Both things can work and it depends on your terrain and the happy and health cap if more cottages is possible. The extra trade routes from currency is mainly interesting when you have foreign trade routes.

 

[brandon72]

OK, I admit it... I'm a newb. Whether or not I'm competant or not remains to be seen.

I'm tired of the same old names in CivIV already (I'm playing BtS). I've found the XML file that lists all the city names and added in a few of my own in the exact same format as they appear in the XML file.

Problem: Some of the city names work just fine while others appear in game as "TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_WHATEVER" (with "whatever" being whichever line it's pulling from). I have looked and looked and looked and looked and I simply can NOT see any difference between the ones I've added that DO work fine, and the ones I added that are all buggered.

Can someone tell me... am I missing something? I'm using a basic text editor to do my edits. It's the same text editor I use to edit PHP, HTML, and other XML files, so I don't really think that's to blame. But... it could be.

I've searched through the site here and I couldn't find a clear cut tutorial or explanation of editing or adding city names. Of course, I'm not the best when it comes to finding ANYTHING online. Search engines and I simply don't think the same way I think.

 

[ori]

OK, I admit it... I'm a newb. Whether or not I'm competant or not remains to be seen.

I'm tired of the same old names in CivIV already (I'm playing BtS). I've found the XML file that lists all the city names and added in a few of my own in the exact same format as they appear in the XML file.

Problem: Some of the city names work just fine while others appear in game as "TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_WHATEVER" (with "whatever" being whichever line it's pulling from). I have looked and looked and looked and looked and I simply can NOT see any difference between the ones I've added that DO work fine, and the ones I added that are all buggered.

Can someone tell me... am I missing something? I'm using a basic text editor to do my edits. It's the same text editor I use to edit PHP, HTML, and other XML files, so I don't really think that's to blame. But... it could be.

I've searched through the site here and I couldn't find a clear cut tutorial or explanation of editing or adding city names. Of course, I'm not the best when it comes to finding ANYTHING online. Search engines and I simply don't think the same way I think.

Welcome to CFC
This sounds like you miss a tag with your city name edits - how do the entries look like? They should look like:

<City>TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_LE_BAM</City>

the <City> and </City> tags are important...

 

[brandon72]

Welcome to CFC
This sounds like you miss a tag with your city name edits - how do the entries look like? They should look like:

<City>TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_LE_BAM</City>

the <City> and </City> tags are important...

Thanks for the rockin' welcome! And thanks for the suggestion. I did check all my tags, very closely, and they're all fine. So I'm still stumped. Any spaces in names have the underscore as they should. None of the town names are very long and none are duplicated.

When it happened in game, I immediately thought, "Oh, I must have screwed up a tag somewhere." But when I checked it, nope, they were all fine.

This one really has me stumped. I admit, I know just enough about XML to be able to edit an existing file. I can see what tags need to go where based on what's already there. Adding a few lines shouldn't really matter. At least it hasn't in the past. So I simply can't understand why some of the towns I added (Fort Lauderdale) work while others (Chilicothe) don't.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks for the rockin' welcome! And thanks for the suggestion. I did check all my tags, very closely, and they're all fine. So I'm still stumped. Any spaces in names have the underscore as they should. None of the town names are very long and none are duplicated.

When it happened in game, I immediately thought, "Oh, I must have screwed up a tag somewhere." But when I checked it, nope, they were all fine.

This one really has me stumped. I admit, I know just enough about XML to be able to edit an existing file. I can see what tags need to go where based on what's already there. Adding a few lines shouldn't really matter. At least it hasn't in the past. So I simply can't understand why some of the towns I added (Fort Lauderdale) work while others (Chilicothe) don't.

Maybe the game expects a certain number of them and you've added a few and it only accepts the first n (say 30). I must admit that I'm just guessing here.

You could go to the Creation & Customization subforum and ask for more detailed advice.

Maybe you should copy the entries from your file there so that people can give you detailed advice.

 

[_alphaBeta_]

In BTS, some mounted units have the ability to do flanking damage to siege weapons. As long as they survive, damage is done to all siege units in the stack. Is the flanking promotion necessary for this to happen?

The other day I attacked a stack of two catapults with a knight. As expected one of them defended and lost, but the other remained undamaged. The civlopedia entries led me to believe that mounted units have this capability regardless of promotions.

 

[Roland Johansen]

In BTS, some mounted units have the ability to do flanking damage to siege weapons. As long as they survive, damage is done to all siege units in the stack. Is the flanking promotion necessary for this to happen?

The other day I attacked a stack of two catapults with a knight. As expected one of them defended and lost, but the other remained undamaged. The civlopedia entries led me to believe that mounted units have this capability regardless of promotions.

I recreated the scenario that you describe (1 knight versus 2 catapults) 3 times. The knights won the battle versus the leading catapult every time and thus could do some flanking damage to the remaining catapult. 1 time, the second catapult didn't suffer any damage, the other 2 times it did.

I think that it works similar to normal combat. Normal combat takes place in rounds and each round of combat one side wins the round and does some damage to the other side. With first strike rounds (from the drill promotion and such), the side with the first strikes will damage the other if it wins the round and no damage will be done when the first strike unit loses the round.
I guess that flanking damage works similar to a first strike round, the second catapult cannot damage the knight, but the knight has a chance to damage the catapult.

There are several units that can do flanking damage, but they can only do flanking damage to a few units. A cavalry can do flanking damage to cannons, but not to catapults, trebuchets, artillery or mobile artillery.

A unit can only do flanking damage when it survives the combat with the best defender. The flanking promotions make survival much more likely, especially when the best defender of the stack is a lot stronger than the attacking unit with the flanking ability.

 

[_alphaBeta_]

I recreated the scenario that you describe (1 knight versus 2 catapults) 3 times. The knights won the battle versus the leading catapult every time and thus could do some flanking damage to the remaining catapult. 1 time, the second catapult didn't suffer any damage, the other 2 times it did.

I think that it works similar to normal combat. Normal combat takes place in rounds and each round of combat one side wins the round and does some damage to the other side. With first strike rounds (from the drill promotion and such), the side with the first strikes will damage the other if it wins the round and no damage will be done when the first strike unit loses the round.
I guess that flanking damage works similar to a first strike round, the second catapult cannot damage the knight, but the knight has a chance to damage the catapult.

There are several units that can do flanking damage, but they can only do flanking damage to a few units. A cavalry can do flanking damage to cannons, but not to catapults, trebuchets, artillery or mobile artillery.

A unit can only do flanking damage when it survives the combat with the best defender. The flanking promotions make survival much more likely, especially when the best defender of the stack is a lot stronger than the attacking unit with the flanking ability.

Thanks for checking it out.

Perhaps I got caught up in the wording of the unit descriptions because I was under the impression that the new flanking attack always happened. Never occurred to me that it has a chance of happening, like so many other things with combat in this game.

I understand that the promotion helps the situation, but is NOT required for this behavior to occur.

_______________________________________

Another couple of questions:
1. Regarding the above with flanking attack, do you get a message similar to collateral damage when it happens?

2. What is the "can't trade" column for in the tech trade screen for? Is this for techs that they have, but can't give you because of the "no tech brokering" option? I also noticed that techs I can't trade because of this don't show up at all in the negotiation screen. Is that how it's supposed to work. Makes it difficult to know what you have that they don't.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks for checking it out.

Perhaps I got caught up in the wording of the unit descriptions because I was under the impression that the new flanking attack always happened. Never occurred to me that it has a chance of happening, like so many other things with combat in this game.

I understand that the promotion helps the situation, but is NOT required for this behavior to occur.

I also didn't know there was only a chance of it happening, but the quick test shows it to be true. I can't say anything definite about the chance, but I expect it to be equal to the chance to win a round of combat (A/(A+B) is the chance that a unit with strength A wins a round against a unit of strength B). Since most cavalry units are stronger, the chance of a flanking attack is quite good. I also know (from reading about someone else's tests) that you can hit multiple catapults/trebuchets/etc. with one flanking attack, but I don't know how many. It could be stored in the xml file.

Hmm, couldn't find anything in the xml file.

A test: 1 knight versus 30 catapults: 23 flanking attacks. Ouch, there seems to be no limit to the number of flanking attacks. Personally, I think that's bad.

(10/10+4 *30 = 21.4, which is close to 23, so it seems that my hypothesis that the chance of a flanking attack is equal to the chance of a successful hit during a combat round is true)

Also the damage is exactly equal to the damage of a single round of combat between a knight and a catapult.

To show the problem with unlimited flanking attacks: 6 knights were able to defeat the 30 catapults in one round. If it had been 1000 catapults, it wouldn't have taken many more knights.

_______________________________________

Another couple of questions:
1. Regarding the above with flanking attack, do you get a message similar to collateral damage when it happens?

Yes. You get a message telling you the number of flanking attacks.

2. What is the "can't trade" column for in the tech trade screen for? Is this for techs that they have, but can't give you because of the "no tech brokering" option? I also noticed that techs I can't trade because of this don't show up at all in the negotiation screen. Is that how it's supposed to work. Makes it difficult to know what you have that they don't.

Yes, that is how it is supposed to work. I don't see why it makes it difficult to know what you have that they don't. If you have something that they don't then it will show up on the can trade side of the tech trading window in the F4-menu.

If you have just acquired a technology that opens up the road to new technologies which are in possession of your opponent, then you will also not be able to trade for those this turn. You will have to wait a turn. That is already true in the normal game with normal tech trading.