Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Most naval units that require oil actually require oil OR uranium. They do not require both. Most modern land units MUST have oil. If you have uranium, this is the reason why you can build oil-requiring naval but not land units.

 

Probably because you've got uranium. Naval units require oil or uranium to be built; that's why you can build destroyers and battleships and not fighters or tanks.

Edit: D'oh, I posted 120 seconds too late xD

 

perhaps you discovered & mined uranium
uranium can be used for naval units but not the others u mentioned

 

When attacking with siege, do you feel that it's better to attack with your siege until all your other units have 90%+ odds, or attacking until your best units have about 70% odds to save more siege at the potential cost of city raider 3 melee units?

 

Those naval units require oil or uranium; the land units require oil specifically. You can check the Civilopedia in-game to discover what resources each unit requires -- which can also be handy to know when you go to war, so you know where to pillage the enemy to reduce their military abilities.

 

Depends on how much siege I have. If I have a lot, then I'll drop defenses and attack with all I can. If I only have a few, I'll use them to drop defenses and suicide only one or two.

 

Shrines give Gold NOT commerce

 

Isn't it +1 ?

EDIT: Emu'd

 

If I have enough siege, then I will attack with siege until I can attack no more (all opposing units are below the maxdamage threshold of the siege units). I typically make sure that I have enough. Depending on the odds, I'll use my best siege units or my weakest.

If you haven't build enough siege to do this (you won't against a large SOD) then it isn't the odds against the top defender that matter. If my leading siege units has 60% odds against the best defender and the leading melee unit 80% odds and the rest of the defenders are much weaker, then it's probably a good idea to use the melee unit (as the expected value of losses is lower). Siege units are primarily useful to increase the odds against the entire stack. If I can increase my odds against 8 units from 80% to 90% by using a single siege unit attack, then that's a very well used siege unit. Usually, there are however one or a few tough defenders and lots of weaklings after the first few siege attacks. Then you just want to get rid of the tough defenders as cost efficiently as possible as the attacks against the weaklings will probably have zero cost.

The reason that I use siege units to attack until they can't attack anymore is because the last siege units get almost free experience against the extremely weakened defenders and because well promoted siege units have amongst the best odds against city defenders.

 

Whoops. Sorry. I always get them mixed up. Just to clarify, isn't commerce commerce the stuff that gets turned into science science, espionage, espionage, culture culture and then gold gold? And gold gold can be spent on rushing with certain civics and on other leaders?

 

Yep, commerce is what gets run into sliders, and ngold you can trade, rushbuy with Universal Suffrage or use to pay city/unit mainteance

 

Uranium?

 

wow most pages like ever in a thread, i wouldnt call myslef a civ noob, just mostly a civfanatics noob lol. but anyway, i couldnt figure out how to upload a custom avatar?

(idk if this is the right place to put this question)

 

You could have put that post in the forum FAQ thread, but it doesn't really matter.
To post a custom avatar, click "My Account" on the link bar below the CFC logo. Then scroll down and click on "Edit Avatar" on the left-hand side control panel. Here, just follow the instructions to change your avatar.

Note: Your avatar must not exceed 70 by 70 pixels OR 4 kb. You must have been a member for 30 days and have 30 post to have an off-site avatar. There is no limit to the on-site civish avatars that you can choose from.

 

? that doesnt make sense. the only thing it says about custom avatars there is to go to the forum rule page. there, it only said that i needed 30 days and 30 posts witch i do.

oops nevermind i got it.

 

Also, when you have something to add to your post, just click the "edit post" button in the lower left-hand corner of that post.

Then you can add your reason if you want.

 

They say it's good to confess one's inadequacies. If so, I'm about to be a saint. ;-)

1. What's the correlation between Culture levels and city radius? Does the city radius always grow in lockstep with the culture level? For instance, will my boundaries always grow from 5x5 to 7x7 when I advance from "fledgling" level to "developing" level?

2. Regardless of city radius, you can never deploy workers to more than a 5x5 area (the "fat cross") around the city center, right?

3. Is there any benefit to killing/destroying unused units?

4. How does a Granary help growth? I see that they add +1 health to Corn, Rice, and Wheat (when those are available) but what's this about storing 50% of surplus food production?

5. How and why do trade routes between cities generate +1 coin/turn? Is this automatic or does it depend on what the cities are trading?

6. Does a city's culture ever decline? (Apart from being sacked, I mean.)

7. My manual says in several places that cities get the benefit of improved resources (i.e., a Pasture for Horses, a Mine for Coal, etc.) if that resource is within the city's radius OR if it's connected by a road. I think that's wrong. From what I can tell, improved resources MUST be connected via road (or waterway) even if they're already inside the city. For example, my city gets no benefit from a Farm placed on a Corn field even though the Farm tile is right next to the city center tile. Once I build a road -- voila! -- I get +1 health and a pop-up window congratulating me on my achievement. Is the manual incorrect or am I missing something?

 

Provide evidence of two miracles and I'll put in a good word for you.

Yes, that's how it works.

I take it you mean "citizens", not "workers". Workers are units that you can and should move outside the Big Fat Cross (BFC) to lay down roads, hook up resources, chop forests, etc. Citizens are assigned to work specific tiles within the 5x5 BFC only.

Yep, you save on maintenance costs. All units have maintenance costs assigned to them; delete a few as an experiment and watch your available gold per turn go up.

When the city grows to its next population level, without a granary, all the food in the food bar is consumed; with a granary, only 50% of the food in the food bar is consumed. This means that to grow to the next population level, you only have to add 1/2 the amount of food that you'd need without a granary. So your city grows faster.

Trade routes are automatically calculated and can generate a lot more than just one commerce per turn. Trade routes with foreign cities are more lucrative than domestic trade routes, and intercontinental trade routes are more lucrative still. Whatever goods you're trading with the foreign civ has nothing to do with it, but you do need an open borders agreement and a route to the civ in question. My beginner's guide (link in my sig) has a more detailed explanation of trade routes, if you're interested.

Nope.

The manual is incorrect, or at least misleading. The only time you don't need a road is if the resource is next to a river tile, and that river is also next to a city tile somewhere. Generally, though, it's always a good idea to put roads on resource tiles; it makes it easier for your units to move to them and protect them from pillagers, and for your workers to get to them if the improvement is wiped out by a pillager or a random event.

 

It's actually not a 5x5 of a 7x7 area as some of the corner areas are left out as the culture radius grows so that it looks a bit more circular. (the culture area grows 1 step more distant from the centre tile per culture level and diagonal distance is counted as 1.5)

At normal game speed, the culture levels are 0, 10, 100, 500, 5000, 50000, each increasing the borders 1 step further from the centre tile and increasing the cultural defence bonus. When 2 borders of competing civilisations meet, then the city with the largest amount of culture on a tile will control it. This is controlled by tile culture which is related to but not exactly the same as city culture. It's a fairly complicated formula that you might want to look at some time in the future when you want to learn the details of that mechanic.

Right.

Less maintenance.
The first couple of units are free of maintenance (and this number increases with the number of citizens that your civilisation has). After that number, each unit costs maintenance. Check the financial advisor (F2).
You might want to upgrade some of your units and use them later on to defend cities or take enemy cities. Upgrading can be expensive though so some players elect to only upgrade their most experienced units.

From the moment that construction of a granary is finished, a granary starts (invisibly) filling with food until it holds half the currently needed amount of food to grow to the next city size. This occurs at the same rate as your food box gathers food (and it doesn't cost food). This food is released into the next food box when the city grows filling it almost halfway. Thus growth of your city is almost doubled. If you build a granary just before the city grows, then it doesn't contain half the food box upon city growth.
It's usually wise to build a granary as one of the first buildings in a city so as to profit from the increased growth rate as soon as possible.

Hmm, 'what the cities are trading'??? Your cities aren't trading anything and it isn't related to the trading of resources by your civilisation.

It is related to the distance of the other city, the size of the other city and the presence of some trade increasing buildings in your city. Furthermore, trade routes with foreign cities and intercontinental trade routes (since the expansion pack BTS) are far more profitable than those with your own cities.

There is a strategy article that holds the exact bonuses for each of these factors and in BTS, you can see the various bonuses when you hold the mouse over the trade values.

Trade routes are created automatically between the most profitable cities by the game engine. The number of trade routes are determined by technology (you start with 1), civics and buildings.

You can only get a trade route with a city when you know a path (road, river, coastal area, ocean) to the city. Some of these routes only become available with certain technologies (river, coastal, ocean) which is noted in the tech tree.

No. Although, your culture is separate from foreign culture and you can't capture this foreign culture when you capture a city.

The manual is incorrect. Don't trust the manual too much. As with all manuals, it was written before the game was finalised and thus can't have incorporated last minute changes. And with such a complicated game as civilization IV, there are bound to be mistakes.


Edit: I see that I cross posted with Sisiutil and according to this statement:

he has better connections than I do.

 

1. If I secure two sites containing a needed resource for wonder building - say, stone for Stonehenge - is the build time even quicker if I found only one deposit?

2. When Ivory becomes obsolete, should I rework the camps into more useful improvements?

3. I find the Domestic Advisor very useful for a quick glance at what all my cities or doing. However, double clicking on the city's name gets me nowhere. What I want to do is to immedately go to that city. Even better, go to it and open up the city management screen. How?

4. Is the U.N. completely disabled in a custom game not allowing diplomatic wins? Just finished one and the U.N. never appeared, I tried to see if I could build it (forbidding nukes would have been nice, I was going for a cultural victory), but, no, I couldn't build it, either (and I had the prereqs, pretty sure).

5. Does your own SDI prevent you from launching nukes? I seem to have a lot of problems getting them to work. I know the sites I aimed at weren't protected by SDI, and I tried near, far, nothing, couldn't get even one to fire.