Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[s.bernbaum]

So are there any decent guides on the space race out there?

Look in the War Academy. I know that there is a guide there for space race victory in an OCC game, there may be a more general one as well.

How many of each part do I need to build to make sure my ship gets there?

If you want to be sure that it gets there, you need all five of the casings. Each one that you are missing means 20% more chance of failure. You need all of the components that are only one of a kind. You can launch with either one or two engines. With one engine it will take more turns to get there. So, if you can plan things so that both engines are finished at about the same time, two are better. If not, then compare how long the trip will take with only one engine to the time needed to build the second one. Often, it is faster to just go with one in that situation. You can launch with less than all five of the thrusters but I have never done so and have never seen anyone comment on what happens with less than all five.

The only other comment I have would be that unless you are able to build the space elevator using engineers, it will take so long to build that it will actually delay your launch because you can build several spaceship parts in the same city instead in less time. Space elevator was good in vanilla but in BTS they moved it to a tech so late in the tree that it causes this problem.

 

[MrKlew]

What happens to national wonders in captured cities? Do they get razed or is it possible someone could end up with two national wonders this way?

 

[Sisiutil]

What happens to national wonders in captured cities? Do they get razed or is it possible someone could end up with two national wonders this way?

National wonders are always lost when the city containing them is captured. So no, you can never end up with two of the same national wonder.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Though it's worth noting that if you peacefully acquire a city (through the diplomacy screen), any National Wonders that you don't already have will be kept. This can actually be a disadvantage sometimes; e.g. you might acquire a Moai Statues city in a poor location which then disables the ability for you to build it where you originally planned - at least until you dispose of the city in question.

If you peacefully acquire a city with a National Wonder you already have, I'm pretty sure the one in the city you acquired is removed while the one in your original city remains.

 

[pixiejmcc]

DOes anyone know whether there is a year at which barb animals "disappear". I.e. is there a year after which you can guarantee there won't be any 2-move barb units.

Related: In my last game I encountered my first ever barb horse archer. It was late on but I'm sure I've never seen that before. I always wondered what the rules are with barbs, they seem to sort of tech and periodically improve their units, just very slowly.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I don't know what it is but, just as barb animals do not appear until after a certain date, they also disappear at a certain date, after which you get human barbs. The tech level of the barbs is determined by how may civs know the tech in question. I don't recall the percentage but when X percent of civs know a tech, then the barbs have units of that tech level. However, after a certain level, they don't spawn higher level units. What that level is, has been discussed periodically but no one (that I have read) has found the code that sets the level. Mostly, they don't show up at a higher level than rifles, although I did on one occasion see barb paratroopers, in a very long game, where they were on an isolated island that had two barb cities. I have never seen mounted barbs. Your report of them is the first that I have seen. It may be that advanced units and mounted units are possible but very improbable.

The above applies to land units. Ships are different. Barb ships only spawn as galleys. They begin to do so at a set date (again I don't recall what it is) and will spawn throughout the game, as long as there are fogged coastal tiles.

 

[pob]

Galleys start spawning once the barb animal age is over and the barbs know sailing. Barb units (including galleys) stop spawning once the average era of all the civilizations is the renaissance. They can still be built in barb cities though.

Barb animals:

Barb Animals start appearing after game turn 5 (hard coded, independent of game speed). As mentioned earlier the game stops spawning them if both of the following two conditions are met:

1. The average number of (non-barb) cities per player must be >= 1.5.
   .
2. A certain number of game turns must have elapsed (depending on difficulty [iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed] and game speed [iBarbPercent], marathon is special with 400%).

So in a quick deity game animals are usually only created in just 1 IBT (5->6).

When the era of barb animals is over, the existing creatures are not eradicated in 1 major extinction event. Instead, the game kills off 1 animal per turn until they are all gone and will insert regular barb units (Warriors, Archers, ...) as they are "needed" during the next IBT (can be > 1 unit/turn!, ALL required units are created immediately).

barb teching:

How do barbs acquire their techs?

• Their real research rate is almost guaranteed to be 0, since they aren't allowed to have a Palace (8 commerce) and thus suffer from high maintenance (but they don't lose units via STRIKE).
• So they merely receive the 1 free beaker everybody gets (BASE_RESEARCH_RATE) for their current research plus 3% (BARBARIAN_FREE_TECH_PERCENT) of the cost of a tech scaled by the percentage of players who know it for each technology each turn. Hence, if the majority of the players in the game knows Sailing, it won't be long until the first barb Galleys come visit your fishing grounds.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Perfect. Thank you.

 

[spitonme]

What's stack attack? How do I get units stacked? What are pros and cons of it?

 

[Verarde]

You can't stop an assault if everyone starts dying. Every unit will attack, one after the other, with no way to stop them unless the city is taken or they all move. I don't like it because I might want to conserve some troops for a possible counterstrike from the enemy.

 

[pixiejmcc]

What's stack attack? How do I get units stacked? What are pros and cons of it?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4518097

 

[s.bernbaum]

You can't stop an assault if everyone starts dying. Every unit will attack, one after the other, with no way to stop them unless the city is taken or they all move. I don't like it because I might want to conserve some troops for a possible counterstrike from the enemy.

Also, you, the player, have no control over the order that the computer selects for your units to attack. Its choices are far from optimal, resulting in your losses being much higher than they would be with a judicious selection order for attacking units. Thus, stack attack is not a good idea.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Also, you, the player, have no control over the order that the computer selects for your units to attack. Its choices are far from optimal, resulting in your losses being much higher than they would be with a judicious selection order for attacking units. Thus, stack attack is not a good idea.

Making a stack of units is simply putting multiple units into a group. This is generally a good idea because if you have different kinds of units with different promotions you can repel pretty well anything the AI throws at you.

These guys are referring to the option, "stack attack" (I wasn't sure if you're question was really directed towards this or not). With this selected if you attack a city or another stack of units with your stack your units will attack one after the other without you having to attack multiple times. While a time saver, ideally you should consider which unit you want to attack with each time. and select your units individually. Though I think the computer does attack for you with some sense of logic... Doesn't it choose the attacker with the best odds each time?

 

[Smellincoffee]

Could someone explain the proper use of artillery/siege units in CIV? I tend to defer to my CivIII experience, so I only use them for bombarding...in what instances is a direct attack by the artillery merited? Seems better to me to preserve units and use them for bombardment only, but I know this game is different.

 

[s.bernbaum]

These guys are referring to the option, "stack attack" (I wasn't sure if you're question was really directed towards this or not). With this selected if you attack a city or another stack of units with your stack your units will attack one after the other without you having to attack multiple times. While a time saver, ideally you should consider which unit you want to attack with each time. and select your units individually. Though I think the computer does attack for you with some sense of logic... Doesn't it choose the attacker with the best odds each time?

Sure, it selects the unit with the best odds for that attack. That does not mean the best unit for the entire battle. If you have a highly promoted unit that has odds of 25% and a bunch of un-promoted units of the same type with odds of 20%, the computer will send in the highly promoted unit first. After it gets killed the others will attack until they are all dead or one wins. You can see this effect whenever the AI sends a stack to attack your well dug in, highly promoted, defenders. The AI will often get the stack wiped out with little damage to the defenders. Assuming that you decide you need to make this attack, you would send in one or two of the un-promoted units to soften up the defender, thereby increasing the odds that your highly promoted unit will be victorious when you decide the odds are now good enough to send it in.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Could someone explain the proper use of artillery/siege units in CIV? I tend to defer to my CivIII experience, so I only use them for bombarding...in what instances is a direct attack by the artillery merited? Seems better to me to preserve units and use them for bombardment only, but I know this game is different.

Unless you're using mounted units and siege units can't keep up its almost always a good idea to attack with collateral damage units first. This will soften up the defenders and overall you will take less losses and lose less hammers. I didn't play civ 3 but in civ 4 you need a very large % of siege units.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Sure, it selects the unit with the best odds for that attack. That does not mean the best unit for the entire battle. If you have a highly promoted unit that has odds of 25% and a bunch of un-promoted units of the same type with odds of 20%, the computer will send in the highly promoted unit first. After it gets killed the others will attack until they are all dead or one wins. You can see this effect whenever the AI sends a stack to attack your well dug in, highly promoted, defenders. The AI will often get the stack wiped out with little damage to the defenders. Assuming that you decide you need to make this attack, you would send in one or two of the un-promoted units to soften up the defender, thereby increasing the odds that your highly promoted unit will be victorious when you decide the odds are now good enough to send it in.

Yep. I won't disagree with you there.

 

[zooropa]

Hi, how do i stop my cities automatically assigning population to available specialist slots? I dont have the govenor on and yet i seem to spend multiple turns removing specialist out of the slots and back to working a city tile. Its not as if i have 20 plus population and so there are no city tiles to work, if that were the case i could understand it. Whats making this happen? Basically i dont understand why they go into the slots when there are available city tiles to work? Surley the game isnt set up so that when you have a specialist slot available it fills it automatically? Its starting to seriously jack me off, what am i missing/doing wrong?

Cheers

Zooropa.

 

[Manco Capac]

Hi, how do i stop my cities automatically assigning population to available specialist slots?

I think if you stress food, hammer and commerce all at once, then the governor will put all citizens at work even in the most extreme plots at the end. Yes, even tundras without forest. I haven't tested it yet, but Sirian (a developper of the game) mentioned that stuff in a non-related post.

In a score game where manipulating tons of cities, this could a nice trick.

 

[zooropa]

Hi, how do i set all cities to place all the population into work tiles automatically? or do i have to do each city individually? This seems crazy! In civ 3 specialists were not created as a standard and only became specialists if the woked tiles were all used or you manually took population out to perform a specialist function.