Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Roland Johansen]

hello, two quick questions:

1) why's founding your first city on a coast always a bad thing? if i were to hazard a guess, is it because you can't harvest sea resources until later in the game?

Who said that? A coastal city with a lot of food resources can be pretty good and coastal city will have good trade routes later in the game. The negative points of a coastal city is that land tiles usually produce a higher amount of production and a coastal city thus has less good production tiles. The production tiles are important for early expansion and construction projects.

Still a sea city with many food resources can be a pretty good starting point. The high amount of food can help produce the workers and settlers that are needed in the early game.

2) in sulla's walkthrough, he says that '(a city) has too much food- more than it can support with happiness'. does this mean that more food = more unhappiness? i'm a bit lost on this, because doesn't food let a city expand into a bigger one, thus reducing crowdedness and therefore unhappiness?

thanks in advance for answers, which will be appreciated ;D

Each citizen that is added to a city (each growth of a city) is an unhappy one (in the unhappiness score called 'it's too crowded'). So if a city has a lot of food then it grows quickly and will become unhappy if the amount of citizens becomes too high (and thus the unhappiness becomes higher than the happiness).

You could do many things to avoid that problem. The most obvious one is trying to get more happiness in the city (luxury resources, buildings, some civics). Sometimes that is not possible and then other options must be used. Using low food tiles or specialists instead of high food tiles or using the slavery civic and pop rushing some stuff. Pop rushing is pretty powerfull so use it smartly.

 

[a4phantom]

hello, two quick questions:

1) why's founding your first city on a coast always a bad thing? if i were to hazard a guess, is it because you can't harvest sea resources until later in the game?

If you start on a coast near fish, crabs or clams and happen to be a civ that starts with fishing (Rome, Japan, etc.) then you're in luck - you can build a fishing boat while your city grows to size 2, and then build a worker.

 

[The 777 Hoax]

What do revolts do? I was Gandhi, and there was an Indian Revolt in Shanghai... it showed a fist and then the number 2 by it. And that was it. What the heck just happened?

 

[a4phantom]

A revolt occurs when a city is influenced more by the culture of a neighbor (India) than by its own civ (China). The number by the fist indicates how many turns the city will be in revolt, during which time production and commerce cease. After the revolt is over it will return to normal, but repeated revolts can lead to culture flipping, when the city throws out its military units and invites you to accept the city into your empire. If you want Shanghai, start building up culture in the closest city (temples, library, etc etc) to encourage more revolts and the eventual flip. When it's one of your cities revolting (often because you conquered it and it's far away from your cultural centers), try to build up culture in that city and garrison it with lots of units - they don't have to be strong ones, but lots of them)

Question: I'm playing my first serious Prince game. I'm planning on taking Berlin with Quechuas. It's not on a hill, and I expect three archers or so to defend it and a cultural defense of maybe 40%. How many Quechuas (with combat1 and city raider1) would you guess I should send? I'm hoping to lure one of the archers to attack my Quechuas in the field, because the AI's dumb like that, but I'd hate to either send too few and fail in the attack or wait too long and face a wall. Is there a rule of thumb for this sort of thing?

Update: went with the overkill strategy and won. Upgraded to axemen and conquered Spain. A little behind economically and techwise, and the two remaining powers (Asoka and the Malinese gentleman) are "pleased" with eachother despite one being Hindu and the other Christian, and cautious towards my pagan self. I have neither religion within my empire, although I have the Jewish, Buddist and Confucian holy cities (first two stolen from Spain). I now (300AD) have both of the macemen techs and forges in the my three main cities, so I'm going to try to pulverize Mali while keeping axemen and spears in my Eastern cities to ward off India. My main worry is that India will leave me behind techwise while I'm in my third war, but I figure I'll have a big, experienced army to hit them with as soon as Mali surrenders and I take a bunch of techs in exchange for leaving a few measely cities. I'm also a little concerned that Timbuktu is on a hill, but if macemen can sometimes beat longbows on city/hills I'll assume they can beat skirmishers.

 

[The 777 Hoax]

Hmm, ironic because I got a cultural victory for that game. Shanghai never flipped though.

Thanks for the answer, a4phantom.

 

[daifuku]

Who said that?

sorry, i misread from sulla's walkthrough: he said that founding your first city one tile away from the ocean is a bad thing, moreso in civ4 than in civ3.

thanks for the prompt responses. ;D

 

[Veritass]

Founding a city one tile away from the coast is a bad thing, as you have sea squares in your fat cross, but you cannot building a lighthouse or harbor or work boats to take advantage of them. Either move to the coast so you can, or move inland so you don't waste the squares in your fat cross.

On occasion, you can put a city there that has access to crabs/fish/clams in its fat cross, and have a workboat come around from another city to work that resource.

 

[a4phantom]

Hmm, ironic because I got a cultural victory for that game. Shanghai never flipped though.

Thanks for the answer, a4phantom.

Shanghai's one of China's earliest cities right? So if you got a core city to revolt, I'm not suprised you won cultural.

Veritass (is that Latin for truthiness?) is right, try not to found a square away from coast.

 

[SuperSatan3]

I came to this site mainly to download mods.
I have downloaded a couple, but I am unsure as to how to install them.
Does anyone know which files go where? I haven't found any mods that come with installation instructions.

 

[Aldarad]

Sorry if this has already been answered: I hate being beaten in the spacerace so I turned it off. Did I just mess up the AI:s ONLY real chance to beat me? Or will they try for cultural/diplomacy etc?
Should I enable/disable other options to strengten the AI?

 

[MrCynical]

Sorry if this has already been answered: I hate being beaten in the spacerace so I turned it off. Did I just mess up the AI:s ONLY real chance to beat me? Or will they try for cultural/diplomacy etc?
Should I enable/disable other options to strengten the AI?

For some reason the AI is programmed to only go for Space Race, not any other victory type. While they may (very) occasionally win one of the other victory types, this is entirely accidental, and the AI wasn't aiming to do that. As a result if you turn off Space Race the AI plays aimlessly, and is severely crippled.

As for other options, to weaken the AI use "No barbarians" and enable "permanent alliances" (the latter is so strong an advantage I do not consider any victory in a game with it active to be genuine). To strengthen the AI, enable "Aggressive AI" and "No Tech Trading" (assuming you're playing at at least Noble level).

 

[Melhisedek]

If I chop outside my borders will I get some hammers from it?

 

[MazX_TheDog]

Nope, you get nothing. If its in your cultural borders you will get the bonus though.

 

[Samson]

Nope, you get nothing. If its in your cultural borders you will get the bonus though.

Er, this is wrong. Pre 1.61 it made no difference where your borders are to the yeald of a chop. Now you get less, but still get some hammers.

 

[Melhisedek]

I see thanks samson... on to axing than Need to rush my newly expanded empire

 

[Roland Johansen]

I came to this site mainly to download mods.
I have downloaded a couple, but I am unsure as to how to install them.
Does anyone know which files go where? I haven't found any mods that come with installation instructions.

I replied some questions about mod installation problems in post 2606.

Basically, you should unzip the mod-file in your Mods subdirectory of the main civilization directory. And then you can select to load the mod from the options in the main menu when you load the game.

Each mod should get a separate directory inside the Mods directory.

Sorry if this has already been answered: I hate being beaten in the spacerace so I turned it off. Did I just mess up the AI:s ONLY real chance to beat me? Or will they try for cultural/diplomacy etc?
Should I enable/disable other options to strengten the AI?

To add to MrCynicals excellent answer.
If you enable the aggressive setting, then one of the AI's may start to overpower the rest and get a conquest victory or become so large that they get a time victory. Most players play at a level where they can avoid that this happens or stop before that happens, but with the aggressive setting, it can seriously happen. The AI is however far less capable in conquest than a proficient human player, so it takes them quite long to become large and they aren't good in ruthlessly taking advantage of their size and power to conquer weak neighbours.
A human will often conquer a weak neighbouring country when capable even if the relations are excellent. An AI will not do this very often. With the aggressive setting they will do such things more often.
The reason that this AI becomes large is not because it is actively going for a victory condition but because it is programmed to improve it's empire. It attacks countries that are weaker in the power graph and countries with which they have a bad relation.

If I chop outside my borders will I get some hammers from it?

If I recall correctly, you get 2/3 of the normal value from chopping outside of your borders. But the value also reduces with distance from a city.
You can see the production value before you start chopping, it is shown as '+ 34 hammers in Hamburg' or something similar. It is also influenced by the production bonuses of the city, like every other form of production.

 

[Gherald]

Er, this is wrong. Pre 1.61 it made no difference where your borders are to the yeald of a chop. Now you get less, but still get some hammers.

This is also wrong. Pre 1.61 it did make a difference whether you were in your borders or not. The change is that as long as you were in your borders, you would always get the same amount. Now distance from city matters independent of where your borders happen to be (though being in your borders also matters, of course, probably by 2/3 as others have said)

 

[Roland Johansen]

There seems to be some confusion about the forest chop values and how they are calculated. I'll try to clear it up. This info comes from a strategy article.

Pre 1.61, it was only based on the distance to the closest city. Within the first three rings around the city, the production value was 30 and thereafter it decreased by 5 for every extra tile to the closest city. All independent of cultural borders.

In version 1.61, it is more difficult. Within the first two rings around the city (also called the fat cross), the production value is 30 and thereafter it is decreased by 5 for every extra tile to the closest city. Furthermore, the production value is multiplied by 2/3 if mathematics has not been discovered yet and is multiplied by 2/3 again when it is outside your cultural borders. (I don't know how the rounding works, but that is not that important, is it.)

Note that production from chopping is base production and thus modified by any production bonuses present in the city.

The distance is to a city is calculated in the following way. Every horizontal or vertical move counts for 1. Every odd diagonal move counts as distance 1, every even diagonal move counts as distance 2. So 3 diagonal moves and 1 horizontal one counts as distance 1 (first diagonal) + 2 (second diagonal) + 1 (third diagonal) + 1 (horizontal) = 5. The shortest path determines the distance of the tile.

You can see the production value of a forest tile by
-select worker
-hold shift
-left click the forest tile (to move there)
-mouse over the chop forest worker action

Now you see the production value of the forest and which city gets the production. This value is already modified by the production bonuses present in the city.

-cancel the worker action (the move action)
-release shift

 

[Melhisedek]

IIRC there we had a military adviser back in CivIII days. Is there anything similar this time around?

 

[Roland Johansen]

IIRC there we had a military adviser back in CivIII days. Is there anything similar this time around?

Yes, another military advisor

You're probably not satisfied with the military advisor of civ4. You could take a look at the mods section. There is a quite good modded military advisor that might satisfy your needs.