Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[bosamar]

Okay, I searched the forums and could not find the answer. I know they relate to city layouts, but how?

What are "Fat Crosses"?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Okay, I searched the forums and could not find the answer. I know they relate to city layouts, but how?

What are "Fat Crosses"?

It's a term to describe the area around a city that can be 'worked' by that city. The tiles inside that area are available for use by the population inside the city. The size of the area is a square with lenght and breadth 5 without the corner tiles, centered on the center tile of the city. It resembles a 'fat cross' in form.

 

[billybgame]

It's difficult to know what might be the problem without a savegame. Things like inflation and upkeep do indeed increase on the higher difficulty levels, but the Noble-Prince jump should not be anywhere near that significant. What size are the maps you are playing on? If smaller than Standard, then 6-7 cities might be too many, and hence why you are losing so much money and having to lower the science slider so much. Are your citizens working the cottages you have built? If not, then they're not going to grow. Are your cities as large in population as happiness will allow? This will give you the maximum opportunity to enhance your commerce. Do you have a very large military sitting around and not doing much? If so, then this will be costing you a lot of gold.

But like I said, it's tricky to know what might be the problem just from what you have posted. However, I assure you that when playing a "normal" fairly peaceful Prince game, the science slider should most definitely not have to be at 20-30%, so there is certainly something going on wrong there. (In a warmonger game though, it's often common for the science slider to be this low, especially if you're keeping a lot of the cities that you capture.)

Save games are a problem for my as I've made my laptop my dedicated Civ 4 device, as Civ 4 makes my regular computer so bogged down. No internet on the laptop, just yet.

I started another Prince game, and it is much better. But, that's probably because I'm the Americans, with the maintenance halved.

In that game, sure I was working my cottages, etc. I was doing everything I knew to do. That's why I was confused why I was lagging so badly. After this game, I'll see what happens next time.

One thing......in this current game, I did make a worker far earlier than I have done. I usually go, warrior, warrior, settler, warrior/archer, settler, repeat, for awhile. But, I know realize the benefit of getting those cottages built up ASAP. Maybe that was the key.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I usually go, warrior, warrior, settler, warrior/archer, settler, repeat, for awhile. But, I know realize the benefit of getting those cottages built up ASAP. Maybe that was the key.

As someone who never plays at a difficulty level lower than emperor, I can tell you that that opening strategy is very bad at the higher difficulty levels. A normal opening strategy at the higher difficulty levels is something like worker, warrior, settler or worker, chop worker, warrior, settler. (chop worker means using the production from chopped forests to produce another worker). But of course no opening strategy should be an absolute rule. Workers however are produced very early by most people who play at high difficulty levels.

The reason is pretty simple. The land will produce far far more resources (food, production, commerce) if you improve it and thus you will earn back the investment of a worker very fast. The chopping of forests will also help you earn back any investment in workers very fast. Developing pottery so that you can build cottages is also a very important goal in the early game. Maybe not the first priority, but still a major goal.

 

[a4phantom]

Bump! When deciding how much they're willing to pay for peace, do AI's consider your diplomatic relationship or just how close you are to creaming them? For example . . . Monty and I have a great relationship. Shared religion, open borders, trade, etc. He randomly declares war on me because he's Monty. Several turns later, I've taken his capital and two other civs have declared war on him (not at my urging but because everyone hates Monty and he's already losing a war). I've razed no cities of his, so the only negative modifier on our relationship is the war. Is he going to give me more for peace or be more likely to capitulate than if we were in the same military situation, but I'd declared the war, had a different religion, razed several cities and had brought in the other civs as war allies?

 

[cabert]

Bump! When deciding how much they're willing to pay for peace, do AI's consider your diplomatic relationship or just how close you are to creaming them? For example . . . Monty and I have a great relationship. Shared religion, open borders, trade, etc. He randomly declares war on me because he's Monty. Several turns later, I've taken his capital and two other civs have declared war on him (not at my urging but because everyone hates Monty and he's already losing a war). I've razed no cities of his, so the only negative modifier on our relationship is the war. Is he going to give me more for peace or be more likely to capitulate than if we were in the same military situation, but I'd declared the war, had a different religion, razed several cities and had brought in the other civs as war allies?

why don't you just ask him what's the price of peace is?
I really think your relations won't change anything to the peace deal, but I don't know for sure.

 

[a4phantom]

why don't you just ask him what's the price of peace is?
I really think your relations won't change anything to the peace deal, but I don't know for sure.

Of course I ask what the price of peace is. But at that point it's a little too late to let the terms of peace guide how I conduct the war.

 

[Crighton]

It's all a bit relative, but, if you have nothing but positive modifiers and have sufficiently broken him he should be more likely to capitulate, and having Monty as a pet can be quite a bit of fun (since as your vassal he can't initiate wars, but being Monty, he'll ramp up for the wars he'd like to be having which usually means oodles of units).

 

[Isileo]

What are the requirements to be able to build work boats? I have had fishing tech, sailing tech (even though it shouldn't be needed it was there), and cities that the fat T falls just on the coast line even cities where the cultural influence was well into the ocean and yet no boats.

 

[Roland Johansen]

What are the requirements to be able to build work boats? I have had fishing tech, sailing tech (even though it shouldn't be needed it was there), and cities that the fat T falls just on the coast line even cities where the cultural influence was well into the ocean and yet no boats.

The city (center) needs to be positioned on the coast to be able to build any type of ship. Your cities have one tile of land between them and the coast and thus can not build ships. It also means that your cities can not build a lighthouse (+1 food in water tiles) or a harbor (increased trade route output). You typically want to avoid this situation as it makes coastal tiles quite useless.
Note that inland lakes don't count as oceans. You can differentiate between inland lakes and oceans by looking at the base terrain output on the map. Inland lakes have 2 base food and oceans only 1. Inland lakes count as fresh water so the tiles around a inland lake have access to fresh water.

 

[Isileo]

Thanks for the quick answer. I thought that I read somewhere that only the T had to be on the coast. I guess I just read wrong.


At least I know now.

 

[a4phantom]

It's all a bit relative, but, if you have nothing but positive modifiers and have sufficiently broken him he should be more likely to capitulate, and having Monty as a pet can be quite a bit of fun (since as your vassal he can't initiate wars, but being Monty, he'll ramp up for the wars he'd like to be having which usually means oodles of units).

So how much he hates me does affect the terms he'll surrender on. Then I need to think twice about razing cities.

 

[Crighton]

The bottom line is that if you've sufficiently broken him he will capitulate no matter what, but if he likes you you may not have to beat him down as much (and for the record I've had a -12 diplo penalty for razing cities, against Monty coincidently, it had been a long long long war).

If there was no war between you, he liked you a lot, and you had a much greater power balance he'd probably be amenable to being a voluntary vassal in the normal diplomatic routine. But since there is a war (and a bunch of positive diplo stuff, presumably outnumbering the negative war spoiling thing) he'll probably capitulate fairly soon.

 

[Isod]

Belated thanks for the info Parkin.

Does anyone know if the DL version of warlords can use mods? I'll probably DL it off direct2drive or something like that.

 

[cabert]

So how much he hates me does affect the terms he'll surrender on. Then I need to think twice about razing cities.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true.
I have furious vassals all the time

 

[tomart]

please delete repeat post. thank you.

 

[tomart]

In Civ 3, I remember you could watch combats between AI players within your vision range. Now even though I have "Show AI moves" on, the combats don't show. Is there any way to enable that? It's very hard to make sense of foreign wars without being able to see who's killing whom.

I agree 100% - please, can someone clue us in on how to observe wars happening on our doorsteps, let us see others' battles? If Civ3 could do it, Civ4 could do it too; I do not accept this blindness, nor that it is irrelevant.
Do you mean to tell me (I haven't had this happen yet, so I don't know) that if two other civs were fighting in my territory, I couldn't see it? With Warlords' vassals, this could now be more common, but less visible, n'est-ce pas?

I WANT and sometimes NEED to see others' battles. PLEASE?

 

[Zenon_pt]

curiosity: my PC was sandpapered or was you said 'kilded' and now I cann't play the civ 4… Does already happened the sameone?

PS I had to substitute the motherbord and the processor…

I think that the game cann't support for the new motherbord.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Belated thanks for the info Parkin.

Does anyone know if the DL version of warlords can use mods? I'll probably DL it off direct2drive or something like that.

If it's a legitimate version, then it should be exactly the same as the CD version. In other words, I can see no reason why you shouldn't be able to use mods on that version.

I agree 100% - please, can someone clue us in on how to observe wars happening on our doorsteps, let us see battles we're not in?? If Civ3 could do it, Civ4 could do it too; I do not accept this blindness. [And the more I study Civ4, the more I take issue with some of 2K's decisions; they are not gods; but that's for another thread.]

I WANT and sometimes NEED to see others' battles. HOW IS THIS DONE, PLEASE?

I don't think it is possible; but then I could be wrong. If it is possible, I'd also be very interested to know how to do it.

A question of my own - I've recently been playing in a game on the Earth map in which I conquered huge amounts of territory as Egypt. Partway through, Mansa offered to be my vassal during peacetime - something I hadn't seen happen before (and I haven't used vassals before either, I never usually bother). Well, I accepted the deal to see what would happen... but soon realised that I could not reverse it! Why is this, and is there any way to make a vassal leave you? In the trade screen it tells me "this deal cannot be canceled". That kind of sucks, especially as I was planning on dominating the entire globe... So far the only thing I can think of is to declare war on Carthage and Zulu, and hope that they pummel Mansa and get rid of him for me. Is there any other option?

 

[Ginger_Ale]

To my knowledge, the only way that deal can be broken is if Mansa Musa decides to either end it (he gets the option once every 10 turns) or if he grows to half your population and size. Having him killed would also work, I imagine. This is just the way peaceful capitulations work.