Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[HungryMouse]

Any war has penalties, wether it is lack of infrastructure (cos you are building units) unhappiness (WW) damage (cos of pillaging) or loss of cities. This si just one way of doing it, and if it means you have a shorter war then you could end up with less unhappiness. You can also choose where the unhappines is, perhaps somewhere where it is not a problem (though I think it unlikely that there will no problem with either the unhappiness or loss of population).

With the proviso that I have never used drafting in offence, I belive you can definatly beat a stronger opponent. The AI is just so bad at war. They tend to have just 3 units in each city other than the capital, so as long as you can kill them you can take cities. You just need enough units to counter there offence, with is not that hard as they are fairly predictable and not tactically clever enough to avoid your units.

Look, it's quite obvious that drafting is an alternative way of producing units, thus in theory you can create ALL of your military units by drafting after you discover Nationalism. However, my point was that in practice you hardly will use drafting for offence purposes except maybe for producing a couple of units, but not the entire army. As you mentioned you have never tried this strategy yourself, and therefore I really would like to hear about some practical experience of using drafting as a succesful offensive srategy.

 

[bobrath]

I've used drafting to supply the defenders and occupiers for captured cities. That frees up my attack force to continue doing what its good at - attacking. So while the drafted units aren't truly being used for offense, they (like offensive linemen in american football) allow my weapons to be used to the full extent.

The cities closest to the front typically don't have good production right away, so drafting is a way around that and gives your new units the shortest path possible

 

[royfurr]

The number before the slash is your current XP. The number after the slash is how many you need (total) to achieve the next level. The number before the slash can be equal to or greater than the number after the slash; that means that your unit has accrued enough experience already to reach the next level, but you haven't actually promoted it to that level yet.

Basically, a level-1 unit will always show x/2, a level-2 unit will always show x/5, etc. A level-2 unit that shows 6/5 has enough experience for level 3, but you have to choose a promotion for the unit in order for it to actually gain that level (at which point it will change to 6/10).

Thank you very much DaviddesJ for taking the time to post your reply to my question. It was the current value being greater than that needed (ie I had not yet done the promotion) that was hanging me up; I did't realize that I had been missing doing the promotions. Of course there may be times when waiting to do the promotion is a good idea, and with this info I can now quickly find the ones with "promotion-available" in a stack. Thanks!

 

[Barmer]

I just started my first Noble on a Standard sized Continents map. It's a pretty nice start actually having my own continent (now that I've cleared out the barbarians) with room for 7 or 8 cities; stone near my starting city; horses near my next; elephants; spices; copper and other good stuff.

My question though is on making farms. I've made some farms; but in some squares it says I need Civics which is quite a way along the research chain. One of my cities can't get farms until then. I don't remember needing this before -- is this a difference of Noble?

BD - trying something harder

 

[Samson]

I just started my first Noble on a Standard sized Continents map. It's a pretty nice start actually having my own continent (now that I've cleared out the barbarians) with room for 7 or 8 cities; stone near my starting city; horses near my next; elephants; spices; copper and other good stuff.

My question though is on making farms. I've made some farms; but in some squares it says I need Civics which is quite a way along the research chain. One of my cities can't get farms until then. I don't remember needing this before -- is this a difference of Noble?

You need civil service to "chain farms", before this you can only build farms directly next to a fresh water source.

It is not dificulty level dependant.

 

[Snerk]

My question: Can enemy boats attack my land units stationed in my/friendly coastal cities?

no they can't. Some enemy naval units can bombard your coastal cities reducing their defence bonus, but only if the latter presents, i.e. if it is above zero. as soon as it gets down to zero they cannot bombard your city any longer.

I got this message in my combat log:
An enemy frigate has destroyed your fighter.
The only fighters i had was stationed in friendly coastal cities with enemy frigates lurking about.
How could this happen?

 

[lost_civantares]

My question: Can enemy boats attack my land units stationed in my/friendly coastal cities?

I got this message in my combat log:
An enemy frigate has destroyed your fighter.
The only fighters i had was stationed in friendly coastal cities with enemy frigates lurking about.
How could this happen?

I don't know how this would happen, one of the frustrating things about civ4 is the inability of sea units to do anything to units on land except through bombardment of a city. That is it, and it is something that I have always found rather weird.

Are you sure that it was a frigate? There are naval units with air defence, and that might be it.

 

[methusalanador]

Trying out custom games to get myself up to speed. It only allows me to change my own difficulty setting, and I'm wondering if I go one level below noble, and cant change the AI settings, do they revert to my level? Don't want to waste time if they run at "noble" setting, and I'm playing at chieftan.

 

[Snerk]

I don't know how this would happen, one of the frustrating things about civ4 is the inability of sea units to do anything to units on land except through bombardment of a city. That is it, and it is something that I have always found rather weird.

Are you sure that it was a frigate? There are naval units with air defence, and that might be it.

Yes, and it happened on three occations. It was a japanese enemy frigate stationed outside a chinese coastal city where i had my fighters stationed.
Maybe it was a bug, but it seems od it would happen three times them.

 

[SewerStarFish]

My question: Can enemy boats attack my land units stationed in my/friendly coastal cities?



I got this message in my combat log:
An enemy frigate has destroyed your fighter.
The only fighters i had was stationed in friendly coastal cities with enemy frigates lurking about.
How could this happen?

An enemy frigate can destroy your fighter if your fighter tries to bomb the frigate. If you did not deliberately attack the frigate there's 3 possibilities:
1) Fighters flying CAP over your city can be damaged/destroyed by bombardment.
2) Fighters flying CAP defend against enemy naval units as well as bombers.
3) It's a bug.

 

[Blackanvil]

Trying out custom games to get myself up to speed. It only allows me to change my own difficulty setting, and I'm wondering if I go one level below noble, and cant change the AI settings, do they revert to my level? Don't want to waste time if they run at "noble" setting, and I'm playing at chieftan.

The level only effects your civ not the AI. At lower settings you get advantages over the AI and at higher settings it gets advantages over you. I can't quote the specifics but one example is the population a city can reach before becoming unhappy or unhealthy is effected by the difficulty.

 

[JackRules]

Am I right in assuming that if you have a work boat that has built an oil derek, or some other improvement, and the boat is destroyed by the enemy, then you are unable to put another work boat there and have it improve the tile a 2nd time? This would seem like a bug to me.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Am I right in assuming that if you have a work boat that has built an oil derek, or some other improvement, and the boat is destroyed by the enemy, then you are unable to put another work boat there and have it improve the tile a 2nd time?

No, that's not right. What makes you think so?

 

[JackRules]

I must be doing something wrong. In my last game I had fishing trawlers knocked off two different fish tiles, and so after the end of hostilities I built new work boats and sent them to the tiles but the "fish" icon was not "lit up" as an option among the orders available to give to the boat. When I clicked the icon nothing happened.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I must be doing something wrong. In my last game I had fishing trawlers knocked off two different fish tiles, and so after the end of hostilities I built new work boats and sent them to the tiles but the "fish" icon was not "lit up" as an option among the orders available to give to the boat. When I clicked the icon nothing happened.

If you post a save file I will take a look at it.

 

[Blackanvil]

Did it come up and tell you the oil rig/fishing boat was pillaged? If not the enemy probably just ran the citizen that was working that tile off but the improvment is still there.

 

[SewerStarFish]

The level only effects your civ not the AI. At lower settings you get advantages over the AI and at higher settings it gets advantages over you. I can't quote the specifics but one example is the population a city can reach before becoming unhappy or unhealthy is effected by the difficulty.

The level DOES affect the AI, The higher the level the more starting units and the lower the cost the AI pays to produce,techs too.

Ai gets a free worker on monarch, 2 on immortal, a settler on Deity and additional starting techs. This is right out of the SE book.

 

[Snerk]

question, What decides the chance of producing the different kinds of great people. .... like 45% chance of great artist, or 70% chance of a great prophet. Cant make any sence of it.

 

[T_Raccoon]

How do you post screenshots and saved games and such on the forums im kind of a noob at that

 

[DaviddesJ]

question, What decides the chance of producing the different kinds of great people. .... like 45% chance of great artist, or 70% chance of a great prophet. Cant make any sence of it.

All is revealed here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146174