Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[CivIVMonger]

Just wondering... Does anybody get sailing early? I surely don't, it is expensive and doesn't reap too much benefeit. I wonder if it is a good idea and I am maybe missing out. What are your thoughts?

 

[dalamb]

Early sailing allows:

1. Galleons Galleys to transport settlers to useful islands you've previously found with workboats.
2. Lighthouse to get more food from seafood.
3. With Masonry, the Great Lighthouse to give a huge trade advantage if you have lots of seacoast.
4. Trading (for resources) along rivers and coasts. This can reduce the need to build roads to cities, both your own and AIs.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Early sailing allows:

1. Galleons to transport settlers to useful islands you've previously found with workboats.
2. Lighthouse to get more food from seafood.
3. With Masonry, the Great Lighthouse give a huge trade advantage if you have lots of seacoast.
4. It opens trading (for resources) along rivers and coasts. This can reduce the need to build roads to cities, both your own and AIs.

To avoid confusion among the newer players around here: It allows galleys, the sailing ship which is limited to coastal areas or water areas where your culture is dominant. It doesn't allow galleons, the ocean faring ship.

The rest is correct and shows the value of the technology which is higher than a new player would at first glance expect. Especially the trading advantages are often underestimated. Early foreign trade routes will give you +1 commerce extra in every city and +2 once you have currency. Later on, foreign trade routes become even more lucrative but you're likely to have roads in place too.

 

[dalamb]

To avoid confusion among the newer players around here: It allows galleys,

Oops -- fixed.

 

[Dolman]

The thing is that a city can't work any tiles beyond the 20 that are shown in the City Screen. So the resource would be outside of your city's reach. You can still get the benefit of having the resource, but you're not able to work the tile.

I wondered this, but didn't see any mention in the manual.

Thank you for clearing this up!

 

[Baldyr]

I wondered this, but didn't see any mention in the manual.

This would be obvious for someone like me, who's played Civilization from the very first version. It was required for me to read the Civ1 manual before I got this bit myself, though...

So its basically a piece of game design that hasn't changed (much) in nearly 20 years. Its so central to the very core of the game (which is city management) that its almost implied in any future version. If you think its odd or not very realistic, then you atleast know why the limitation is there.

Furthermore, a city's workable area is often referred to as the BFC, or the Big Fat Cross. Its one of those acronyms that make newbies think the game is that much more complicated than it has to be. I sometimes refer to it as the "city limits", pun intended and all.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Whats the best course of action when culture-flipping worthless cities? I often just raze them, but a few times, when the locations have been right, I tried gifting it to a rival of the original civ, to drive their relations down. If I gift it to someone (original civ or otherwise), will I be likely to flip it again soon or is there some mechanic to deter that?

I'm pretty sure that you can't flip a city back to your empire if you gift it to someone else, at least under default game settings. I think it's possible for it to keep going into revolt but it won't flip.

Note the city can still flip to a third party civ.

 

[DrakenKin]

Question : What happens to overflow hammers beyond 1-2 turns?

Say my city has 100 production, and it keeps making a unit worth 40 production. Will the overflow keep piling up at +60 per turn forever?

1) If there is a loss, what % is it?
2) Is the same principle applicable to chop hammers? (If I chop/whip/produce and have a lot of excess hammers in one turn)

(I heard about a 99% hammer loss, but that was for over 20 turns or so if you put hammers into a unit and throw it back in the build queue, so I am guessing it is not the same mechanic.)

 

[Silu]

^ As far as I know, the way the latest patch works, your overflow (all overflow hammers including chops) is maxed at the hammers of the current build, and the rest is lost forever. So even if your 100 hammer city gets 60 (subsequently 100) overflow, it always gets reduced to 40.

Before the latest patch the excess overflow above this was converted into gold, so there were whole strategies based on timing huge chop+whip overflow fests for resource-boosted builds (PRO Walls/Castles being the most broken example).

Looking forward to someone to correct me

 

[DrakenKin]

Yes I was expecting the overflow to convert to gold (I have read the articles you mentioned, someone should really mark them as outdated!) but it didn't so I was a bit confused.

I think it really does not make sens for extra production to vanish. If they wanted to reduce overflow abuse (assuming it is abuse) they can add penalties instead of removing the whole mechanism. But I guess Fireaxis can't be hassled to correctly fix a game that has been released years ago..

 

[r_rolo1]

^ As far as I know, the way the latest patch works, your overflow (all overflow hammers including chops) is maxed at the hammers of the current build, and the rest is lost forever. So even if your 100 hammer city gets 60 (subsequently 100) overflow, it always gets reduced to 40.

Before the latest patch the excess overflow above this was converted into gold, so there were whole strategies based on timing huge chop+whip overflow fests for resource-boosted builds (PRO Walls/Castles being the most broken example).

Looking forward to someone to correct me

Always a pleasure

The 3.19 patch divides between 2 kinds of hammer overflow turning gold: the one from regular building ( say, you have a city with base 18 hammers and you build a wall ... ) and the one from chopping/whipping. The first still gets gold ( in spite of using a completely unintuitive formula to get the value, where you only count with the generic hammer multipliers for them ( like forges, factories, power plants ... ) and not specific multipliers ( like resources, military academies, heroic epic, Police state... ). The second get's nothing, no matter how much trees you chop . I guess that letting a much more versed person in this matters speak is better:

iProductionNeeded = getProductionNeeded(eTrainUnit);

// max overflow is the value of the item produced (to eliminate prebuild exploits)
iOverflow = getUnitProduction(eTrainUnit) - iProductionNeeded;
int iMaxOverflow = std::max(iProductionNeeded, getCurrentProductionDifference(false, false));
int iMaxOverflowForGold = std::max(iProductionNeeded, getProductionDifference(getProductionNeeded(), getProduction(), 0, isFoodProduction(), false));
iOverflow = std::min(iMaxOverflow, iOverflow);
if (iOverflow > 0)
{
	changeOverflowProduction(iOverflow, getProductionModifier(eTrainUnit));
}
setUnitProduction(eTrainUnit, 0);

[B]int iProductionGold = std::max(0, iOverflow - iMaxOverflowForGold) * GC.getDefineINT("MAXED_UNIT_GOLD_PERCENT") / 100;[/B]

I tried really hard, but I just cannot see the intended logic in this piece of code.

The new variable iMaxOverflowForGold is calculated as the maximum of the current build cost (iProductionNeeded) and the number of base hammers of the city (from tiles, specialists, buildings) multiplied by its generic (=non build-specific) modifiers. In the early game with the typical low base hammers and few generic modifiers (forge, bureau) iMaxOverflowForGold will be equal to iProductionNeeded. Chops and whips have absolutely no effect on it!

The capping of iOverflow at the maximum of iProductionNeeded and the base hammers multiplied by ALL modifiers remained unchanged and will also typically result in iOverflow = iProductionNeeded in the early game, especially at slower speeds.

Thus iProductionGold = max(0, iProductionNeeded - iProductionNeeded) = 0.

You will gain a little overflow gold if the city has a lot of base hammers (e.g. > 17 base for pro-stone-wall @normal speed) and then the amount of gold will be higher the more build-specific modifiers are active .

The exact gold overflow = base hammers * build-specific modifiers, excess chops and whips turn into thin air. IMHO this goes against everything the change note of the patch stands for.

And before anyone asks, yes, this part of the code is bugged... even people of the Firaxis Civ IV team admited it some posts below this one.

 

[DrakenKin]

Bugged meaning we can hope for a fix next patch, right...

How often do they release patches?

 

[bestbrian]

Bugged meaning we can hope for a fix next patch, right...

How often do they release patches?

Highly doubtful, but who knows? Noone was expecting 3.19. Surprised the heck out of everyone (pleasantly for most, probably less so for the mods).

 

[Silu]

Bugged meaning we can hope for a fix next patch, right...

How often do they release patches?

Well, even the last one was quite a shock, I don't think anyone thought they are still patching the game. I wouldn't get my hopes up; if the biggest current bugs/problems bother you there are fanmade "unofficial patch mods" that fix these.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Bugged meaning we can hope for a fix next patch, right...

How often do they release patches?

Bugged meaning the writers of the Unofficial Patch had no hesitation changing it to the desired behaviour.

I wouldn't keep your hopes up for another patch but Firaxis have surprised us in the past. They tend to not let anyone know they're making a patch until they release it.

EDIT
lol double cross post with Silu and bestbrian. Oh well.

 

[DrakenKin]

I use the BUG mod. Will the unofficial patch work with it?

 

[glrfndl]

is there some quick way to check who has gotten the circumnavigation bonus?

 

[Dusk]

I've noticed that I can pillage improvements around captured cities (say I want it to be my National Park) but it seems I am unable to pillage improvements I built myself.

Is there any way to get rid of improvements in my own founded cities?

 

[Silu]

I've noticed that I can pillage improvements around captured cities (say I want it to be my National Park) but it seems I am unable to pillage improvements I built myself.

Is there any way to get rid of improvements in my own founded cities?

You can pillage your own improvements no problem (no cash though) except roads. Only ways to get rid of roads within your culture borders are to hope an enemy pillages them or for a random event to destroy them. Quite damn annoying if you want to max forest growing chances in a future NP prospect, even more so when a stupid AI comes to road inside your borders because they captured that size1 tundra barb city on the other side of your empire

 

[EsaKo]

You can pillage your own improvements no problem (no cash though) except roads. Only ways to get rid of roads within your culture borders are to hope an enemy pillages them or for a random event to destroy them. Quite damn annoying if you want to max forest growing chances in a future NP prospect, even more so when a stupid AI comes to road inside your borders because they captured that size1 tundra barb city on the other side of your empire

I think that there should be some late game tech that allows foresting terrain. The process should take a long time, though.