Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[IanM]

Roland you're a star. Thanks for the advice. Everything now working perfectly.

IanM

 

[Roland Johansen]

Glad to hear that everything works now.

 

[.Shane.]

Roland, you're one of my fave posters. Could well be the most helpful and patient.

Here's my question... Is there a way to mass upgrade my units? Other than when they're stacked and selecting all similar units?

Thanks!

 

[MrCynical]

Here's my question... Is there a way to mass upgrade my units? Other than when they're stacked and selecting all similar units?

Hold down the alt key when you click the upgrade button and it will upgrade all the units of that type.

 

[.Shane.]

Hold down the alt key when you click the upgrade button and it will upgrade all the units of that type.

Throughout my civilization or just that stack?

 

[MrCynical]

Throughout my civilization or just that stack?

Throughout your civilization.

 

[frankcor]

I use Alt-Upgrade when I'm doing mass upgrades -- set research to 0% for several turns to raise the cash.

If you select the most recently built obsolete unit, say a Rifleman and use the Alt key to upgrade to Infantry, the game will upgrade all the units you can afford at that point in time, starting with the oldest units first. The unit you selected will still be active if you don't have enough cash to upgrade all the like-units located within your Civ borders. Then, tell that unit to wake up again next turn. Keep repeating for as many turns as it takes to pay for all those units to be upgraded.

Ground or air units being transported on naval units won't get upgraded unless you move the transport or carrier into one of your cities.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Roland, you're one of my fave posters. Could well be the most helpful and patient.

Thank you for the compliment , but I have to say that there are many in this thread who give excellent answers and there are also many outside this thread that help people. In this case MrCynical was the first to give the answer as he often is.

This forum consists of many helpful members unlike some other forums. I had a look at a Warcraft III forum once and all that they were doing there was insulting each other. Saying that the other persons strategy was a noob strategy and that they would beat them easily and many things that would get me banned for a few days on this forum if I would repeat them here. Not a lot of positive thinking there in contrast to the majority of this forums posts. That at least was the impression I got after looking for some alternative strategies. I never posted there as I did not feel like being insulted all the time.

 

[a4phantom]

Shane: "Here's my question... Is there a way to mass upgrade my units? Other than when they're stacked and selecting all similar units?"

Like other folks said, but if you don't have enough cash to upgrade them all remember that the one you've got highlighted won't necessarily be one to upgrade. So I'd cherry pick and upgrade the most experienced (and most valuably experienced, I'd wouldn't prioritize upgrading a unit with Shock or Cover all the way to Infantry for example) ones individually, or ones in key positions. Sometimes some units aren't worth upgrading at all even if you have the cash (far obsolete or inexperienced when all your cities have barrackses and you're running fuedalism or theocracy), and you can use those to 'protect' (impose happiness on) your safe interior cities or else give them to civ who's at war with someone you want to hold at bay.

frankcor: "If you select the most recently built obsolete unit, say a Rifleman and use the Alt key to upgrade to Infantry, the game will upgrade all the units you can afford at that point in time, starting with the oldest units first."

I'm confused. Do you mean all units (upgrading that rifleman with alt will also upgrade muskets, longbows, etc?)? I'm pretty sure it'd only upgrade all your riflemen. If you mean it'll upgrade all riflemen, what you mean by "oldest units first"? The first riflemen you built? Not contradicting you, just confused.


RJ: This forum consists of many helpful members unlike some other forums. I had a look at a Warcraft III forum once and all that they were doing there was insulting each other.
That's pretty much how an Age of Myth forum I used to lurk arou
nd was.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Ground or air units being transported on naval units won't get upgraded unless you move the transport or carrier into one of your cities.

I do know that units need to be within your cultural borders to be eligible for upgrading. I never tried to upgrade a unit in a transport or carrier. Are you sure this is not a specific case of 'only units within your cultural borders can be upgraded'. I repeat that I never tested it, so you can surely be right. Just asking for a confirmation.

Like a4phantom, I also do not upgrade each and every unit (although I often upgrade most) and thus don't use the alt-upgrade. I also want to choose which units to upgrade first when money is scarce.

 

[frankcor]

frankcor: "If you select the most recently built obsolete unit, say a Rifleman and use the Alt key to upgrade to Infantry, the game will upgrade all the units you can afford at that point in time, starting with the oldest units first."

I'm confused. Do you mean all units (upgrading that rifleman with alt will also upgrade muskets, longbows, etc?)? I'm pretty sure it'd only upgrade all your riflemen. If you mean it'll upgrade all riflemen, what you mean by "oldest units first"? The first riflemen you built? Not contradicting you, just confused.

I was inarticulate ::ACK!::. What I meant was "the game will upgrade all the Riflemen you can afford at that point in time."

 

[a4phantom]

Got it. So it upgrades all units of the type selected, in the order in which you built them? I suppose that makes more sense than random selection, which is what I've heard. In practical terms it's pretty much the same result though.

 

[oldtimer]

Does it make a difference which terrian tile I build a city? Do I get any extra money/culture/defense/etc? Or do all city center tiles get the same regardless of where they are built?

 

[Samson]

Does it make a difference which terrian tile I build a city? Do I get any extra money/culture/defense/etc? Or do all city center tiles get the same regardless of where they are built?

You get a minimum of 2 food, 1 production and 1 commerce at the [EDIT] city square. If any is these are higher in the unimproved tile you get the higher value.

The more commone ones that imrove the city square;

Plains hills give 2 production
Commerce bonus on river gives 2 commerce
Food bonus on grassland gives 3 food

 

[Cormorant]

Here's my question. How can I find out what to do when your cities have too little food, even though you've put in loads of farms and lighthouses? I seem to keep getting into the situation where they are stagnant or starving, although each ring on the map encloses a patch on the city which gives two food. How can I correct this?

 

[frankcor]

I can think of three cases where you could have a starving or stagnant city even if all tiles it can work have 2 or more food:

1. you have unhappiness (build happiness producing improvements)
2. you have sickness (build health producing improvements)
3. you have specialists assigned (work tiles instead)

 

[Roland Johansen]

Here's my question. How can I find out what to do when your cities have too little food, even though you've put in loads of farms and lighthouses? I seem to keep getting into the situation where they are stagnant or starving, although each ring on the map encloses a patch on the city which gives two food. How can I correct this?

Each citizen needs 2 food. Each tile is worked by 1 citizen, the center tile is free and provides 2 food (in general). So to sustain the citizens in your city, on average each citizen needs to produce 2 food (minus the 2 food that you get for free from the center tile).

So a size 7 city needs to produce 14 food to sustain its citizens. It doesn't matter if this is produced by the center tile (2 food) plus 3 tiles that produce 4 food or by the center tile plus 6 tiles that produce 2 food.

Specialists don't produce food and do cost food like any other citizen, so you can only have a limited number of them.

At some stage, the food produced and the food consumed balances out and city growth stops. If your city produces an odd amount of food, then it will keep switching between two city sizes.
If you want to increase the city growth, then make sure that many tiles are farmed and hills have windmills on them and make sure that the city is using these tiles.

If you have questions about a specific city, then post a screenshot here and we may give detailed help.

 

[a4phantom]

You get a minimum of 2 food, 1 production and 1 commerce at the [EDIT] city square. If any is these are higher in the unimproved tile you get the higher value.

The more commone ones that imrove the city square;

Plains hills give 2 production
Commerce bonus on river gives 2 commerce
Food bonus on grassland gives 3 food

Good to know! As for defense, a city on a hill gets +25%. An archer or longbowman defending that city will get +25% for being on a hill (tile bonus) and +50% for being on a hill (archer special ability). That's +75% for putting your city on a hill, and those are bonuses that can't be bombarded away. Then you get 25% for an archer defending a city, and probably 25% for fortify, and something for walls or culture. Early game rushes with archer killers (Quechuas, Immortals) almost collapse when the victim's key cities are on hills.



And to add to Frankcor's list
4. An enemy unit could be sitting on a food producing tile, preventing its use.
5. Cultural borders could have shifted, denying you food producing tiles. I once accidently starved my ally/girlfriend the queen of Egypt's city from 12 to about 3 by unintended border expansion.

 

[Nyte Ryder]

What dose the official Civilization IV plugins for 3D Studio Max 6 do?

 

[Roland Johansen]

What dose the official Civilization IV plugins for 3D Studio Max 6 do?

I believe it has to do something with unit creation (or model creation in general) by graphics artists, so ask for more information about this in the creation and customization forum. There's a sticky about this at the top of this forum, so that should be the first place to look for information. It's only interesting if you want to create new units (or models in general).