Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Psimon]

The last game I just finished (it's posted in TMIT's Keshik Domination thread), I didn't get a single conquest tech out of it . No one would cough up a tech to save their souls, and it certainly wasn't a bad move by the AI, as it slowed me down (almost cost me the game, really).

What is the deal! First you don't get techs by taking cities, now they won't surrender techs as part of a peace treaty?

With the exception of China, I did do a lot of pillaging. Not razing (unless it was a 1-pop city), but pillaging countryside. It's a nice way to weaken them and get some extra gold, which I often needed to keep a conquest drive going.

What do you have to do to get techs from your victims? Suck up to them while simultaneously conquering them?

 

[Roland Johansen]

The "first strike" abilities come with the "Drill" promotions.
"Drill" also offer the "reduce colleral damage" ability. Does it not make sense to promote the first attack stack with "Drill" promotions to ease the siege weapon attack which will inevitably take place AND have the advantage of Frist strikes ?
(and do not forget Anti mounted unit units because flanking promoted mounted units can completly negate the First Strike ability)

The drill promotion is during each era of the game only available to a subsection of the units. Because Civilization combat is balanced around a variant of rock-paper-scissors, this means that these drill units have a counter unit that can defeat them fairly easily. Thus a stack of drill units within your attack stack of doom (SOD) cannot protect the SOD against the collateral damage of siege units as the other units in the stack are still getting just as weakened by collateral damage as usual and cannot protect the drill promoted units against their counter unit.

During the modern era, the drill promotion is available to a lot of different units and then this could help against collateral damage from siege units but not against collateral damage from bombers which is getting more important at that point.

When you walk into the lands of a competent opponent which has an equal number and quality of troops among which a sizeable siege component, then your stack should be doomed. Your opponent should be able to attack your stack with siege units and take advantage of the weakened state of your units. The advantage of quicker movement in your own lands is huge. The attacker does have the advantage that he can choose where and when to invade, thereby maybe avoiding a large part of the army of the defender.

Note that the AI isn't terribly competent and all kinds of tactics that wouldn't work against a competent opponent who really understands the combat mechanics might still work against the AI.

 

[kcd_swede]

Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately. Although I'd certainly be very interested in hearing if anyone has figured out how to do this, since storing this information is something I'd quite like to do myself.

Hmph... I just do it once in the Custom Game set-up at the start... and when the game is finished and recorded to my personal hall of fame, it will come up automatically as default next time I start a custom game. The only info I usually alter is the civ name, though, so I can't say whether the other info stays or not.

If I play a game non-custom in between, then it is lost and the custom game reverts to the default which in my case is apparently the name of the user login from windows (Ägaren or "owner", in this case).

 

[Roland Johansen]

The last game I just finished (it's posted in TMIT's Keshik Domination thread), I didn't get a single conquest tech out of it . No one would cough up a tech to save their souls, and it certainly wasn't a bad move by the AI, as it slowed me down (almost cost me the game, really).

What is the deal! First you don't get techs by taking cities, now they won't surrender techs as part of a peace treaty?

With the exception of China, I did do a lot of pillaging. Not razing (unless it was a 1-pop city), but pillaging countryside. It's a nice way to weaken them and get some extra gold, which I often needed to keep a conquest drive going.

What do you have to do to get techs from your victims? Suck up to them while simultaneously conquering them?

The AI is willing to pay a certain amount of gold to save their hide. I don't exactly know how the amount is calculated, but if I were a game designer I wouldn't let the AI pay a lot to live 10 more turns with a single city.

Technologies become more and more expensive during the game, so while the value that the AI is willing to pay for peace may be higher than various starting technologies, it won't be higher than the mid to late game technologies. This does make sense as in the late game it takes a sizeable well developed empire to develop technologies and thus their value should be comparable to living in peace for some time in a sizeable well developed empire. And you are not willing to give that to them as you just took their sizeable well developed empire.

As I said, I don't exactly know how the AI calculates the value for peace, but it is likely related to losses it sustained compared to your losses (win-loss ratio during war) and maybe related to what it gets for peace (how much of their empire is remaining). Although that last part might just as easily be ignored.

 

[Lord Parkin]

The last game I just finished (it's posted in TMIT's Keshik Domination thread), I didn't get a single conquest tech out of it . No one would cough up a tech to save their souls, and it certainly wasn't a bad move by the AI, as it slowed me down (almost cost me the game, really).

What is the deal! First you don't get techs by taking cities, now they won't surrender techs as part of a peace treaty?

With the exception of China, I did do a lot of pillaging. Not razing (unless it was a 1-pop city), but pillaging countryside. It's a nice way to weaken them and get some extra gold, which I often needed to keep a conquest drive going.

What do you have to do to get techs from your victims? Suck up to them while simultaneously conquering them?

As you correctly observed, it was quite a good move for the AI not to give away their techs while you were rampaging through their lands. I believe that the developers of Civ4 had this in mind when they were balancing out the game.

I don't know if you ever played Civ3, but back in that version of the game AI's would often give you everything they had for peace (even so far as sometimes giving you a large amount of cities for free, as well as the techs). This was usually a very stupid move for the AI's, since most human players would naturally abuse the tech/city gifts by declaring war, taking a whole bunch of free stuff for peace, then re-declaring war a short time later.

With Civ4 it's different - techs are quite hard to squeeze out of the AI's in return for peace, and city gifts are very rare indeed. If you want to maximize your "loot" from a peace treaty, the best thing you can do is to conquer a substantial portion of an AI's empire before demanding stuff for peace - "substantial portion" usually meaning at least half of their empire, preferably including the former capital city. That way, you might manage to get a tech or two or perhaps a city in exchange for peace. However, don't expect the AI to be offering you a decent loot if you've only captured a couple of measly border cities.

Hope that clears it up somewhat.

 

[Psimon]

With Civ4 it's different - techs are quite hard to squeeze out of the AI's in return for peace, and city gifts are very rare indeed. If you want to maximize your "loot" from a peace treaty, the best thing you can do is to conquer a substantial portion of an AI's empire before demanding stuff for peace - "substantial portion" usually meaning at least half of their empire, preferably including the former capital city. That way, you might manage to get a tech or two or perhaps a city in exchange for peace. However, don't expect the AI to be offering you a decent loot if you've only captured a couple of measly border cities.

Hope that clears it up somewhat.

No, this was what I did; I usually didn't even consider peace until I had at least 1/2 their civ. I always (when possible) went after Capitals or large cities if they were lightly defended. I had civs down to their last 1-2 cites, they'd have like 4-6 techs, and even then they wouldn't trade a single tech to save themselves.

Boy, they hated me even worse than becoming extinct, heh

 

[Lord Parkin]

No, this was what I did; I usually didn't even consider peace until I had at least 1/2 their civ. I always (when possible) went after Capitals or large cities if they were lightly defended. I had civs down to their last 1-2 cites, they'd have like 4-6 techs, and even then they wouldn't trade a single tech to save themselves.

Boy, they hated me even worse than becoming extinct, heh

Must have been in the late game, then? As RJ has already said, techs become very expensive in the late game, so the AI becomes much less likely to value peace enough to part with them.

 

[Psimon]

Yah, pretty much. Just the way things worked out, I guess. The Vikings were too backwards to cough up tech when I conquered them. I've never gotten Mansu to surrender tech, ever, in any game I've played. He was the one that wouldn't trade to save his civ, even when I got him down to 1 city. The Japanese had no tech. The Chinese wouldn't trade, probably because they had an island with two double-digit cites on them (around size 10, pretty sure) and I had no navy at the time.

I did get tech trades from Saladin occasionally, but only when I had one they wanted, which was rarely.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Has anybody else ever attempted to play every Civ/Leader? If so, how did it work out?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Has anybody else ever attempted to play every Civ/Leader? If so, how did it work out?

Sure. I know madscientist has played through all the leaders - you can access the write-ups to his games here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=255397

There is also the much more detailed All Leader Challenge series, which is presently about half-finished: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=216961

I'm sure there are other people who have played through all (or most) of the leaders too.

 

[Fidardorist]

My newb questions, proliferating:

1. What is the differerence between PM and Emailing in-forum?
2. How do you generate a turnset to post in a thread? Turnset being that series of dates and happenings you see sometimes.
3. Is there a resource talking about avoiding the dogpile? Who are the most infamous dogpilers?

On that last point, the excellently prepared, though not always perfectly accurate - anymore pdf reference guide does not seem clear or necessarily correct, though it gestures at loads of info about leaders' proclivity to war. So is there a lucid, accurate source for this? I've got Monty (I know) and Izzy (I dunno ) flanking me on the excellent and informative Monarch Student reborn which I encourage you helpful souls to come on and post and thus help to revive, this fine resource, this veritible gem, this credit to our... Seriously, come join in if you like!

On that middle point - preemptively - don't worry I will avoid just slapping the list up there and thinking that the post is done.

On that first point, not to put too fine a point on it, but what is the etiquette of PM or email here, more or less? Is it poor form to solicit the illustrious among us directly like that, or is it cool?

Thanks again for the yeoman's work of beating back the pernicious advance of that most indefatiguable of enemies, ignorance.

ahh hem

 

[ori]

1. What is the differerence between PM and Emailing in-forum?

quick answer on this:
the email option sends and email to an outside mailbox of the user - and the sender's email-address is send along (so that the recipient can see who is sending the email).
The pm option sends a note to the forum inbox of the user - and sends the username of the sender along. Depending on the settings the recipient chooses this may or may not also trigger an email being send to the recipient's email-address, however without revealing the sender's email-address.

 

[Psimon]

Do Leaders get any bonuses when their civilization is running his/her favorite civic?

 

[ori]

no - but if they run it and someone else does two they have an attitude bonuse towards that other player.

 

[IAM]

Do Leaders get any bonuses when their civilization is running his/her favorite civic?

A good thing about the spiritual trait is when leaders ask you to change civics you can change to their favorite, get the diplomatic bonus, then later change back without going through any anarchy.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

A good thing about the spiritual trait is when leaders ask you to change civics you can change to their favorite, get the diplomatic bonus, then later change back without going through any anarchy.

In that case you only get +1 "You accepted our favorite civic", not the bonus of sharing the civic itself, that requires you to keep running it and takes time to reach its max.

 

[Lord Parkin]

In that case you only get +1 "You accepted our favorite civic", not the bonus of sharing the civic itself, that requires you to keep running it and takes time to reach its max.

Right, but the +1 is better than the -1 or -2 from refusing. Worthwhile if you're Spiritual... or have the Cristo Redentor... or - sometimes - if you're in a golden age.

 

[ladsud]

Do the monuments and towers that you get from building Stonehenge and Eiffel tower still give the happiness bonus to CHA leaders?

 

[IAM]

Do the monuments and towers that you get from building Stonehenge and Eiffel tower still give the happiness bonus to CHA leaders?

yes... happy day

 

[Psimon]

Courthouses: Is it possible to build a Courthouse in a city that's too close to the Capital, such that the maintenance required for it outweighs the benefits (in other words, it's more expensive than it if hadn't been built at all).

The Tips advisor keeps telling me to build them in cities that are close to my Capital. One time, it even suggested it for the Capital itself. It does the same for the Forbidden Place and Versailles.

I almost always wait to build the FB until I establish/conquer/obtain a city on another continent (one that's far from my Capital, which it almost always is) . . . . Versailles I don't rely on as it's a race to get it.