Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Gwynnja]

I settled on top of the dye in order to get both cows in the BFC. Do I get any commerce from the Dye, having settled on top of it?

 

[JujuLautre]

when you settle on a tile:
- all "features" are removed (flood plains, forest, jungle)
- all improvements are removed
- then you get the maximum of the output of the tile and of 2 food/1 prod/1 commerce.

So if the tile produces more than 2/1/1 in at least one of the 3 things, you get the best output.
In your case, the tile produces 2 commerces (because of river + dye) so you get 2 commerce in the city.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Thanks Lord Parkin. I don't know how I missed seeing that article all this time...

Here's another quick question: When you grant independence to a colony, how is the capital city chosen? If I capture a couple of barb cities will it be the first city that I captured?

 

[wannabewarlord]

in the risk of sounding stupid, I wanna ask a quick question. I probably should try it out myself first, but since I don't have access to civ4 until the weekend and I am kinda impatient, I thought I'd give it a shot:

I keep reading on how to chop down forests to create hammers quickly. now if you build an improvement on a tile, the forest automatically goes away, right? I assume this is not the same chopping down as the direct order to the worker (with bronzeworking)? so as to benefit from +hammers, I need to specifically use "chop forest", and not simply build any other improvement, correct?

and while we are on the subject: where in the interface (which buttons?) can I either spend gold for finishing a production (with the appropriate civic) or assign slaves (whipping) to do that?

thanks for the info!

cheers
-wannabewarlord

 

[JujuLautre]

Building an improvement on a forest tile will give the same effects as building the imrprovement + chopping the forest (camp excepted); so you will get the hammers.

The "rush" buttons are on the top of the city governors buttons, on the right of the building list.

 

[wannabewarlord]

thanks for clearing the forest question up!

here's another one:

I read with great interest through the beginner's guide and the stack o' doom analysis by sisiutil. very helpful, I must say. also, I read many comments about tech "races" and certain must-have (must-reach-first, respectively) techs.

I was wondering if there's also some sort of guide to tech-tree "builds", that analyses in more detail why and how to get to certain techs how fast, depending on the situation.

tried search but didn't find anything. maybe one of you can point me to something like a "complete idiot's guide to the tech tree or how I stopped worrying and love the bomb"

cheers
-wannabewarlord

 

[Sisiutil]

I read with great interest through the beginner's guide and the stack o' doom analysis by sisiutil. very helpful, I must say. also, I read many comments about tech "races" and certain must-have (must-reach-first, respectively) techs.

I was wondering if there's also some sort of guide to tech-tree "builds", that analyses in more detail why and how to get to certain techs how fast, depending on the situation.

tried search but didn't find anything. maybe one of you can point me to something like a "complete idiot's guide to the tech tree or how I stopped worrying and love the bomb"

cheers
-wannabewarlord

Thanks for the compliments on those articles of mine.

A tech tree guide would be quite a challenge, so I'm not surprised you didn't come across one. Usually, bee-lining to certain techs is part of a larger overall strategy, so just analyzing the tech tree in and of itself may be putting the cart before the horse. And each tech can play into several different strategies--Bronze Working, for example, can be a key military tech (revealing copper), or can be used to accelerate wonders (through chopping), or to just enhance the speed of city builds (through slavery/whipping), or all of the above; for Rome, it's a stepping-stone on the way to Iron Working, Praetorians, and world conquest, so tech path strategies vary by civ, as well.

You'll probably find several guides to different strategies in the War Academy that include tech paths as part of their overall plan. I know my Intermediate Tactics and Gambits article contains some material like that, for example. Someone may one day write a comprehensive strategic tech tree guide, but I think that would be a monumental undertaking.

 

[Endure]

Another newbie question:

So I'm playing my first game of warlords ever and I've conquered the continent I was on and invaded another continent. I picked the weakest civ there and took about half his cities and then forced him to capitulate and now have my first vassal state.

I am able to gift them techs, resources and gold, but for some reason I cannot gift them back a couple cities I took from them. Is it not possible to gift cities back to the vassal state? The cities aren't really in a prime location, and I pretty much just want the vassal state to guard my western flank against the russians (they're pretty powerful on this continent) while I attack the english to the north. I don't want to have to waste troops, gold, etc on those cities I took if I can get the vassal state to do it for me.

 

[burianek]

Hey a couple of stupid questions. (thanks for this thread)

- If I have a resource like sugar, and it's in the jungle, will I lose the resource if I chop down the jungle? As far as I know, sugar can exist in grassland. I'm just afraid I'm going to lose it by messing with the tile.

- If I have a sea resource (clams) that is in my culture, but outside of a city's work radius, can I still send work boats to it so that I can gain it as a tradable resource? (and get the +1 health bonus). Or do sea resources need to be on workable tiles to gain the effects?

 

[TheRealBitter]

Hmm, so specifically what happens when you try to login? Does it "freeze", does the button "stick", or does the button "press in and out" but appear to do nothing? Just trying to determine if it is an error with trying to detect a connection or if it is not even attempting to connect.

The button clicks in and out, and the animations going on in the background of the screen lag for about a second or less, and then nothing happens. No error message, nothing.




Bitter.

 

[Endure]

Hey a couple of stupid questions. (thanks for this thread)

- If I have a resource like sugar, and it's in the jungle, will I lose the resource if I chop down the jungle? As far as I know, sugar can exist in grassland. I'm just afraid I'm going to lose it by messing with the tile.

- If I have a sea resource (clams) that is in my culture, but outside of a city's work radius, can I still send work boats to it so that I can gain it as a tradable resource? (and get the +1 health bonus). Or do sea resources need to be on workable tiles to gain the effects?

1) Don't know. Would like to know as well.

2) As long as it's within your cultural boundaries you can build a work boat and claim the resource. It need not be specifically worked by a city. (or even within the cities fat crosses)

 

[BrantleyL1]

Question: Why do Civs in BTS trade you for something, wait a while and decide that the deal no longer works - only to offer it again a few turns later??

Pet Peeve: Vassels. Last two games I've gone to war with a civ (A) - then another civ (B) goes to war with them - then A capitulates to B - so I'm at war with BOTH.

 

[BrantleyL1]

Hey a couple of stupid questions. (thanks for this thread)

- If I have a resource like sugar, and it's in the jungle, will I lose the resource if I chop down the jungle? As far as I know, sugar can exist in grassland. I'm just afraid I'm going to lose it by messing with the tile.

- If I have a sea resource (clams) that is in my culture, but outside of a city's work radius, can I still send work boats to it so that I can gain it as a tradable resource? (and get the +1 health bonus). Or do sea resources need to be on workable tiles to gain the effects?

1) you do not chop down anything useful when chopping. So, if you want to farm a resource (sugar, in your case) that's in the jungle, you can't build the farm unless you know iron working.

2) Endure is right. Any resource in your cultural borders is available for use and does not have to be worked to gain the benefits... Except the food benefits. Then it must be in your cities fat cross.

 

[Abegweit]

Hey a couple of stupid questions. (thanks for this thread)

Not stupid

- If I have a resource like sugar, and it's in the jungle, will I lose the resource if I chop down the jungle? As far as I know, sugar can exist in grassland. I'm just afraid I'm going to lose it by messing with the tile.

You don't lose the resource. AFAIK, it is not possible to destroy resources period.

If I have a sea resource (clams) that is in my culture, but outside of a city's work radius, can I still send work boats to it so that I can gain it as a tradable resource? (and get the +1 health bonus). Or do sea resources need to be on workable tiles to gain the effects?

Yes, if you send a work boat to it, you get the benefit.

Edit: Brantley beat me to it.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks Lord Parkin. I don't know how I missed seeing that article all this time...

Here's another quick question: When you grant independence to a colony, how is the capital city chosen? If I capture a couple of barb cities will it be the first city that I captured?

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that the "capital city" goes to the city with the highest population. If two cities have an equal population, then I believe that the capital goes to the oldest city. I can't check this at the moment without access to civ.

Another newbie question:

So I'm playing my first game of warlords ever and I've conquered the continent I was on and invaded another continent. I picked the weakest civ there and took about half his cities and then forced him to capitulate and now have my first vassal state.

I am able to gift them techs, resources and gold, but for some reason I cannot gift them back a couple cities I took from them. Is it not possible to gift cities back to the vassal state? The cities aren't really in a prime location, and I pretty much just want the vassal state to guard my western flank against the russians (they're pretty powerful on this continent) while I attack the english to the north. I don't want to have to waste troops, gold, etc on those cities I took if I can get the vassal state to do it for me.

Hmm, I'm not too sure on this one sorry. What happens when you try to give them the cities - is the option redded out, or do they just not accept the offer?

The button clicks in and out, and the animations going on in the background of the screen lag for about a second or less, and then nothing happens. No error message, nothing.




Bitter.

This certainly sounds odd. It seems like the most likely problem would be in your firewall still blocking some of the necessary ports for civilization. That's the only reason I can think of that your computer would be doing that.

Question: Why do Civs in BTS trade you for something, wait a while and decide that the deal no longer works - only to offer it again a few turns later??

Pet Peeve: Vassels. Last two games I've gone to war with a civ (A) - then another civ (B) goes to war with them - then A capitulates to B - so I'm at war with BOTH.

For your question - that is a known bug introduced by the 3.13 patch. There is nothing that you can do about this, aside from installing the "unofficial patch" which can be found in the BTS forum. I also got frustrated with the problematic AI deals, so I installed the unofficial patch and it all appears to work fine now.

You don't lose the resource. AFAIK, it is not possible to destroy resources period.

Yes, that's correct. There is no way to destroy a resource in the normal (unmodded) game, aside from going into the World Builder and physically removing it yourself. Once a resource appears or is discovered, it remains there forever.

Resources can, however, be created - every mine that is worked by a city in your empire has a small (I believe 1/10000) chance of generating a mineable resource (if I recall correctly, the options are Copper, Iron, Gold, Silver, and Gems, and later Aluminium and (?) Uranium) each turn.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Another newbie question:

So I'm playing my first game of warlords ever and I've conquered the continent I was on and invaded another continent. I picked the weakest civ there and took about half his cities and then forced him to capitulate and now have my first vassal state.

I am able to gift them techs, resources and gold, but for some reason I cannot gift them back a couple cities I took from them. Is it not possible to gift cities back to the vassal state? The cities aren't really in a prime location, and I pretty much just want the vassal state to guard my western flank against the russians (they're pretty powerful on this continent) while I attack the english to the north. I don't want to have to waste troops, gold, etc on those cities I took if I can get the vassal state to do it for me.

The developers decided that creating a vassal out of a defeated civilization should be a permanent decision. They didn't want to enable the loophole where you could virtually destroy a civilization and then create a vassal state out of the remaining cities only to destroy this vassal state after a short period of peace where you were rebuilding your army.

The developers also wanted to enable the vassal state to regain its freedom when the former conqueror would become relatively weak. Thus when a vassal gains 50% or more of the land area of the former conqueror, then it can regain its freedom.

Now when the conqueror could gift back cities to the vassal state, then this would again enable the loophole where the conqueror can 'force' freedom on the vassal and then conquer the rest of the vassals cities. So to avoid such a loophole, it is impossible to gift back cities to a vassal.

Hey a couple of stupid questions. (thanks for this thread)

- If I have a resource like sugar, and it's in the jungle, will I lose the resource if I chop down the jungle? As far as I know, sugar can exist in grassland. I'm just afraid I'm going to lose it by messing with the tile.

- If I have a sea resource (clams) that is in my culture, but outside of a city's work radius, can I still send work boats to it so that I can gain it as a tradable resource? (and get the +1 health bonus). Or do sea resources need to be on workable tiles to gain the effects?

The sea resource question was already answered. An improved resource inside your cultural borders and connected to your cities can be used by your cities and is available for trade.

The other question also has a fairly easy answer. You can never remove a resource from the game by worker actions. Actually, the only way to build the resource enabling improvement, the plantation, on top of a sugar resource is by removing the jungle. A jungle and a plantation cannot coexist.

Question: Why do Civs in BTS trade you for something, wait a while and decide that the deal no longer works - only to offer it again a few turns later??

This is related to a bug. Install Bhruic unofficial patch on top of the official BTS 3.13 patch to solve this issue.

Pet Peeve: Vassels. Last two games I've gone to war with a civ (A) - then another civ (B) goes to war with them - then A capitulates to B - so I'm at war with BOTH.

The fact that the B will be at war with you is taken into consideration when it accepts the capitulation from A. So B would rather have war with you while gaining A as a vassal than the former situation. It's a kind of a dirty backstab by civilisation B.

Note that the unofficial patch makes it so that a defeated civ will try to capitulate to the civilisation that conquered the largest part of it. If this civilisation refuses the capitulation, then it may still search for another master.

 

[Endure]

Hmm, I'm not too sure on this one sorry. What happens when you try to give them the cities - is the option redded out, or do they just not accept the offer?

In the trade screen, under the cities tab, there are no cities listed as available to trade. Not sure why that is.

 

[kopfschuss]

Hello!

I've been browsing these forums quite frequently the past few days, reading PDFs and checking the Strat forum as well as just generally browsing but there are still a few things I'm unsure of, which I may have missed in my studies.

(I'm currently playing BtS as The Vikings; Noble/Terra/Epic settings with time victory disabled)

The concept of a settler rush: I'm just not sure exactly how soon after founding my first city I should have more cities set up.

Also I always end up with sick & angry people in my main city. No matter how many farms I build nothing changes.

Third: No matter what I do I just can't seem to get ahead in my military production (going for a domination victory) because I think I'm spending too much time setting up cities (which kinda ties into my first problem) and trying to bee-line for berserkers which takes a long time for me. Are they generally worth it or should I stick with axe/sword units?

Lastly, I end up in war because people keep asking me to cut my ties with everyone else and I just say no until they get annoyed with me. Any tips on how to handle this situation?

I may have missed these topics in obvious places, so sorry if these questions are readily answered somewhere!

 

[Endure]

Hello!

I've been browsing these forums quite frequently the past few days, reading PDFs and checking the Strat forum as well as just generally browsing but there are still a few things I'm unsure of, which I may have missed in my studies.

(I'm currently playing BtS as The Vikings; Noble/Terra/Epic settings with time victory disabled)

The concept of a settler rush: I'm just not sure exactly how soon after founding my first city I should have more cities set up.

Also I always end up with sick & angry people in my main city. No matter how many farms I build nothing changes.

Third: No matter what I do I just can't seem to get ahead in my military production (going for a domination victory) because I think I'm spending too much time setting up cities (which kinda ties into my first problem) and trying to bee-line for berserkers which takes a long time for me. Are they generally worth it or should I stick with axe/sword units?

Lastly, I end up in war because people keep asking me to cut my ties with everyone else and I just say no until they get annoyed with me. Any tips on how to handle this situation?

I may have missed these topics in obvious places, so sorry if these questions are readily answered somewhere!

Well first off, welcome to the forums.

1) Settler rush - I generally try to have my first settler out by 2500 BC, usually with the aid of a worker chopping forests. I'm by no means any sort of expert though so others could probably help you out more here.

2) Building farms won't help you with sick people unless their built on resources like wheat, corn, etc. You need to control the size of your cities and prevent them from growing too big early on (overcrowding leads to unhealthiness and unhappiness). Best way I find to do this is with whipping the unhappy/unhealthy population away with slavery. Whipping pop is also important for early expansion, either via the war or peaceful means. Eventually you can build structures like adequets to deal with unhealthiness and temples for happiness. It's also important to remember that if you have heredity rule early on, each military unit stationed in a city provides +1 which can go a long ways to keeping your citizens happy and productive.

3) Berserkers probably come too late if you want an early war, but if you don't mind waiting awhile to start a war, you could certainly wait for them. If your looking for an early war, I'd go with the axe rush. If your whipping away your excess population, you can build up an army of axes very quickly to take out your nearest opponent. Taking their cities early on will also help you later on because you'll have more cities (in hopefully good locations) to produce units for later wars.

4) There's a really good article in the war academy called "Triangle Diplomacy". You should read through it. It explains that if you try to keep everyone happy, you'll end up with everyone hating you. You want to pick out a couple AI's early on that like each other and become friends with them and work hard at maintaining diplomatic ties with them (same religion if possible, trades, accepting their demands, etc). It's impossible to have all the AI's like you, so you want to pick a few friends that will hopefully have your back when you need them.

I'm fairly new here myself, so others may have better insight to provide, but hopefully this helps a little.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hello!

Hello back to you and welcome to civfanatics!

I've been browsing these forums quite frequently the past few days, reading PDFs and checking the Strat forum as well as just generally browsing but there are still a few things I'm unsure of, which I may have missed in my studies.

(I'm currently playing BtS as The Vikings; Noble/Terra/Epic settings with time victory disabled)

The concept of a settler rush: I'm just not sure exactly how soon after founding my first city I should have more cities set up.

It's not very wise to expand extremely quickly in civilization IV (it was a good move in civilization III). In civilization IV, cities cost upkeep and because the income is fairly limited at the start of the game, this upkeep can become too much when you expand very quickly. So you'll have to make sure that cities actually contribute to your empire. Investing lots of hammers into a city and city defenders and then just letting that city sit there won't do a lot of good for your empire. You have to make sure that each city contributes to your empire as quickly as possible as otherwise, they're just dead weight that will pull your civilisation down.

To get these cities up and running quickly, you need a sufficient number of workers. As long as there are cities working unimproved tiles and as long as forests exist that could be chopped to speed up the development of your cities, you know that you could use more workers.

At the very start of the game, your capital is completely unimproved and building a settler at that point to start expanding your empire is a very time consuming thing. A typical capital will produce 5 hammers (from food and actual production) when building a settler at the start of the game and it won't grow during this construction as the food is invested into the settler. It's better to first improve the food and hammer output of your capital by improving tiles around the capital. It takes a while before the capital will be productive and can produce its first settler. The second settler won't take as long as the capital can now produce quickly. Just make sure that these cities actually contribute to your empire as quickly as possible and don't drag you down.

Also I always end up with sick & angry people in my main city. No matter how many farms I build nothing changes.

You probably missed the happiness and health values next to the production and food bar at the top of the city screen. The starting health and happiness values are pretty low and are quite limiting. As a city grows, it's unhealthiness and unhappiness grow by 1 for every population point that is added. Once the unhealthiness exceeds the healthiness, the city will become sick resulting in a loss of food. Once the unhappiness exceeds the happiness, some citizens will become unhappy. Unhappy citizens still eat food but don't produce anything.

The only way to solve the issue is to increase the health value and happiness value of a city. There are many ways to do this which are nicely categorised in these two articles:
Ways into happiness by cabert and
Ways into health by cabert.

Often, the ways to increase the health and happiness of a city are limited at a certain point in the game. More options will open themselves at a later date, but at that specific point, the options are limited. Thus you want to make sure that the city just doesn't become so unhealthy and unhappy by limiting its growth. You can do that by switching from high food, low hammer or high food, low commerce to low food, high hammer and low food, high commerce tiles. Using the rush production option from slavery is another method to transform excess population into something useful: hammers.
The end goal of a city is not to become big, it's to get a high hammer and commerce output.

Note that producing lots of farms actually had an adverse effect as it made the food production of your cities even larger and thus resulting in faster growth and bigger cities with more health and happiness issues.

Third: No matter what I do I just can't seem to get ahead in my military production (going for a domination victory) because I think I'm spending too much time setting up cities (which kinda ties into my first problem) and trying to bee-line for berserkers which takes a long time for me. Are they generally worth it or should I stick with axe/sword units?

You should just use the units that you can build when going to war. It's no use postponing war to wait for that perfect unit that will come someday. Of course, it is also not useful to go to war when there's no prospect of any actual gains. Make sure that you're stronger than your opponent. Scout his lands before the war and take a look at the Power Graph (F9 screen) to guess the strength of your opposition. And very important, don't go up against well defended cities without lots of siege equipment. Use siege units to remove the defence bonus and use a few collateral damage attacks from siege units before sending in the non-siege units.

War is a costly affair in civilisation IV. You'll lose units, your diplomatic relations will suffer, you'll lose trading opportunities and trade deals will be cancelled, your enemy may pillage some of your lands and last but not least is the war weariness unhappiness which will appear in your cities making your citizens unhappy and inactive. The gains of a successful was are also considerable. You'll gain cities, the basic building blocks of your civilisation, greatly increasing the strength of your civilisation while you similarly weaken one opponent. The cost of an unsuccessful war is that your empire will stagnate because of the costs of war while your opponents empires will grow further.

If you can't produce enough units for a war, then your cities might not be productive enough. It's always a good idea to create a few cities that have a high production (lots of mines and enough food to feed the citizens that work these mines) and can produce units quickly.

Lastly, I end up in war because people keep asking me to cut my ties with everyone else and I just say no until they get annoyed with me. Any tips on how to handle this situation?

You can't be friends with 2 people who hate each other. They will continuously ask you to chose between them and when you don't, then they'll start to hate you too. The idea is to pick a limited number of civilisations who are likely to like each other (same religion) and become friends with them. If they ask you to break your ties with someone outside this limited group because they don't like that civilisation, then you should seriously consider doing that. If they ask you for a small favour, then you should also consider doing that. Even war against a civilisation outside the group of friends should be considered. You can't stay completely neutral in this game. You're often forced to choose a side.

Diplomacy is an important aspect of this game, don't neglect it. It can be one of the more interesting parts of the game if you get into it.