Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions
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Roland Johansen
Deity
I have heard of this issue with low end graphic cards or graphic card drivers which weren't updated. But this was mainly at the time when vanilla civ4 was just on the market so it could be a totally different issue.
The best place to get answers for such an issue would be the Technical Support forum.
Mallin
Supreme Meerkat Dictator
It really depends on what type of game your playing. If you were playing for cutural victory then you would probably want to focus on getting artist, prophets (for religions and shrines), and engineers to build cultural wonders earlier on in the game. If wanted to create a powerful industrial nation then focus on scientist and engineers through the mid to late game period. If your going for merchants then focus on them in the same time period since wealth is not really important early on.
Personally I usually just let the greats take their own path and then modify the game around that.
Thanks for the responses to my earlier questions guys.
Something else I’ve been wondering about is if it is worth using the build research/wealth icons. My cities founded in BC usually run into problems where I’ve built all the structures necessary. E.G My research cities have built all research producing structures, would it be standard practice to stick a bank/market in, or run the research icon for a while until new options open up?
Something else I’ve been wondering about is if it is worth using the build research/wealth icons. My cities founded in BC usually run into problems where I’ve built all the structures necessary. E.G My research cities have built all research producing structures, would it be standard practice to stick a bank/market in, or run the research icon for a while until new options open up?
Roland Johansen
Deity
Since the first few great persons are very cheap to get and give very large returns for their low cost (measured in Great Person Points (GPP's)), there is a big incentive to get the first few quick.
There can be reasons to delay the production of GPP's a bit. For instance, you want a great prophet for the shrine in your holy city and you want it as quick as possible, but at present you can only produce great scientists points by employing scientists. However, in a few turns a World Wonder will be finished which produces great prophet points and then you can build a temple there for even more great prophet points. It might be interesting to delay the great scientists points if they would be produced in the same city as the great prophet points (and thus pollute the great person poins pool) or if they would result in a great person in another city first. This would delay the creation of the great prophet as the costs of the next great person are higher.
In other games, you might prefer a great scientist first even though you have a holy city without a shrine.
It's certainly possible to win the game at even the highest difficulty levels without focussing on great persons or by even ignoring them. But you're not making things easier for yourself. To demonstrate the great worth of the first great persons, I'll give an example:
A great merchant can perform a trade mission which can generate a lot of money, even early in the game. Lets say that he were to generate 1000 gold if you create one early in the game (later the profit is a lot larger with bigger cities). The first great person costs 100 GPP's (at normal game speed). So the value is 10 gold per GPP. Since a merchant generate 3 GPP's in addition to its normal output (3 gold), that mean that the value of the specialist is actually 3*10 +3 = 33 gold per turn. That's a very high value for a citizen in one of your cities.
The GPP value of specialists however diminishes quickly as their cost increases for each one that you create.
I rarely get into the situation early in the game that my research cities have build everything that they need and there's no useful thing to build in them. Maybe your research cities production is a bit high relative to their commerce output. However, I don't see why you question the value of a bank/market in research cities. Research cities are basically cities that have a high value of commerce production (or many scientists). A part of that commerce is invested into gold for maintenance and unit upgrades. If you have banks and markets, then a smaller fraction of commerce needs to be invested in gold and more can be invested in research. (If your research cities are mainly producing their research through scientists then commerce and thus base gold might be very low in this city and banks and markets aren't very useful).
If you play on low difficulty levels, then maintenance and unit upgrade costs can be so low that you barely need to divert commerce into gold. I can see that you wouldn't build markets and banks in this case. At higher difficulty levels, the costs for maintenance and unit upgrades (you need more units) are higher and thus gold increasing buildings are more valuable.
Building wealth and research can be fairly efficient since that it produces a base of 1 gold/research per hammer. It used to be 1/2. It can be necessary when you've overstretched your economy a bit by expansion or conquest. Usually, I have better investments for my hammers like buildings or units. However, many game approaches can work and I've seen players defending a minimalistic approach towards buildings in favour of more use of the build gold/research mechanic.
It's usually very easy to see the return of the building that you're contemplating to build.
150 hammer observatory adding 25% research to my base research output of 20 (80% science of 25 commerce) = 150 hammers for 5 research per turn.
150 hammers can also be converted to 150 research by building research.
Do you want 150 research or 5 research per turn?
If you do such comparisons, then set the research slider on where you'll have it on average. It's no use to assume your current 80% slider rating when you're going to upgrade lots of units in the future and will set the gold slider at 100% for several turns to accomplish that.
Good post Roland. I just wanted to point out that one can often get more beakers
science by building wealth and increasing the science slider setting, since the wealth produced pays your expenses and frees you up to run a higher science slider. Then you're running the beakers produced by commerce commerce through your science multipliers. In my current game, I was getting 1.19 beakers per 1 
with several libraries, plus an Academy in the capital. I'm playing as a Philosophical leader, so I wanted to take advantage of the double production speed universities. Once I got those set up, I was getting about 1.35 beakers per 1 , and now that Oxford University is up and running I'm getting nearly 1.5 beakers per 1 , which means that every 2 
used to produce wealth can be converted into 3 
via the science slider, while the same 2 hammers used to produce research produce only 2 . The ratio would be even higher if I were still running Bureaucracy. DouLou, you can calculate the empire-wide value of 
-derived beakers to -derived gold by (one way to do it) lowering your science slider a notch or two and calculating as follows:(# of
produced at higher science slider setting - # of produced at lower slider setting) / gold: produced at higher GOLD slider setting (LOWER science slider) - produced at lower gold slider setting) Sorry if that looks clunky.
e.g. for me recently, (870-230 (100% science vs. 0% science)) / (219 - -213 (Negative gold at 0% gold slider) = 640 / 432 = 1.48
per 1 Because of this dynamic, I haven't built research much, unless I'm in a golden age and already running 100% science. Sometimes people will get alphabet before currency and have the option of building research but not the option of building wealth yet. There may be some other applications which I'm not knowledgeable about. Also be aware that I usually have at least some cottages, so commerce is important to me. Some people take a more specialist-heavy approach, and the beakers produced by specialists are not subject to the ratio (that's why I used the phrase "
-derived beakers" above). However, the gold produced by merchants, priests, or settled great prophets can also help pay your bills and let you run a higher science slider.
Roland Johansen
Deity
Good post Roland. I just wanted to point out that one can often get more beakers
Very true. I didn't want to go into these mechanics in this thread as it's a beginners thread and my post was already getting lengthy. But you explained in a relatively clear way given the technicality of the subject. Good job.
By the way, I've had a game where I was using a espionage economy where my gold multiplier was higher than the science multiplier. In that case, this of course doesn't work. My economy was optimized using espionage multipliers and gold multipliers. Still building gold would have given me more espionage points than a hypothetical building espionage ability would have because my espionage point multiplier was higher during a large part of the game than my gold multiplier.
Thanks for the reply Roland, that helped a lot.
I have another question, though.
When I click create a city that overlaps with another city, there are some tiles I can't work, even when the original city isn't working them. How do I know which ones I can and cannot work? I believe you can work overlapping tiles from both cities (although not at the same time) because some people on these forums have mentioned "sharing" tiles.
I have another question, though.
When I click create a city that overlaps with another city, there are some tiles I can't work, even when the original city isn't working them. How do I know which ones I can and cannot work? I believe you can work overlapping tiles from both cities (although not at the same time) because some people on these forums have mentioned "sharing" tiles.
r_rolo1
King of myself
You can choose which city gets the tiles. Go to the city screen and left click on the tile if it fogged. Now you can work it in that city 
( and obviously not in the other 
)
( and obviously not in the other )
r_rolo1
King of myself
Not so doh... I've seen players that play in Immortal level that didn't knew this one
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2007
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- 20,112
Just wondering -- Is there a way to make it so it's possible for workers to get on the mountains and build a road, and if there's a road on it, other units can pass?
I'm not sure where the XML files are, and even if I did, I wouldn't know where to start.
EDIT: Found the XML, but I'm even more confused. As well, anybody remember in Civ3 that the chariots couldn't enter a mountain unless it was on a road? Like that, except for all the other units.
I'm not sure where the XML files are, and even if I did, I wouldn't know where to start.
EDIT: Found the XML, but I'm even more confused. As well, anybody remember in Civ3 that the chariots couldn't enter a mountain unless it was on a road? Like that, except for all the other units.
Thank you. I see your point about it being a beginners' thread.
Thank you for sharing that. I haven't run an espionage economy yet so I wouldn't have thought of that. By the way, I saw a mod here on CFC that adds the "build espionage" ability. Of course once espionage multipliers go up, you probably wouldn't want to use it anymore, like you are saying..
Roland Johansen
Deity
It surely is possible to mod this but not with just XML-mods. In standard unmodded Civ3, mountains were accessible to every unit without roads.
There was an announcement about a civ4 modcomponent that made mountains accessible on then main page of the forum. It's called Mountains: back to service. Further down in that thread, another mod is mentioned which allows various types of restricted movement.
The 'build espionage' option seems to be a forgotten option in BTS, so it doesn't surprise me that a modder created a modcomponent to add it to the game.
You must try the espionage economy some time. It's really good for those games where you have a hard time keeping up with the AI tech rate, the ones where you play at the edge of your abilities. Especially when you can control the state religion of your neighbours. This allows significant espionage bonuses and makes technology stealing fairly cheap compared to normal research.
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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- Apr 5, 2007
- Messages
- 20,112
thanks much.
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