Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[rantzzz]

No eyed deer.

When attacking into an enemies territory, it is usually best to keep your units all on the same tile. This has a number of advantages and 1 dissadvantage. The disadvantage is that you are suseptable to collateral damage units, so if a catapult attacks your stack 6 units will be damaged rather than 1. The advantages are: It allows the best unit you have to do the defending (ie. if a spearman attacks your axeman will defend, if a catapult attacks your horse archer will defend); it provides protection for your damaged units, eg. if a unit wins a fight but is severly damaged, if it was on its own it would be picked off easily, but if it is in a stack the other members of the stack will defend until it is healed.

Every reasorce must be 'hooked up' to recive the civ wide benifit of it (in this case providing copper for units). You do not need to conect it to get the tile benifits (in the case of copper 4 hammers). This connection can be with roads, rivers or by sea (with the appropriate tech and only between cities). If the reasorce is coonected to some cities and not others only those it is coonected to recive the benifit. It must be connected to the capital to allow you to trade it to other civs.

Thanks for the quick response!
Regarding resources so it means that as long as the resource is within the city radius and there's a white circle on it, the benefits are only to the city itself.

If i want that benefit to extend to other cities, I gotta build roads from that resource tile and lead into another city?

 

[JujuLautre]

Not exactly; they are two interests to ressources:
- work them in a city: for this, you need the ressource to be in the BFC of one of your cities, and inside your cultural borders. Just open the city screen and click on the ressource tile and you will work it like every other tile. The main advantage is that, with the correct improvement (mines for gold/iron, farm for rice/wheat...), these tiles will yeld a high benefit, thus helping the city that work them.
- get a bonus from this ressource: to get the bonus in a city, you need to have the ressource inside your cultural borders, with the correct improvement (or a fort in BTS), and to have a connection between the ressource and your city (road, river, coast, ocean...). The benefit of the ressource depends of the ressource: some give health (rice, fish...), some give happiness (gold, dye), some have their effect boosted by a building (forge for gold, granary for rice), some allow you to build certain units (iron for swordmen) or boost production (copper for the internet) etc...

 

[Samson]

Thanks for the quick response!
Regarding resources so it means that as long as the resource is within the city radius and there's a white circle on it, the benefits are only to the city itself.

If i want that benefit to extend to other cities, I gotta build roads from that resource tile and lead into another city?

Pretty much, with a couple of provisos:

If the city and another is on a river or coast (with sailing), then you do not need roads, the river or coast act as trade connections. Also you need to conect the reasorce to the city.

The civ wide and tile benefits are very different. In the case of copper, if the resource is within the city radius and there's a white circle on it you get 4 more hammers than if it was unimproved grassland. If you connect up the copper you can build axemen etc.

 

[Zivilyn]

I have a question about religion.

I know there are often bonuses for having buildings in cities for your state religion, and missionaries can spread your religion. I was looking through the menu's last night and saw they list the percentage of each religion in the world. Is there any benefit to spreading your state religion to a foreign city, or for having an enemy convert?

 

[6K Man]

I have a question about religion.

I know there are often bonuses for having buildings in cities for your state religion, and missionaries can spread your religion. I was looking through the menu's last night and saw they list the percentage of each religion in the world. Is there any benefit to spreading your state religion to a foreign city, or for having an enemy convert?

Plenty of benefits - if you have a shrine for the religion you're spreading, you get +1 gold in the shrine city for every city you spread it to. And if it's your state religion, you can also "see" into the foreign city with that religion.

Also, spreading your state religion to AI cities makes it more likely that that AI will convert to your religion, netting you a buddy. Sometimes.

The detriment, as far as I can tell, is minor - the AI city gets additional culture for the extra religion and can build religious buildings for that religion as well (possibly adding and )

 

[Zivilyn]

Plenty of benefits - if you have a shrine for the religion you're spreading, you get +1 gold in the shrine city for every city you spread it to. And if it's your state religion, you can also "see" into the foreign city with that religion.

Thank you! I thought the benefit for the Shrine was only in my cities. Do those benefits apply even if you did not personally spread the religion to the foreign city, but the civilzation adopts it anyway?

 

[6K Man]

Thank you! I thought the benefit for the Shrine was only in my cities. Do those benefits apply even if you did not personally spread the religion to the foreign city, but the civilzation adopts it anyway?

It doesn't matter how the religion got there - so long as it's there, you get the benefits.

Note that if a civilization converts to your state religion, that doesn't mean this religion automatically spreads to all their cities. But the AI might be more likely to internally spread the religion (via missionaries) than otherwise.

 

[rantzzz]

I've got a question:

How do you guys manage your cities and units? This games, from first looks, seems like micromanagement hell!

There's so much to do!

 

[Giovanni Caboto]

I've got a question:

How do you guys manage your cities and units? This games, from first looks, seems like micromanagement hell!

There's so much to do!

Nah, it's much better than you think. I can speak from years of experience with CIV2 where I spent 90% of my time to check on micromanagement.
In the beginning I was tempted to act similarly with CIV4. Then I realised the benefits of the automatic.
First is the carryover. If you need e.g. just 1 to accomplish a building with a production of say 20 , the 19 surplus will be kept as the first stock for the next production. Same goes with .
Second you can adjust the focus of your city's output, whether you want to focus on production, growth, or wealth/research - or a mixture of these. According to your selection the automatic allocates the city more on tiles with mines, farms or on those with high economy.
Therefore you need to visit your cities only from time to time or whenever a special event appears, e.g. a war raises the necessity to produce units faster than normal or you want to boost the production of a wonder.

 

[Zivilyn]

Nah, it's much better than you think. I can speak from years of experience with CIV2 where I spent 90% of my time to check on micromanagement.
In the beginning I was tempted to act similarly with CIV4. Then I realised the benefits of the automatic.

This brings up a minor annoyance I have.

I find I assign my workers to automatically upgrade the nearest city or build a network. Problem I have is that I lose track of them! When I build a new city I want to improve nearby resources. late in the game I have several workers off doing jobs but no easy way of finding them or reassigning them. Is there an easy way to track them down?


Similarly, if I set a unit to defend a tile it seems that unit is never brought to my attention to command or move. Again, I find I lose track of assets that I may want to reassign to another city or battle but no easy way of locating those inactive units.

 

[Verge]

This brings up a minor annoyance I have.

I find I assign my workers to automatically upgrade the nearest city or build a network. Problem I have is that I lose track of them! When I build a new city I want to improve nearby resources. late in the game I have several workers off doing jobs but no easy way of finding them or reassigning them. Is there an easy way to track them down?


Similarly, if I set a unit to defend a tile it seems that unit is never brought to my attention to command or move. Again, I find I lose track of assets that I may want to reassign to another city or battle but no easy way of locating those inactive units.

Use your Defense Advisor to track down where you units are. Just click on, say, "Workers" from the list, and it'll highlight where each one is on the global minimap.

 

[Roland Johansen]

This brings up a minor annoyance I have.

I find I assign my workers to automatically upgrade the nearest city or build a network. Problem I have is that I lose track of them! When I build a new city I want to improve nearby resources. late in the game I have several workers off doing jobs but no easy way of finding them or reassigning them. Is there an easy way to track them down?

The military advisor can help you as Verge has already explained. Furthermore, you can wake (stop all orders) all units of a certain type by holding the alt button while you stop the orders of one of these.

Similarly, if I set a unit to defend a tile it seems that unit is never brought to my attention to command or move. Again, I find I lose track of assets that I may want to reassign to another city or battle but no easy way of locating those inactive units.

When you fortify (or use the sleep command on) a unit, then this is a command so that this unit will never ever bother you again. So you actually chose this option yourself. If you want to give new orders to this unit after a few turns, then you should use the skip turn command (for a successive turns). There is no difference in the ability of a unit to defend a tile.

A certain mod was created a while ago to improve the management issues of Civ4 BTS. It's called the Beyond the Sword Unaltered Gameplay Mod (Short BUG).
If you were using this mod, then another option would be available. You could set a reminder for yourself. You could give the fortify command and then set a reminder so that you were reminded about the unit in 10 turns or 100 turns whatever you want. But of course you would still have to set the reminder. You can't expect the game to guess when you might want to move a certain unit again.

 

[smatt834]

<snip>

Moderator Action: Warned for flaming. Content deleted.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Roland Johansen]

<snip>

This is not the thread to insult new players. This is a thread to help new players. Of course, some of the questions won't be the smartest and the answers could be found in the manual (printed or not) or in the civilopedia. But there is a lot of documentation concerning this game and you can't expect players who might be completely inexperienced with these types of games to remember everything they read. And of course, some don't read the rules but just start playing the game and get stuck. It's a game after all. You're supposed to have fun, not read whole rulebooks.

Comparably, if students would remember everything they would read in a textbook, then many more would only get A's at school.

This is the thread that is supposed to make it easier for players to ask stupid beginner questions which they don't dare to ask anywhere else because of responses such as yours.

In my opinion you're way out of line here.

 

[Scrybe]

Oh my.


Anyway... I need advice for stopping a rival civ from completing their spaceship. I HATE space victory. It's way to easy for me to win, but whenever I try to go for a different type of victory I'm blocked by a space loving AI. And yet, I always get so caught up in the moment of creating a new game that I forget to turn that option off.

So now here I am in 2005, working towards a domination victory, but Civ #2 is half way to a space victory. They are way to strong for me to take them militarily. I've tried the spy thing a while ago, (in a different game) and failed miserably. What should I be trying to sabotage my opponent's space program?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Oh my.


Anyway... I need advice for stopping a rival civ from completing their spaceship. I HATE space victory. It's way to easy for me to win, but whenever I try to go for a different type of victory I'm blocked by a space loving AI. And yet, I always get so caught up in the moment of creating a new game that I forget to turn that option off.

So now here I am in 2005, working towards a domination victory, but Civ #2 is half way to a space victory. They are way to strong for me to take them militarily. I've tried the spy thing a while ago, (in a different game) and failed miserably. What should I be trying to sabotage my opponent's space program?

You're talking about spies, so I guess that you're playing a BTS game. Before BTS, spies weren't that influential in the game.

Since you are going for a domination victory, you shouldn't have a lot of problems with diverting a large part of your income to creating spy points. If you build a few spies, then you could start destroying parts of their space ship. It's not cheap, but it will hinder their efforts enormously. Try to pick the parts that they will need most.

You can destroy parts of the space ship from every one of their cities. So pick the city in which it will be the cheapest. That is usually a city, close to your capital with your state religion without a security bureau (you could destroy that one first if needed). Leave the spy in the city for 5 turns and the cost will be reduced by 50% (10% per turn). You can see in which city it will be the cheapest by looking in the espionage screen.

If they still manage to launch the space ship, then you could capture their capital before the space ship reaches its destination. That would destroy the space ship.

May I inquire why this civilisation is too strong for you since you are going for a domination victory and you don't have that much time left in the game? Do you actually expect to reach the domination limit before the game ends?

 

[Scrybe]

May I inquire why this civilisation is too strong for you since you are going for a domination victory and you don't have that much time left in the game? Do you actually expect to reach the domination limit before the game ends?

Well, actually, the last time I tried using spies was before I got Warlords. I don't have BTS yet.

As to why my opponent is too strong for me... 1. Other side of the world. 2. Equal powered units. and 3. I would have to divert all of my power to just them, meaning there would be no way to get the 60% land area I need to win with just their nation.

So I guess ultimately, the answer is that I'm just not that good.

I have won a Domination victory this way before, but it was only because the other civ that was close to completing the Space Ship was not that powerful, so in taking them down militarily I was also able to get the land I needed.

 

[Verge]

Your best bet, Scrybe, sounds like working your diplomatic contacts to bring other AIs into your war against this strong civ in hopes of weakening them.

 

[ori]

Well, actually, the last time I tried using spies was before I got Warlords. I don't have BTS yet.

As to why my opponent is too strong for me... 1. Other side of the world. 2. Equal powered units. and 3. I would have to divert all of my power to just them, meaning there would be no way to get the 60% land area I need to win with just their nation.

So I guess ultimately, the answer is that I'm just not that good.

I have won a Domination victory this way before, but it was only because the other civ that was close to completing the Space Ship was not that powerful, so in taking them down militarily I was also able to get the land I needed.

to slow down an opponent:
a) declare war on him - he will start building units instead of projects for some time, if he is far off you don't even have to do anything, maybe pillage a few fish or something like this...
b) bribe others to join you in war or at least stop trading
c) use spies to destroy his towns (yes I say towns ) - if he has not yet researched all the required techs this will slow him down more than anything
d) if all fails invade, pillage mostly (see c) )...

 

[Scrybe]

Ah... I see. Sounds nasty. Thanks for the advice, all!