Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[ggganz]

It's Stack of Doom.

 

[JujuLautre]

Any defense to this general scenario? Just send more troops than you think you need?

Just send the troops you need; but you obvsiously need more than what is necessary to take out the defender you see, since the AI will always send reinforcements

It's quite natural actually, wouldn't you do the same?

 

[Sisiutil]

Typical scenario ... I make a Stack of Death (I think that's the term we use around here), and I go marching in to attack an enemy city. I have spied on the city, and I know what they've got defending it. Great, do my calculations and send the troops I need to win.

Except ... the enemy civ will always send troops like mad from surrouding areas, flying in to defend the city. I swear, even if I surround it, I see them fly right by me. And the next turn, there are two or three of the strongest troops possible, that weren't there before. And now the numbers are not so favorable, and my whole strategy is out the window.

Any defense to this general scenario? Just send more troops than you think you need?

Siege weapons.

It doesn't matter how strong the opposing forces are or how dug in they are, hit them with enough Catapults, Trebuchets, Cannon, Artillery, or Bombers and they'll be easy prey for even your weakest attackers. I've taken more than a few cities with my Medic III Chariot even in the gunpowder era! (Just gotta make sure I have a handful of city garrison units too, to hold onto the thing.)

 

[Pronay]

Hi, had a question that's most likely been answered plenty of times, but maybe someone will do it again

I was reading on Amazon about getting Civ IV (played Civ II on PS1 way back) and I saw that there was the game, a gold edition(?), & two expansions... also read in the BtS reviews that Warlords was unnecessary?

Basically I don't know what to buy of the listed:

Civilization IV
Civilization IV: Gold Edition
Civilization IV: Warlords Expansion Pack
Civilization IV Beyond the Sword

Would appreciate some clarification

 

[scienide09]

You need the basic Civilization IV software to play the expansions. Then, get yourself Beyond the Sword: it has everything from Warlords except for the scenarios.

 

[Pronay]

thank you!

 

[scienide09]

You're quite welcome.

Oh, and since I forgot (due to early morning no-coffee-yet sleepiness), welcome to the forums!!

 

[Abegweit]

Dumb question but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere. What does it mean when a Spy is attached by the name of a Civ? Oh. And while I'm at it, is there a good guide to Espionage around somewhere?

Thanks.

 

[Roland Johansen]

What does it mean when a Spy is attached by the name of a Civ?

I don't understand the question.

Oh. And while I'm at it, is there a good guide to Espionage around somewhere?

I like this one by (started by) Bhruic: Spy detection. Not only the first post contains information, also some of the following posts explain parts of how espionage works.

 

[Abegweit]

In the lower right corner of the screen, you see the name of each civ you know, together with some info about that civ, such as its score. Icons provide info about religion, trade routes, etc. One icon is a Spy. My question was what this is supposed to signify about your relationship with that civ.

Thanks for the link.

 

[ori]

it tells you that you have more espionage against him than he has against you

 

[Michael Alan]

Building only a road/railroad on the resource would be pretty pointless though. The manual isn't accurate on a lot of things.

Well I assumed they would just make lots of roads so my units could go anywhere in no time.
Anyway, funny thing happened. After my post to you I played and used automated road maker guy and he made an incense improvement on a single incense symbol way out in the middle of a desert that I never thought of to improve. So that was cool and you are right.

Plus a I got a Charlemange win on a conquest victory. Highest score yet. First conquest attempt too. So early wins DO matter for score. Used Tiny map, Chieftain, Medieval time start and won on the date 1900. Went for Gunpowder. Ended up with tons of extra rifleman so I could have scored higher by striking sooner with less guys.

 

[BrantleyL1]

3 - It's usually (not always : Flood Plains make a hige difference) better to farm up a city in order to grow to your happy cap, then work cottages. Same thing for a production city. First you grow, then you work.
4 - have fun

#4 is my MAIN objective... But, I've been having trouble figuring out a few things. Which I think has led to less fun...

I guess the thing I've missed is how to get off to a really good start. If I'm reading what you say here... Of course all things are prefaced with "it depends"... And there are a LOT of conditions that change things.

So, if I'm reading this right... It might be good to start off building a LOT of farms. Flood Plains provide 3 - combine that with a farm and that makes 5 . This strategy will provide food for your workers and excess food, which allows for growth. Build a granery to hold on to that excess food. I can see with excess food that you should be able to convert a few citizens to specialization.

Once you've got your city to a larger (how big?) size, come back and build cottages (on the flood plains for example). Won't this lead to starvation - since you'll have 2 less food with a cottage than a farm??

I've never understood "build your happiness cap"... How is that related to building a lot of farms to grow your city?? What I've seen is that the citizens begin to complain about how big the city is. You have to build temples, etc. to offset that. Or you could whip them. But that also leads to unhappiness - especially if you use it too frequently. Can you explain this a little more??

Thanks a lot!

 

[BrantleyL1]

Ok, maybe not so stupid...

But I was reading another post and it made me think of this question (I've had this for a LONG time).....

What controls the expansion of cultural borders - when do they do it - and is it possible to do things to control it?? Or maybe it's dependant on location??

For example, your very first city starts out small (3x3), but very quickly grows to "fat cross" size. And not long after, it seems to grow beyond that size.

The second city never seems to expand as quickly. My typical problem is that I've found a nice location NEAR copper (within the fat cross of city #2), but perhaps the better location is maybe 2 squares away from the copper. Then I wait FOREVER for the cultural border to expand.

Later cities seem to not have any particular rule about when they expand borders.

Is this related to the growth indicator? I thought that it was related to city population - which does not seem to be related to the size of the cultural borders.

Can someone explain this? Does my question make sense?

 

[ori]

you need culture culture to expand your city borders. The first city has the palace in it which automatically produces 2 /turn - all other cities do not start out with producing buildings so you need to build those, e.g. a monument or library...
The border expansions occur at certain thresholds - they are different for each speed, I just forgot what exactly they are...

 

[JujuLautre]

The Thresholds are 10/100/500/5000/50000; but you can just hover on the culture bar on a city (bottome left) to see that.

Also, if you're not creative, you need a culture producing building (monument?) to make borders pop in the early game. Or a religion. They will not pop by themselves.

 

[ggganz]

Yes, you need a Monument/Obelisk to pop your borders early (or religion) which is why Stonehenge is so popular.

 

[Roland Johansen]

#4 is my MAIN objective... But, I've been having trouble figuring out a few things. Which I think has led to less fun...

I guess the thing I've missed is how to get off to a really good start. If I'm reading what you say here... Of course all things are prefaced with "it depends"... And there are a LOT of conditions that change things.

So, if I'm reading this right... It might be good to start off building a LOT of farms. Flood Plains provide 3 - combine that with a farm and that makes 5 . This strategy will provide food for your workers and excess food, which allows for growth. Build a granery to hold on to that excess food. I can see with excess food that you should be able to convert a few citizens to specialization.

Once you've got your city to a larger (how big?) size, come back and build cottages (on the flood plains for example). Won't this lead to starvation - since you'll have 2 less food with a cottage than a farm??

I've never understood "build your happiness cap"... How is that related to building a lot of farms to grow your city?? What I've seen is that the citizens begin to complain about how big the city is. You have to build temples, etc. to offset that. Or you could whip them. But that also leads to unhappiness - especially if you use it too frequently. Can you explain this a little more??

Thanks a lot!

When people on this forum talk about the happy cap or the health cap, then they mean those numbers close to the city growth bar which determine the happiness and healthiness in the city. If your city grows too large then it will grow bigger than the happiness and healthiness of the city and the unhappiness and unhealthiness will overtake the happiness and healthiness. You will get citizens that don't work at all but do eat 2 units of food (unhappiness) and citizens that do work but eat 3 units of food (unhealthiness). The unhappiness effect is clearly very bad and the unhealthiness effect is also not very good. In both cases, you're essentially wasting food. You can somewhat control the happy cap and health cap by adding certain buildings to a city, but most of the happiness and healthiness of cities is based on the various resources that were connected to your cities.

You will typically want to have a number of citizens in your cities just below the happy and health cap so that every citizen is producing hammers and commerce and none are unhappy or unhealthy. If at some point the happy and health cap are around 10 in most of your cities, then you do want to get your cities to size 10 as fast as possible. An empire with 5 cities at size 10 is working twice as many tiles (50) as an empire with 5 cities at size 5 (25) and this means that it is about twice as productive and producing twice as much commerce and science. (For experts reading this: I'm ignoring specific effects of increase in city and civic upkeep and trade routes which are non-linear in relation to city size. I'm also ignoring the effect that you're typically using better tiles first and worse tiles later and the effect of the centre city tile.)

A city growing from size 1 to 2 needs 22 food, from 2 to 3 it needs 24 food, from 3 to 4 food, it needs 26 food (normal speed values). A granary will help speed up the growth process, but you still need about half of the food values just mentioned. You can get these cities to the happy and health cap fast by getting a good food production in these cities and that is done by working a few food resources and adding a few farms. But once you're at the happy and health cap, then you don't need that extra food any more, you just need enough food to feed those 10 happy and healthy citizens (20 food). Food by itself is not useful, it's just useful for feeding the citizens working in the fields (and working as specialists) (Notable exception: extra growth used for whipping citizens with the slavery civic can be very efficient). So you will want to change some of the farms into cottages or mines. It's most effective when you have high food, low production/commerce tiles and low food, high production/commerce tiles between which you can switch. In that case you don't have to continuously re-improve the land around your cities.

By the way, you're talking about farms as if they produce 2 food. During most of the game, farms only add 1 food to non-food resource tiles. Only after biology in the late game do they add 2 food and you seemed to be talking about an earlier period in the game.

 

[Scrybe]

Building trade network includes connecting resources, and building a fort on a resource makes it available just like a mine, farm, winery, or whatever the approbiate improvement is, would. Since the resources we're talking about are not in a city radius, there's no drawback besides the slighly longer build time of the fort, and the tile becomes easier to defend should you get invaded.

Wait... am I understanding you? You're saying if there is a sugar tile outside any of my cities, but inside my cultural boundaries, that a fort will cause the sure to make all my cities one face happier? (Assuming there is a road connecting it to a city.)

 

[ggganz]

You will get all of the effects EXCEPT the added from building a plantation from a fort.