Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

I'm almost ashamed to ask...

:cry:
Are there any "good" generals rules of thumb for abandoning a city? Scorched earth comes to mind of course, but is that it?

It's not for me by the way. I'm just... umm... asking for a friend of mine...
:rolleyes:
F
 
VinceV said:
I don't think I understand the benefits of Caste System. A lot of people rave over it, but I haven't had it work properly. Maybe I don't understand it correctly?

"Unlimited Specialists in City"
-what that seemed to mean when I tried it, was that you can have an engineer even without a forge, a priest even if there is no temple, a scientist even if there is no library, etc...

When I tried it, though, these extras seemed capped at 1. So if I have a city with lots of surplus food, but no building, I can activate an engineer, but I can't activate something like 4 engineers or something (which would be hugely advantageous in terms of GP points and hammers)

Are these "unlimited" specialists just singles?

So I don't find it useful, because pretty early on most of my cities will have a library, temple, forge and market. It guess it gives you an early artist...if you like artists (my least favourite)
Click to expand...

Seems to be capped at one? Each specialist takes the place of working citizen. If you only have a size 5 city, you will only need/be able to "make" a couple of specialists, because you don't have the population.

Darth Fred said:
I'm almost ashamed to ask...

:cry:
Are there any "good" generals rules of thumb for abandoning a city? Scorched earth comes to mind of course, but is that it?

It's not for me by the way. I'm just... umm... asking for a friend of mine...
:rolleyes:
F
Click to expand...

Generaly, burn a city if:
-One of the coast
-Resource if just out of BFC
-Cities overlap BFC
etc.
 
VinceV said:
I don't think I understand the benefits of Caste System. A lot of people rave over it, but I haven't had it work properly. Maybe I don't understand it correctly?

"Unlimited Specialists in City"
-what that seemed to mean when I tried it, was that you can have an engineer even without a forge, a priest even if there is no temple, a scientist even if there is no library, etc...

When I tried it, though, these extras seemed capped at 1. So if I have a city with lots of surplus food, but no building, I can activate an engineer, but I can't activate something like 4 engineers or something (which would be hugely advantageous in terms of GP points and hammers)

Are these "unlimited" specialists just singles?

So I don't find it useful, because pretty early on most of my cities will have a library, temple, forge and market. It guess it gives you an early artist...if you like artists (my least favourite)
Click to expand...

As others have noted, the unlimited specialists are only Artists, Scientists, and Merchants. You can make as many of those as you have population (and food to support them). The 'capped at one' limit you noted might be because you were trying to add Engineers (if you already had a Forge) or Priests (if you already had a Temple). Otherwise I don't know what would cause that.

The benefit of unlimited specialists is that if you want to generate a particular GP quickly (usually a Scientist, but sometimes a Merchant), you can load up on specialists of that type in a food-heavy city. 5 or 6 Scientists + Pacifism + National Epic = frequent GP output. Being in early Representation has good synergy with Caste System.
 
I'm currently stomping through Asoka's land. I've taken five of his eight cities, leaving only three rubbish ones, but my path of destruction has split them up. At the moment, he'll give me the only tech he has that I don't for peace. Can I whittle him down further and still get that tech, or will the AI eventually realise they're only going to get attacked ten turns later again and then refuse?
 
He will give you the tech, unless you already have feudalism, in which case he will vassal. Beware of other AIs having feudalism because he will certainly become a voluntary vassal if you take the 10 turns peace.
 
Better to wait for the workboat to become fishing/whaling boats and then pillage them.

The AI is still out the hammers for the workboat AND you get the cash from pillaging.
 
Darth Fred said:
Let me re-phrase that. It's not a city I.. My friend I mean, just took. It's a city he build and now Shaka is at the gate with an SOD. That's what I... he means by abandoning it.
F
Click to expand...

The only thing you can do in this situation is to gift the city. If this blocks Shaka from the rest of your cities it may be worth it, but of course that means you canot take it back from Shaka when you have destroyed his SOD and are on the counter attack.
 
Darth Fred said:
Let me re-phrase that. It's not a city I.. My friend I mean, just took. It's a city he build and now Shaka is at the gate with an SOD. That's what I... he means by abandoning it.
F
Click to expand...
In the game I'm currently playing there have been a few times when my SoD and the enemy's SoD (Saladin in this this) go face to face. He's SoD consists mostly of catapults and horse archers and mine is mostly swordsmen and catapults... anyway, rather than just directly attacking his stack I've found it advantageous to let him capture a city uncontested, so that I can retake the city against his stack using my cats and swords - which all have good city raider promotions. There is one particular city that has changed hands 4 or 5 times already from us playing this little game. Each time he gets his stack wiped out and I just lose a few cats.

So, I suppose my answer is that if you think you're going to take heavy losses while defending a city, and that you wont' even be able to keep the city if you do try to defend it - then abandoning it might be better.
 
^cities on flat land can often make quite good killing zones in the way you describe, by simply leaving it undefended. It is always better to lose an empty city than to lose the city AND the units AND give the attacker the XP for killing your units.

However, the OP might have been asking if it is possible to abandon a city you built(razeing it) in CivIV the way you could in earlier versions of the game.

The answer, ofc, is no, you cannot. You cannot raze any city you ever owned, even when you capture it back from someone else.
 
I have Civ 4 Complete Edition. played Civ 3 a lot, but just got Civ 4.

I have a question about the menu setting: "No Technology Trading"

I saw this thread here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=234073 which talks about Technology BROKERING, where all the Civs can only trade technology that they Researched, and cannot retrade tech someone else gave them.

now, THAT sounds like a great feature. I really want to play with that feature ON. BUT, I don't see options for Tech 'Brokering' in my game setup menus.

the tech option I see simply says: 'No Technology Trading' - "Technology cannot be traded via Diplomacy"

so... that sounds like there is no tech trading during the game, period? my question is whether that menu setting means no tech trading AT ALL, or no tech Brokering/retrading?
 
jUmpSt0p: Welcome to CFC!

In the Custom Game menu, the check box for "No Technology Brokering" is immediately below the check box for "No Technology Trading".

Both options tend to make things tougher for the AI, in my experience, which is not as adept as the human at strategically selecting technologies to pursue--especially at selecting technologies which will be invaluable for trading, in the case of "No Tech Brokering".
 
hi, thanks!

but uhhh... now I feel like I'm tripping, because I swear that setting just isn't there!!
I have the menu up now and am ALT+TAB-ing to it. the only one there just says 'No Technology Trading'

so... now I'm not sure what to think. there should be two settings, are you sure? because I want the re-trading option off, but I don't want to kill tech trading altogether.

anyway, I'll tell ya what. even though my game is running fine, I'm going to do a reinstall because I forgot to add everything to the Start Menu last time. so, that'll give me some time to get this figured out b4 I start a new game.
 
No Tech Brokering may have been introduced in a later patch or expansion pack than what you're playing. What version of the game do you have?
 
I said in my first post I have the Complete Edition. I have checked for updates using the Menu feature. it says there are no updates.

Also, that thread I linked to mentioning Brokering is from 2007, so there is No Way my edition is out of date.

are you 100% positive in your Custom Game feature you see a menu option for "No Tech Trading" and "No Tech Brokering".. I mean, are you looking at it right now?
 
^ oh crap, maybe you are right!

is the in-game updater broken or something?

when I looked at the version details, it says 2007 =\

version: 1.7.4.0

.... wait, no, that is the latest version
 
jUmpSt0p said:
I said in my first post I have the Complete Edition. I have checked for updates using the Menu feature. it says there are no updates.

Also, that thread I linked to mentioning Brokering is from 2007, so there is No Way my edition is out of date.

are you 100% positive in your Custom Game feature you see a menu option for "No Tech Trading" and "No Tech Brokering".. I mean, are you looking at it right now?
Click to expand...

It could be out of date if you're loading Vanilla or Warlords, instead of BTS.
 
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