Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

And you don't nuke the city instead, then paradrop some dudes in and raze it?

 

But what about the corp. executive?

 

I guess what I was asking is which is more effective: +50% EP or extra chance of catching rival Spies. I really hate having my water supply poisoned by my rivals. I have actually gone to war over it.

 

If you're really concerned and low on hammers, then build the Intelligence Agency and a Spy in the city. Having a Spy inside a city gives it exactly the same extra chance of detecting enemy Spies as a Security Bureau - and the bonuses don't stack. So yeah, a 180 hammer Intelligence Agency plus a 40 hammer Spy gives you essentially the same thing as a 220 hammer Security Bureau, except with more espionage points.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the "+50% defence against Espionage" for the Security Bureau... I believe this increases the cost of rival Spy missions. However, generating more EP's per turn also offers an intrinsic benefit of increasing the cost of rival Spy missions and lowering your own - not sure how comparable it is though. Certainly generating more EP's allows you to perform the "counterespionage" mission more frequently, which doubles your rival's mission costs. Again I'm not sure what the exact comparison ends up being, but it's probably not significant enough to be concerned with.

The best thing to do if you're really intent on thwarting enemy Spies is just to build both buildings though. That, or use the hammers to build a military instead and wipe them off the continent.

 

I've googled around but can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Has someone collected a summary of the exact differences between the difficulty levels? I know its all in the xml but I didn't want to go to to that level of research

 

Is this something like what you're looking for? Bear in mind it's rather outdated (from 2006 and for normal Civ4 without expansions), but I think most of the numbers are still about the same. You can go to the location specified at the top of the image (except in your Warlords or Beyond The Sword folder) to double check the current values in the XML if you want.

Spoiler :

 

Good stuff Lord Parkin. Do you know the difficulty level bias towards the WFYABTA trade cap? Also, does begging/extorting techs count towards the trade cap?

 

Not sure, but I'd guess maybe it's under "iNoTechTradeModifier"? If so, I'm not sure what the numbers mean rather than a general trend of being less willing to trade at higher difficulties.

Also not sure, but my guess is that it would. I should point out I'm no expert on the XML, I just found and downloaded that handy spreadsheet ages ago.

 

You just gotta love the charts and tables of Civ information. Thanks.

 

How do i prevent the AI to just spamm Cities all over the World? Its just not fun when i have 7 cities and Montezuma has 21

Is there a way to fix this through XML editing? Have to say i play with the ROM: A new Dawn Mod and it contains a "Better AI" Patch, but it has no effects i guess.

 

The way to stop the AI from claiming land is to claim the land before it does. This may not be possible on higher difficulties.

If anything, Better AI makes this worse. It makes the AI better. As in it plays the game better, which includes expanding its territory better.

Other than that, you just need to start taking the territory from him or win by some means that does not require doing so.

 

What level are you playing (Settler, Chieftan, Warlord, Noble, etc)? From your question I gather that you are relatively new to the game. It may be that you are playing at a level above where you can succeed without more experience. If you start a thread and post details about how you play, people can give you advice on how to improve so that this will not be a problem for you.


Also, welcome to the forums!

 

I play on Noble.

No,i play it for years now, i just never really stuck my head into a little Theorycrafting, i always gave up on it when i saw another civ with 15+cities and never touched it again for a few months because thats a fun Killer for me

How do i disable it and will this have a noticable affect on it? I remember playing the Game without this Mod and it also happened.

I changed >MIN_CITY_RANGE< to 3 because i was reading something about this that it could help. I couldnt find the option to change the AI Happines.

Thanks

 

I think that you are either not expanding fast enough (not enough settlers fast enough at beginning) or not training enough workers. I also play on Noble for the most part. Other than when I purposely stop expanding (usually to pursue a culture victory), I am the one with the huge number of cities, not an AI.

Again, I suggest starting a thread where you describe your typical early game or post an early save. Then people can point out how doing things differently may solve your problem.

 

I am almost 100% sure that your problem is that you are building too many unnecessary buildings instead of workers and settlers to expand your empire. The only building you need in every city is the Granary. You are probably also building excess city defenders, archers axes ect. You don't need to have a huge army early, you are better off having just a couple dudes to defend against barbs.

 

I am not expansionist/warmonger at heart, so sometimes I do have less than half the cities the AI has. No probs on prince/monarch but must be much harder on higher levels.

 

You hit the nail in the head, i exactle do that every time . I just like to build everything what the game offers to me (more so in New Dawn, there is so many to build!).

I try your suggestion next time.

Thx

 

QUOTE=Mec AntiKythera;11252125]You just gotta love the charts and tables of Civ information. Thanks.[/QUOTE]

Here is another set of crazy useful charts.

There is also a very cool ref booklet located around here somewhere, that is written in the spirit of how the manual looks like, with lots of good information.

 

You may be referring to Anion's excellent reference guide, which can be found at the link below:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=6570

 

That would be the one! Thanks for finding it, I bookmarked it this time, though I have it downloaded in pdf format which is why I didn't bk mark it originally.