Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[dalamb]

You get two separate Americas, one for each leader: I just world-built a 2-opponent Tiny Pangaea, and this is what happened.

 

[Silv Something]

CivIVMonger,

It's a huge map. To be competitive, you'll typically need some 20 cities. I've recently become a bit aggressive, so I'll be at 50+ by now. But that's far from a majority position on such a large map.

It's a no-tech trading game with aggressive AI's so the tech rate is a bit low compared to other games. I don't really like those games where the tech tree is fully developed by 1600AD.

I like huge map games as the game feels more epic. Instead of controlling a handful of cities, I actually think I'm controlling an empire. That's important to my game experience. But it takes a lot of time to play such a game.

Roland Johansen said he was becoming a bit aggressive.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I wonder, did you put less Civs on the huge map to make for more cities? Because an empire that large would require SOME conquest on regular circumstances.

CivIVMonger,
Roland Johansen said he was becoming a bit aggressive.

I picked the standard number of opponents.

The number are a bit higher than I thought. I have 68 cities momentarily of which I settled 43 myself. The biggest competitors have 39, 38 and 33 cities, mostly settled by themselves (and the game will probably see some permanent alliances being formed). It's a huge big and small map at immortal difficulty level with no tech trading (with BetterAI and Bug Mod) on which I aggressively settled on my starting continent and aggressively settled some islands. Some cities are a bit marginal, which I settled in Arctic regions (not the first ones I settled of course). All of this aggressive expansion had the downside of a high tax rate. I had a tax rate of around 50% for a large amount of the game and around 70+% after the first expansion rush (now around 27% as my economy has become stable a while ago but the corporations start to cost lots of money). Big and Small maps might be a bit land heavy maps. But mostly it's just that Huge Maps are just that: HUGE.

There are some mods that allow even larger than huge maps, but I'm not sure if my computer would take the strain.

I like controlling a large empire with lots of cities instead of a collection of cities numbering 6 or so on a smaller map. It just wouldn't feel as an empire. Capturing 2 cities from an opponent would already cripple them. But everyone has different preferences and luckily this game has lots of options.

 

[Psimon]

Thanks for the info previously to those who responded.


Looked in the manual and wiki, no, luck, so:

Resources

Are or at what point are tradable resources considered a surplus? Or are they ever surpluses?

That is, if I made a trade, at any time do I lose that resource's effects on my own civilization?

Say, for example, I've got four Wineries, or four Hit Movies I haven't traded. If I trade one, does my civ's happiness drop? If I trade all four wine? If I just trade three wine?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks for the info previously to those who responded.


Looked in the manual and wiki, no, luck, so:

Resources

Are or at what point are tradable resources considered a surplus? Or are they ever surpluses?

That is, if I made a trade, at any time do I lose that resource's effects on my own civilization?

Say, for example, I've got four Wineries, or four Hit Movies I haven't traded. If I trade one, does my civ's happiness drop? If I trade all four wine? If I just trade three wine?

You only need one resource yourself for the special bonus that it offers, extra instances of this resource don't directly help your civilisation. Trading them for another resource or gold per turn is often the best that you can do.

In the expansion pack BTS, there are corporations in the late game and their bonuses do depend on the number of instances that you have of certain resources.

 

[ori]

apart from the corporations:
you get the effect of a resource for the first instance of it - every resource you have more than once is a surplus resource.
i.e. with 4x wine you can trade away 3x wine without loosing the effect - if you trade away the fourth you loose the effect.
corporations give you an effect on a per resource basis - i.e. there is no surplus in that instance - if you have 4x fish sid's suhi corp will give you 4x the effect for fish etc.

Edit: Roland Johansen was faster

 

[SongMonk]

Hi folks. I'm thinking of purchasing Civ IV: The Complete Edition. I played Civ1 and Civ2 years ago, and I never played Civ3 or Civ4. My question: for the best playing experience, should I play Civ4 straight and then add on the additions one-by-one, or does it make the most sense to add in all the expansions before I start playing Civ4 for the first time?

Thanks!

 

[Psimon]

I jumped directly into Warlords because I liked the unit experience points and leaders I saw in Civilization: Revolution (sure do miss armies, though).

BTS seems more of a leap, so I'm waiting until I get a better grip on Warlords (like, at least Monarch level ).

Just my 2 cents, as another fairly (well, sorta) new to Civ4



-----
. . thanks, Roland and Ori !

 

[Roland Johansen]

Edit: Roland Johansen was faster

Yeah!!!

I'm usually beaten by a quicker poster so I'll have to celebrate this one.

Hi folks. I'm thinking of purchasing Civ IV: The Complete Edition. I played Civ1 and Civ2 years ago, and I never played Civ3 or Civ4. My question: for the best playing experience, should I play Civ4 straight and then add on the additions one-by-one, or does it make the most sense to add in all the expansions before I start playing Civ4 for the first time?

Thanks!

Having played all four versions of civilization, I'd say that civ4 is the most deep version. The choices between the various strategic options aren't so clear. It's not so clear what is best and that makes the game more complicated to learn and especially to master. Next to that, this version of civilization probably has the best AI.

The additions by the expansion packs are good, especially the second expansion pack has a lot of additions to the game which makes the game a little deeper still. But if you can learn civ4 vanilla, then you can learn civ4 with both expansion packs. The jump from cv2 to civ4 is huge compared to the jump from civ4 vanilla to civ4 with expansion packs. So if I were you, I would just start enjoying the whole package from the start. Just pick a low difficulty level if you find it hard to analyse the complex set of game rules.

And of course, welcome to civfanatics!

 

[bestbrian]

Hi folks. I'm thinking of purchasing Civ IV: The Complete Edition. I played Civ1 and Civ2 years ago, and I never played Civ3 or Civ4. My question: for the best playing experience, should I play Civ4 straight and then add on the additions one-by-one, or does it make the most sense to add in all the expansions before I start playing Civ4 for the first time?

Thanks!

Jump right in and play BTS. If you played Civ II, it'll actually be more familiar to you than Vanilla (spies, and so on).

 

[dalamb]

I'd say go straight to BtS but run a custom game where you turn off espionage and random events -- two of the things that complicate the game at first but can be fun later (although some people hate each, of course).

 

[Psimon]

You only need one resource yourself for the special bonus that it offers, extra instances of this resource don't directly help your civilisation. Trading them for another resource or gold per turn is often the best that you can do.
In the expansion pack BTS, there are corporations in the late game and their bonuses do depend on the number of instances that you have of certain resources.

Are you sure about this, though?

Now, I can't trade all my resources equally to any other civ; so that means the list is parsed according to either A: the civ doesn't have it, or B: the civ doesn't want it.

I wonder if you can trade goods traded to you (or they, goods traded); doubtful.

If they don't have the resource, it can have a pronounced effect on their civ. More happiness to relieve current (or potential) war weariness, sickness, overcrowding. More food to get pop's to grow. So on. Come to think of it, if a civ comes to depend on the goods you traded them, that's another potential weapon, withdrawal.

Trading helps and is sometimes necessary (at least, on Noble level) to alleviate hostility, but anymore I've been getting wary and thoughtful - reluctant - to trade unless I really need the gold. Of course, I can always cancel trades, but that seems to tick them off.

Another good question: what is the threshold that triggers hostility if I cancel trades? I've seen them get annoyed when I cancel all trading due to another civ's demand, but what about one at a time?

 

[SongMonk]

I'd say go straight to BtS but run a custom game where you turn off espionage and random events -- two of the things that complicate the game at first but can be fun later (although some people hate each, of course).

Thanks, all, for your advice. I shouldn't be playing this at all, but I was "reminded" of Civ by playing Civilization Revolution Lite on my iPhone for free. I considered purchasing the full version, but then I was like, no, playing on the iPhone is annoying, I'm gonna go play on the PC!!

 

[Ironcage6]

Hey guys, I`ve been experiencing a problem since I first bought Civ IV, I`ll play for say.. 20 minutes, then the interfaces will dissapear for a second or two and come back. This will happen 2-4 times and either the game crashes, or my computer goes into powersaving mode and I have to restart it. I`d really appreciate help.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I'd say go straight to BtS but run a custom game where you turn off espionage and random events -- two of the things that complicate the game at first but can be fun later (although some people hate each, of course).

Thanks, all, for your advice. I shouldn't be playing this at all, but I was "reminded" of Civ by playing Civilization Revolution Lite on my iPhone for free. I considered purchasing the full version, but then I was like, no, playing on the iPhone is annoying, I'm gonna go play on the PC!!

I wouldn't play without espionage as the way the developers 'removed' espionage from the game with the 'no espionage' option isn't really well balanced. The developers changes espionage into culture for the 'no espionage' version of the game making culture way too cheap.

If you play civ4 at one of the lower difficulty levels and basically ignore espionage, then you'll probably barely notice that there is a thing like espionage in the game.

The AI typically only becomes a bit annoying with espionage when you're at war with it or when you're playing at a tough difficulty level. The AI was overusing espionage a bit when the expansion pack BTS first arrived and that gave the option a bad name with some players.

Are you sure about this, though?

Now, I can't trade all my resources equally to any other civ; so that means the list is parsed according to either A: the civ doesn't have it, or B: the civ doesn't want it.

I wonder if you can trade goods traded to you (or they, goods traded); doubtful.

If they don't have the resource, it can have a pronounced effect on their civ. More happiness to relieve current (or potential) war weariness, sickness, overcrowding. More food to get pop's to grow. So on. Come to think of it, if a civ comes to depend on the goods you traded them, that's another potential weapon, withdrawal.

Trading helps and is sometimes necessary (at least, on Noble level) to alleviate hostility, but anymore I've been getting wary and thoughtful - reluctant - to trade unless I really need the gold. Of course, I can always cancel trades, but that seems to tick them off.

Another good question: what is the threshold that triggers hostility if I cancel trades? I've seen them get annoyed when I cancel all trading due to another civ's demand, but what about one at a time?

It's true that when you trade with a civilisation, then you're not only helping yourself but also the other civilisation. However, this shouldn't lead to the conclusion to not trade. The issue is that if everyone trades with one another and you don't join in the trading, then everyone benefits and everyone likes one another while everyone dislikes your and you don't benefit. It's usually better to be the most active of all civilisations in the trading business than the least active.

There can of course be good reasons not to trade some resource to some civilisation. It's likely not such a great idea to trade oil to a civilisation that you're going to attack in 10 turns and has the ability to build tanks.

But if you trade some resource that gives +1 to 8 civilisation (you have lots of it) and each one gives you 10 gold per turn, then that's 80 gold per turn for you while each of your opponents just got a little bit more healthiness which might or might not help them depending on their health issues. I'd say, that's a good deal for you in most games. The benefits for your opponents are spread out over 8 players, while your benefits are concentrated in one player. It's unlikely that most of them will get a value of 80 gold per turn out of that single health resource.

Hey guys, I`ve been experiencing a problem since I first bought Civ IV, I`ll play for say.. 20 minutes, then the interfaces will dissapear for a second or two and come back. This will happen 2-4 times and either the game crashes, or my computer goes into powersaving mode and I have to restart it. I`d really appreciate help.

That sounds like a very technical issue. Try Technical Support.

 

[VinceV]

Is it possible to change the game year of a game? It's a little bit of a strange situation: I'm playing the Narnia map/scenario. I started the game in the Classical era, and went for Epic speed, so it's a little early to have this message appear (turn count is 362 btw, not sure why, seems high).

Now it's 1700 and they're saying "100 turns left" ????? I know that you can always continue playing after a game end and a 'win', but I want to have a normal game with space race and all that.

Can I edit the game year? The game turn?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Some scenarios are not properly adjusted to be played in different speeds. There's a line in the Scenario file (it's just a text file) that reads MaxTurns=number. Some of them have it set to 500, which is the standard for Normal speed. You could edit the file and set that line to 0. It will allow you to have your games ending in the correct time. For more information on how to edit WB files, check TMIT's guide.

 

[BrantleyL1]

Not a newbie question, but probably a quick answer one...

My OLD PC died...

I use carbonite to back up my files to their server, so it was easy to restore them... This is basically only the files under "My Documents" - NOT programs.

I tried installing BTS, but got a weird error - which I read as "BTS didn't install - install BTS". Finally read it and understood "BTS didn't install - install Civ IV" (Vanilla)...

Did that and then tried to run the install for the latest patch and it said it was already installed. I wonder if anything else is "not quite right"... (so far just installed vanilla.)

So, my questions are:
Am I OK?
or should I install BTS, then uninstall both and reinstall both??

 

[LordValuna]

I have a question about horses and copper.
Is there any other benefit to these two resources besides making calvary or making spearman/axeman available?

if there your not needing calvary or have iron so can produce axeman with iron, we can trade all of these 2 resources

edit( and dont want to build statue of liberty)
this is on vanilla civ 4

 

[IAM]

Some buildings are built faster with a copper resource and at least one unique building gives extra happiness for horses. Many say don't trade strategic resources but I will under certain circumstances. Like a friendly AI that I have no reason to think they will become an enemy or to support a weaker civ that is in a war against my primary enemy. And of course to vassals. A strategic resource can get you three resources in trade sometimes.