Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Regenerate map.

 

Nothing specific, but unless your playing some horrific rigged map then you must have something beside desert available, just make use of that as best you can.
You could always post the save with screenshots in the strategy and tips section for others opinions on any specific game.

 

Motherland unhappiness is function of your culture stocked in the city versus the previous owner and population.
And various constants plus an increased motherland unhappiness during war and that is another constant.

Only keeping a city small, getting lots of your culture in the city or destroying owner leader will help to manage motherland unhappiness.

For further details, go to here.

 

If the area is chock full of flood plains and oasises (oases?) and incense, then it might make a real good commerce capital. If it's just a barren desert, your city will never grow. I wouldn't wanna play that, it wouldn't be any fun. But if you want a challenge that puts one-tile island to shame, go for it...

And thanks Lemon Merchant and Tachywaxon for the answers. I guess it's "replace his crappy broke culture with my magnificent culture of awesomeness." Yeah, I can do that.

 

I'd move before settling to either a coastal tile or near a flood plain/oasis. Nothing can be done if you have only enough food to sustain your 1 pop. city.

 

If you're playing a weird mapscript like oasis where you can actually spawn in the middle of the desert and don't like rerolling starts the only option is to move your settler until you find a suitable spot, escorted by the warrior. There's no use settling in the desert. It's better to settle a good site on T10.

 

Sometimes when you raze a city the defender gets some free units... but not always... can anyone give me an insight on how this works?

 

You mean when it says that the citizens have formed an army or something like that? I believe it's a random event.

 

It happens if you have random events on and if the defender was at Emancipation.

 

That would be the Partisans event.

Although it is, technically, not a random event. It just uses the random event system in a non-random way. It is a completely deterministic event triggered by the onCityRaised event handler in CvEventManager.py. If all the criteria are met, it will happen. The number of units produced is not random either, with the base number being the current culture level (which is 1 + the number of times the cities culture has expanded for the current owner, so from 1 to 6 for never expanded to legendary).

There is one random component: there are two choices (half the base number of units, minimum of 1, created in the capital city or the full base number of units created near the razed city) and which one the AI picks is random. Both choices have the same weight in the XML so it should be an equal chance for each. So if the event happens but you don't see any units created near the razed city then it got some in its capital.

 

I think that is a largely terminological quibble. To be clear for the original questioner:

It only happens if random events are turned on (so it is in one sense a random event) but if it could happen (ie, the defender was at Emancipation) it will always happen (so in another sense it is not).

The message when the event happens makes it clear that units were created in the capital.

If you are nobbling a big empire with Emancipation it's a good idea, all else being equal, to keep squashing each new capital - otherwise they can potentially accumulate an ungodly number of partisans in one place, a hard nut to crack. That said, if you don't plan to finish them off, an island capital combined with your own control of the sea can effectively render half the partisans irrelevant.

Likewise it is imperative to try and take a city with a few units left to move, so you have half a chance of killing off partisans in the country before they can all go and hide in cities and start getting defensive bonuses.

 

Thanks to all for the explanations!

So... it's a random event that is not random!

Ah, there is a maximum! Good!

I didn't fully understand the meaning of "never expanded to legendary"... with Legendary culture (assuming that the current owner started from 0 culture) the defender gets 6 units, correct!?

.

 

Where the streets have no name?

 

With a little pre planning, you could use a spy to flip them out of emancipation (assuming you aren't running it). If the partisans are really a concern.

 

What happens when you chop a forest near a city that is building wealth, science beakers or culture? Are the hammers conserved for the next 'proper' build? Do the hammers dwindle away over time?

 

^^^ Yes they are conserved. And no, they do not decay.

 

They can be, if you aren't just stomping on someone. If neither side has the tech lead, they're - say - Riflemen to fight your Riflemen. You could do without more of those buzzing about. The spy idea is a good one.

 

I meant it as the range of possible culture states: from "never expanded" to "legendary". The "never expanded" level is really called "poor" so I probably should have used that. And yes, the maximum is 6.

 

Ok.

Got it! Thanks!

 

What is the best strategy to take out an enemy stack which contains 20 siege weapons and 30-40 other units? For example, Monty or Qin Shi Huang very often has huge macemen/catapult, riflemen/trebuchet or infantry/cannon stacks in Earth 18 civs game.