Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[GooglyBoogly]

1) Yes, but only if the grenadier attacks - as the bonus applies only when grenadiers Attack riflemen, and not the other way around.

2) The game engine chooses the unit with the greatest odds of victory, this is not always a good thing in some situatons, most notably fights that involve the single medic promoted unit being chosen to defend over any of its wounded bretheren, and thus if it dies your units will heal MUCH less since there is no more medic - in a similar vein you may find that your Great General attached unit will defend when you would rather that a lesser unit were sacrificed. The game engine also does not take into account unused promotions, so you may lose a 5xp spearman over a 0xp one just because of their ordering (since they would have the same strength)

 

[Roland Johansen]

I've a couple questions I've run into.

1) If say a grenadier which has +50% bonus vs rifleman fights a redcoat (which replaces rifleman) does the bonus still work?

The bonuses are substracted from oneanother, so the grenadier gets a 25% bonus.

 

[PieceOfMind]

1) If say a grenadier which has +50% bonus vs rifleman fights a redcoat (which replaces rifleman) does the bonus still work?

By the way, whenever there is a bonus against a particular unit that bonus always applies to the various unique unit versions as well. For example, the Chariot has +100% attack vs. axemen, and this will apply also to the Phalanx, Vulture and Dog Soldier - all units which replace the axeman.

 

[Supr49er]

One of the good things about grouping your units in a Stack of Doom is that the game selects the best unit to defend/attack.

Welcome to the Forums dorn.

 

[IAM]

Welcome dorn!

 

[dorn]

By the way, whenever there is a bonus against a particular unit that bonus always applies to the various unique unit versions as well.

Yea this is what I was actually asking. Good to know.

I've another question. Is there any kind of guide or faq explaining what order great people can bulb technologies?

Also thanks for the welcome.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Yea this is what I was actually asking. Good to know.

I've another question. Is there any kind of guide or faq explaining what order great people can bulb technologies?

Also thanks for the welcome.

Enjoy.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952

 

[Perplexity]

What's the difference between "Space Race" and "Space Colony"?

 

[Lord Parkin]

What's the difference between "Space Race" and "Space Colony"?

The "Space Race" is the time that you (and other nations) are building spaceship parts in a race to complete your spaceship. In Beyond the Sword, after someone's spaceship is launched there is a set waiting period (usually around 10 turns on Normal speed) until the spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri to build the "Space Colony". During both stages, your spaceship can be sabotaged by rival nations.

Note that before Beyond the Sword, as soon as you completed the Space Race you won - there was no "Space Colony" stage.

 

[Gwynnja]

The "Space Race" is the time that you (and other nations) are building spaceship parts in a race to complete your spaceship. In Beyond the Sword, after someone's spaceship is launched there is a set waiting period (usually around 10 turns on Normal speed) until the spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri to build the "Space Colony". During both stages, your spaceship can be sabotaged by rival nations.

Note that before Beyond the Sword, as soon as you completed the Space Race you won - there was no "Space Colony" stage.

How do you sabotage a spaceship after it's been launched? I always thought that it was a matter of waiting?

 

[Lord Parkin]

How do you sabotage a spaceship after it's been launched? I always thought that it was a matter of waiting?

If you capture (or raze) the rival's capital city while the spaceship is in flight, the spaceship will be destroyed and they'll have to start again on building it. (A bit unrealistic, but I guess it's for game balance. )

 

[coldcell]

Hi,

I remember reading in this website guides on how to set up your city and what to do. I cant seem to find it... so can anyone guide me again ^^

1) Starting from basics: setting your cities. I know about the 20 tiles from the city that you can work on. But I'm confused about building a city where I can fit as many resources into those 20 tiles or simply expanding until I get those resources through roads?

2) World wonders. Should I build ALL world wonders in 1 city if I can help it to maximize benefits? Or should I spread out world wonders all over my city?


These are the 2 main things I'm confused about. Normally I just walk around with my Settlers until the AI tell me a good place (by blue circle) to settle. The thing is I dont know why that place is good lol...

 

[dalamb]

The AI does not always have the best opinion about where to put your city, but a blue circle is reasonable when you're starting out; that's what I used to do, and one of my few improvements since then is to ignore them when I have a specific goal in mind.

1. It is usually best to keep a resource in your BFC (big fat cross, the 21 tiles) so you can get the benefit of working them for the extra production, food, or commerce. If your cultural borders expands enough, you can connect the resource so that, for example, your cities can make axemen from a bronze mine outside your BFCs, but you should hope that will be rare.

2. As usual, there are different opinions. I've heard of one guy who likes to build all his wonders in a single city, but that seems to be a distinctly minority opinion. The main thing to think about is that those wonders generate Great Person Points (GPP) towards a specific kind of Great Person -- Prophets from Stonehenge, Engineers from Pyramids, etc. If you build all the wonders in once city, you "pollute the gene pool" -- there's a random chance of what kind of Great Person pops out. So if you want to push towards Great Prophets, you build stonehenge and the oracle in one city, pyramids in another (should you get so lucky as to build all of those), and run extra specialists in whichever city produces the kind of GP you want -- eg build a temple in the Stonehenge city and run a priest; build a forge in the pyramid city and run an engineer.

 

[Lord Parkin]

One advantage of putting most of your wonders in a single city, though, is that you can get more benefit out of the National Epic. What usually happens in my games is that I'll build my 3-4 earliest wonders in a single city, then later spread out and build wonders in different cities - especially as I start needing to build more than one at a time. (A good example is the Electricity/Radio/Mass Media stage of the game, where a lot of wonders that you'll want come very close together, and you may have to build them simultaneously in different cities to get them all.)

 

[Roland Johansen]

I personally usually build world wonders for their unique benefits (like a free technology from the Oracle or +2 experience from the Pentagon). The great person points are nice and are actually a fair share of the bonus for the earlier wonders. But when you're starting to invest 500+ hammers just for 2 great person points, then I think that's a less efficient investment.

If you have the luxury that you are so far ahead of any competition that you can choose and pick your location to build the world wonder, then I would (just like Lord Parkin) put all of them in the National Epic city. However, if you regularly are in this luxury situation, then I guess your presently used difficulty level isn't really challlenging you.

The reason to concentrate all great person points generation into one single city has to do with the way that the great person birth algorithm works. If a great person is born, then the next one will cost significantly more and so many cities who just produce a small amount of great person points will actually never create a great person because they're chasing a GPP birth value that is increasing faster than the speed at which they create great person points. The GPP generated in these cities are completely wasted when they don't lead to the birth of a great person.

 

[dalamb]

Yes, but... sometimes people create a GP farm city solely to generate, for example, Great Scientists, or perhaps Great Artists in a cultural victory strategy. Then you might want those few-GPP other wonders in a separate city to avoid polluting the gene pool.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Yes, but... sometimes people create a GP farm city solely to generate, for example, Great Scientists, or perhaps Great Artists in a cultural victory strategy. Then you might want those few-GPP other wonders in a separate city to avoid polluting the gene pool.

Of course, there exist such strategies. This game luckily has no always best strategies.

 

[NecroAngel]

Question to anyone here, really. How long do your games usually last in real-time? Regardless of what speed you have it on. Do you play it over days? Even on quick this game seems incredibly slow. I usually can't get as motivated if I re-load the next day having already experienced much of it...

Also, are there any 'rues of thumb' for conquering someone? Because often this is a huge problem for me. I feel the need to build up an army over many, many turns to utterly dominate them. Once I get there though, the ridiculous amount of defence bonuses they get make it incredibly messy. The only time I stand a chance is if they're very peaceful and have only built a few units.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Question to anyone here, really. How long do your games usually last in real-time? Regardless of what speed you have it on. Do you play it over days? Even on quick this game seems incredibly slow. I usually can't get as motivated if I re-load the next day having already experienced much of it...

Also, are there any 'rues of thumb' for conquering someone? Because often this is a huge problem for me. I feel the need to build up an army over many, many turns to utterly dominate them. Once I get there though, the ridiculous amount of defence bonuses they get make it incredibly messy. The only time I stand a chance is if they're very peaceful and have only built a few units.

Games can last days, months, even years (eg. multiplayer games by email with one turn per day)!

With your military conquests, it sounds like you would benefit greatly by bringing along more siege units such as catapults, trebuchets, cannons, artillery. When you attack cities, you should use these units (or bombers or ships) to reduce the city defenses to 0% by bombarding first. After doing that, you should send in your siege units first, even if you lose several in the process, as they will damage many defenders. After the siege, you use your normal units like city raider units and so on. This works well because combat favours the healthy over the injured.

A lot of people describe this as sacrificing cats (catapults). Although it seems odd, it's a very common (and effective) strategy.

 

[Gwynnja]

I usually play marathon and my games usually take 20-30 hours. An OCC played on normal speed will take me around 6 hours.