Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[AJ11]

Spoiler :

Hello, all:


I'm a new member, so apologies if this is out of
place. I've played Civ4 a few times _ coming to
it straight from years of Civ2. I've a few frustrations,
I'm afraid, but maybe I'm being clueless. Anyway _


Comparison with Civ2: "If it ain't broke, don't
fix it" is my verdict.


1. Game simply isn't as much FUN. Simplicity of Civ2
stimulated imagination. Yes, Civ2's artwork is great _
but unnecessary.


2. Challenge has been taken away.


Examples _ (a) govt type; (b) war; (c) pollution
and corruption; (d) maker bias and editing of
civilisations.


(a) In Civ2, you pretty much knew your choices _
Democracy, Communism, Monarchy, etc. OK, one could
argue about interpretation of the names _ game
has a very American slant _ but still, in game
terms, you had clear choices: the more freedom
people have, the more money they may generate,
but the less they will willingly fight for you.
From the very start of a Civ2 game, you make a
clear personal choice about what type of ruler
you want to be: this has specific benefits, and
specific costs, which change your whole game.


In Civ4, the expansion of this into 28 or so
Civics ends up leaving you, oddly, with no
real choice _ because the way they're set up,
they make no real difference.


The irony is, when I first saw Civ4's splitting
of government choices into detailed Civics, I
thought it was a great idea _ and in theory, it
is. But for whatever reason, it doesn't work out
like that in actual game-play.


Giving the Pyramids the power of having all
"Government Type" civics is a LOUSY idea: takes
all the challenge out of the game. In Civ2, the
equivalent power is only given very late: with
Statue Of Liberty, I think it was ? Anyway, my point
is, I learned very early on to ALWAYS go for
building the Pyramids a.s.a.p. in Civ4, and
thereafter use either Hereditary Rule or
Representation. Virtually no penalty or
challenge. What's more, switching between the
"Government" civics makes very little
difference on the ground.


(b) As regards war _ as far as I can see, in
Civ4 it's virtually impossible to take an
enemy city if the two opposing civilisations
are within an ass's roar of each other
technology-wise. This leads to a defensive,
World-War-1 mindset


(c) The manual says (not in quite these words) that
the makers removed corruption, waste, and
pollution as big factors because too many
people were whining about them. Pathetic
decision, removing all challenge.


(d) I feel that the makers show a weird sort of
bias in their choice of so-called great civilisations
and leaders, as compared to Civ2's. Bluntly, I
don't see why the "American Empire" merits two
leaders while the Romans only get one. The "American
Empire" shouldn't even exist, really, given that
the USA was a breakaway from English imperial history _
it would be more proportional, in world history terms,
to merge "The English" with the Americans as "Anglo-Saxons". On which note, how on earth does Victoria
merit inclusion as a great leader ? By her time,
English monarchs didn't DO anything except sit on
the throne. What about Henry the Fifth, Cromwell,
or Gladstone ? I only like the last one, but they
were all major English figures.


Plus, I'm sorry, but how on earth does Mali get in
there as an important civilisation when the Celts
don't ? No disrespect to Mali, but in terms of world
history, they just didn't happen to be where the
world-changing action was. The Celts were: first,
they were the Iron Age movers and shakers in Europe,
second, Rome had to conquer them, in Gaul, to get
its Empire going, and third, when Europe sank into
the Dark Ages, it was Celtic monks who kept learning
(Latin, Greek, etc.) and writing alive, and spread
idea-bearing religion, which ultimately got Europe up
and running again as a civilisation. Regardless of your
personal opinions on Christianity or Europeans _ these
things *happened*.


Of course, I wouldn't care about stuff not being there if it was easy to make one's own changes _ it isn't.
The makers claim you can add a new Civ using XML _ you can't. I'm using Windows XP, so it's not me that's the problem.


In Civ2, all one had to do to make changes was some
simple editing of ordinary text files.

-----------------------------------------------------

Finally _ I've read the makers' end-notes in the manual,
about what they felt was "wrong" with earlier
Civ versions, that they wanted to "improve". I
reject this utterly as regards Civ2 (I can't speak
for other versions).


When all the smoke has cleared
away, the only real improvement has been the art
quality. Yes, Civ2 graphics were simple and almost
cartoonish _ a small price to pay for the most
addictive game I've ever played. Civ4 doesn't
even come close. Classic case of "if it ain't
broke, don't fix it".


Score: Civ2 beats Civ4 5-nil _ or 5-1 at best.


P.S. In fairness, there IS one thing I think
is great about Civ4 _ the religions.

I have played both Civ2 and Civ4, and have modded both. I have been modding Civ games since the days of Colonization. So, I'd like to think I have a bit of a handle on the various gameplay of the different games all the way up from the original Civ.

There are places where you are right, Tsevo, and places where you are wrong. Let's treat your post as one big question and go through your points one by one.


1. Simplicity doesn't simulate imagination as much. A more complex ruleset allows you to better define your setting. It is not simulating to see your battleship taken out by a phalanx, for example. It actually breaks immersion.


2. a) To a certain extent, you are right. Civ4 give more choices in terms of civic compared to the old "government" style of doing things. However, half of those civics are pure trash. Civics like Environmentalism and Serfdom makes me wonder what the heck the game's creators were smoking. The fact that in general you end up with a question of State Property or Free Market is another bad point in balance. It is as if the other 3 might as well not exist. However, it does allow for more diversity, and some people do play with a particular civic for fun (there is a story going around in Story and Tales where the players' civ, Japan, is locked in Mercantilism, for example, as a nod to historical accuracy).

b) Wars can be won and won easily with inferior tech levels. What you need are enough siege weapons. With enough siege weapons, even a lowly horse archer can win you the war. This is where I believe Civ4 failed badly. Game balance is skewed heavily towards artillery. This was a problem in Civ3 and it continues to be a problem in Civ4.

c) I don't see how this removed challenge. In fact, by concentrating all of it in gold, it escalated the problem. At certain points in the game, gaining an extra city can kill you, whereas in Civ2, it just means that that city is not productive until you bought a courthouse. It didn't affect the rest of the empire at all.

d) I have to agree with you in that Mali shouldn't really be there. There are many other civs that should be there ahead of Mali. Tha Majapahit Empire, for example, stretched over much of present day Indonesia, Borneo, Singapore, Malaysia and beyond. The Native North Americans had several distinct groupings that were not explored. Mali was a political/marketing nod to islam, in my opinion, so that muslim players can have something to look forward to other than the arabs and the Turks. With the new religions parameter, I guess the makers of the game were also looking for at least one other civilisation with islam as a focus so as to not look like bigots.

It is similar with the wonders. All of a sudden we have all sorts of islamic "wonders" listed with the more traditional ones. Seriously. University of Sankore? Spiral Minaret? Wonders of the world? What the-??? The creators needed to balance out all the Christian wonders that have been there for donkey's years, and so anything went. It is funny how that they didn't bother to be so conscientious with Hinduism, Taoism and Confucianism, all of which also made the religion cut (the Taj Mahal is islamic, by the way, and is probably the only islamic wonder that should be there; and no, the Hagia Sophia is not islamic, it is Orthodox Christian). Even Buddhism only got the Angkor Wat and the Shwedagon Paya.

It is all marketing, and probably fear of repercussions. The makers of the game knew they could get away with ignoring the other religions. Just not islam. The fact that they had to make a disclaimer in the game about religions is very telling (I believe it is under Game Concepts in the Civilopedia).


3) You can actually add a civilisation by tinkering with the XML files. I did it for Fall from Heaven 2. It is not easy, particularly if you don't have the capability to make your own icons and graphics, but it can be done.

 

[Rammones]

We were talking about these new civs - is there any way to just add them to the normal game without loading any mods? Does it mean that if I download two sepparate civs (2 mods), it is not possible to play with them together? Thanks

 

[Danelius90]

We were talking about these new civs - is there any way to just add them to the normal game without loading any mods? Does it mean that if I download two sepparate civs (2 mods), it is not possible to play with them together? Thanks

It depends where you download them to. If they are in the custom assets they should load with the normal game. If they have been downloaded into a mod folder you could copy and paste them into custom assets, but this might be a pain to do (and to remove)
BEST way I should think is to create your own mod folder and add these civs in that folder (can't remember if you need to make a copy of the original file with the civs in and add them to that file in the correct directory [don't change the original files!]). That should allow you to run an otherwise normal game but with extra civs, and go back to the completely normal game anytime you want.
Hopefully if you've dabbled in creating a civ or know how it works this might make an ounce of sense. Someone who knows exactly might be along soon anyway or take a look at the C&C forum. There's a good tutorial there for adding civs, and if you can manage that you should be able to manage your request

 

[Skallagrimson]

They do have a dramatic impact, though you actually have to plan around them.

• Monarchy allows unlimited happiness at the cost of hammers to build units and gold for maintenance, and is also useful for diplomacy for extended periods of the midgame.
• Representation gives instant happiness in your core cities and makes specialists far more powerful.
• Police State is highly situational however, mostly useful if your drowning in war wearriness later in the game.
• Universal Suffrage is monstrous with a matured cottage spam empire and the Kremlin, potentially turning towns into 8-10 per turn tiles with the right civic and infrastructure setup. However the big downside is that it does nothing if you have no, or few towns.

Obviously the latter two aren't useful till much later in the game, but all the civics have uses.

As others have mentioned, the Pyramids are hardly without penalty. The cost involved is immense, without stone or industrious that 500 is equal to 5 settlers, or 14 Axes or 10 Horse Archers, grabbing them will leave you with fewer cities and less of a military. To make matters worse the only civic worth building them for is Representation as Hereditary Rule comes with a relatively early tech!
Representation is not a newbie friendly civic either, it does require experience in city management and specialists to get real benefits from.

Far from being a no-brainer build, the mids are actually the biggest newbie trap in the game!

Notable exception: failgold, pre-currency. Or any bonus-produced wonder for failgold post-currency.

On corruption and waste, the replacement, city maintenance is vastly more effective at preventing the silliness of ring city placement and ICS that were all the rage in civ 3 (I don't remember back to civ 2 in any detail)

I remember in Civ2 because land was land, and the only resources were iron, coal, silk, and a few others (hardly game-breaking, just minor boosts to yield), and with late game Engineers all land could be transformed as desired, city placement was a purely mathematical grid to align BFCs for maximum tile usage and minimum overlap. The classical move-out for placement was 3 diagonal, 1 lateral or vertical, to puzzle-fit the BFCs (especially useful on large land-only land masses like America or Russia).

My first major noob hurdle to clear in Civ4 (never played 3 as I stuck with 2 for a long time), was to embrace overlaps or gaps as applicable when going for max food.

 

[Rammones]

It depends where you download them to. If they are in the custom assets they should load with the normal game. If they have been downloaded into a mod folder you could copy and paste them into custom assets, but this might be a pain to do (and to remove)
BEST way I should think is to create your own mod folder and add these civs in that folder (can't remember if you need to make a copy of the original file with the civs in and add them to that file in the correct directory [don't change the original files!]). That should allow you to run an otherwise normal game but with extra civs, and go back to the completely normal game anytime you want.
Hopefully if you've dabbled in creating a civ or know how it works this might make an ounce of sense. Someone who knows exactly might be along soon anyway or take a look at the C&C forum. There's a good tutorial there for adding civs, and if you can manage that you should be able to manage your request

Thanks a much!

 

[elohssa]

Can a colony trade away techs that it has started with (on independence), to foreign civs if no trade brokering is on? I am thinking of trying a colony just for fun (never had one as I think colonies suck) but this would be a set-back if they can trade technologies they start with (but technically haven't researched themselves). Also once I create a colony does it get defenders for free in each city? As I'm thinking of just dumping 4 settlers into New Zealand (earth 18) and instantly giving them independence. Will the 4 cities get defence (against barbs)?

 

[Samson]

BTW, you skipped Civ III, it was a wonderful game, we played that a long time, esp. the Rise and Rule mod.

I guess this should be on the Civ3 thread, but as it was brought up here: the Rise and Rule mod thread says "To be able to play RaR, you need the unit animation folders "World War II" and "Medieval Japan"." and then provides various links to http://civ3.bernskov.com/ which seems to be down. Does anyone have these files?

[EDIT] The answer to this question is probably here

 

[Psyringe]

I guess this should be on the Civ3 thread, but as it was brought up here: the Rise and Rule mod thread says "To be able to play RaR, you need the unit animation folders "World War II" and "Medieval Japan"." and then provides various links to http://civ3.bernskov.com/ which seems to be down. Does anyone have these files?

These folder were, IIRC, installed with the "Play the World" expansion (or at least on said disc), so people usually have them already. They probably needed to be copied over to the mod, I don't recall the details. If you don't have PtW, then your best bet is asking in the Civ3 subforum.

 

[Beaster]

Howdy,
I've played Civ2 for years just got Civ4, (yeah, I know) How do you force build, or just buy a unit/building?
I've searched this forum, combed through threads/posts, read the book, am I blind/********, all the above?

You can call me blind/********, just let me know the answer as well

 

[Ansive]

Force build? You mean rush/buy/whip?

Slavery civic if you want to rush with population (1 pop = 30 hammers on normal speed, can only sacrifice half the population in a city). Universal suffrage civic if you want to rush with gold (2 gold = 1 hammer.. I think).

 

[God-Emperor]

Two civics enable you to rush buildings and units:
Slavery lets you rush production by sacrificing some population.
Universal Suffrage lets you rush production by paying money.

Slavery is available pretty early, when you get the Bronze Working tech. It is a very powerful civic, partly due to the early game's low happiness limits (it is very easy to grow your population over the limit, which is useless unless you can use the population to rush build).

Universal Suffrage is not available until much later at Democracy unless you build the Pyramids (and this civic is not a good reason to build them) and while it is useful, it may not be better than Representation (enabled by it's immediate prerequisite tech, Constitution) if you need Representation's happiness or are running very many specialists (Rep gives +3 to each specialist) or you don't have very many towns (US gives +1 to each town).

Additionally, the Nationhood civic (avaialble at Nationalism) allows you to draft units, which is not quite the same (and you can't draft a building).

 

[Beaster]

Yeah, that's what I mean, in Civ2 you have the option on the build screen to "buy" unit/building/wonder.

I'm just getting used to the changes between 2, an 4.

Universal suffrage is it then, Thanks for the speedy replies gentlemen.

 

[Carwyn]

Yeah, that's what I mean, in Civ2 you have the option on the build screen to "buy" unit/building/wonder.

I'm just getting used to the changes between 2, an 4.

Universal suffrage is it then, Thanks for the speedy replies gentlemen.

Also, when you go to buy or whip something the option to do so will be available when you either click the city bar or open the city screen. It will be an arrow in the little box of city control options, just to the left of the mini map. Sometimes just finding the silly controls can be a pain.

 

[GGracchus]

Also, in the case of US, you want to wait a turn after you tell the city to build whatever before you rushbuy. This lowers cost and I think improves the hammer overflow, although I'm not sure exactly how it works.

 

[Ansive]

There's always a 50% penalty if you haven't invested at least 1 hammer before rushing (build it one turn, rush the next one).
Population gives only 20 hammers if it's the first turn.

 

[SuperrAsss]

my friend told me about an event that happened to him a while back when he was playing a game.. He completely conquered another island, and eventually he got an event that made the entire island into another civ wich was then his vassal. This was appearently because of the high maintenance cost, but when we played a multiplayer game and he did the same (we were on seperate teams) nothing happened for a long time, even though he got like -800 because of the maintenance. He eventually just built the forbidden palace there and fixed it, but why wouldnt it convert? How does this mechanic work?

 

[AJ11]

my friend told me about an event that happened to him a while back when he was playing a game.. He completely conquered another island, and eventually he got an event that made the entire island into another civ wich was then his vassal. This was appearently because of the high maintenance cost, but when we played a multiplayer game and he did the same (we were on seperate teams) nothing happened for a long time, even though he got like -800 because of the maintenance. He eventually just built the forbidden palace there and fixed it, but why wouldnt it convert? How does this mechanic work?

He created a colony. Sometimes, the game asks you if you want to do it. But, I believe you can do it yourself manually.

 

[Lord Parkin]

my friend told me about an event that happened to him a while back when he was playing a game.. He completely conquered another island, and eventually he got an event that made the entire island into another civ wich was then his vassal. This was appearently because of the high maintenance cost, but when we played a multiplayer game and he did the same (we were on seperate teams) nothing happened for a long time, even though he got like -800 because of the maintenance. He eventually just built the forbidden palace there and fixed it, but why wouldnt it convert? How does this mechanic work?

It's the "colony" feature you're talking about. Vassal States have to be on for it to work. Sometimes the game will prompt you to start a colony, but often it will not. If you want to manually start a colony, go to the F1 screen and look for the fist icon. Clicking that should found the colony - though be careful you're sure which cities are going to flip to AI control.

Personally I don't like to use colonies, but then I'm a bit of a control freak.

 

[Psyringe]

my friend told me about an event that happened to him a while back when he was playing a game.. He completely conquered another island, and eventually he got an event that made the entire island into another civ wich was then his vassal. This was appearently because of the high maintenance cost, but when we played a multiplayer game and he did the same (we were on seperate teams) nothing happened for a long time, even though he got like -800 because of the maintenance. He eventually just built the forbidden palace there and fixed it, but why wouldnt it convert? How does this mechanic work?

It's not an event. It's called "creating a colony" and can be done anytime when you have (I think) at least two cities on a landmass unconnected to your capital. To create a colony, you go to the domestic advisor, select one of the cities that should form the new colony, and press the "fist" icon.

I think there's also a hint that recommends to create colonies, that's why your friend may have mistaken it for an event.

 

[Danelius90]

Just wondering how to work out who the worst enemy of a civ is. Is it just the one that has the lowest diplo score? Does it include hidden modifiers?
ofc BUG tells you but I'm just curious as to how it calculates it