Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Roland Johansen]

Now I have a question concerning Cavalry (cossaks included)

Are these units listed as mounted units or gunpowder units?

Im asking this because I want to know how well a machine gun unit will defend against cavalry.

Will the machine gun benefit from the +50% against gunpowder units?

The classification of a unit can easily be found in the civilopedia entry of the unit and cavalry (and cossacks) are mounted units. The machine gun will not get a bonus against the unit.

 

[Ben E Gas]

Can you ever attack with the machine gun unit?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Can you ever attack with the machine gun unit?

No (see the civilopedia entry of the unit), it is a purely defensive unit. Typically, I'd only use it in cities that are under serious attack or one of them in a stack as stack defense (against infantry). They are not the most useful unit.

 

[Steev42]

I use Sevomod. It is great. I don't know what your having a problem with though. I am just learning all of the quick keyboard controls, so I never tried the ctrl-I or shift-I command. But I have never had any problems getting into any of the menus. Did you find an answer to your question? If so, what was it?

No, not yet. I'm going to try a reinstall, as suggested in Sevo's forum, and I'll let the board know.

Edit: Reinstall worked. I'm still getting an error with the HoF Mod, but I think it's in settings. I should have thought of the reinstall earlier, though, since my OS got corrupted a while back, and I never reinstalled the game after that. *shrug* Live and learn. Thanks for the help, guys.

 

[tomart]

"Alt-s lets you create signs... But you can also go to the strategic overlay. When you zoom out until you see the flat terrain change into a globe, it is one of the buttons in the lower right part of the screen. Only when zoomed out, you can draw on the map with the features in the strategic overlay. It also allows you to create signs, but it is easier to do that with Alt-s."

Thanks! I didn't have any success with Alt-s, but out there in orbit, the Strategic Overlay brings up Signs and Lines. It's kind of painstaking, but you can ju.....st about barely see where you're drawing...
But a few turns later, they've all disappeared. So it's just a temporary tool.
Thanks again.

 

[fool01]

I know the city name, I don't know where it is. Is there some method how to locate it?

 

[Roland Johansen]

"Alt-s lets you create signs... But you can also go to the strategic overlay. When you zoom out until you see the flat terrain change into a globe, it is one of the buttons in the lower right part of the screen. Only when zoomed out, you can draw on the map with the features in the strategic overlay. It also allows you to create signs, but it is easier to do that with Alt-s."

Thanks! I didn't have any success with Alt-s, but out there in orbit, the Strategic Overlay brings up Signs and Lines. It's kind of painstaking, but you can ju.....st about barely see where you're drawing...
But a few turns later, they've all disappeared. So it's just a temporary tool.
Thanks again.

Maybe Alt-s was not an option in one of the earlier patches. Have you patched your game?

The lines will not be saved in the savegame in the earlier version of Civ4, so if you save and reload, then they will be gone. They will be saved in the savegame in Warlords and I also seem to remember in the last patch of vanilla Civ4, but I'm not sure of that last part.

I know the city name, I don't know where it is. Is there some method how to locate it?

First of all, welcome to civfanatics!

There are two methods that I could think of.

1) Zoom out far and look for the city on the map.
2) Click F1 and click the city on the city list. The game will move you inside the city if you click the button in front of the city.

Also, you'll get some messages about a number of your cities at the start of a turn (construction finished, borders expanded, etc.). These messages can be reread in a log that is accessible through a button at top left part of the screen or by pressing CTRL-TAB. If you click on a message related to a certain city, then the map will move to the location of that city.

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Hi

I saw a link not long ago for a Civ 4 jargon buster type page that had a list of all the abrreviations and phrases used on these forums and wondered where that page is please? I lost the link!

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hi

I saw a link not long ago for a Civ 4 jargon buster type page that had a list of all the abrreviations and phrases used on these forums and wondered where that page is please? I lost the link!

Here is the link. It's part of the war academy.

 

[a4phantom]

No (see the civilopedia entry of the unit), it is a purely defensive unit. Typically, I'd only use it in cities that are under serious attack or one of them in a stack as stack defense (against infantry). They are not the most useful unit.

Agreed (about the machine gun). A unit that can't attack or get Garrison promos is limited, although to be fair I spend more time attacking cities than defending them. But infantry should do almost as well against hordes of riflemen and grenadiers, better against cavalry, siege and tanks. The only thing I'd rather defend against with MG instead of infantry si other infantry. But since infantry get Garrison and not City Raider (unless you nurse and upgrade macemen, which is less convenient now with the introduction of trebs), even then you should be alright with infantry unless hugely outnumbered. If you're going to be vastly outnumbered, I suppose a stack of machine guns with Drill might be your best shot at beating a horde of infantry, but even then you'll want some infantry to fight off any accompanying cavalry and siege.

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Here is the link. It's part of the war academy.

thanks!

Just for the record, it doesnt have BIDL or FIDL in it, which were the two I was wondering about! But then it came to me in a flash what they mean, so its ok

 

[OscarWildebeest]

Roads are not required to get the benefit of improvements like farms, right? So why am I prompted to build a road back to the city when I've finished a farm?

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Roads are not required to get the benefit of improvements like farms, right? So why am I prompted to build a road back to the city when I've finished a farm?

you need a road to get the health benefit I think, but you dont need it to work the tile in the city screen

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Roads are for travel (no more commerce bonus, food bonus, etc.), so the game might just want you to have a road in that direction. I'm not quite sure - perhaps you had a resource like corn on that tile? Maybe the game just thought a road would be good there, for no particular reason.

Simple answer to your question: no, roads are not needed for farms' benefits.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

Roads serve two purposes:

1. To link resources to your capitol.
2. Increased movement.

Unless you have rice, corn or wheat under that farm, there is no real reason to link it with a road (other than travel).

 

[OscarWildebeest]

OK, thanks, I thought so. Looks like the game is just trying to tell me, "hey, why not build a road while you're here?"

Looks like I wasted a lot of my time in my first couple of games just building roads...

 

[Zophos]

OK, thanks, I thought so. Looks like the game is just trying to tell me, "hey, why not build a road while you're here?"

Looks like I wasted a lot of my time in my first couple of games just building roads...

And you'll note that the AI does pretty much the same thing - roads, roads everywhere.

 

[Sisiutil]

And you'll note that the AI does pretty much the same thing - roads, roads everywhere.

I think that it's usually a good idea to build a road to any improved tile. Early in the game, it makes it easier to defend your tile improvements from barbarians; later on, from other civs' pillagers. More roads mean you can save valuable road movement points for all of your units. It's also easier and faster to get back to that tile later if another improvement is needed, especially if it's a forest or hill tile that costs an extra movement point just to go there.

 

[a4phantom]

Sisiutil is right, redundant roads give the defender a huge advantage. In real life a key part of any invasion is to destroy the defender's ability to reinforce the front. In Civ4 not only is it impossible to destroy roads with artillery and planes (I think), but the redundancy of roads and railroads combined with the way seige weapons work is a defender's paradise. I was thinking they should put a maintainance fee on roads or excess roads (roads that aren't between cities or major resources wouldn't pay for themselves), but that would get ridiculously complicated.

 

[cleverhandle]

(The Machine Gun) is a purely defensive unit. Typically, I'd only use it in cities that are under serious attack or one of them in a stack as stack defense (against infantry). They are not the most useful unit.

I would rather say that they're an extremely useful unit for a rather limited time (post-Rifles, pre-Artillery) and for a very specific purpose (protecting stacks or workers). I generally don't wage much war in the Industrial Age, but did so in my last game and was really happy to use MG's again. I like capturing a city, bringing in worker pairs covered by MG's to connect up rails, and using that mobility to quickly reinforce and resupply my army. No way that an attacking Infantry is going to touch a Drill 1/2 MG...