Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[HungryMouse]

I believe that AI has reduced upgrade costs of units compared to the human player, even on Noble. Can somebody say what exact bonus AI has in upgrading units and is there any explanation why AI has cheaper upgrade? I thought on Noble me and AI are even on everything... Also is there any way to make unit upgrade costs for AI same as for human player?

 

[onlinejester]

I'm now playing my first game of Civ4 -- Settler Level -- France (Louis IV)against four rival civilizations (India, Rome, Egypt, and Russia). Am now in the mid 18th century. Am able to see their resources and note that they have multiple items of different resources. I have Open Borders with all of them. We have all been at peace since the very beginning. I am way ahead of them.

The problem is that when I bring up my Foreign Advisor's window, no resources appear for any of them, while all of my tradable resources appear. And when I conduct diplomatic relations and the trade table window appears, although the word RESOURCES appears on their side, no resources appear under it, not even in red print.

Once Egypt asked me to trade rice for fur, which I accepted, and once Caesar asked me to trade something (can't remember now) for deer, which I also accepted. So I know that the trading of resources can occur.

So my question is Why don't any of their (extra) resources appear, either in my Foreign Advisor's window or in the diplomatic trade table? The only answer that I can come up with is that they are all trading every single extra resource with each other. Is there any way I can know what resources they are trading with one another? The reason I ask is that my explorers have shown me (via the map) they have several resources that I could use, and I am pretty sure that I have a number of resources that they could use. When can *I* initiate such a trade? Or do I have to always wait until one of them initiates a trade?

 

[fung3]

Onlinejester: It seems that they have no surplus goods to trade with you.

Hit F4 and there you will see any tradable resources on the 'resources' page, also still on F4 look at active, you will see your current trades.

You can't see what they trade with each other (unfair). If you see no items there it is because you either already have them yourself or they aren't available i.e not hooked up.

NB. Get patch 1.52 downloaded and installed if you havn'e done so already. You can find it at this site and many others.

 

[biratets]

Does Civ4 work with Windows Server 2003? I'm planning to upgrade from XP and it would be nice to know if I can continue playing Civ.

Also, what the h*ll is "Asterothe" ? It says game name = Asterothe in the Civilization.ini file.

 

[MrCynical]

I believe that AI has reduced upgrade costs of units compared to the human player, even on Noble. Can somebody say what exact bonus AI has in upgrading units and is there any explanation why AI has cheaper upgrade? I thought on Noble me and AI are even on everything... Also is there any way to make unit upgrade costs for AI same as for human player?

@Hungry Mouse: The AI has reduced upgrade costs at all levels, starting from 55% reduction at Settler, to 70% for Noble, and the bonus increases still further at the higher levels. This is a sort of fudge because the AI was immensely reluctant to upgrade it's units in Civ 3, and so would always have ancient units left around. In Civ 4 it gets this bonus so it upgrades it's units properly.

Noble is the closest to equal difficulty for you and the AI, but the AI still gets a handful of small bonuses on it. These are to unit upgrade and upkeep costs, plus minor bonuses to war weariness and inflation, plus acouple of other things. If you open up the Civ4HandicapInfo XML file you can change the upgrade bonus the AI gets. The value for this is the AIUpgradeUnitPercent at each difficulty level, Just set it to 100 for it to be the same as the human player. If you copy the XML file, make your changes to the copy and put it in the appropriate custom assets folder it won't overwrite any of the original files.

Also, what the h*ll is "Asterothe" ? It says game name = Asterothe in the Civilization.ini file.

@Biratets: For some reason Civ 4 takes whatever name the computer you're playing it on has as your default in game name. I really wish it wouldn't do this, as it has no buisness poking round it files which can potentially contain provate information.

 

[sabote]

Hello, Civ4 it's the first game I play of the Civ series, so imagine that's kind of hard if you never played before, so I gotta couple of questions.

1. When you trade a technologie research, do you lose that tech and the things you can do with it?

2. How can you work water tiles? I've constructed work boats, but I can only work tiles with, clam, crab, fish, etc. Is there a way to work water tiles with no special resources on them to produce food?

Thank you very much.

 

[scienide09]

Sabote -- welcome to the forums. I hope that you're enjoying CivIV.

To answer your questions:

1) No, you don't lose the tech or benefits of something that you trade. However, you should pay attention to the effects of the tech that you gain from the trade -- does it negate the effects of a certain wonder? Does it make one of your luxury resources obsolete? These effects are usually highlighted in red when you hover the mouse cursor over the tech in question. The same information is also available through the pedia.

2) Workboats cannot work 'normal' water tiles, only those with fish/etc. resources, as you've noticed. Inside the city display you can assign citizens to work water tiles if they are in your city radius. They will give some benefit, but not as much food as tiles with the resources on them.

 

[MrCynical]

1. No, once you've researched a technology there's no way to lose it.

2. You can't construct anything on water tiles unless they contain fish, clams, crabs, whales or oil. Ordinary water tiles cannot be improved, though if the city using them has a harbour they will generate 2 food instead of one.

 

[TehAko]

Hey, accidentally posted my question when I could've went to this thread.

How do I get Settlers to new continents, so I can colonize them?

 

[TCGTRF]

Hey, accidentally posted my question when I could've went to this thread.

How do I get Settlers to new continents, so I can colonize them?

If you have sailing and there's a non-ocean route, you can send a settler and a military unit in a galley.

If there's no route like that, you have to wait for Astronomy and build a Galleon, which can take a settler and three other units.

If you are playing on the "Terra" map, where the civs start in the Old World, it's often more useful to research military techs and Astronomy early and send two Galleons full of your highest tech troops to the New World and just capture the Barbarian cities there.

 

[Zorn]

Is there a way to display the 20-tiles-cross of your cities on the map (like Civ-Assist did for Civ3)?
Would be useful for planning new cities.

 

[onlinejester]

I am playing my first game of Civ4. Former Civ games allowed me to see what technologies the rival civilizations had already learned once I had established diplomatic contact with them (via a diplomat). I haven't been able to find a method in Civ4 to see rival Civs' technologies.

Is it possible to do this in Civ4?

If not, it should be added, since in real life nations who have established diplomatic contact are pretty much aware of how advanced other nations are technologically.

 

[onlinejester]

Some previous Civ games allowed us to create Engineers and discover technologies that allowed us to transform landscapes (irrigating deserts, changing hills into grasslands and mountains into hills, etc). I haven't found any way to do this in Civ4; thus deserts and mountains and ice squares remain unusable (unimprovable), as far as I can tell. I'm only up to 1802 in my first Civ4 game, so maybe I'll be able to do this later on. Will this be possible?

If not, I think such an ability to transform the land areas should be added to the game.

 

[Zenith Omega]

Is there a way to view what plot on the map you are currently viewing? The reason why I would like to find this out is because I am trying to edit the starting locations of a pre-made map, but do not know how to "tell" the program where the starting locations will be for the civs. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Regards,

Zenith Omega

 

[litlfrog]

I feel silly asking this, but I can't find an answer anywhere.

I know how to install a full modpack--it works fine. But how do I just use a few new, downloaded units? The search function returns way to much noise for me to filter out any signal here.

 

[Jastrow]

Until recently, I was under the impression that the output (hammers, food) of the central city square were fixed. However, I in reading the GOTM discussion, I find people talking of founding on the "plains hill" for the extra hammer (and thus getting their worker 3 turns earlier). The advantage of doing this is clear.

My question.... Is there a list somwhere, or a description, of which squares will give extra production from the central city. I know that founding on a resource gets you the happy/health, but not the extra hammer/food/coins. WHere can I found cities to get those?

THanks,

 

[mnf]

A quick question on huts giving technology.

I went into the world builder, set up 25 huts for a scout to pop, *before the first city is ever founded*. I came out with only gold and maps. From that, I note to myself that I will always found a city first and then pop that first hut that is within one move of our starting unit.

Now the question.

If we auto-pop a hut while our starting settler founds the capital, is there a chance to get a technology from it?

 

[J_RocKeT76]

There is probably a chance though I have never seen it inside borders of first city. Can't remember getting tech from visible huts on opening map. I found the more huts you put on in the worldbuilder equals less chance of getting techs, you may get a few then they dry up.

 

[Zenith Omega]

I noticed I can use notepad to edit civilization files. Therefore, I think I know how to create new civs and their leaders. However, I have 3 questions regarding this...
1. How do I create Leader pics and/or videos that would be used for trades and such.
2. Also, how would I tell the game what color to make these new civilizations?
3. What do all of those lines of information mean? For each civilization and leader, the is so much stuff that I cannot figure out the meaning of.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Zenith Omega

 

[onlinejester]

Onlinejester: It seems that they have no surplus goods to trade with you.

Hit F4 and there you will see any tradable resources on the 'resources' page, also still on F4 look at active, you will see your current trades.

Thanks for your answer, but I'm still puzzled over this. We are now in the 1850s, and I see that the other civs have many surplus resources. Yet not a single one of them lists any of them as "tradable" according to my Foreign Advisor (F4, under RESOURCES), whereas dozens of mine are listed as tradable.

Is the AI set up to have the AI civs trade resources with each other rather than with me -- except when they are desparate to have one of mine? It seems that although THEY can initiate the trade of resources with me whenever they think it's beneficial to themselves to do so, I am not allowed to do this -- even at Settler level of play -- because none of them have ever listed any of their resources as tradable, even though I keep checking (F4), which in itself is somewhat of a pain to have to do constantly every few turns or so.

I have an abundance of iron, which almost none of them possesss and which I would be willing trade for copper, but all the AIs offer is money -- and a pittance at that (3 or 4 gold per resource). I am finding this aspect of the game very frustrating. As I recall, in Civ3 I was able to trade resources much more expansively.

I'm still debating about the inclusion of Resources as a game element, since the placement of resources seems to occur by chance, thus making SOLO Civ more a game of luck than of skill. For example, I really needed marble more than I did stone, but I got tons of surplus stone on my fairly large continent and not a single marble -- actually only ONE source of marble appeared in the game.

In real life and in multiplayer, of course, nations can barter at the diplomatic table, but in solo Civ we are limited by what appears on the Resource table (and who knows what determines which resources, if any, an AI nation regards as tradable or the nation with whom it will be willing to trade?). If the diplomatic aspect of determining resource trading were improved in solo play, I would enjoy the game more.