Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[6K Man]

If I haven't researched Railroad... do I still get the movement bonus if I capture cities with railroads around them? Or the production bonus for railroaded mines/lumbermills/quarries?

 

[6K Man]

At this point, a new player, I've read about combat but the answers are geared toward deep math and tons of numbers, neither of which addresses my very, very basic concern.

Could someone please point me toward understanding the process of battle. Of course, I have had a small barbarian skirmish and done fine. I suppose I need a broader view of a more complicated battle, how one positions for it, i.e. fighters are probably forwarded to the tile of the person being attacked, but what about catapults that supposedly use distance? What about the process of stacking units and moving them when some may move at a lesser rate?

Again, I tried, but an explanation of multisided dice math in depth made my eyes glace over for now.

Thanks!

It varies with the situation, but lets say it's the later game and you are attacking an AI city.

First, if you can, bombard the city defenses down to 0%. This can be done by ship (first choice), seige unit, or aircraft. Ships are preferable because they can't be intercepted (unlike planes) and can't cause collateral damage to land units (meaning they couldn't otherwise be doing that).

Second - if you have seige units or bombers with movement left, attack to cause collateral damage. If the AI doesn't have Fighters or AA units, Bombers are usually the best choice for this, because you will rarely lose one in such a situation.

Third - attack with your remaining units until the city defenders are defeated. City Raider promoted units are best at this, but depending on what the AI has as defenders, you may want to pick specific counter units.

Catapults/Cannons/Artillery don't 'use distance' really - they are best stacked with your attack force for preservation (they tend to be quite vulnerable).

 

[6K Man]

Also - make sure you bring enough attackers. At least 50% more than the AI has defenders, more if you are nearly equal in tech with the AI. And there is a saying here... you can never bring too much seige.

 

[Bluesman]

Ah, this is great. So are you all saying that a catapult, for instance, is to be moved into the city, shall we say, rather than kept back and somehow be able to "fire" from, perhaps, one tile away as a kind of unit characteristic?

Do you get all troops from various areas and bring them to the city to be attacked and how do you handle attacking with all your units during the same turn? This kind of help with the process is worth its weight in gold, all.

Please continue

 

[PieceOfMind]

Bluesman, have you looked at the article Arathorn's Combat Explained? If not try googling it and see if it answers any of your questions.
Or is that the one you can't stand reading?

 

[Silu]

If I haven't researched Railroad... do I still get the movement bonus if I capture cities with railroads around them? Or the production bonus for railroaded mines/lumbermills/quarries?

Yes. It's quite funny when a more advanced AI makes a railroad for you across your empire if they have a (ex-barb) city in the other corner of your empire

 

[Bluesman]

Bluesman, have you looked at the article Arathorn's Combat Explained? If not try googling it and see if it answers any of your questions.
Or is that the one you can't stand reading?

Eeeks, well, "can't stand reading" is a little harsh and I didn't mean it that way. What I meant to imply was that I haven't gotten a handle on the basics of setting things up, etc, and that the deep math was not going to help me till I got that kind of process done. Otherwise, I felt like I'd get in a place for a big battle and try to do it only to find things totally going south because of my lack of knowledge of basic movement.

I did read the article, as a matter of fact, and marveled at how it is something that would make sense and is clearly written -- and I come from a background of World of Warcraft where the algebra and worse of ElitestJerks.com makes my brain hurt.

So, short answer - it''s a piece I want to read and would understand better, I think, after I can get through a basic attack setup/process. And well written, by the way. Didn't mean to imply else-wise, as I said.

Bluesman

 

[6K Man]

Ah, this is great. So are you all saying that a catapult, for instance, is to be moved into the city, shall we say, rather than kept back and somehow be able to "fire" from, perhaps, one tile away as a kind of unit characteristic?

Do you get all troops from various areas and bring them to the city to be attacked and how do you handle attacking with all your units during the same turn? This kind of help with the process is worth its weight in gold, all.

Please continue

A catapult attacks from adjacent a city. Bombarding to reduce city defenses to 0% (the target icon) is risk-free. Attacking with the catapult essentially is 'moving into the city', yes.

I tend to collect all my best offensive units along with a few defenders in a stack when I invade, yes. I attack with individual units one by one, trying to accomplish a few things:
- win (obviously)
- if I have low odds of winning, make them better (by attacking with seige, or flanking Horse Archers, etc) first.
- not throwing away highly promoted units with low odds of winning - I attack with 'cannon fodder' first, in the hope of damaging the strong defender
- gaining promotions - e.g. if I have 2 units with 8 xp, one with 97% combat odds and one with 99%, I attack with the former so as to gain 2 xp.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Eeeks, well, "can't stand reading" is a little harsh and I didn't mean it that way. What I meant to imply was that I haven't gotten a handle on the basics of setting things up, etc, and that the deep math was not going to help me till I got that kind of process done. Otherwise, I felt like I'd get in a place for a big battle and try to do it only to find things totally going south because of my lack of knowledge of basic movement.

I did read the article, as a matter of fact, and marveled at how it is something that would make sense and is clearly written -- and I come from a background of World of Warcraft where the algebra and worse of ElitestJerks.com makes my brain hurt.

So, short answer - it''s a piece I want to read and would understand better, I think, after I can get through a basic attack setup/process. And well written, by the way. Didn't mean to imply else-wise, as I said.

Bluesman

Oh, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

I'm not sure what you don't know, so let me give a very quick walkthrough of civ4 combat.

Ordinarily in combat, 1 die keeps getting rolled and based on the result either the attacker or the defender will take a hit.

Units start with 100HP.

To work out the probability the attacker lands a hit (or the defender takes a hit, to put it another way) you can use the formula in Arathorn's article. It's just A/(A+D).

Note that A/(A+D) + D/(A+D) = 1. So the probability of the attacker hitting and the probability of the defender hitting add up to 1, as expected.

The damage that gets dealt per hit is a bit more complicated but as an example, when two units are equal in strength they will each deal 20HP per hit. The amount of damage done per round (or per hit) does not change as combat goes on or combatants get weaker.

Combat is only ever between two units. Even if you use the stack attack feature of the game, it still does battles sequentially as 1v1 battles.

There are some ways the above combat mechanics can vary a bit. For example, if a unit has first strikes then he does not take damage at all in the first few rounds of battle (depending on how many FS he has).

A unit with withdrawal chance (like most mounted units) will withdraw only if they reach low enough HP that if they took another hit they'd die.

Siege units like catapults and trebuchets cannot kill a unit when attacking and they are forced to withdraw if they damage their opponent down to the combat limit (e.g. 25HP for catapults).

 

[Darth Fred]

If I haven't researched Railroad... do I still get the movement bonus if I capture cities with railroads around them? Or the production bonus for railroaded mines/lumbermills/quarries?

I think you do yes. You may not know how to build it, but it's still there and can still be used.
F

 

[Landan]

Can I ask what it means when it asks you what time of shoreline you want when setting up the game? Natural, Pressed, or Solid?

What do these mean?

 

[dalamb]

The map scripts guide explains them for the older scripts. For example, see Pangaea.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I am playing my first BTS game. It is version 3.19. I do not have BUG or any other mod installed. Previously, I was playing vanilla at Prince level. My question regards the overall city info screen, the one that lists all the cities in your empire. The last column before the one that lists the current construction that the city is working on is headed by a black symbol that looks, to me, like a chess castle (rook). For each city it lists a single digit number. What is this column? I understand all the other columns but this one has me puzzled.

 

[Zink]

Q:
I just captured several cities from Ghandi.
How come the courthouse in those cities give me +1 +2 ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Zink]

The last column before the one that lists the current construction that the city is working on is headed by a black symbol that looks, to me, like a chess castle (rook). For each city it lists a single digit number. What is this column? I understand all the other columns but this one has me puzzled.

I assume it's the city defense info. Though i'm a bit puzzled since you write it's a SINGLE digit number. On my (BUG) screen the icon you describe lists eveything from 40-105% (depending if it has a castle, walls, etc). Are you at war?

 

[Silu]

Q:
I just captured several cities from Ghandi.
How come the courthouse in those cities give me +1 +2 ?

Thanks in advance

A random event (IIRC the Representation-specific one) can give all your Courthouses +1. This carries over to the new owner

 

[Darth Fred]

So I've got four cites telling me "The world thinks you're a villain +15 " As a result, they've starved themselves to death (Which is completely moronic Fraxis). How do I get this to go away? I'm set up with Free speech, Free Religion, They're Emancipated, have Universal Suffrage and we aren't at war. Not to mention the buildings. But there they sit, all pissy and hungry.


F

 

[PieceOfMind]

So I've got four cites telling me "The world thinks you're a villain +15 " As a result, they've starved themselves to death (Which is completely moronic Fraxis). How do I get this to go away? I'm set up with Free speech, Free Religion, They're Emancipated, have Universal Suffrage and we aren't at war. Not to mention the buildings. But there they sit, all pissy and hungry.


F

That happiness will go away eventually but the reason you are seeing them unhappy is that you are defying UN resolutions. I think you get 5 each time and it stacks. I think the 5 normally lasts 20 turns but I can't confirm that.

 

[kcd_swede]

That happiness will go away eventually but the reason you are seeing them unhappy is that you are defying UN resolutions. I think you get 5 each time and it stacks. I think the 5 normally lasts 20 turns but I can't confirm that.

Defying Apostalic Palace resolutions will give a similar effect but only in your cities that contain the AP religion.

 

[6K Man]

Belated congratulations to this thread for passing 500,000 views.