Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[lymond]

It's still popping up these requests to leave.

I believe you mean the captured cities are revolting. That's a different thing. Captured cities may be under cultural pressure if the former master is still alive. This is something that you need to be aware of...the revolt risk. Look at the culture bar at the lower left of the city screen (it also show current revolt risk 0%-10%max). If the former civ has greater than 50% culture pressure then the city may have some revolt risk. Eventually the city will flip back to the former owner. Simple solution is to just gift the cities back to your vassal. Another option is that enough garrison units will can eliminate revolt risk - more advanced the units the more suppression. Anyway, as you capture cities and decide to take on a vassal, culture pressure is something one must take into account. Of course, eliminating them in the first place removes all their culture.

(minimize pop-ups is for eliminating the general pop-ups on the new turn ..which I find nice. You get they icons on the right of the screen that you can select for the message or ignore)

 

[TruePurple]

No. the cities are not revolting. They are just asking to leave, the other nation would be so appreciative if I just gave back all their cities. (including cities 20 tiles away from my vessels single city)

 

[crullerdonut]

What determines the number of turns of anarchy when switching Civics? At the beginning of the game (at least on Normal speed), one can switch two (2) Civics and still get only 1 turn of anarchy. But, later in the game, switching two civics causes 2 turns of anarchy. Why is this?

 

[Qactus]

What determines the number of turns of anarchy when switching Civics? At the beginning of the game (at least on Normal speed), one can switch two (2) Civics and still get only 1 turn of anarchy. But, later in the game, switching two civics causes 2 turns of anarchy. Why is this?

Later in the game your city count will be higher. See this post by T-Hawk from the Strategy Articles section:

I searched for this, but couldn't find it, so took a code dive to post it here. Here is the formula for turns of anarchy length when changing civics. The code is at getCivicAnarchyLength in CvPlayer.cpp. [] means round down to integer. This assumes anarchy is actually occurring, of course; no Spiritual trait or Golden Age or Cristo Redentor.

[([(1* + CivicsChanged** + [Cities × MapFactor / 100]) × SpeedFactor / 100]) × StartingEraFactor / 100]

* This is BASE_CIVIC_ANARCHY_LENGTH from GlobalDefines.xml. It is 1 in the standard unmodded game.

** This is defined per each civic in CIV4CivicInfos.xml. Every civic is 1 in the standard game.

MapFactor is from iNumCitiesAnarchyPercent in CIV4WorldInfo.xml.
11 Duel
10 Tiny
9 Small
8 Standard
7 Large
6 Huge

SpeedFactor is iAnarchyPercent in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml.
67 Quick
100 Normal
150 Epic
200 Marathon (yes another factor that favors Marathon for HOF type score play)

StartingEraFactor is iAnarchyPercent in CIV4EraInfos.xml
50 Ancient
50 Classical
40 Medieval
40 Renaissance
34 Industrial
34 Future
34 Modern

The function also multiplies the anarchy time by 1 + m_iAnarchyModifier (by calling getAnarchyModifier()) but it seems that this is always zero in the unmodded game. So here is a short version omitting some of the rounding and divisions by 100 and assuming an ancient start:

(1 + Civics + [Cities × MapFactor / 100]) × SpeedFactor × 0.5

I'll elaborate a little more on that one factor of [Cities × Map factor / 100]. This is what makes civic changes take longer later. It is not due to the game date or to any previous civic changes; it is driven only by your number of cities. Every N cities counts as one additional "ghost" civic change. On a normal map, it's every 100 / 8 = 12.5 cities. So your 13th city, 25th, 38th, 50th, and so on each cause extra anarchy.

This explains why you can change 2 civics in 1 turn on normal speed, but not epic speed (assuming no city count penalty.) On normal speed, the anarchy length comes out to (1 + 2 + 0) × 1 × 0.5, which is 1.5 rounded down to 1. On epic speed, the same operation comes to (1 + 2 + 0) × 1.5 × 0.5 = 2.25 rounded down to 2.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Whoever builds the UN is guaranteed to be one of the two leaders up for election as UN resident/secretary general.

This is not correct, the two candidates for the election will be the person who controls the city with the UN in it and whoever of the other players has the most population.

A common tactic at the high levels is to give the UN city away to your hand picked opponent.

 

[crullerdonut]

I see. From that post

On a normal map, it's every 100 / 8 = 12.5 cities. So your 13th city, 25th, 38th, 50th, and so on each cause extra anarchy.

Basically, if you have 12 cities or fewer and you need to change a bunch of Civics, then it may be wise to do so before capturing enough cities to have 13 of them. Good to keep in mind. As a mnemonic, I'll just try to remember 13 being the unlucky number of cities.

 

[Pangaea]

A common tactic at the high levels is to give the UN city away to your hand picked opponent.

Are there still people on the forum that merely play the game? Or have we come to the place now where it's mandatory to play the game in a Swiss cheese factory, on a chair made of cheese, eating cheese, wearing glasses made of cheese?

Sometimes I kinda wish I didn't know about this place and see all these exploits to the n-th degree.

 

[crullerdonut]

Sometimes I kinda wish I didn't know about this place and see all these exploits to the n-th degree.

This is a common thing for most games, I would say. It's always up to the player, whether or not they choose to use exploits. Different categories of speedruns allow or disallow various exploits and glitches. In Gen 1 Pokemon, one can skip a huge section of the game just with the Pokedoll glitch, but nobody is forcing anyone to use it when playing for fun. One can efficiently play Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 by spamming three-piece "roller coasters" (cf. Marcel Vos), but one can also play it by making aesthetically-beautiful parks.

On the other hand, sometimes there are exploits that are essentially unavoidable. In Gen 1 Pokemon, there's the so-called "badge-boost glitch" which will inevitably happen to the player numerous times outside of their control, so one might as well just use the mechanic when possible. The entire concept of intentionally building fail- may fall into this category.

When playing Civ4, which I do for fun, I generally refuse to do things which I consider to be "exploits", such as begging 1 for peace or building the same National Wonder in many cities, just for the fail-. Nonetheless, I sometimes do very cheesy things like join wars dogpile in faraway places just to Pillage the Towns and Villages, giving me easy while hurting the new owner, all the while making my "allies" pleased with my "help".

 

[Fippy]

Are there still people on the forum that merely play the game?

I never play with those things outside sgotm
Actually i also stopped (ab)using ceasefires and so.

 

[TruePurple]

How does the AI decide how much to give for peace? I was wooping on a AI and wanted to sue for peace in exchange for tech. AI wouldn't give me much, even when I wooped on it's last city till it had one heavily injured defender left, it wouldn't give me much. How does it decide? Is there caps? Does techs given for surrender count towards traded tech maxes?

I play this game single player plenty. What is "sgotm"?

 

[lymond]

How does the AI decide how much to give for peace? I was wooping on a AI and wanted to sue for peace in exchange for tech. AI wouldn't give me much, even when I wooped on it's last city till it had one heavily injured defender left, it wouldn't give me much. How does it decide? Is there caps? Does techs given for surrender count towards traded tech maxes?

Not sure exactly, but I think it's a combination of war success, war weariness and power. I don't know the code though. Yes, techs given in peace count toward caps.

I play this game single player plenty. What is "sgotm"?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-succession-gotm.196/

Friendly competition of teams playing a game created by the staff with special rules. A game is going on now.

CFC also provides Games of the Month and HOF...see my sig

 

[Pangaea]

I never play with those things outside sgotm
Actually i also stopped (ab)using ceasefires and so.

Nice to hear. It's pretty demotivating to learn time and again that I'm using a Lada against Ferraris whenever I play these competitive games.

 

[crullerdonut]

Nice to hear. It's pretty demotivating to learn time and again that I'm using a Lada against Ferraris whenever I play these competitive games.

I'm sure that there could be categories for these competitive games, just like there is with any speedrunning scene (glitchless, glitches allowed, etc.).

Moderator Action: Please do not discuss the mod capabilities for any Game of the Month or Hall of Fame games. Thanks, leif

Besides not building the UN and gifting that city to an AI opponent, what other things would you like to not be used in these competitions?
For me, another one which comes to mind is gifting the AI a city near your capital, just to spy on it and get huge bonuses that way. To me, that's something that a human opponent would refuse to do, but since the AI wasn't programmed with that capability, it's just exploiting this missing capability.

 

[TruePurple]

If I get tech for peace, then after the peace ends fight again, can I get the same nation to fork over more tech with more peace trades? Do I need them to grow to weaker than when the war started?

 

[elitetroops]

I'm sure that there could be categories for these competitive games, just like there is with any speedrunning scene (glitchless, glitches allowed, etc.).
It looks like SGOTM has move-logging, too, so these things could be enforceable, too.

Besides not building the UN and gifting that city to an AI opponent, what other things would you like to not be used in these competitions?
For me, another one which comes to mind is gifting the AI a city near your capital, just to spy on it and get huge bonuses that way. To me, that's something that a human opponent would refuse to do, but since the AI wasn't programmed with that capability, it's just exploiting this missing capability.

All competitive strategy games, whether it be vs AI or other humans, would come down to finding your opponent's weaknesses and trying to exploit them. The Civ AI does a lot of things a human wouldn't do. If the goal is to ban exploiting any behavior a human opponent wouldn't do, we would have to start by banning warfare altogether.

In the end the AI is just another piece of code among all the other. Knowing AI behavior and trying to capitalize on that is in my mind no different from knowing barb spawning rules or forest spread mechanics and trying to use that knowledge to your advantage. City gifting does indeed allow some rather shady strategies and I kind of wish that part had been implemented differently in the game. The exploits mentioned in this thread aren't however the major offenders. For example gifting the UN city doesn't really give you any advantage. The victory date would probably not be any faster than if you had managed the diplo a bit better and could win the vote without gifting it. More likely slower because you'd have to build it in a sub-optimal location. Setting up the right circumstances for gifting it can also be quite tricky, so all in all I'd say it's easier to win the normal way. To me gifting it is more of a plan B if randomness (or my own stupidity) somehow messes up the diplo situation.

If something is clearly a bug, that's a different issue. The worst city gifting exploit, liberating cities while still at war (which would force a peace deal if done through diplo screen but is possible to do without a peace deal through other means), is clearly a bug and has already been banned in all competitive games.

 

[Orion Pax]

My next question:

Why does the AI seem to leave so many tiles undeveloped? And switch back and forth between improvements when they do develop it? I get that it's the coding, but why is the coding that way I guess...?

 

[elitetroops]

Worker code is just horrible. For example, they always build a road first before building the improvement. And they tend to even use the route to -option to move to tiles that need improvements to sometimes delay them a dozen turns or more. Worst case is if a BFC includes a tile on the other side of a large lake or wide bay. They'll happily build twenty roads to get to the tile. Why? No idea. Did the devs really understand the game that badly, or did they do it intentionally so that a competent player would have an advantage over automated workers..

 

[TruePurple]

If you get bonus research in a library from a library quest, does that bonus research ever get obsolete? If you get a bonus researcher in your great library, that disappears when your great library is obsolete?

 

[Orion Pax]

Next question - dot maps:

How does one erase city maps one has placed?

I see how I can switch off the dot map display so it doesn't show when I am not using it. But I want to be able to wipe placements as I go so I can have a fresh map. Could do without the fuzziness of the overlaps..

Thanks!

 

[lymond]

I forgot which hotkey does what, but one of Alt-X or Ctl-X should erase the dotmaps. Right-click should erase an individual dotmap.