Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[ggganz]

Yes, that's what I thought, too, and it won't affect non-millitary units (settlers, workers, not sure about scouts, explorers)

 

[Roland Johansen]

Does Pacifism make units above your free unit threshold cost 2, or does it add 1 to the cost of every single unit? Or . . . something else?

I wrote an article about unit upkeep when the game was just out. I believe it is still accurate. You can find it in the War Academy, here.

The short version. You pay 1 extra gold for every military unit (every unit except missionaries, workers and settlers). But the unit upkeep is lessened by a certain degree dependant on the difficulty level (see article, the handicap cost), so you actually pay less than 1 extra gold per military unit. There is also a free unit upkeep for these military units. To get all the details, I refer to the article.

Edit: I forgot something which isn't in the article either. All costs are heightened by the inflation costs. So if you have a 50% inflation value (late game), then you are actually paying more for every additional unit than when you have a 0% inflation value (early game). It is not directly related to the unit upkeep as it just modifies all costs so it wasn't mentioned in the article.

 

[linzamin]

I'm getting ready to play my first game of Civ IV Warlords. What is the best game speed to play at? Epic or Normal?

 

[Lord Parkin]

I'm getting ready to play my first game of Civ IV Warlords. What is the best game speed to play at? Epic or Normal?

Depends on your personal preferences. Do you like long games or shorter games?

Also keep in mind that game time spent also depends on map size and number of civs... so larger maps with more nations will naturally take longer to play anyway.

On the whole, I find that Normal is a fairly reasonable pace, though Epic is enjoyable if I want to take longer to think over what I'm doing. (Wars against the AI are also slightly easier on Epic, since they can't produce reinforcements as quickly.)

 

[a4phantom]

Thanks. How is the inflation rate calculated? By year I suppose?

 

[Lochlann]

Hi all, got a quick question that I can't seem to find answered anywhere else: is it possible to be taught Meditation or Polytheism as a result of entering a goodie hut? In all of the (many) games of Civ IV that I've played, I can't remember ever popping a hut and finding either of those techs. Obviously it would be pretty nice to do so, since you'd basically be getting a free religion (unless it was founded already), but I wonder if the developers thought that that'd be too overpowered and excluded those techs from the huts. I can't find any details one way or the other, though. Anyone know for sure? (This is for the non-expansion game, by the way.)

 

[Lord Parkin]

Hi all, got a quick question that I can't seem to find answered anywhere else: is it possible to be taught Meditation or Polytheism as a result of entering a goodie hut? In all of the (many) games of Civ IV that I've played, I can't remember ever popping a hut and finding either of those techs. Obviously it would be pretty nice to do so, since you'd basically be getting a free religion (unless it was founded already), but I wonder if the developers thought that that'd be too overpowered and excluded those techs from the huts. I can't find any details one way or the other, though. Anyone know for sure? (This is for the non-expansion game, by the way.)

You're correct - it is not possible to pop Meditation or Polytheism from a hut. (In fact, it's not possible to pop any religion-founding tech, as far as I recall.) The complete list of techs available from huts is available in the XML files (I can't recall exactly where off hand).

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thanks. How is the inflation rate calculated? By year I suppose?

Inflation slowly increases throughout the game. It starts at 0% and stays there a while. Some time after 0AD, it will start to rise and will eventually be 100% at 2050AD (or lower at the lower difficulty levels).

It just increases the cost of everything by that percentage.

 

[Lochlann]

You're correct - it is not possible to pop Meditation or Polytheism from a hut. (In fact, it's not possible to pop any religion-founding tech, as far as I recall.) The complete list of techs available from huts is available in the XML files (I can't recall exactly where off hand).

Aha. Thanks for the quick confirmation.

 

[Sisiutil]

The same question was answered twice, and with almost the same begginning.

Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ, my mom used to say. To this day, I still don't know what the heck she meant by that.

 

[frankcor]

Your mom was a wise woman.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

I'm getting ready to play my first game of Civ IV Warlords. What is the best game speed to play at? Epic or Normal?

First, for the most part everything on Epic takes longer, but the ratios are the same.

For example, if the epic game lasts 5x as long, then everything takes 5x longer to build/research.

Well if everything takes proportional longer, what is the advantage of playing on epic? The answer to that is "useful lifespan".

In normal speed games, it is possible to go to war with someone, build troops and send them out, but by the time you reach their cities, your troops may be obsolete by the research that you and the AI have done. In the epic speed game, your units' useful lifespan is longer. Since movement rates remained the same between the two game speeds, your units can reach the other civs before becoming obsolete.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

I've noticed that sometimes my missionary will fail to spread religion, even if it's to one of my own cities and I'm not operating Theocracy.

Can someone please tell me under what circumstances a missionary can fail to spread religion? Thanks.

 

[Sisiutil]

I've noticed that sometimes my missionary will fail to spread religion, even if it's to one of my own cities and I'm not operating Theocracy.

Can someone please tell me under what circumstances a missionary can fail to spread religion? Thanks.

Someone else can tell you the numbers, but basically, the chance of a missionary failing increases with the number of religions present in that city. The more religions that are already there, the greater the chance that the missionary will fail.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

I've noticed that sometimes my missionary will fail to spread religion, even if it's to one of my own cities and I'm not operating Theocracy.

Can someone please tell me under what circumstances a missionary can fail to spread religion? Thanks.

I have never had a missionary fail it's mission on a city that doesn't have a religion. Otherwise, if there is a religion present, there is a chance of failure, and the chance of failure increases with the number of religions present.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I've noticed that sometimes my missionary will fail to spread religion, even if it's to one of my own cities and I'm not operating Theocracy.

Can someone please tell me under what circumstances a missionary can fail to spread religion? Thanks.

It's dependent on the number of religions in the city and whether or not it is a city of your own (or your team) or a foreign city. Zophos got the numbers a while back. Here is (a part of) his post.

In the unmodded game (with 7 religions), this reduces to:

SpreadProb(non-team) = 100% - (80% * numReligionsInCity/7)
SpreadProb(team) = 100% - (60% * numReligionsInCity/7)

Or, in chart form (with proper rounding):

# Religions	Non-Team	     Team
0	          100%	             100%
1	           89%	              92%
2	           78%	              83%
3	           66%	              75%
4	           55%	              66%
5	           43%	              58%
6	           32%	              49%

That's it. The only thing that matters is how many religions are present in the city already. Population, distance to holy city/shrine, capitol vs non-capitol, etc. don't enter into the calculation.

 

[a4phantom]

Has the AI gotten lazier about spreading the state religion to all its cities? The Chinese and Egyptians were Buddist from almost the beginning, but as I conquered them I noticed a great many old cities with Hinduism or Islam but not Buddism.

Also, when deciding the value of converting, does the AI prioritize capital and big cities, or just number of cities? Does it consider the diplomatic ramifications (other than that I've got a gun in my right hand as I offer them the Bible with my left . . .)? Does having a Holy City really trump, as it seems to, all other considerations for the AI (if every nation is Buddist, the AI that founds Islam will convert to Islam if they don't also have the Buddist holy city)?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Inflation slowly increases throughout the game. It starts at 0% and stays there a while. Some time after 0AD, it will start to rise and will eventually be 100% at 2050AD (or lower at the lower difficulty levels).

It just increases the cost of everything by that percentage.

Do you mean, later at the lower difficulty levels? Or do you mean earlier? ("Lower" when talking about years is a little ambiguous.)

Has the AI gotten lazier about spreading the state religion to all its cities? The Chinese and Egyptians were Buddist from almost the beginning, but as I conquered them I noticed a great many old cities with Hinduism or Islam but not Buddism.

Also, when deciding the value of converting, does the AI prioritize capital and big cities, or just number of cities? Does it consider the diplomatic ramifications (other than that I've got a gun in my right hand as I offer them the Bible with my left . . .)? Does having a Holy City really trump, as it seems to, all other considerations for the AI (if every nation is Buddist, the AI that founds Islam will convert to Islam if they don't also have the Buddist holy city)?

I think the AI has always been fairly bad at spreading religions around its own land. As far as I've seen, most AI will only use missionaries on cities that don't already have a religion in them. They hardly ever (if even at all) bother to convert cities which already have a religion, even if it's the "wrong one" with respect to their state religion.

When its capital and big cities don't have a religion in them, I think they get prioritised for the spreading via missionaries, from what I've observed to date. The diplomatic ramifications are considered, at least in part - if a large part of the world, or a single continent is dominated by one religion, then the AI will tend to prefer to convert to that religion if they can (although if it's not spread enough through their lands, they'll still be hesitant). Holy cities do indeed cause AI to have strong possessive attachments, and they will much prefer to convert to their "holy" religion than any other. However, if their "holy" religion is not well-spread through their lands, and there is a larger religion spread among many of the other nations of the world, the AI will usually stick with the "mainstream" religion, at least for a time.

 

[Dier]

Hi, I tried the system requirements lab mentioned in post #185 of this thread, and it says that my system meets the minimum requirements except for this:

Video Card
Minimum: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (NVIDIA GeForce2+ / ATI Radeon 7500+)
You Have: Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family (Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset)

I played the downloadable 100 turns version without any problems, and was wondering what the deal is here. I'm considering buying this game, but my laptop is hardly upgradable. Thanks!

 

[Waterchan]

I have the Civ 4 original without expansion. When I first start up a game and zoom-out to a certain level, the music continues playing. But later on in the game, when I zoom it out to the same level, the music cannot be heard unless I zoom in very close on a city.

Does anyone know how to configure Civ 4 so that the music will play constantly, as long as you are not too zoomed-out?