Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

It can be quite hilarious if you're playing OCC. The AIs will build cities right next to your culture, and will then disappear to the overwhelming culture from you cap. The AI will try again and again.
 
Excellent advice from Vaidd above. I have only a couple of things to add.

After letting the rage subside, I reloaded and tried to save my empire. Basically, I spent serious moola upgrading archers to longbowmen, then I pulled units completely out of ancillary cities and used them to buttress my two star cities.
Spending money to upgrade units is really only worthwhile in three circumstances: (a) the unit has earned more promotions than a brand new one has or can obtain soon after it's been built; (b) a neighbour has launched a surprise attack and you need to beef up the nearest defenders; or (c) you have oodles of money to burn, in which case the game is probably as good as won. If none of the above apply, save your money.
I make swordmen to retaliate, but he's across a river fortified in a forest. Becomes apparent that this is a bad idea. OTOH, with Heroic Epic finished, I can output a unit every turn. He doesn't seem to feel like attacking. I ask for peace, and am surprised that acquiesces.
Swordmen are best used to attack cities; they have a built-in bonus to that effect. Don't just look at a unit's strength, look at its other characteristics. To expand on Vaidd's point about spearmen's bonus versus mounted units, pretty much all of the units in Civ IV were designed in a paper-rock-scissors fashion, where every unit is a counter unit to another one, and has a counter unit against which it is much weaker in turn. So spearmen have a bonus against mounted units, but are weak against axemen, who have a bonus against other melee units. And so on and so forth.

Siege weapons like catapults, trebuchets, cannon, etc. are vital for taking cities and destroying enemy stacks because they cause damage to multiple units when they attack. Yes, you're going to lose several of them, but they are the key to military victories in Civ IV.
 
@steveg700:
What are catapults and trebuchets good for? When I attack a stack with them, they are the first unit pulled out of the stack to fight, they inflict seemingly no damage, and are smashed with one blow.

Most of your questions were well addressed by others. The wording I quote caught my eye.
It sounds like you are using stack attack. Don't do that. When you do you are letting the computer decide which units to attack with, thereby giving away a lot of the advantage that you get from having real intelligence. Pick a unit, use the move command (cntrl-G) to mouse over the enemy stack, but don't click on it. The display will show you the odds for that unit to attack. When you see odds that are okay with you, for a unit, then click and make the attack. I almost always look at several different attack choices before deciding. If you are using BUG, the attack results for cats and other siege will show up as messages at top screen center telling you how many units suffered collateral damage from your attack. If not using BUG, you can find that info in the log at the top left of the screen. Also, if you mouse over the stack after each siege attack, you can see the strength of the enemy units and figure what damage was done. Once there is enough damage to satisfy you, you switch your attackers to your combat units.

As others have mentioned spears and pikes are the units to use against mounted enemy. It sounds like you are in the classical period, which means spears. A spear is 4 and gets 100% against mounted, which includes elephants, for a total of 8. That makes your spear even with the elephant at 1:1 giving 50% odds. If one or the other has promotions, that will sway the odds, so you want to promote your spears as much as you can in this situation. If you use the cats first, the elephants will already be damaged and your spears will have the advantage.

In the field, like when the enemy stack is invading you, use cats not trebs. The cats are stronger units. However, when attacking cities, use the trebs because they get a bonus against cities, making them stronger than cats in that setting.

Also, swords are only really useful for attacking cities, where they get a bonus. In the field, both axes and elephants get bonuses versus them making them pretty weak units in that setting. I rarely build any swords.
 
Elephants get bonuses versus swords?
 
Elephants have an intrinsic bonus against mounted units, but not Swordsmen. Perhaps you're just seeing the effect of the strength difference between the two units? Elephants are as strong as Macemen, just without the bonus against melee units... so they're pretty tough early in the game, and will definitely have good odds of beating Swordsmen in most situations.
 
Good, I didn't think so, but when long time posters say something, it sometimes makes me wonder.
 
Does changing game speed to epic or marathon simply "stretch" the game ? Is there no change in basic gameplay balance at all?? Which is the speed best recommended ?
 
Speed does change game balance.
Pretty much everything gets adjusted proportionally with game speeds but not units movements. They always stay the same.

As a result, warmongering gets somewhat easier in slower game speed.

I personally like Epic the best.
 
Does changing game speed to epic or marathon simply "stretch" the game ? Is there no change in basic gameplay balance at all?? Which is the speed best recommended ?

What MaxWar said. Though I tend to find warmongers like Marathon best, not only because unit movement is unchanged, but also because the longer research times mean the units you build remain useful longer. At normal speed and faster, it's not uncommon for several ships full of units to be obsolete by the time they make landfall.

If you're more of a peaceful player, you'll probably prefer a faster game speed. Otherwise you'll find many, many turns at Marathon or even Epic going by with almost nothing to do.
 
So, one thing that puzzles me is this concept of obsolesence. My walls and castles will eventually stop working, and not just as attackers improve their tech, but simply as a result of my own research? I research rifling, and suddenly in the middle of a siege, all walls throughout the empire stop repelling axes and spears? That would turn me into a luddite real quick. Rifiling, in and of itself, doesn't offer me any new defensive emplacements, so I'm seeing any internal logic.

Is there rhyme or reason to this I'm not seeing?
 
I have vanilla, I see they have Civ 4 complete on steam. Would it be worth it to get it? I love civ 4 and started playing it and 1 recently. What do i get from it that vanilla doesn't have?
 
So, one thing that puzzles me is this concept of obsolesence. My walls and castles will eventually stop working, and not just as attackers improve their tech, but simply as a result of my own research? I research rifling, and suddenly my walls stop repelling spearmen? Rifiling, in and of itself, doesn't offer me any new defensive buildings, so I'm seeing any internal logic.

Is there rhyme or reason to this I'm not seeing?
Walls and castles remain effective against non-gunpowder units. Try parking your stack next to a enemy city before you bombard away the defenses. Select a gunpowder unit, then a non-gunpowder unit; you should see the city's defense % change depending upon the selected attacker.
 
Does changing game speed to epic or marathon simply "stretch" the game ? Is there no change in basic gameplay balance at all?? Which is the speed best recommended ?

They are mostly proportional. The main exception is that on Marathon the cost to produce a unit is only doubled whereas most other things are tripled. (Compared to Standard.)
 
Good, I didn't think so, but when long time posters say something, it sometimes makes me wonder.

Sorry about that. Poor wording on my part. I should have been more detailed but was only adding an afterthought to the gist of the post, namely that swords are poor field units.
 
I have vanilla, I see they have Civ 4 complete on steam. Would it be worth it to get it? I love civ 4 and started playing it and 1 recently. What do i get from it that vanilla doesn't have?

Warlords, which adds some scenarios and new civs.
Beyond the Sword, which add those, Corporations, a Unique Building for each civ (UB), more civs, more units and buildings, a few wonders, Great Generals, better Espionage, better forts, and a few other things I am probably forgetting :D
Oh yeah, and for BtS, there are tons of downloadable mods out there, which add even more. Like the one in my sig (Special Forces (no, I'm not ashamed of advertising my mod in such a way :p))
Believe me, it is worth it.
 
Warlords, which adds some scenarios and new civs.
Beyond the Sword, which add those, Corporations, a Unique Building for each civ (UB), more civs, more units and buildings, a few wonders, Great Generals, better Espionage, better forts, and a few other things I am probably forgetting :D
Oh yeah, and for BtS, there are tons of downloadable mods out there, which add even more. Like the one in my sig (Special Forces (no, I'm not ashamed of advertising my mod in such a way :p))
Believe me, it is worth it.

The way you put the info is confusing :crazyeye:. Great Generals, UBs, and vassals are from Warlords, but BTS includes (well, BTS) everything from Warlords except the scenarios (although the Complete version contains Warlords and BTS, so you get the scenarions).
 
Are there any well tested user created content or official mods great for PBEM/Multiplayer for BTS???

It is ok to include Warlord but BTS is prefered
 
The way you put the info is confusing :crazyeye:. Great Generals, UBs, and vassals are from Warlords, but BTS includes (well, BTS) everything from Warlords except the scenarios (although the Complete version contains Warlords and BTS, so you get the scenarions).
I never played Warlords. Nuff said :p
 
Random question: Why do cities autoraze from time to time (i.e. no give you the opportunity to capture)? It seems to be less significant (perhaps younger) cities? Or perhaps if they only have 1 pop...?

Realised it was easy to answer my own question in Worldbuilder :p I didn't test it very extensively but it seems that if the city has 1 pop it autorazes but anything above that and you have the option to take it.
 
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