Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Renata]

You're so mean.

 

[Jonezy]

Hey everyone!

I'm a complete newbie to the Civilization world. Well I kind of played around with Civilization 1, when I was kid building as many wonders as possible. Well, after years with Football Manager, I have been needing a new fix/time killer/something to take my mind of the real world, and I decided that Civilization must be worth a serious bash.

So here I am with a new copy of Civ4 Complete (Euro version, no Colonization), and in my attempt to understand this complex piece of wonderful gaming experience I stumpled upon this great forum, where a complete noob like me, won't be laughed at, but helped (unless you are a serious tread spammer and annoy some people). Been lurking for a few days, still trying to get through some of all the amazing guides and strategies, but one step at a time (I'm still far (actually very frickin far) away for having just a rough idea of every unit, building, wonder and tech and what they do).

So played the tutorial on the vanilla version, and then shifted to BTS, as I wanted all them lovely civilizations to play with. After a settler game, where I was more confused than anything, but still won by a mile, I started on chieftain without the espionage, vassal thingy and random events (one thing at a time right).

Now I have had two games on chieftain level, mostly trying to rush a neighbor (its not really a rush though, when your rush stack contains swordsmen though is it...) and my first attempts to specialize my cities. Is all good and I'm slowly getting confident with the first third of the game, but still get rather perplexed when I reach the more modern times (oh well, one thing at a time right...).

Now, in both games the world was 2 big continents (played fractal, large map and on normal speed) and I 'rushed' a neighbor and settled down becoming friends with the others on my continent. Then, when we find the other continent, everybody over there are happy chappy best mates sharing a religion between them; so I figure I don't want to warfare the whole other continent, so I tuck myself in and wonder/specialist spam 3 cities in order to win a cultural win (bit boring, yay, but a win is a win). But apparently legendary city is not reached at 50000 culture points, but on 100000? Is that a bug or have I mocked up some settings, as I thought legendary was reached with 50000 on normal speed? Or does is have to be 3 cities settled by me? Maybe its just the game telling me to get a grip, and play a higher level. (Had to go for space wins instead..)

I also have another question, which I probably will be told to find in some guide around here, but I'll try anyway. How does the granary work? My city will grow no matter, as long as I have enough food on the working tiles right, so the granary is only for making this growth faster? So if I don't fancy my city to grow rapidly (those unhappy muppets wont help out anyway), I should skip on the granary?

Wow, this turned out longer than expected. Sorry about that.

 

[Silv Something]

Hey everyone!

I'm a complete newbie to the Civilization world. Well I kind of played around with Civilization 1, when I was kid building as many wonders as possible. Well, after years with Football Manager, I have been needing a new fix/time killer/something to take my mind of the real world, and I decided that Civilization must be worth a serious bash.

So here I am with a new copy of Civ4 Complete (Euro version, no Colonization), and in my attempt to understand this complex piece of wonderful gaming experience I stumpled upon this great forum, where a complete noob like me, won't be laughed at, but helped (unless you are a serious tread spammer and annoy some people). Been lurking for a few days, still trying to get through some of all the amazing guides and strategies, but one step at a time (I'm still far (actually very frickin far) away for having just a rough idea of every unit, building, wonder and tech and what they do).

So played the tutorial on the vanilla version, and then shifted to BTS, as I wanted all them lovely civilizations to play with. After a settler game, where I was more confused than anything, but still won by a mile, I started on chieftain without the espionage, vassal thingy and random events (one thing at a time right).

Now I have had two games on chieftain level, mostly trying to rush a neighbor (its not really a rush though, when your rush stack contains swordsmen though is it...) and my first attempts to specialize my cities. Is all good and I'm slowly getting confident with the first third of the game, but still get rather perplexed when I reach the more modern times (oh well, one thing at a time right...).

Now, in both games the world was 2 big continents (played fractal, large map and on normal speed) and I 'rushed' a neighbor and settled down becoming friends with the others on my continent. Then, when we find the other continent, everybody over there are happy chappy best mates sharing a religion between them; so I figure I don't want to warfare the whole other continent, so I tuck myself in and wonder/specialist spam 3 cities in order win a cultural win (bit boring, yay, but a win is a win). But apparently legendary city is not reached at 50000 culture points, but on 100000? Is that a bug or have I mocked up some settings, as I thought legendary was reached with 50000 on normal speed? Or does is have to be 3 cities settled by me? Maybe its just the game telling me to get a grip, and play a higher level. (Had to go for space wins instead..)

I also have another question, which I probably will be told to find in some guide around here, but I'll try anyway. How does the granary work? My city will grow no matter, as long as I have enough food on the working tiles right, so the granary is only for making this growth faster? So if I don't fancy my city to become grow rapidly (those unhappy muppets wont help out anyway), I should skip on the granary?

Wow, this turned out longer than expected. Sorry about that.

The granary makes it so when your food bar gets full and you get a pop point instead of starting over the food bar is already half full. It is extremely useful for making your cities grow faster. But if you don't want your cities to grow so fast, because of the happy cap, maybe, you should not build a granary.

Your culture city question beats me.

Welcome to the forums though!

 

[Jonezy]

The granary makes it so when your food bar gets full and you get a pop point instead of starting over the food bar is already half full. It is extremely useful for making your cities grow faster. But if you don't want your cities to grow so fast, because of the happy cap, maybe, you should not build a granary.

Your culture city question beats me.

Welcome to the forums though!

Thanks for a nice welcome!

Know how a granary work: Check. (Sucks being new to everything.....)

 

[Freezer-TPF-]

If you disable espionage, I think buildings that would produce espionage points produce culture instead -- therefore the amount you need for a cultural win gets raised.

 

[Padma]

I started on chieftain without the espionage, vassal thingy and random events (one thing at a time right).

<snip>

But apparently legendary city is not reached at 50000 culture points, but on 100000? Is that a bug or have I mocked up some settings, as I thought legendary was reached with 50000 on normal speed?

It sounds like you have the 3.19 patch installed. With that patch, you can turn Espionage off, but Culture-production is then increased, so they changed the requirements for Legendary Cities to correspond. (It's kind of complex, but if you play with Espionage ON, Legendary should go back to 50000.)

 

[Freezer-TPF-]

What exactly do I need to do to blockade a port city? Do I need to have a blockading ship on every adjacent coast tile? Is there a way to tell whether I have a city properly blockaded?

 

[Ghpstage]

What exactly do I need to do to blockade a port city? Do I need to have a blockading ship on every adjacent coast tile? Is there a way to tell whether I have a city properly blockaded?

Blockade is only in BTS and it is shown as a unit command similar to Pillage or Settle, once used it blockades all tiles in a 7*7 area (3 tiles in every direction) surrounding the ship. It prevents the passage of trade through those tiles (other routes usually exist though) including resources and stops cities working the affected water tiles.

I also have another question, which I probably will be told to find in some guide around here, but I'll try anyway. How does the granary work? My city will grow no matter, as long as I have enough food on the working tiles right, so the granary is only for making this growth faster? So if I don't fancy my city to grow rapidly (those unhappy muppets wont help out anyway), I should skip on the granary?

The unhappy citizens can be made to contribute by liberal use of slavery

 

[Freezer-TPF-]

Thanks on the blockade answer, and good point about other trade routes usually existing. I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Skreed]

New to Civ 4, Playing my first BTS game last night... I had kindof a slow start and hadnt quite gotten around to concentrating on my millitary yet when Alexander declared war on me. I had a few (primative) units in most of my towns, but nothing that would stand in the way of an above average military civ.

Long story short... several units/stacks began to advance and then just stopped, fortified, and didnt budge.

At first I thought it was some 'Improved AI' trickery (attempt to bait me into attacking, thus weakening my already suspect defenses). But it kept going on and on... long enough for me to build a military that was vastly superior to the one loitering on my land... put walls around several of my cities... research a couple of key techs so I could build Cats-O-Plenty (and my first trebochets) for a counter offensive. All while their Swordsmen and Phalanxes sat around watching.

They'd still be there now if I hadnt cracked them before calling it a night.

I wasnt keeping track, but I'd say they were there 75-100 turns before I cleaned up. For their trouble, they forced me to become a military juggernaut... and all it cost me was my chance at the Hanging Gardens (by 2 turns!!! ) and a lot of improvements to my newest city (founded the same turn they declared war).

That has to be a bug or glitch of some kind... not sure if its been fixed in a patch, but I intend to update to the newest version when I get home tonight. Has anyone seen this? is it common?

 

[Jonezy]

Whaow, what a forum this is!

It's the espionage off that triggers the culture points needed for a legendary city, been annoying me for days I couldn't figure it out. Thanks. Culture win seems pretty hard then (then again, what do I know..). Guess I better start learning the trade of espionage then.

Oh, and my slavery utilizing needs some serious practice... I'm working on it.

Thanks again. Time for my very first experience with Roman praetorians...

 

[Roland Johansen]

But apparently legendary city is not reached at 50000 culture points, but on 100000? Is that a bug or have I mocked up some settings, as I thought legendary was reached with 50000 on normal speed? Or does is have to be 3 cities settled by me? Maybe its just the game telling me to get a grip, and play a higher level. (Had to go for space wins instead..)

The espionage points that can be earned by the special espionage buildings are a decent amount and all of them are converted into culture in a no-espionage game. This messes a bit with game balance as for instance the courthouse suddenly is useful for a culture border clash. It also messes with the cultural victory which would become too easy if the value was the same as in a normal game. However, doubling it to 100.000 as was just done in the latest patch is probably a bit too much making a culture victory a bit too hard again.

I also have another question, which I probably will be told to find in some guide around here, but I'll try anyway. How does the granary work? My city will grow no matter, as long as I have enough food on the working tiles right, so the granary is only for making this growth faster? So if I don't fancy my city to grow rapidly (those unhappy muppets wont help out anyway), I should skip on the granary?

The granary stores food from the moment that its construction is finished. It can hold a maximum of half the amount needed to grow which is released into the new food box once you grow a city size. This means that if you build it just before you grow, then it won't have its full effect yet as it can't fill halfway with the last few food points needed to grow to the next city size. But from that moment onward it will fill half the foodbox when you grow effectively doubling the growth rate.

When you become a bit more experienced with the game, you'll probably recognise that it is usually a good thing to have a granary as one of the first buildings in a city as getting your cities large fast is a good thing with all the extra population adding hammers and commerce to your city output. Next to that once the city has grown to its happiness and health caps then surplus food can normally be converted in other resources as commerce and hammers. This can be done by replacing farms by cottages and workshops and windmills by mines or by employing specialists, but also the strong slavery civic is very useful to convert population and thus food into finished production items.

Welcome to civfanatics, Jonezy!

New to Civ 4, Playing my first BTS game last night... I had kindof a slow start and hadnt quite gotten around to concentrating on my millitary yet when Alexander declared war on me. I had a few (primative) units in most of my towns, but nothing that would stand in the way of an above average military civ.

Long story short... several units/stacks began to advance and then just stopped, fortified, and didnt budge.

At first I thought it was some 'Improved AI' trickery (attempt to bait me into attacking, thus weakening my already suspect defenses). But it kept going on and on... long enough for me to build a military that was vastly superior to the one loitering on my land... put walls around several of my cities... research a couple of key techs so I could build Cats-O-Plenty (and my first trebochets) for a counter offensive. All while their Swordsmen and Phalanxes sat around watching.

They'd still be there now if I hadnt cracked them before calling it a night.

I wasnt keeping track, but I'd say they were there 75-100 turns before I cleaned up. For their trouble, they forced me to become a military juggernaut... and all it cost me was my chance at the Hanging Gardens (by 2 turns!!! ) and a lot of improvements to my newest city (founded the same turn they declared war).

That has to be a bug or glitch of some kind... not sure if its been fixed in a patch, but I intend to update to the newest version when I get home tonight. Has anyone seen this? is it common?

You could report it in the BetterAI forum. This mod tries to improve the AI in various ways. Maybe this issue wouldn't even have occurred if you had been playing that mod and then you might have been conquered. Great huh

If you report something in that forum, you'll need to provide a savegame though as otherwise it's almost impossible to see what the AI is exactly doing wrong and how to improve it.

Also welcome to civfanatics, Skreed!

 

[Ghpstage]

Guess I better start learning the trade of espionage then.

You can completely ignore the espionage side of the game if you want, even with espionage on, at least until your Monarch.


I have a few Peace Treaty and Defensive Pacts (DP) questions which i'm wondering whether anyone knows the answers to.

Do Peace Treaties block, or trump AP "war against the infidels" resolutions?
i.e. if I had a peace treaty with civ A and civs A, B, C and D were part of the AP, could the infidel resolution force a war against me? Would it even come up? and if so would civ A be allowed to join it?
Also, could one of these resolutions trigger a DP holder into a war? and if so, and the MPP holder was in the AP that declares on me, would the AP war or MPP take precedence? (i'd guess AP here)

With Peace Treaties and DPs without the AP;
If my DP partner has a peace treaty with a civ that attacks me, would the DP or peace treaty have priority?

I'm also wondering if it differs in different situations, or whether there is a general order of priority, something like
AP
DP
Peace Treaty (Which is what would guess the order is )

 

[Skreed]

You could report it in the BetterAI forum. This mod tries to improve the AI in various ways. Maybe this issue wouldn't even have occurred if you had been playing that mod and then you might have been conquered. Great huh

If you report something in that forum, you'll need to provide a savegame though as otherwise it's almost impossible to see what the AI is exactly doing wrong and how to improve it.

Thanks much. I'll take a look at that mod.

I was pretty sure I was stewed when I saw the largest of the AI Stacks at my doorstep. I lucked into some excellent starting territory too, so it would have been a shame to lose it had they not decided to have an eon-long picnic along my coastline.

I'm sure providing a 'savegame' is relatively straightforward, and something I'll look into.

[Edit] Wonder if this (from 3.19 patch notes) had something to do with those units stopping short of my cities... No work tomorrow so I have plenty of time to look into it tonight after work.

Fixed bug with AI not knowing how close its cities are to other players

 

[Roland Johansen]

[Edit] Wonder if this (from 3.19 patch notes) had something to do with those units stopping short of my cities... No work tomorrow so I have plenty of time to look into it tonight after work.

Fixed bug with AI not knowing how close its cities are to other players

That has to do with a bug in the AI which caused it to not recognise the distance to potential war victims correctly and therefore sometimes declaring war on a distant foe while it would be better to pick a nearby foe.

 

[jmas]

Two questions:

1) What happens if you complete the Mausoleum of Mausollos during a golden age?

Is the golden age extended by the normal 50% of its total duration (8 turns on Normal speed), by some fraction of that proportional to how much of the Golden Age is left, or do you get no benefit at all for that golden age?

And 2) Is a great merchant's trade mission generally worth more when it is "intercontinental" (on another land mass), even if that other land mass is closer than many locations on your own land mass? (I'm playing on a Pangaea map, but there are some islands settled by one of the AI)

Thanks all, in advance.

 

[Silv Something]

I have no idea about your first question (I only play vanilla) .

However I believe that ideally you would get the most money from a GM's (great merchant's ) trade mission if they are on the exact opposite tile from your capital. Then have them (mentally) walk around in a growing spiral until they find a city.

For example, if your capital is at 45 degrees north latitude and 90 degrees west longitude, you would ideally have a GM in a city at 45' S and 90' E.

Make sense?
I do not think your trade mission will give you more $$$ if it is on a different landmass.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Two questions:

1) What happens if you complete the Mausoleum of Mausollos during a golden age?

Is the golden age extended by the normal 50% of its total duration (8 turns on Normal speed), by some fraction of that proportional to how much of the Golden Age is left, or do you get no benefit at all for that golden age?

And 2) Is a great merchant's trade mission generally worth more when it is "intercontinental" (on another land mass), even if that other land mass is closer than many locations on your own land mass? (I'm playing on a Pangaea map, but there are some islands settled by one of the AI)

Thanks all, in advance.

1) I don't really know, but if I had to guess, then I'd assume that the length of a golden age is set once it starts.

2) The value of the trade mission is based on a theoretical trade route between your capital and the target city. This means that the distance of the target city to your capital and the size of this target city matter, but also all the normal modifiers that you see in the trade route breakdown in the city screen:

+5% for each population point of the Target city over 10
+25% if the receiving city has a connection to the Capital
+3% per turn since your last war with the civ (if it is another civ) [max 150%]
+50% if you have a Harbor
+100% for the ToArtemis
+100% if the other city is on another continent
+100% if it is another civ on another continent AND you have a Customs House

Note that you can see the benefits of the trade mission before you move your merchant to that city by doing the following:
Hold Shift
Set a go to move order for the merchant to the target city
Check the hover text above the trade mission, it should tell you the value of the mission
Cancel the move order
Release Shift

I must warn you that the civ engine can be a bit quircky about showing the hover text. If the trade mission button doesn't light up after you've set the move order, set another move order to the target city until you see the trade mission button lighting up. Don't forget to cancel all move orders before releasing shift.

Since the Temple of Artemis offers such a large bonus and it is likely build in a large city with a lot of the other bonuses, it is often the best target city.

 

[ladsud]

Can you pre build wonders like you could in Civ3?

 

[jmas]

Thank you Roland and Silv. In my current game, I'm about to capture the ToA from Frederick in his capital. I suppose from the standpoint of maximizing revenue, I could have waited to declare on him until I could tech Econ and grab the free GM (I probably could have done it within 10 turns if I'd known this)! My capital is hammer poor and recovering from massive Globe Theater drafting; I don't think it has a Harbor. I'll experiment with the process you describe and see if I think it's worth it to get a Harbor and/or Customs House--which would probably mean whipping to get them. Thank you for the replies!