Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Sorry if this has been asked before but is it not possible to bomb railroads in Civ4? It seems you can only bomb improvements and not infrastructure. This sucks cos in Civ3 this was the best way to cut off an enemy city from the rest of their empire. The only was I can do it now is to use gunships but they often get stranded. Also, can ships no longer destroy improvements/roads?

Also, why do my ICBMs not work? I click on a city to bomb and nothing happens. On some cities the square doesnt even come up.
 
ICBM's can only be fired at hostile civs, so make sure you've declared war before you try launching. They can't be fired at a target if any of your troops or cities will be caught in the blast radius. They also won't work if any troops or cities of any third party civ you aren't at war with are in the blast radius, and this includes spies. If you can't fire at something, there is probably a friendly or neutral unit in the way, and if you can't see one it's probably a spy.

Ships can't do anything except bombard cities now unfortunately. I thought it was possible to bomb rails and roads, but I must admit, I can't recall ever trying to. It's possible this has been removed, but it seems an odd choice if it has.
 
MacBryce said:
So I can use an enhanced advisor when everybody else has their version modded too?

I'm not using an enhanced advisor right now, because I'm thinking I can't use it online.
Click to expand...
I downloaded the (Enhanced Foreign Adviser mod) and hosted it in a direct ip setup, and it worked. So you will either have to find a server that is running that particular mod or serve it yourself to play it online. I like this mod I think I might have to use it myself. FYI, I didn't have anyone else connect to the game so It worked for me when I launched the game, but it should work for anyone who is running that mod.
 
Hi. I'm new to CFC, and forums in general, so I'll try to learn the proper etiquette as fast as possible. I am having problems in the world builder. I can use it alright (lots of experience from Civ II), but after a while, my computer starts beeping and then freezes up, esp. when placing land terrain.

I've installed the 1.52 patch. It did help with some other problems I was encountering, but not with the slow performance and single beeps that are coming from my (motherboard :confused: just goes beep. . .beep. . .beep--10 - 60 sec intervals, no specific pattern, than the computer freezes up). Temperatures seem to be OK.

My system is nice: KN1 Extreme, Athlon X2 4200, 2 GB DDR, ATI X850XT--with all recent drivers. Does anyone know what is going on and what I can do to correct this issue?:salute:
 
1. I don't understand how unit cost and free units fit together on the financial screen. Could someone explain what the example below is trying to tell me? In the first screenshot, I'm paying 17 gold for 17 units, but there's free support for 31. So why am I paying anything? Then I'm paying nothing for 34 military units, and 9 of them are free. Am I missing something, because this makes no sense in my mind. Is this also counting all of your units in play?

Second screenshot is just another example of the same insanity.





2. What does everyone do with their obsolete units? I'm all the way up to mace men, but I still have a few warriors hanging around. I understand that you can upgrade them and preserve any promotions they have. Assuming you don't have the cash for this (it seems a lot cheaper to just produce the newer unit), are there any other uses?
 
_alphaBeta_ said:
2. What does everyone do with their obsolete units? I'm all the way up to mace men, but I still have a few warriors hanging around. I understand that you can upgrade them and preserve any promotions they have. Assuming you don't have the cash for this (it seems a lot cheaper to just produce the newer unit), are there any other uses?
Click to expand...

1. You need a military unit in every city to keep the citizens from becoming unhappy (they demand military protection). They don't care what kind of unit it is, so obsolete warriors are good for this.

2. With the Hereditary Rule civic, you get +1 happiness in a city for each military unit there. Again, it doesn't matter what kind of unit it is.

3. You can post your units in unexplored territory in order to prevent barbarians from appearing there. Barbarians won't spawn in any tile that your units can see.
 
Hi,
I am new to Civ, and have been enjoying it greatly :)
In my last game I have tried the defensive pact for the first time. I first had one with the americans(roosvelt). They broke it when Isabella declared war on me. Then later in the game, I had another try and took a defensive pact with saladin. Then Isabella attacked again and this time saladin broke the pact!!!
So none of them really took their pacts seriously! I have two questions:
1. Is this usually so (warlord,they were both "pleased", we had trading....). Has anyone found defensive pact useful?
2. When they brake a pact like this, do they get punnished in any way. Reputation/diplomacy with other leaders. Everyone should find them utterly unreliable one should think.

I know I am probably trying a level that abit to difficult for me but I find the challenge very fun!
I look forward to tonight, then I am going to finnish Isabella off once and for all :)

Br//Sten
 
Resources Resources Resources...

Is there any easy way of finding out which tiles have which resource. I seem to be the only civilisation at th emoment that doesn't have coal, and frankly it's holding me up. I tend to miss the pop up messages that say "coal discovered here", and it's a pain in the nect scanning every tile by site to see if there is coal there.

Also - and I appreciate this is an improvement request and not a question, (so I guess I should post it somewhere else), but why the heck can't I build a railroad with oil instead of coal? that makes no sense to me. In fact shessh, if I have no coal and no oil, I would like to build a railroad with uranium!!!!
 
Originally Posted by Bananafish
Q. Artillery units (incl Cannon, Catapault etc) can attack individual units and can obviously bombard cities, but can it not also bombard a stack of units? I know it can attack that stack, but the odds always seem to be so low in the favour of the stack - whatever is in the satck, that it has never seemed worth risking it...
Click to expand...

A lot of people seem to use artillery units as suicide units. They're not supposed to win the fight, but rather weaken the whole stack for other units to clean up (as was already said).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the answers - I played with that for a while, and it's even better than you said. Yes you do lose a few Cannon on the way, but it would appear they have an automatic retreat chance built in, so more often than not you unit stays alive as well.

Does Anyone know exactly what the retreat odds are?
 
Bananafish

Have you tried 'ctrl R' to bring up the resource label, this makes searching much easier.

If you have no coal then trade or war for it.
 
@Alphabeta.
1)This means you have 51 units in total, but you get 34 of them free thanks to civics or whatever, so you're only paying upkeep on 17. Similarly for supply, you have 15 units outside your territory, but you get four of them free, and so are only paying upkeep on 11. There's a thread that explains how this screen works in more detail somewhere in the strategy articles, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

2)I think other people have covered this fairly well
 
MrCynical said:
@Alphabeta
2)I think other people have covered this fairly well
Click to expand...

Here u go

The only thing which isn't explained by mrCynical is the Military support cost. I think that it's only needs payment when you're using pacificism?
 
The military support cost will always be zero unless you're running pacifism, in which case it'll be 1 gold per turn per unit, minus any free units you get.
 
StenSture said:
Hi,
I am new to Civ, and have been enjoying it greatly :)
In my last game I have tried the defensive pact for the first time. I first had one with the americans(roosvelt). They broke it when Isabella declared war on me. Then later in the game, I had another try and took a defensive pact with saladin. Then Isabella attacked again and this time saladin broke the pact!!!
So none of them really took their pacts seriously! I have two questions:
1. Is this usually so (warlord,they were both "pleased", we had trading....). Has anyone found defensive pact useful?
2. When they brake a pact like this, do they get punnished in any way. Reputation/diplomacy with other leaders. Everyone should find them utterly unreliable one should think.

I know I am probably trying a level that abit to difficult for me but I find the challenge very fun!
I look forward to tonight, then I am going to finnish Isabella off once and for all :)

Br//Sten
Click to expand...
A Defensive pact works a little differently in Civ 4 than in earlier versions, and is not what you might expect.

A defensive pact ends when it is fulfilled.

What that means in practice is that if you have a pact with civ A and then Civ B declares war on you two things happen.
  1. Civ A declares war on civ B (fulfilling the pact)
  2. The pact is cancelled (it has been fulfilled)
Often for new players this means you see the message that the pact has been cancelled and wonder what happened. In fact if you check your ally should be at war in your defense. You will need to reestablish the pact (if your ally is still willing) to protect against future warmongers.
 
Bananafish said:
Also - and I appreciate this is an improvement request and not a question, (so I guess I should post it somewhere else), but why the heck can't I build a railroad with oil instead of coal?
Click to expand...

I think that's a sensible suggestion. But this isn't the place for it. (And I'm not convinced about the nuclear-powered trains.)
 
Thanks for the information MrCynical & MacBryce!

Some more questions:
1. When using the draft option I cannot seem to find a way to change what unit to draft. Is there anyway to do this? I'm talking about the top button above the slavery and Universal suffrage buttons on the city control panel.

2. When you trade the world map with an AI civ, this is a current status of everything they have explored. Do you share in exploration after this point, or must you ask for the world map again to get any updates?

3. Can you create a permament alliance with an AI civ once a game is underway? I cannot find a technology that allows it. Defensive pact seems to be the highest level. If you cannot, do you have to set the teams as such in the custom game setup? Is there any other way?

4. How exactly do farms spread irrigation? Do they have to be adjacent tiles? How in the world was I able to build a farm here in this screenshot? All of the surrounding 8 tiles do not have farms or fresh water. There is also no resource there. The farm in question has a worker standing on it, the tile directly left of the city.


Bananafish said:
Does Anyone know exactly what the retreat odds are?
Click to expand...
They should be displayed when you mouse-over the unit. Some promotions actually increase the chance of this. There's nothing like seeing a siege weapon inflict massive collateral damage, and then retreat from the fight. Remember that colateral damage is not inflicted unless the catapult attacks.
 
1. You don't get to choose what unit to draft. Of course, as you research new technologies, you may be able to draft better units.

2. You have to trade maps again to get any new information.

3. Fascism enables Permanent Alliances, if you turned the option on when you created the game. It is in the tech description.

4. Cities spread irrigation in the same way that farms do.
 
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