Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Some more random questions as they pop into my head:

1. Resources again - when you get a food resource traded to you from a rival civ, am I right in thinking that you only get the health benefits for your population and not the actual 'food' benefits that the tile produces?

2. Is there a quick way of scanning your troops to find out their level? I want to build West Point and need someone to be at level 6 - this meant clicking on every individual troop in every city to find one.

3. At what point would you recommend going for your 1st wonder? I tend to leave it until I've got at least 2 or 3 cities and by then the AI has all but won the race!

4. Is there a cap to the size a city can grow to? I've a feeling I read somewhere in these pages that it was '20', but could anyone confirm or correct this?
 
edit : ORI was faster!

:p

1. Resources again - when you get a food resource traded to you from a rival civ, am I right in thinking that you only get the health benefits for your population and not the actual 'food' benefits that the tile produces?
correct :)


2. Is there a quick way of scanning your troops to find out their level? I want to build West Point and need someone to be at level 6 - this meant clicking on every individual troop in every city to find one.
:confused: I know of no easier way :sad:


3. At what point would you recommend going for your 1st wonder? I tend to leave it until I've got at least 2 or 3 cities and by then the AI has all but won the race!
If I think I have a shot at an early wonder I start ASAP, i.e. once I have any bonus (stone or marble) hooked up - usually I have one or two settlers out by then though...


4. Is there a cap to the size a city can grow to? I've a feeling I read somewhere in these pages that it was '20', but could anyone confirm or correct this?
No hard cap - it really depends on the food you can muster in your city... just try the following: start a game with a city were you max out merchant specialists, put the Globe Theater in there and settle every Merchant super specialist in that city - you can get a really high food output that way :crazyeye:
 
2. Is there a quick way of scanning your troops to find out their level? I want to build West Point and need someone to be at level 6 - this meant clicking on every individual troop in every city to find one.

Why were you looking for the unit in the first place? You don't need to know which of your units is level 6 to be able to build the small wonder.

And you probably would know if you had a unit of level 6. They have to fight and win many many battles to get to that level or they have to get a Great General attached to them.

You can look in the military advisor and click on show individual units. That will show you the promotions of all of your units. A unit needs at least 5 promotions to be level 6. If a unit starts with certain promotions (aggressive or protective leader or for instance the guerilla I from the gallic warrior), then those don't increase his level.
 
Why were you looking for the unit in the first place? You don't need to know which of your units is level 6 to be able to build the small wonder.

And you probably would know if you had a unit of level 6. They have to fight and win many many battles to get to that level or they have to get a Great General attached to them.

You can look in the military advisor and click on show individual units. That will show you the promotions of all of your units. A unit needs at least 5 promotions to be level 6. If a unit starts with certain promotions (aggressive or protective leader or for instance the guerilla I from the gallic warrior), then those don't increase his level.

Thought the unit needed to be in the city I wanted to build in - guess not from your reply. I had fought a couple of wars and knew I had units of 4 & 5 - just wasn't sure whether any had made it to level 6 at that point. Thanks for the help.
 
So, my next question concerns the amount of gold you get from trade routes. I understand how the number of trade routes a city has is dependant on various builds, etc. But how does the amount you get from each one differ? Is it related to the size of the foreign city you have a route with or some other factor? On the same subject, does anyone know how the game chooses which cities you have trade routes with? Other than open border agreements, I can't see any pattern to it.:confused:
 
Thought the unit needed to be in the city I wanted to build in - guess not from your reply. I had fought a couple of wars and knew I had units of 4 & 5 - just wasn't sure whether any had made it to level 6 at that point. Thanks for the help.

Ah, a misunderstanding, you don't need the unit in the city to build the wonder.

The military advisor can help you find the highly promoted units so that you can try to get them to level 6. It's not that easy to get units to level 6 without using a great general. You'll have to get lucky and be careful with the highest promoted units so that they stay alive.

So, my next question concerns the amount of gold you get from trade routes. I understand how the number of trade routes a city has is dependant on various builds, etc. But how does the amount you get from each one differ? Is it related to the size of the foreign city you have a route with or some other factor? On the same subject, does anyone know how the game chooses which cities you have trade routes with? Other than open border agreements, I can't see any pattern to it.:confused:

The amount of gold that you get from trade routes is related to the size of the city you have a trade route with, the distance of the city you have a trade route with and the size of the city itself. The Harbor increases the value of the trade routes with 50%. Foreign trade routes are 2.5 times as profitable as domestic ones. Foreign trade routes have a minimum value of 2, domestic ones a minimum value of 1.

You can only have 1 foreign trade route with each foreign city. The most profitable trade route is connected with the best of you cities first and then the next most profitable trade route is connected until the foreign trade routes are all used and then domestic trade routes are assigned to the rest of your cities.

There exists an article on Trade Routes in the War Academy.
 
Ah, a misunderstanding, you don't need the unit in the city to build the wonder.

The military advisor can help you find the highly promoted units so that you can try to get them to level 6. It's not that easy to get units to level 6 without using a great general. You'll have to get lucky and be careful with the highest promoted units so that they stay alive.

On the subject of the military advisor, I've another question (oh, I'm just full of questions today). When you're on the military advisor screen and click on the image of one of your opponents, you can see what units they have (subject to certain conditions that I forget at the moment - I'm at work and can't check). The question is, does it only show units that you are aware of (i.e. cities that you've a spy/missionary in) and how does the information there get updated?
 
On the subject of the military advisor, I've another question (oh, I'm just full of questions today). When you're on the military advisor screen and click on the image of one of your opponents, you can see what units they have (subject to certain conditions that I forget at the moment - I'm at work and can't check). The question is, does it only show units that you are aware of (i.e. cities that you've a spy/missionary in) and how does the information there get updated?

It's just the units that you can see, nothing more, nothing less.
 
Ah, a misunderstanding, you don't need the unit in the city to build the wonder.

The military advisor can help you find the highly promoted units so that you can try to get them to level 6. It's not that easy to get units to level 6 without using a great general. You'll have to get lucky and be careful with the highest promoted units so that they stay alive.
Once you give a unit its Level 6 promotion, however, the unit could be killed and you'll still be able to build West Point--in its memory, I guess. :lol:

In Warlords, the easiest way to get a Level 6 unit is to attach a Great General as a Warlord to a unit with 6 XPs, IIRC.
 
In Warlords, the easiest way to get a Level 6 unit is to attach a Great General as a Warlord to a unit with 6 XPs, IIRC.

Yes, it takes 26 xp to reach level 6 (unless you're Charismatic, you lucky dog). I usually stick it to a chariot with combat1 and healing1 so I can get healing2, healing3, and morale (or whatever the +1 movement is). Putting it on a primitive and non-defensive unit like a chariot will keep it safe in the stack, and you'll be able to upgrade for free all the way to gunship.

1. I know the Great Players tend to disdain building world wonders as inefficient moves towards winning the game. For those of us who build them anyway, I was wondering which ones you guys thought were the best as far as benefits/costs. Obviously, it depends on circumstances, but in general which Great Wonders give the best bang for the buck?

2. How often do you guys dedicate the same city as your prime science city (with Oxford University, Great Scientists, Academy) and prime gold city (Wall Street ((great movie by the way)), Great Merchants)? My capital usually ends up being both, unless I capture a holy city with a very profitable shrine.
 
You will not get the +25% bonus when producing units.
Woops..that's it, should've figured it out myself :hammer2:
I was indeed building units, coincidentaly all of them in holy cities which made me think this was the 'problem'.
many thanks for lighting the bulb!
 
1. I know the Great Players tend to disdain building world wonders as inefficient moves towards winning the game. For those of us who build them anyway, I was wondering which ones you guys thought were the best as far as benefits/costs. Obviously, it depends on circumstances, but in general which Great Wonders give the best bang for the buck?

Personal favourites include Oracle, Colossus, Great Library and Hanging Gardens. After them I generally only build wonders if I have the bonus resource and it could be useful in my situation.

2. How often do you guys dedicate the same city as your prime science city (with Oxford University, Great Scientists, Academy) and prime gold city (Wall Street ((great movie by the way)), Great Merchants)? My capital usually ends up being both, unless I capture a holy city with a very profitable shrine.

I normally have a shrine producing enough gold to make it my gold city. Capital is either production or science depending on lands and resources.
 
1. I know the Great Players tend to disdain building world wonders as inefficient moves towards winning the game. For those of us who build them anyway, I was wondering which ones you guys thought were the best as far as benefits/costs. Obviously, it depends on circumstances, but in general which Great Wonders give the best bang for the buck?
Well, all wonders are useful to a certain extent. If you're talking about early wonders, then Stonehenge is nice, especially if you are Charismatic. The Oracle is one that I personally tend to favour too. Colossus and Great Lighthouse are good for gold, the latter more so on larger maps. And the Great Library is very cool. Anything that produces Great Engineer points is also nice, as well. I will never attempt to build an expensive early wonder unless I have the associated speeding resource, and/or am Industrious, and even then it's situational.

As for the late game, it's often the case that I'll have little competition in obtaining those wonders anyway. But regardless, the Statue of Liberty is definitely extremely powerful on most maps (except archipelago ones). The Pentagon is awesome too, and more so if you are Aggressive, Charismatic, or Spiritual. The Taj Mahal is a personal liking of mine, although it's not strictly speaking a great benefit. Later on, the Eiffel Tower is exceptionally powerful, and the UN is always nice to get. The Space Elevator of course, and that's about it. ;)

If you wanted to know which wonders I thought gave the worst bang for their buck though... well, again it's situational and a matter of personal preference. But personally, I would rank Notre Dame and the Sistine Chapel amongst them (though of course it would be different if I were playing for a cultural victory, which I usually don't).
 
1. I know the Great Players tend to disdain building world wonders as inefficient moves towards winning the game. For those of us who build them anyway, I was wondering which ones you guys thought were the best as far as benefits/costs. Obviously, it depends on circumstances, but in general which Great Wonders give the best bang for the buck?

I agree with azzaman and Lord Parkin on which wonders are useful. The most important ones were mentioned by them.

I usually will also only build the wonders if I have the resource that gives the production bonus or when I have a large enough tech lead that I can do whatever I want.

I disagree a bit on the Notre Dame. Everything that gives happiness is nice especially when war weariness starts to hurt. But the bonus isn't really huge and restricted to one continent so I'd call it a mediocre wonder. I agree that the Sistine Chapel is awful (not in real life of course).

The Chitzen Itza and the Hagia Sophia (another beautiful structure) are also useless. The defence bonus can easily be bombed away and the worker production bonus comes at a time that I'm not that interested in worker speed anymore. The most important terrain structures have already been build. I'm also not impressed with the Parthenon as it's great person bonus comes at a time that my cottage economy usually isn't creating many great persons. But if you have build an early great person factory or using a specialist economy, then it might be useful. The Pyramids are too expensive and the civics they offer are not useful enough at that point in the game (universal suffrage) or don't support my cottage economy (representation). Hereditary rule might be researched before the Pyramids have been constructed and police state is usually not needed that early in the game. If you build the Pyramids, even with stone, then you won't build 3 settlers. I'm not impressed with the Temple of Artemis either as its 100% trade route bonus is only working for one city and 1 extra priest isn't that great. Maybe it is interesting on tiny maps where you only have a few cities and you have also build the great lighthouse for extra trade routes. I'm not that impressed with Versailles either. It's just too hard to build it in a spot where it will help your empire by reducing the upkeep cost.

If you can get both the University of Sangkore and the Spiral Minaret, then the +2 science + 2 gold bonus on every religious buildings suddenly makes religious buildings very worthwhile. With stone, these wonders are pretty cheap at that point in the game. Though maybe not as great as some of the other wonders mentioned, in combination they're pretty strong if you build the temples, the monasteries and the cathedrals.

I do think the Kremlin and the Three Gorges Dam are great late game wonders. The one will make cash rushing very very powerful and the other will replace the unhealthy coal plants with healthy hydro energy and remove the need to construct coal plants in cities on the continent that haven't done so already.

The problem with wonders is that if the competition for first spot in the world is tight, then you don't have the luxury of building them. Also, building wonders while you should be expanding your empire is generally a bad idea. It's a very different thing when 1 out of 20 cities is producing a wonder then when 1 out of 2 is producing a wonder. At the end of the game, building a wonder is not hurting your empire as much as at the start of the game.

If you want to build great wonders in your great person farm, then watch out for great artist producing great wonders. You generally don't want to spawn too many great artists and thus don't want these wonders in your great person farm. You do want the great wonders that produce great engineers or maybe great scientists or great merchants in your great person farm.

2. How often do you guys dedicate the same city as your prime science city (with Oxford University, Great Scientists, Academy) and prime gold city (Wall Street ((great movie by the way)), Great Merchants)? My capital usually ends up being both, unless I capture a holy city with a very profitable shrine.

I will only combine them when the holy city is in the best cottage spam location on the part of the map that I control, which means virtually never. Wall Street will go to my holy city (usually captured holy city) and Oxford University goes to the city with the best potential for producing commerce. I'll make sure that the religion of my holy city is spread far and wide.

I must say that I usually play on huge maps and that makes the money producing power of the holy city much greater.
 
^^it's strange that both of you rate the sistin chapel so low.
When I go cultural, it's the only wonder I really want.

Of course, it's just as good captured as built ;)

When going for domination too, it's a great wonder :
Imagine :
- you capture a size 8 city (nothing unusual, really)
- you own none of the surrounding tiles (nothing unusual, really),, so while under revolt, you have 8 citizen specialists (or maybe priests or merchants, but certainly no artists!...) assigned. You may add a theater to the queue, but it doesn't get built while under revolt.
- On the turn the city goes out of revolt, your citizens add hammers to the theater in the queue, you lose one pop from starvation, but you still have no culture, so you must whip the theater to start growing culture (and prevent starvation in many cases).

Now same scenery with sistin chapel somewhere :
- on the turn the city comes out of revolt, you citizens add hammers to the theatre (or anything you like) and culture. 8*2 = 16 culture, meaning you expand to the fat cross on the turn you come out of revolt :).
Even with 3 unhappies, you still have 5*2=10 culture, enough to get the expansion.
This wonder is really cool, if you ask me ;)

and about notre dame, I just let the neighbours build it and put a target sign on the city where it's built. I only build it when i have a GE sitting around.
 
I don't quite see why the sistine chapel is so great for a cultural victory. It only adds 2 culture per specialist and I won't use many specialists in a city that's going for the legendary culture level. A well developed cottage adds far more culture when at 100% culture. And that's the normal way to go for a culture victory (at least that's what I read in most of the posts on this forum and what I do myself). Or do you go for a culture victory without the 100% culture slider? In that case, I understand. The rest of your cities can go on with their job at a normal science-gold rate while the 3 cities going for legendary culture just use specialists. But it will take a long time if you were playing at a level where you couldn't get many of the wonders of the world.

By the way, I've only gone for a cultural victory once. I don't quite like the option. So I'm not that experienced with all the aspects of it.

I can see the usefulness for capturing cities. That's a nice feature of the wonder. I hadn't thought about that before. I usually will build culture the first turn that a city comes out of its rebellion. For a small city, the 8 surrounding tiles can often be enough for a while until the first border expansion occurs. Sometimes, I will rush buy or pop rush some buildings in such a city.

Still building a great wonder just to get some marginal just captured cities up and running a few turns earlier is not that great in my opinion. But it does show that the wonder has its uses.
 
I don't quite see why the sistine chapel is so great for a cultural victory.
I'll try to explain a bit.
It only adds 2 culture per specialist and I won't use many specialists in a city that's going for the legendary culture level. A well developed cottage adds far more culture when at 100% culture. And that's the normal way to go for a culture victory (at least that's what I read in most of the posts on this forum and what I do myself).

That's exactly the point!
What is difficult about cultural wins?
It's having 3 legendary cities. The capital is usually easy to grow to legendary.
Then there is a high commerce city that will be founded early enough to have all those nice cultural buildings and mature cottages.
Then you can build another commerce city or a GPFarm.
You will need a GP farm, since the 3rd city will probably need some help (= GArtists) to not slow down the win.
If you go for sistin chapel, your GP farm will be your 3rd city.
If you let sistin chapel go, your GP farm will be another city.
I played a lot of cultural games, and I found it much easier to have
2 good commerce cities + GP Farm + helper cities than
3 good commerce cities + GP farm + helper cities.

When going cultural, it's not always easy to capture more cities. You want no enemies! So being able to make with 1 less great spot is huge.
With sistin chapel, your GP farm will be producing enough culture/turn to not slow you down. 6 artists + sistin chapel will be enough.
(+ every settled specialist (including GGenerals!) gives 2 cpt (before modifiers), this is just the icing on the cake)



Or do you go for a culture victory without the 100% culture slider? In that case, I understand. The rest of your cities can go on with their job at a normal science-gold rate while the 3 cities going for legendary culture just use specialists. But it will take a long time if you were playing at a level where you couldn't get many of the wonders of the world.
I'm not playing above monarch (except rome and incas;)), but at monarch level I won without culture slider too.


By the way, I've only gone for a cultural victory once. I don't quite like the option.
Maybe you tried it in the most academic way? I find it boring, when I try to do it "just perfectly". I favour a more balanced game, where you spend less time in an obviously weak situation.

I can see the usefulness for capturing cities. That's a nice feature of the wonder. I hadn't thought about that before. I usually will build culture the first turn that a city comes out of its rebellion. For a small city, the 8 surrounding tiles can often be enough for a while until the first border expansion occurs. Sometimes, I will rush buy or pop rush some buildings in such a city.

Still building a great wonder just to get some marginal just captured cities up and running a few turns earlier is not that great in my opinion. But it does show that the wonder has its uses.
That was my point. This wonder has its uses.
You simply must see them ;).
I agree that saving 2 pops (those you would sacrifice for the theatre) and losing 3 turns of expanded territory isn't much.
But this is a really common situation, something you might face 30 times in the game. So it's not totally marginal.
It's a lot less straightforward than the oracle of course, but shaving off 3 turns in every city can make domination a lot easier, and rushing a courthouse instead of the theater can help a lot too ;).
 
I agree that the Sistine Chapel is awful (not in real life of course).

Good, cause I'm not really in shape for a fist fight much less crossing the Atlantic for one! Thanks guys. The Wonder I insist on building is the Great Library. I always manage to get the University of Sangore too, and by late game I'm far ahead so I can scoop up the Wonders I really want (Statue of Liberty, Pentagon and Three Gorges Dam). I always try to conquer the Great Wall if someone nearby builds it early on, along with the Pyramids for Great Engineers. I'd like to build Oracle, since that's the one you don't benefit by capturing, but I don't usually get the right techs early on, and since I don't found holy cities spawning a Great Prophet would be a huge waste of GPP for me unless I captured one without a shrine which is rare.
 
I think they forgot them. I think that they -

roads -

Increase movement of units to 1/2 a movement point per tile, changes to 1/3 with engeniering (?).
Connect cities for trade routes.
Connect cities to share health and luxury resorces.

Railroad -

Increase movement of units to 1/10 a movement point per tile.
Increase hammer production of mines and lumber mills by 1.

So does this mean that Horses travel faster along a railroad than foot units? Strange...
 
So does this mean that Horses travel faster along a railroad than foot units? Strange...

Yes, mounties, settlers and tanks move 20 spaces on RR and foot troops move 10. Their extra mobility helps them catch the right trains and avoid delays.
WRONG! Apparently everyone moves 10 spaces on RR, regardless of the unit's own movement value.
 
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