Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks for the reply. Thats good to know. I've got more questions.

How much culture can you get before the culture zone stops expanding?

If memory serves me right for normal speed:
0-9 culture, 1 tile radius, 0% defence bonus
10-99 culture, 2 tiles radius, 20% defence bonus
100-499 culture, 3 tiles radius, 40% defence bonus
500-4999 culture, 4 tiles radius, 60% defence bonus
5000-49999, 5 tiles radius, 80% defence bonus
50000+, 6 tiles radius, 100% defence bonus, legendary culture, 3 needed for cultural victory.

Multiply the culture levels by 0.5 for quick speed, 1.5 for epic speed, 3 for marathon speed.

Horizontal and vertical tiles count as 1 tile distance. The first diagonal tile costs as 1 tile distance, the second as 2 tiles distance, etc. So a tile that is at a distance of 2 horizontal tiles and 3 diagonal tiles, is at distance 2 (2 horizontal tiles) + 1 (first diagonal tile) + 2 (second diagonal tile) + 1 (third diagonal tile) = 6. This is the way the game calculates distance for anything. For instance bombing range is also calculated in this way.

If I put 5 workers in a group then tell them to build a road between 2 cities, will it be built 5 times as quick as a single worker would build it?

There will not be any loss caused by letting the workers work together as each worker will reduce the amount of work to be done. Even if you let 6 workers work on a project costing 8 worker turns, then all 6 workers work 1 turn and 2 workers work the second turn. The other 4 can start another job, there's no loss whatsoever. However each worker has to move onto the unroaded square and sometimes this cost the full movement allotment of the worker (forests, hills, etc. cost 2 movement points). That is very inefficient. Instead of losing 1 worker turn to move to a tile, you'll lose 5 worker turns to move to a tile. So it is important to not let the workers move a lot without doing anything.
The game also doesn't forget any interrupted work done. So if you have a 6 turn project and have to run for barbarians after 4 turns, then you only have to do 2 more turns of work on the project.

This last thing can be used to micromanage. You can almost cut a number of forest (leaving 1 turn) and then finish them all on the same turn to finish a wonder.
If your worker has to walk a long way to it's next important job, then you can let him do some unimportant stuff along the way without notably slowing his movement to the important job. You can move your worker 9 tiles over railroads and then let him do some job. Immediately interrupt the job (before ending the turn) and one turn of work has been finished on the job. If you had moved 10 tiles, then the worker wouldn't have been able to do any work along the way to the important job.
Note that this micromanagement is not crucial to become a good player.

Is there a limit to the number of cities we can have?

No, but maybe if you play on truly huge custom made maps, then your computer will not be able to process the huge amount of calculations and memory can become an issue.

Is there any way to make an outline of the fat cross appear in the main game, without having to examine individual cities?

No (CTRL T activates the map grid, but that is not what you mean).

However, you can draw on the map using the strategic overlay when you zoom out to globe view. That can be nice to do some advanced city planning.

How do you define which city a religion is founded in? I wanted to found religions in separate cities, but all 3 that I've founded happened in my second city.

It's pretty random, it cannot be fully controlled. The algorithm that determines which city becomes the holy city prefers cities without a religion and prefers large cities.

(edited out a few minor errors)

 

[a4phantom]

The game also doesn't forget any interrupted work done. So if you have a 6 turn project and have to run for barbarians after 4 turns, then you only have to do 2 more turns of work on the project.

This last thing can be used to micromanage. You can almost cut a number of forest (leaving 1 turn) and then finish them all on the same turn to finish a wonder.

That's good to know, I'm going to *almost* cut down my forests while waiting for mathematics (+50% hammers for cutting down a forest).

Matty: Is there a limit to the number of cities we can have?

Aside from what RJ said about stressing the computer, every city you add increases the maintainance cost of *all your cities*. So it can get pretty catastropicly high at the end, which is what keeps Domination victories from being really easy. Don't build cities that won't bring major benefits to you just because you can.

 

[Matty R]

Thanks people. Its much appreciated.

I've just been doing some thinking while in the shower. That seems to be where my best ideas come from. Anyway, I was wondering, do you think the religions could be founded in the cities that were researching the technology that founded the religion? So if you research meditation in a particular city, Buddhism will be founded in that city?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Aside from what RJ said about stressing the computer, every city you add increases the maintainance cost of *all your cities*. So it can get pretty catastropicly high at the end, which is what keeps Domination victories from being really easy. Don't build cities that won't bring major benefits to you just because you can.

While number of city upkeep costs rise very fast when you add lots of cities, it is capped at a certain value per city. And this value is not that high that it will cause problems when you have well developed cities. It will cause problems at the start of the game when you don't have the means or technology to develop your cities.

(The cap is dependant on the difficulty level, varying from 4 to 8)

The city distance upkeep is only related to the distance to your capital (or forbidden palace/Versailles whatever is closer). You can eliminate it by using the state property civic.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks people. Its much appreciated.

I've just been doing some thinking while in the shower. That seems to be where my best ideas come from. Anyway, I was wondering, do you think the religions could be founded in the cities that were researching the technology that founded the religion? So if you research meditation in a particular city, Buddhism will be founded in that city?

No, the algorithm that determines which city will become the founder of the religion (the holy city) gives a higher chance to cities with fewer religions and a higher chance to bigger cities. Then a virtual die is rolled and one of your cities will become the holy city.

 

[bad-aries]

Military List?
Is there a list saying which unit is better for attack/defends city, or attach/defends in terrans?

Thanks.

 

[Raisin Bran]

Military List?
Is there a list saying which unit is better for attack/defends city, or attach/defends in terrans?

Thanks.

not that I know of but this might be the closest thing !

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/units/

 

[Bonaparte1664]

Can someone please tell me how to open the world builder in order to make a custom map? The only way I can get in it (to my knowledge) is after you make a game. I just want to make a custom map, like I could in CIv III!

 

[a4phantom]

While number of city upkeep costs rise very fast when you add lots of cities, it is capped at a certain value per city. And this value is not that high that it will cause problems when you have well developed cities. It will cause problems at the start of the game when you don't have the means or technology to develop your cities.

(The cap is dependant on the difficulty level, varying from 4 to 8)

The city distance upkeep is only related to the distance to your capital (or forbidden palace/Versailles whatever is closer). You can eliminate it by using the state property civic.

Thanks, didn't know about the cap.

bad-aries == Military List?
Is there a list saying which unit is better for attack/defends city, or attach/defends in terrans?==

Archers and longbowmen get bonuses defending cities and hills. They are the natural city defenders, although it helps to have an axeman or crossbowman there too because they get bonuses against melee units, the common city attackers. After this it's normal to use the strongest gunpowder unit available, which means muskets, rifles, infantry and then mech infantry (I skip muskets). You'll also want SAM infantry to defend against bombing.

Swordsmen get a bonus when attacking cities and have twice the base strength of archers, so they're the first natural attackers, although early on axemen with the city raider promotion can do it. Macemen are the next usual city raiders. Gunpowder units cannot be given City Raider, so from gunpowder to tanks there is no natural city attacker (cannons can get city raider but have a low base strength compared to defenders). What I do is nurture city raiding melee units during the early game, and then upgrade a bunch of swords and maces with City raider 1, 2 and 3 to riflemen. The late game natural city raider is tanks but my games never last that long.

Addition: as RJ pointed out, there is no unit that is always the best. If a city is entirely defended by axemen it will be almost impossible to take with swords, axemen or horse archers will be necessary. If a city is defended exclusively by crossbowmen, maces will be slaughtered and you'll need knights or (lots of) crossbowmen to do it. But in a single player game you can count on AI cities being primarily defended by the natural defenders I described, archer-longbow-gunpowder.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Military List?
Is there a list saying which unit is better for attack/defends city, or attach/defends in terrans?

Thanks.

Raisin Bran's link is the best you can find. There is not a best unit for attacking a city and a best unit to attack in the open. Each unit has a counter unit and thus it depends on the units that you're facing.

Can someone please tell me how to open the world builder in order to make a custom map? The only way I can get in it (to my knowledge) is after you make a game. I just want to make a custom map, like I could in CIv III!

What is exactly the problem with opening the world builder from inside the game? You open the world builder, make a map with the various tools, exit the world builder and save the map. Are you looking for something different?

 

[a4phantom]

Thanks people. Its much appreciated.

I've just been doing some thinking while in the shower. That seems to be where my best ideas come from. Anyway, I was wondering, do you think the religions could be founded in the cities that were researching the technology that founded the religion? So if you research meditation in a particular city, Buddhism will be founded in that city?

Research points are contributed by cities, but the research is civ wide.

 

[Bonaparte1664]

Raisin Bran's link is the best you can find. There is not a best unit for attacking a city and a best unit to attack in the open. Each unit has a counter unit and thus it depends on the units that you're facing.



What is exactly the problem with opening the world builder from inside the game? You open the world builder, make a map with the various tools, exit the world builder and save the map. Are you looking for something different?

Is there a way to open it without starting a game? If not, and I have to start a game in order to open world builder, how do I remove all the civs?

Just tell me how one would usually go about creating a map.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Can someone tell me exactly how line of sight works? This is what I think i know:

If you are on a hill, u can see 2 tiles in any direction and you can see a hill that is three tiles away. When you are on a hill you can't see a tile two tiles away that is between you and a forest.

On water you can see 2 tiles in any direction (including on land?) And it seems that you can see 2 tiles beyond your cultural borders, but sometimes it is only 1. I can't quite work this out. I wonder if you can only see those tiles over which you have 'any' (e.g. 1%) cultural influence over.

Oh and...i'm pretty sure it doesnt but i'll ask anyway, does march apply to all units on the same tile, i.e. will they all heal whilst on the move. And does anyone find the double medic useful? cos i dont .

And how bout the 1st strike promos, are they better than combat promos?

 

[The Tyrant]

Is there a way to open it without starting a game? If not, and I have to start a game in order to open world builder, how do I remove all the civs?

Just tell me how one would usually go about creating a map.

I think you're looking for the World Builder Manual.

 

[Lord Parkin]

If I put 5 workers in a group then tell them to build a road between 2 cities, will it be built 5 times as quick as a single worker would build it?

Adding to the answers already given, I'd like to point out that you also need to be careful of "worker groups", where you group a stack of workers into one unit to "save time" moving them around. In this case, the game will NOT "wake" the worker group for you if one of them has performed an action that turn, so you will waste valuable turns on worker jobs.

An example: Say you have a stack of 5 workers building a Well on a tile with Oil. This Well would take, let's say, 16 turns with a single worker. So after 1 turn with the 5-worker group, 5 turns worth of work will be done, and so on... then on the fouth turn, only ONE of the workers will need to work to finish off the Well, and the other four workers will have their movement points left. BUT, seeing they're in a group, the game (for some silly reason) will NOT wake the available workers for you to give instructions to, and instead will let the four unused workers sit around wasting their turn unless you notice and interfere yourself. This is why I don't use worker grouping myself.

Oh, and speaking of grouping of units, does anyone know how to turn it OFF auto when fortifying? One thing that I find really frustrating is when I have two (or more) of the same unit on a square, which have both been in battles. However, when I order them both to fortify/heal, the danged game decides to auto-group them for me. So once one of the units is healed, he'll "wake" and I'll move him without thinking... and the other unit (who's still healing!) underneath him will move as well!! Ack!! This "helpful" auto-action really does nothing but annoy me every time.

 

[MrFixxiT]

Ok, I'm rather new to Civ IV (played Civ I and maybe 2 when I was a lot younger and didn't exactly know what I was doing strategically) and haven't found a definitive answer to my question in the manual and didn't find it on the forum as of yet too, so here goes for the most nooby questions ever:

1. When I build an improvement the benefits of it like +1 commerce or +1 production or +1 food will only some to the city when a citizen is working that tile, right? (so when the white (or is it blue?) circle is around that tile)

2. When I build an improvement necessary for a special resource (let's say fur or horses) I do not need to work the tile for it to give me the 'special' benefits, right? As long as it's in my cultural borders or I have roads going from it to a city?

3. So my final question, summing those two up: You need a citizen to work a tile for before the tile is giving your city the C, P and D (only fat cross) including any bonusses for improvements on that tile, but for the resources and their special resource bonuses you don't need to 'work' the tile. Is that correct?

4. Do resources like horses only apply to the nearest city?
Or to the cities in whose cultural borders they're in? If so, how do I know what cities that is as when the borders join I don't see their distinct borders anymore.
Or maybe to every city of my civ?
Or only to cities that are connected to it by roads?

Thanks in advance. I could probably have figured these out by playing some time, but as I don't have lots of spare time I want to invest the valuable time I DO have in playing well!

 

[pixiejmcc]

A granary did give you a half filled food box after growth in civ1, civ2 and civ3. In this version, they changed it slightly to the better. Now the granary stores half the food produced from the moment it was build and this food is added again when the city grows.

So if your city with granary was around for a while (it built the granary when it was size 3 and now is size 5), then it functions exactly as a4pahntom says. At normal speed a size 5 food box contains 30 food and all of it was produced with the granary in effect. So when the city grows from size 5 to 6, then it will start size 6 with 15/32 food (15 being half of 30).

But when the granary has just been build then you will observe a slightly different behaviour. Assume a city size 3 with 24/26 food growing at a speed of 2 food per turn. It finishes the granary. It then produces the final 2 food needed to grow to size 4. It then starts at 1/28 food because only 2 food were produced from the moment that the granary was present in the city.

In civ 1, civ 2 and civ3, people always wanted to finish the granary just before the city grew to profit from the half full food box. Now, the moment of production is not important anymore as the granary starts storing half of the food from the moment of construction. This game rule change thus reduced a little micromanagement and is slightly more logical.

.

Ahhh. Blessed relief. I'd heard something like this, but no one explained it so i've stilll been micromanaging my granary production all this time.

On the subject of micromanagement, someone explained to me that if (for example) ur aggressive and u chop a barracks just as it is about to finish, all those xtra (doubled) hammers will go towards ur next building project, which is super useful. Is this a well known exploit?

 

[Samson]

Ok, I'm rather new to Civ IV (played Civ I and maybe 2 when I was a lot younger and didn't exactly know what I was doing strategically) and haven't found a definitive answer to my question in the manual and didn't find it on the forum as of yet too, so here goes for the most nooby questions ever:

1. When I build an improvement the benefits of it like +1 commerce or +1 production or +1 food will only some to the city when a citizen is working that tile, right? (so when the white (or is it blue?) circle is around that tile)

Yes. The food, hammers and commerce from a tile is shown in the city screen, and you get them if you have a citizen working that tile.

2. When I build an improvement necessary for a special resource (let's say fur or horses) I do not need to work the tile for it to give me the 'special' benefits, right? As long as it's in my cultural borders or I have roads going from it to a city?

Yes. [EDIT] It has to be within your cultural bourders AND connected to a city.

3. So my final question, summing those two up: You need a citizen to work a tile for before the tile is giving your city the C, P and D (only fat cross) including any bonusses for improvements on that tile, but for the resources and their special resource bonuses you don't need to 'work' the tile. Is that correct?

Not sure what you mean by C P and D, but this sounds right.

4. Do resources like horses only apply to the nearest city?
Or to the cities in whose cultural borders they're in? If so, how do I know what cities that is as when the borders join I don't see their distinct borders anymore.
Or maybe to every city of my civ?
Or only to cities that are connected to it by roads?

Thanks in advance. I could probably have figured these out by playing some time, but as I don't have lots of spare time I want to invest the valuable time I DO have in playing well!

You get it in all cities conected to the tile. Cities and tiles can be conected by roads, rivers and coast (once you have sailing).

 

[pixiejmcc]

In a normal combat round each side has a chance to do damage the other based on their respective strengths, the stronger unit has a higher chance to do damage. Damage is around 20 points (out of a total of 100 hitpoints for healthy units), the stronger side does more damage, the weaker less.

In a first strike round only one side can do damage. If the rolls of the dice indicate that the side without the first strike would deal damage, then this roll is ignored.

If you have 3-6 first strikes, then the number of these first strike rounds that occur is between 3 and 6. Probably something like 25% chance of 3 first strike rounds, 25 % chance of 4 first strike rounds, 25% chance of 5 first strike rounds, 25% chance of 6 first strike round. But I'm not sure of these chances and have not read anything definite about them.

And it's 50-50 whether each 1st strike is successful right?

So for example, chances are a samurai is going to win one round of combat before normal battle ensues. Roland, do you use the first strike promo. I can kinda see how drill 3 would make some sense. But I never use drill promo and am still not really convinced.

 

[Matty R]

I've noticed that even though I have 2 pastures with cows linked to my cities, I'm only getting a single +1 health. Does this mean that I can trade one of these pasture with another civilization and still maintain my +1 health bonus?

If I did that, would I ever be able to get the traded pasture back, or is it permanently lost to me?

Is it the same for other resources, like gold, copper, stone etc?