Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Qactus]

Thank you! How many of the island will usually be connected by sea, as opposed to ocean, tiles?

That depends on the settings. There are archipelago maps where almost all islands are connected w/o ocean in between. That's what I meant when I said it is sometimes possible to circumnavigate (and unlock the extra movement) with galleys.
Here are some sample archipelago maps for (left to right) snaky continents, islands and tiny islands:

(This is from https://civ-wiki.de/wiki/Kartensammlung_(Civ4). It's a very useful overview to get an idea what mapscripts will look like and what their landmass settings will do, it's in German though)

 

[R82]

A proper guide would have a section on traits as well. Let's just point out that IND obviously helps with the Great Lighthouse and cheap forges make whipping units easier later on. AGG is even less useful, because fighting (land) barbs won't be an issue on a water map. CRE is hugely helpful in order to get second ring food resources online quickly. On a land map it is much easier to adapt your city placement to get food in the first ring, on water maps this is often not possible.

So, ideally I'd do an unrestricted leaders game with Louis XIV, or maybe Huayna Capac, of the Vikings?

 

[Tecumseh1]

This is what the AI does so it's automatically suspect.

In this specific instance it's probably best to spend a turn reducing Chicago's defense to 0. But there are lots of situations where you simply can't wait to bombard each city to 0. That can take many turns pre-gunpowder if the city has a wall.

I'm curious how other players conduct their cannon wars. Generally I try to send some cannon for pre-bombarding while the main stack is healing. I'll bombard the city closer to 0% but won't skip a turn of the main stack's movement to wait for more bombardment.

Bombarding to 0% might save some cannons, but all sorts of bad things can happen when you fight a war too slowly.

I will rarely spend a whole turn bombarding defenses. It's usually less efficient and too slow. Esp with cannons (or trebs even if they don't have too many longbows). I will bombard with a few, the promote a couple to collateral damage and suicide. Then use city attack promoted siege to further soften. And can take city in 1 turn if you bring enough units. Of course that isn't always a luxury. But I'd rather suicide a few siege and take targets more quickly. I usually don't split my stack or try to bombard 1 city ahead. It's too tedious to keep things tight and usually bad things happen to me when I don't use concentration of force.

 

[NickGabben]

When a capital city is captured, the palace is auto-moved to another city. What I'm wondering is whether there's a bonus for capturing the capital. Sometimes it's the very last city you take, way down on a peninsula and then there are games where the capital keeps getting moved along the logical invasion path so you capture it like five times. Does the AI react differently to losing the capital or is it just another city loss?

 

[AcaMetis]

As far as I know capturing the capital only matters insofar as capturing an AI's actual first city (which will ixnay them going for a Cultural victory) or destroying that civ's spaceship travelling to Alpha Centauri. I'm not aware of any given city that happens to have a Palace being worth more war success than any other given city.

 

[Lennier]

I don't think capturing an AI's actual first city will by rule prevent them from getting a cultural victory--it just makes it practically impossible as that's probably their highest culture city. And it's capturing the capital that destroys the spaceship, NN the first city (but that's usually the capital.)