Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[a4phantom]

New question. And sorry, I didn't search through 200 pages of posts to see if this is a duplicate question. I may yet take some time to read through the excellent responses in this thread, though.

Question:
Many of the buildings and wonders get an increased production speed "with marble" (for example). Does that mean that marble has to be one of the resources available anywhere in your civilization (or can you trade with other civs for marble) - or does it have to be actually available within the borders of the city that the wonder will be built?

The city must have access to it, which means it has to be linked to that city by roads, rivers, (probably after Sailing) coastal or (after Astronomy) ocean trade routes. You can trade for that marble, which means it will appear in your capital which had better be linked to your wonder producing city by the above possible routes. On the city screen in the upper right you will see what resources the city has access to. You might know this but just to draw the distinction, units *require* their resources (iron, oil, horses, etc) to build, whereas wonders are built twice as quickly with their resource (marble, stone, etc) but don't require them.

And don't worry about asking previously asked questions, this thread is hassle free. Besides, answers change over time, due to patches and Warlords the game works differently than it did a year ago.

Ok, downloaded and installed the patch. I don't see anyting in the writeup about being able to break capitulation deals. Darn.

 

[Koryu]

hi!

Theres a great europe map out there, unfortunatly the map needs a mod.
WIth the current version of civ4 (warlords) I cant load any mods, but I think this is a known problem.
The Maps got 17 civilisations, including such as portugal which is'nt hard coded (?) in the game.
I would like to replace such civilizations like portugal with standard civilisations.
I started to put these civs from a working mapfile to the europe mapfile but left the starting positions from the original europe mapfile.
Anyway, it does'nt work and I dont know why.

And next: I saw something that was'nt selfexplaining for me:
handicap=NOBLE_HANDICAP
what does it mean?

Well then, I hope someone can help me

greetings,
Koryu

 

[A. Ninny]

And don't worry about asking previously asked questions, this thread is hassle free. Besides, answers change over time, due to patches and Warlords the game works differently than it did a year ago.

Good to know.

Here's another question:

What are the limitations on updating military units? At one point in my game it seemed I was able to trade up many of my archers for crossbows and longbows. Later, the option to trade up other obsolete units has been grayed out.

 

[Raisin Bran]

Good to know.

Here's another question:

What are the limitations on updating military units? At one point in my game it seemed I was able to trade up many of my archers for crossbows and longbows. Later, the option to trade up other obsolete units has been grayed out.

Did you have enough money to upgrade them ?

the option is grayed out when you dont have enough money to buy the upgrade.

 

[A. Ninny]

Did you have enough money to upgrade them ?

the option is grayed out when you dont have enough money to buy the upgrade.

Probably not. I guess I should watch my gold more closely. Is there a chart somewhere that tells how much it costs to upgrade each type of unit?

 

[a4phantom]

Probably not. I guess I should watch my gold more closely. Is there a chart somewhere that tells how much it costs to upgrade each type of unit?

Somewhere. You also need the resources available, i.e. you can't upgrade chariots to knights if you don't have iron or you've lost your horses. And you can't upgrade units outside your cultural borders.

 

[elder abuser]

alright so when i more the mouse over a tech to see what it does, it doesnt describe it. It also does this when i want to see what the unit i want to build is. example: modern armors are extremely powerful late game offensive units... (i dont get that part)
does anyone have an idea how to enable them?

 

[a4phantom]

What're the major or notable changes in gameplay from the patch?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Yes! I was absolutely kidding you, of course Like Stephen Colbert or Sacha Baron whazzisname, I am not an idiot, I only play one on TV. Yes.

Note: the above quotation of RJ is not perfectly accurate. I had to remove one of his symbols to put mine in. In reality he laughed at me 15 times, not 14.

You're not an idiot of course. Just surprised that you missed it.

hi!

Theres a great europe map out there, unfortunatly the map needs a mod.
WIth the current version of civ4 (warlords) I cant load any mods, but I think this is a known problem.
The Maps got 17 civilisations, including such as portugal which is'nt hard coded (?) in the game.
I would like to replace such civilizations like portugal with standard civilisations.
I started to put these civs from a working mapfile to the europe mapfile but left the starting positions from the original europe mapfile.
Anyway, it does'nt work and I dont know why.

And next: I saw something that was'nt selfexplaining for me:
handicap=NOBLE_HANDICAP
what does it mean?

Well then, I hope someone can help me

greetings,
Koryu

The problem you have with loading certain mods probably has to do with the fact that they were created for an earlier version of civ4 and haven't been updated (yet) for civ4 warlords version 2.08 (latest patch).

I don't know what you did wrong so that it doesn't work. I'm not an expert on modding and many things could have gone wrong. You're better of asking the question in the main creation and customization forum where all of the modding experts reside.

Your second question is a little vague. Where is this line 'handicap=NOBLE_HANDICAP' coming from. I know that there exist a similar line in the CivilizationIV.ini file. There it just means the last difficulty level that you started at, in this case noble.

By the way, welcome to civfanatics!

alright so when i more the mouse over a tech to see what it does, it doesnt describe it. It also does this when i want to see what the unit i want to build is. example: modern armors are extremely powerful late game offensive units... (i dont get that part)
does anyone have an idea how to enable them?

I also sometimes experience a moment where the pop-up help information doesn't appear. The problem usually dissapears when I mouse over the little buttons in the lower right corner or when I enter and leave the menu. But this doesn't occur very often to me.

Have you downloaded and installed the latest patch? I do remember it occuring more often in the earliest versions of civ4.

 

[Roland Johansen]

What're the major or notable changes in gameplay from the patch?

The changelog can be found at the start of this thread.

 

[Zophos]

Is there a chart somewhere that tells how much it costs to upgrade each type of unit?

Yes...there is a long thread with some folks who have created a big Excel spreadsheet that tracks most of the costs of everything, and lets you adjust the prices for game speed and difficulty, too.

But the calculation is easy: take the difference in hammers between the two units, multiply by three, and add 25.

 

[ordinaryguy]

About game speed...

The amount of time it takes to buid/research something is proportional to the game speed. On the slower speeds, it takes longer to research/build stuff. So while you get more turns to play the game, the research/build takes longer too so it works out.

Where the slower game speeds really pay off is with troop movement. If your troops are marching a long way, they have more time to reach their destination before new research/building become available. So if it takes 20 turns for a unit to reach the enemy city, on fast game speeds that unit could be obsolete before it reaches the city (since research is fastest). On slow game speeds the unit will have time to reach it.

In my opinion, slower speeds are better for people that like warfare in the older eras (units stay viable longer). The faster speeds are better for people that like to research more quickly and play with the newer era units. In the end it comes down to each their own. I like the normal speed.

Yes. You can set autosave prefs in the .ini file.

The file you want is normally located at C:\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini. Look for AutoSaveInterval and set it to 1. You can also set MaxAutoSaves to whatever number of saves you want to retain before it starts throwing old ones away.

Thanks to ChicagoCubs and Zophos for the answers. Greatly appreciated

I have another question:

Which game speed is the most preferable? I mean I tried marathon but it took sooooooo long to build an improvement that I just quit the game On the other hand, normal is sometimes to quick for me (units get obsolete before I can even use them)

Any opinions welcome! Thanks

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks to ChicagoCubs and Zophos for the answers. Greatly appreciated

I have another question:

Which game speed is the most preferable? I mean I tried marathon but it took sooooooo long to build an improvement that I just quit the game On the other hand, normal is sometimes to quick for me (units get obsolete before I can even use them)

Any opinions welcome! Thanks

That's quite personal. Some people like quick, other marathon. I like epic which is between normal and marathon. Note that things take a long time at the start of the game (building times and research times), but things get faster after the cities how grown a little. Don't be discouraged by the building time of the first worker or settler. After some improvements to the land have been made, the building times will decrease significantly.

 

[gippy]

Hello-

Just came back to playing a bit of Civ IV after a long hiatus (with PhD thesis written in between, etc.).

I think I've seen this answered before, but can't find it.

Is there a way to review messages displayed between turns?

You know how it tells you "Christianity was discovered in xxxx", "Mosess was born in xxxx", etc.? Those sometimes scroll off the screen and I miss them.

I think a log is kept somewhere, but how do I access it?

There's a window that contains this, and I can scroll back, or some such, right?

Thanks!

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hello-

Just came back to playing a bit of Civ IV after a long hiatus (with PhD thesis written in between, etc.).

I think I've seen this answered before, but can't find it.

Is there a way to review messages displayed between turns?

You know how it tells you "Christianity was discovered in xxxx", "Mosess was born in xxxx", etc.? Those sometimes scroll off the screen and I miss them.

I think a log is kept somewhere, but how do I access it?

There's a window that contains this, and I can scroll back, or some such, right?

Thanks!

The window can be accessed by a button at the upper left side of the screen when you're viewing the map (not when in a city). Clicking on the messages will scroll the screen to the spot where the event took place (if you have already discovered that spot on the map).
The window can also be accessed by pressing CTRL-TAB.

 

[Tantor]

What`s the logic behind the cultural city defense??
I think high culture cities sometimes are ridicoulusly hard to conquer.
In my hometown we have a library, a theater, a colloseum (stadium) and a university, but what are we supposed to do if an evil Shaka comes to rape and pillage? Throw books on his tanks?

 

[andybrown65]

I've just turned the forum from red to blue! - How did I do that?

My real question is this:

I've been loosing a lot of battle at 81% what seems like 81% of the time. Naturally I accept that it is statistically possible for me to be cursed and loose them all; all of the time and it's probably me just ignoring the good and remebering the bad, but it got me thinking: is this how combat works?

me strength 17 (modified) vs enemy strength 14 (modified)
say for sake of argument I'm 81% odds on (I'm not sure how the odds are calculated); lets say I loose and get hit for 3 damage.

Now I'm strength 14 vs strength 14
on the next virtual dice roll is it 50/50 I'll win - or am I still at 81%

If it is the case that it is now 50%, what affected how much damage I was given after the first dice roll.

Thanks for any help or redirects to a useful guide.

 

[Roland Johansen]

What`s the logic behind the cultural city defense??
I think high culture cities sometimes are ridicoulusly hard to conquer.
In my hometown we have a library, a theater, a colloseum (stadium) and a university, but what are we supposed to do if an evil Shaka comes to rape and pillage? Throw books on his tanks?

Culture is the abstract representation of a feeling of belonging together, a unity of a people. The stronger the culture, the stronger the unity, the more resistance the defenders offer.

Civ4 is an abstract game, so there are many elements that are far from perfect representations from the real world. But it's a game, so...

 

[Chance]

how does everybody make new mods and buildings

 

[Roland Johansen]

how does everybody make new mods and buildings

There are quite a few people creating mods for Civ4, but by far not everybody does it. It's not that easy. Basic world builder map creation and some xml-editing are not very difficult, but you can do a lot more with Civ4 (even mod the AI) and that is a lot harder. But with the basic editing you can already do a lot. There are a few tutorials written by experienced modders who share their experience. You can find them in the stickied threads at the top of the Creation and Customization subforum (which can be found here).