Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[henrebotha]

I don't wanna disrupt the questions and answers of this thread, but I thought I'd give a quick follow-up. So spoilers to protect the uninterested.

Spoiler :

Welp, my first venture into Noble ended pretty quickly. Here's the condition of my empire when I retired:

So exactly 2 turns after I loaded the savestate Saladin placed a city right next to Tokyo, nearly in the same spot henrebotha suggested I should've placed Tokyo in the first place (doh!). Then a few turns later a barbarian started demolishing Tokyo's improvements, and my fortified warrior had a 73.8% chance to win the fight, so I sent him out to kill the barb... and I lost. An immediate rage-retire followed.

And, omg, the end-game screen makes me even sadder. Look at all that juicy land on the main continent. What I wouldn't give to have started there! Oh well. Learning experience!

In any event, thanks go to henrebotha for taking the time to give advice!

No problem. Start a thread next time if you want extensive back-and-forth. Also, you could try re-playing the same game and see how stuff works out.

 

[bestbrian]

Hey, Henrebotha, good to see you finally got BTS.

 

[vhhawk]

I loved a spy's ability to bribe enemy units and cities in Civ 2. It was one of my favorite wicked elements of the game. What happened to that? Why wasn't that carried to Civ 4?

 

[bestbrian]

I loved a spy's ability to bribe enemy units and cities in Civ 2. It was one of my favorite wicked elements of the game. What happened to that? Why wasn't that carried to Civ 4?

Huge exploit for the player, and it totally sucked when it happened to you.

 

[Baldyr]

A quick one from me also:

What are the amounts of XP corresponding to each unit level?

Like: Level 0 = 0 XP, Level 1 = 2 XP, Level 2 = 5 XP, and so on.

Does anyone know the equation used to calculate the XP/Level ratio?

(I'm doing some functions for spawning units with preset experience, by the way.)

 

[henrebotha]

@bestbrian: my girlfriend pretty much forced me to get Complete. Needless to say, I'm happy.

A quick one from me also:

What are the amounts of XP corresponding to each unit level?

Like: Level 0 = 0 XP, Level 1 = 2 XP, Level 2 = 5 XP, and so on.

Does anyone know the equation used to calculate the XP/Level ratio?

(I'm doing some functions for spawning units with preset experience, by the way.)

XP required to reach level n = n^2+1.

 

[saon1971]

Thanks! Do you have the long answer?

 

[Baldyr]

Thanks! Do you have the long answer?

Well, there really isn't that much too it. I'm not even sure if I've got it right myself, so someone could probably confirm this:

The number of is based on difficulty level. You get many on the easiest levels and very few on the hardest ones. You get additional by runnings certain Civics or having access to luxury resources, to name a couple of available bonuses.

The number of is based on several things, but the base amount would simply be city size. There's one for every population point, plus the additional generated by different conditions. These can be anything from foreigners feeling disenfranchised, religious minorities or zealots considering you an infidel, war weariness or citizens feeling unsafe.

All these figures are readily accessible to you if you mouse over the associated symbols and figures in the City Screen.

The number of citizens actually gone and not doing any work is number of minus number of . This is why there will be no strike as long as => :mad. The ratio is used to calculate how many more citizens your city can handle happiness wise mad: minus ). This scope between and is sometimes referred to as the cities "happy cap". This is reached when equals .

 

[henrebotha]

Thanks! Do you have the long answer?

The long answer involves that "We love the despot/monarch/dictator/president day" thing you sometimes get. When this day is celebrated in a city, that city's maintenance cost drops to 0 for that turn, so you make a small amount of cash. However, this only happens if your citizens are way happy; the more surplus happiness you have, the greater the chance of it occuring.

So for the most part, you don't need to improve your cities' health beyond what is necessary, but improving happiness endlessly has some benefits.

 

[6K Man]

There is a small benefit to improving your cities health beyond what is needed to make healthies>unhealthies: A health cushion greatly lessens the effect of poisoned water supplies.

I've had cities starve down 3-4 sizes because they were size 22 and had exactly enough health to stay that size. A -8 unhealthiness penalty really hurts.

 

[Beriks]

So I have just bought BTS after playing the Vanilla for a long time. I mainly play Multiplayer and there for I was happy with the tool with which you were able to point out specific locations on the mab for your teammate(s), but it seems to be unavailable in BTS.

Is it gone or is there a way to "reactivate" it?
If so how?

Is there perhaps a mod out there which contains such a tool?

//Beriks

 

[Silu]

So I have just bought BTS after playing the Vanilla for a long time. I mainly play Multiplayer and there for I was happy with the tool with which you were able to point out specific locations on the mab for your teammate(s), but it seems to be unavailable in BTS.

Is it gone or is there a way to "reactivate" it?
If so how?

Is there perhaps a mod out there which contains such a tool?

//Beriks

Is placing (and removing) signs on the ground with Alt+S what you are looking for?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I think he meant "pinging" them.

 

[Silu]

...which, in turn, you do by clicking 'p'...

 

[Silv Something]

Well, there really isn't that much too it. I'm not even sure if I've got it right myself, so someone could probably confirm this:

The number of is based on difficulty level. You get many on the easiest levels and very few on the hardest ones. You get additional by runnings certain Civics or having access to luxury resources, to name a couple of available bonuses.

The number of is based on several things, but the base amount would simply be city size. There's one for every population point, plus the additional generated by different conditions. These can be anything from foreigners feeling disenfranchised, religious minorities or zealots considering you an infidel, war weariness or citizens feeling unsafe.

All these figures are readily accessible to you if you mouse over the associated symbols and figures in the City Screen.

The number of citizens actually gone and not doing any work is number of minus number of . This is why there will be no strike as long as => :mad. The ratio is used to calculate how many more citizens your city can handle happiness wise mad: minus ). This scope between and is sometimes referred to as the cities "happy cap". This is reached when equals .

May I suggest reading of cabert's ways into happiness ?

 

[PieceOfMind]

In a team game (or permanent alliance, which is almost the same), city BFC tiles are assigned primarily by the distance to the city, and only secondarily by culture (if the distance is equal). 2 tiles east is shorter than 2 tiles west and 1 north, so it's assigned to Chita's controller. Sadly, you can't get it back except by gaining control of Chita.

Sorry Silu but I'm pretty sure this is not the right explanation because distance does not work like that.

Basically diagonal distance is counted as 1.5 tiles and distance is always rounded down. So two distances of 2.5 and 2 like in this example are both actually a distance of 2 and therefore equal.

Sadly, I'm not sure of the better explanation for the observation, so I'm not being very constructive.

 

[StarEye]

Three questions from me: is there a difference between the religions at all? Is it only the number of cities that have that religion that matters? Are there any reasons why I should choose one religion over another to spread? I think there should be bonuses and/or dynamic changes to them, like at one point, christian civilizations could be rather cruel religion, with the crusades or the dark ages (with the witchhunting) but have later evolved to a more peaceful religion.

Second question is: how much time spent on looking for a suitable site for the first (and second?) city would you say is acceptable?

Last one: how is gamelength calculated? For example, if I choose Epic over Standard, will unit/building production be over more turns than normal? What makes the game longer?

 

[jlc102127]

This isn't really a gameplay question but me and my dad have just gotten back into civ 4 over LAN. The main problem we have is that if one of us is taking a longer time to finish a turn that the other, we (mainly me) get impatient and switch to another window, like an internet browser. What happens though, is that if I switch to firefox, he gets a message saying "Waiting for jlc102127, Player x". I was wondering if there was a way to be able to switch to another window without stopping the other players from not being able to finish their turns. thanks in advance.

 

[Sisiutil]

Three questions from me: is there a difference between the religions at all? Is it only the number of cities that have that religion that matters? Are there any reasons why I should choose one religion over another to spread? I think there should be bonuses and/or dynamic changes to them, like at one point, christian civilizations could be rather cruel religion, with the crusades or the dark ages (with the witchhunting) but have later evolved to a more peaceful religion.

Second question is: how much time spent on looking for a suitable site for the first (and second?) city would you say is acceptable?

Last one: how is gamelength calculated? For example, if I choose Epic over Standard, will unit/building production be over more turns than normal? What makes the game longer?

1. To avoid offending anyone in these intensely PC times, there are no significant differences between the seven religions. They all function the same way. The only difference between them is which ones appear first (and tend to dominate) and which ones appear later (and tend to be minority religions). In a custom game with "Choose religions" on, all the religions have an equal chance of being chosen early on and dominating.
2. You can take as long as you like, just realize that the AI will likely settle in place and begin growing and researching while you're exploring. As you climb through the difficulty levels, it's usually better to settle your capital on the 1st or 2nd turn.
   As for the second city, again, as you climb the difficulty levels, it becomes more important; many players prefer to settle their second city to claim a strategic resource like copper or horses.
3. At Epic speed, almost everything is multiplied by 1.5--750 turns as opposed to 500 turns at normal speed, but builds (buildings, units, wonders) also require 1.5 times the standard number of hammers, techs require 1.5 times the standard number of flasks, cities require 1.5 times the standard amount of food to grow, etc. Unit movement remains unchanged, however, so your units are less likely to become obsolete by the time they reach enemy territory. (FYI, Marathon speed has a 3x multiplier for almost everything.)

 

[Silu]

Sorry Silu but I'm pretty sure this is not the right explanation because distance does not work like that.

Basically diagonal distance is counted as 1.5 tiles and distance is always rounded down. So two distances of 2.5 and 2 like in this example are both actually a distance of 2 and therefore equal.

Sadly, I'm not sure of the better explanation for the observation, so I'm not being very constructive.

The explanation of the reason might be wrong, haven't checked (then again, it could be counted as 100x like most of the BtS functionality and never divided, or just hard-coded for the different BFC tiles), but the explanation of the functionality is correct for sure. It's teamgaming 101, really, it's hugely important to know how the tiles are assigned on the in-team border in order to make a proper dotmap. Never seen evidence to the contrary in a hundred team games at least

Three questions from me: is there a difference between the religions at all? Is it only the number of cities that have that religion that matters? Are there any reasons why I should choose one religion over another to spread? I think there should be bonuses and/or dynamic changes to them, like at one point, christian civilizations could be rather cruel religion, with the crusades or the dark ages (with the witchhunting) but have later evolved to a more peaceful religion.

There's only two tiny gameplay differences between the religions. The first is that their appropriate cathedrals (those unlocked by Music that give 50% culture) are sped by different resources (Copper, Stone, Marble). This might come in handy when playing with Choose Religions on and pursuing a Culture victory - you can handpick religions for whose cathedrals you have the speeding resource.

The other is that autospreading is calculated "in order" for each city, and stopped if the autospread succeeds. Judaism is checked first, so it has a teeny-tiny bit bigger rate of autospread than the others.