Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[utberguy]

Speaking of that, I've played both regular games and mod games and none of them has shown up.
Is there a way to "reset" the score?

 

[cabert]

Speaking of that, I've played both regular games and mod games and none of them has shown up.
Is there a way to "reset" the score?

yep, deleting the replays would do it

 

[BrantleyL1]

I'm not 100% green, maybe 90%.... I've been doing some reading and now believe that at least some of my success is due to luck. I'm looking for a little more info on the growth of my civilization...

From what I've read, I know that there are a couple of elements that will aid in growth...



I know that the fat cross is the area that any given city will "work". I know that how many tiles they will work is dependant on the population. Left on their own, the population will pick and choose what they work on, which may or may not be the best. You can control it by clicking on the city and selecting the things to work...

Which leads to my thought about great people (GP). I know that I can change a city to have certain specialists. So, I can have a scientist that will add to the GP points and eventually will generate a Scientific Great Person. I know that if you create a specialist, it will remove one of the tiles being worked. Seemingly at random.

Which leads further to the thought about creating "special" cities - one to emphasise comerce, another science, perhaps another art. (And I've seen the culture bomb work - at least in theory - but not in my test. I figure the cities I tried it on were too far along on culture.)

So, here are the questions:

Is there a better (or worse) kind of tile to work? Let's say that I decide to create a specialist. I have to stop working something. Should it be a cottage or a farm?

Do things far outside your fat cross get worked?? For example, maybe your cities have grown to encompass a large area - bigger than the fat cross - and you build a lumbermill or cottage in an area on the fringe of the bigger area - does it get worked...

On trying to get more great people... How many specialists is recommended to optimize this?

And on city specialization. What is recommended? And what do I build there?

And are the recommended buildings generally a good idea? It seems that the system tries to get certain things build everywhere. (For example, do I really need an observatory everywhere?)

I'm on a war footing right now and trying to emphasise infantry. I had almost knocked out one AI - and another is now pissed off at me and just declared war. I might be in trouble because I am sparsely defended near him. And I've been depleted millitarily trying to wipe out the one AI. Any thoughts???

I generally bypass the recommendation at time like these and build military units (infantry, for now). So, unitl the citizens complain, I keep building military - because I need them to defend us (or attack them...). So, unless they complain (this is a cesspool...) I just keep building military. When/If I wipe them out, I will go back and concentrate on commerce, science, etc.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

While you're pondering Brantley's questions, here's a quick and dirty one of my own:

From 4000BC to 2050AD, at normal speed and normal map size, how many turns are available in a game?

 

[Sparta]

That's a lot of questions at one time for this thread I think (no offense), but I'll give it a shot. (Also, note that every one of your questions could be answered with "it depends" - all of these will be influenced by external factors that you'll get more of a feel for as you get more experienced with this iteration of Civ.)

Is there a better (or worse) kind of tile to work? Let's say that I decide to create a specialist. I have to stop working something. Should it be a cottage or a farm?

It depends on your overall goal with that particular city, but typically the best results are achieved by having a single GPP-generating city for your empire, which would have an inordinately large amount of food. As such, you'll typically be working all farms in this city anyway most of the time. If you need to run a specialist in a different hybrid city for some reason, it is probably best to decide on a case-by-case basis whether you'd prefer the extra food from a farm or the extra commerce (and cottage growth) from working a cottage.

Do things far outside your fat cross get worked?? For example, maybe your cities have grown to encompass a large area - bigger than the fat cross - and you build a lumbermill or cottage in an area on the fringe of the bigger area - does it get worked...

You can't ever work a tile outside of a fat cross to harvest the food, hammers, and commerce from that individual tile (nor can you ever discover a resource in an unworked mine), but you will get credit for one more instance of any resource tile that happens to be within your culture, regardless of if it is inside a fat cross or not.

On trying to get more great people... How many specialists is recommended to optimize this?

All of them. (I'd recommend making a single farm-intensive GPP city (and including at least the National Epic there), and working as many specialists as you can manage to feed there.)

And on city specialization. What is recommended? And what do I build there?

It is just in general more efficient to specialize cities where possible than to not. Typically people lean toward a solitary GPP city with tons of food, and then split the remainder of their cities toward prioritizing either hammers or commerce. In this way you don't need economic buildings in the former or military buildings in the later, saving you production investment and netting some roundabout turn advantage (e.g. to build a couple "well-rounded" cities might take two of almost every available building, whereas making one production-oriented and one economic could save you almost one instance of every building, which means both cities will be up and running far more quickly and you can be cranking out troops with one sooner). Here and here are a couple good articles on specialization from the strategy articles section that can go more in-depth than this thread is geared toward.

And are the recommended buildings generally a good idea? It seems that the system tries to get certain things build everywhere. (For example, do I really need an observatory everywhere?)

As above, and per specialization advice, no, you definitely do not need an observatory everywhere. Some cities can focus on production, ignore economic buildings, and just crank out troops after building maybe a granary and barracks (and forge and stable potentially later on). Note that building an observatory in a production-heavy, commerce-low military production city can easily take a hundred turns to pay for itself and become a profitable investment, which is a horrible return on investment compared to other options available to you. [I can't help but mention here that as a whipping enthusiast, I have a real partiality toward granaries, but overall there probably is no building that is an absolute must-have in every city. IMHO though, granaries, forges, and courthouses probably come the closest to universally useful (albeit with definite exceptions for the latter two). Otherwise though you should probably have a better feel for the direction you are taking your empire in a grand strategy sense than the AI attempts at guessing the next best build (IMO).]

I'm on a war footing right now and trying to emphasise infantry. I had almost knocked out one AI - and another is now pissed off at me and just declared war. I might be in trouble because I am sparsely defended near him. And I've been depleted millitarily trying to wipe out the one AI. Any thoughts???

I generally bypass the recommendation at time like these and build military units (infantry, for now). So, unitl the citizens complain, I keep building military - because I need them to defend us (or attack them...). So, unless they complain (this is a cesspool...) I just keep building military. When/If I wipe them out, I will go back and concentrate on commerce, science, etc.

Just a guess, but try using more artillery (by which I mean all artillery units, including cannon and catapults) - Civ4 really favors a suicide-artillery approach as they are typically cheaper than your primary forces, get city raider promos, and have a 25% chance of withdrawing. In a general sense, that may help you to maintain more of your [core] military as time goes on.

Also, as you get more familiar with the game mechanics, it may be a good idea to try to anticipate citizen complaints and deal with them proactively rather than reactively. A health-enhancing building won't cost any less after your citizens realize they are living in a cesspool than it did before then, and yet you will be losing food the whole time your cesspoolness is in play - therefore if the building is really needed, it may be more efficient to build it in advance of a problem rather than after you have crossed the threshold. This becomes even more significant in the case of happiness, as going over the limit there results in citizens that won't even work a tile at all, rather than just bringing in incrementally less food but still working tiles, as in the case of health.

Anyway, hope that may have helped a bit - perusing those articles on city specialization may be the most enlightening aid for you though. As you play more, you'll get more and more familiar with things and it will all come a bit easier. Then once you finally get down to a comfortable 1% green rating, they will release a new Civilization, and the process can begin anew!

Edit: Sorry, OscarWildebeest (nice nick btw ), but I am sadly stuck at work right now and far from civ (rest assured that I wish it were the inverse). The best I can offer is that I'm pretty sure the first handful of turns are all 40 years apiece, but I don't know when precisely that first transitions over to a smaller increment. And actually, now that I think about it, I always play epic, so it may even be 50 years normally for all I know. I guess I'm pretty much useless on that one right now. Sorry; good luck getting your answer (I'll answer it inside of two hours if nobody else has by then).

 

[DrewBledsoe]

While you're pondering Brantley's questions, here's a quick and dirty one of my own:

From 4000BC to 2050AD, at normal speed and normal map size, how many turns are available in a game?

Here's the standard turn code for normal speed:-

<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>40</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>75</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>25</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>20</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>25</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>10</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>50</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>5</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>2</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>1</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>130</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>


If you add the turns up, you'll get the answer (I'm far to lazy today ),,,,........doing it in my head its 490 ?

 

[Sparta]

I get 460, now that I remotely understand the question.

Play Now -> F8 confirms 460 as well.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I get 460, now that I remotely understand the question.

Play Now -> F8 confirms 460 as well.

Yep sounds about right now I haven't added another 30 on

 

[Roland Johansen]

Typically people lean toward a solitary GPP city with tons of food, and then split the remainder of their cities toward prioritizing either hammers or commerce. In this way you don't need economic buildings in the former or military buildings in the later, saving you production investment and netting some roundabout turn advantage (e.g. to build a couple "well-rounded" cities might take two of almost every available building, whereas making one production-oriented and one economic could save you almost one instance of every building, which means both cities will be up and running far more quickly and you can be cranking out troops with one sooner).

In my opinion, you gave lots of good advice, but I disagree with the above advice (you only need to build half of the buildings in a commerce city and the other half in a production/military city) which is repeated very often on this forum and has become some kind of mantra which is being repeated without further thought. The fact that 19 out of 20 people on this forum agree with it however doesn't mean that I accept it as true. Yes, I know, I'm stubborn.

There are many instances where you don't need to build a building in a city because it is almost useless.
An example would be to create a library in a city which only has a science production of 3 and almost no food surplus to enable scientists. The library would add no extra science to such a city and it couldn't use its food surplus to enable scientists. Even if the city would have double that science output, a library would still be fairly useless. You're investing 90 hammers in the building (at normal speed), so the increase of 25&#37; in science should be worth that investment. If the city is producing 80 science per turn, then the 25% adds 20 science and that is worth it. If the city produces 6 science per turn, then the 25% adds 1 science and that is (normally) not worth it. 90 hammers for 1 science per turn is not worth it. Of course, if you foresee a large increase in the output of science in this city, it might be interesting.

In such a way, I agree that not every building is worth building in every city.

However, if you have a great grassland area with nice rivers and some commerce producing resources and you decide to create a great science city there, then I think you will need virtually every building there to create a great science city.

Of course, you'll need a library, university, observatory and research lab for the science. But since the city will become a large city using many cottages for commerce production, you also need to get some happiness and health producing buildings in that city. So you will need:
A marketplace to increase the happiness from several resources, a granary and grocer and harbor to increase the health from some other resources, a forge to increase the happiness output of metallic luxury resources, an aquaduct if you happen to be short on health resources and temples and a colosseum if you happen to be short on happiness resources.
When you are at war and need to increase the culture slider to combat war weariness in your cities, then you would like to get the extra happiness from a theatre and a broadcast tower (and the earlier mentioned colosseum).
When you want to upgrade many of your units and set the gold percentage high or when the upkeep is high and a large part of your commerce is dedicated to gold, then a bank could be valuable to increase the gold production in this high commerce city.
Hmm, with all of these buildings that I want to build in this huge commerce city, I do need some good hammer production. So a factory and (coal) plant would be nice to speed up the process of building all of these buildings.
So where is this large collection of buildings that is not needed in a commerce city? Yes, you won't need a barracks, yeah great. But that is not a large collection of buildings that is not needed.

A hammer producing city with a really low commerce output might not get a good benefit from a library, observatory, university, research lab and bank. But the other buildings mentioned above are still often interesting. So the section of buildings that is not needed in a commerce or hammer specialised city is pretty small.

There are however often several buildings that are not needed to be build. For instance, if you happen to start with the health bonus from expansive civilizations and happen to have some good health resources near your cities, then you will rarely need to build an aquaduct for extra health in your cities. But this has nothing to do with being a production or commerce oriented city.

There is a very interesting option of specialization in civilization IV with the small wonders. For instance, the city where you build Oxfords University, should be a city with a huge commerce output. You want to get the maximum benefit from the +100% science that this small wonder generates. So it can be very interesting to plan a certain city with many cottages that are being developed and grown through time and thus prepare it to get Oxfords University when this small wonder becomes available. And there are several other small wonders that also benefit hugely from picking the terrain improvements to enhance their special bonusses.

I wouldn't expect too much from building specialization in your various cities. You will just have to look at the benefits of a building and then decide if it will be worth it to build it in that city. It depends very much on the availibility of resources. If you happen to have gold, silver and gems, then a forge is a great building to increase the happiness in your cities. If you happen to have none of these resources, then you'll build that building only for the increase in hammers.

If you add the turns up, you'll get the answer (I'm far to lazy today ),,,,........doing it in my head its 490 ?

Ouch, back to elementary school for you. You failed your math test.
The sum amounts to 460 turns on normal speed. The number of turns only depends on the game speed, not the size of the map.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Indeed. If I recall correctly, for total turns:

Quick: 320
Normal: 460
Epic: 660
Marathon: 1200

 

[DrewBledsoe]

You're right about the general thought on different buildings RJ, and put it well, stating that people will blindly think something is true, if it is repeated often enough.

I'd even go further, and state that with the longer game speeds, it's very rare for me not to have a barracks in every city by the industrial age, if not earlier, sometimes built in a huge hurry to help stave of an unexpected attack. (PLus there's the nationhood civic in certain games, happiness from barracks, rare but occasional)

Even with your non-science producing city...frrm the example you gave, the only reason I could imagine building such a "non producing anything city", is to grab a resource. Even then a library may be a wise investment just to beat off another culture, in certain occasions.

Almost every city that will one day be size 20 or so, will eventually need the great majority of the buildings that can be built, in order for happiness, health and some production.

I'm just trying to further show, that it's very difficult to say precisely what buildings you will need in a certain city, in that these vary with game situation, and will never be precisely the same from game to game.

So in short, I agree with you ..................and yes I must have added 130, then another 30 or something like that...........been another tiring day

 

[Bigmansam45]

Hi
i picked this game up for the first time in awhile, i got 8200 pts on the easiest diff, on a huge map on Marathon mode, i finish the game with an UN victory in the 1700s, can someone give me a general idea at what diff should i be playing at for a challenge, but it not to be impossible for me, thank you.

 

[Roland Johansen]

You're right about the general thought on different buildings RJ, and put it well, stating that people will blindly think something is true, if it is repeated often enough.

I'd even go further, and state that with the longer game speeds, it's very rare for me not to have a barracks in every city by the industrial age, if not earlier, sometimes built in a huge hurry to help stave of an unexpected attack. (PLus there's the nationhood civic in certain games, happiness from barracks, rare but occasional)

Even with your non-science producing city...frrm the example you gave, the only reason I could imagine building such a "non producing anything city", is to grab a resource. Even then a library may be a wise investment just to beat off another culture, in certain occasions.

Almost every city that will one day be size 20 or so, will eventually need the great majority of the buildings that can be built, in order for happiness, health and some production.

I'm just trying to further show, that it's very difficult to say precisely what buildings you will need in a certain city, in that these vary with game situation, and will never be precisely the same from game to game.

So in short, I agree with you ..................and yes I must have added 130, then another 30 or something like that...........been another tiring day

And I again agree with your comments. I can't remember building a city which wouldn't get a library at some point. Usually, in the late game the (foreign) trade routes alone produce enough commerce to make a library interesting. And only the fishing villages which are virtually without any land based production tiles might be cities that wouldn't get a barracks at some point in the game. They might be producing science and gold increasing buildings throughout the game.

I was just arguing that lots of buildings are being constructed to allow the city to become large, healthy and happy. There are very few buildings in the game that I will build in some cities and not in others.

Hi
i picked this game up for the first time in awhile, i got 8200 pts on the easiest diff, on a huge map on Marathon mode, i finish the game with an UN victory in the 1700s, can someone give me a general idea at what diff should i be playing at for a challenge, but it not to be impossible for me, thank you.

Welcome to civfanatics!

I personally view the highscores as a bad representation of the skills you have at playing this game. They are very dependant on how early you win the game, so an aggressive player who goes for an early conquest victory will generally get a far better score than someone winning diplomatically in 2000AD.

The map settings and speed settings and starting position also determine the difficulty of a game to a large extend. I view the slower speed settings (marathon, epic) and the smaller map sizes as easier than the faster speed settings and the larger map sizes. The main reason for this is that the human player is usually a lot better at warring than the AI and the slower game speeds allow more time for war while the smaller maps allow you relatively bigger gains from aggressive play. Also rush tactics work far better on the smaller maps.

In general, people only step up one difficulty step at a time, but if the game was very easy for you, you could go up two or more steps at once. The easiest difficulty setting gives you significant advantages compared to the AI while the higher difficulty settings give you significant disadvantages compared to the AI. The steps are quite considerable. I've read about players who say that they easily defeat the AI at prince difficulty level but can't beat the monarch difficulty level and that's only one step. So don't become too confident in your abilities, except if you don't mind losing a game.

If you are worried that a small step up would give you a boring experience because the low level AI cannot match your abilities at this game, then I would suggest to also change the map type. A game on an archipellago type map is very different from a game on a pangea type map. Some variation in map types can also result in interesting games.

Have fun playing civ!

 

[frankcor]

One thing I can add to Roland's guidelines about what difficulty level should one be playng: it's often said on these forums "If you're not losing 1 or 2 cities a game, it's time to move up to the next difficulty level."

 

[mrwhite89]

Question.......(Sorry if this has been asked before)

How do you capture and post screenshots? NOT the little ones at the bottom of the post, but the ones that fill the screen like what I usually see posted by Sullla during his succession game reports.

 

[frankcor]

I capture screen shots using the Print Screen key on the keyboard. That copies the Civ or Warlords screen to a file in the ScreenShots folder of your My Documents game folder.

Use any bitmap or photo editing software to edit the image, or to copy and paste portions of several images to create a combined image. I use Corel Photopaint or Adobe Paintshop.

Next, sign up for a free account at www.photobucket.com (there are other sites that do the same thing). After you upload your screenshot files to photobucket, you'll be provided links using square brackets ( [ and ] )that you can copy/paste into your forum posts here on CivFanatics.

Now, go post a good story and let us know where it is so we can read it.

 

[mrwhite89]

Awesome! Thank's a lot. I will be participating in my first succession game next week and want to post my turns with lots of visual aids.

 

[Bigmansam45]

Thank you roland!!

 

[bardolph]

I know that the fat cross is the area that any given city will "work". I know that how many tiles they will work is dependant on the population. Left on their own, the population will pick and choose what they work on, which may or may not be the best.

No. It is the governor that picks which tiles are worked. Your governor is represented by the icon-filled grid near the bottom-right of your city screen. You can control your governor by selecting different priorities from the governor grid, or by turning the governor off. When you turn your governor off, your population automatically become "citizens" (1 ) until you assign them.

Which leads to my thought about great people (GP). I know that I can change a city to have certain specialists. So, I can have a scientist that will add to the GP points and eventually will generate a Scientific Great Person. I know that if you create a specialist, it will remove one of the tiles being worked. Seemingly at random.

Again, your governor selects which tile is removed. You can also instruct your governor to emphasize and/or , in which case your governor will automatically assign specialists when possible.

Is there a better (or worse) kind of tile to work? Let's say that I decide to create a specialist. I have to stop working something. Should it be a cottage or a farm?

If you're starving then work more farms. If you want to grow faster, work more farms. If you're at your cap, work fewer farms.

Do things far outside your fat cross get worked?? For example, maybe your cities have grown to encompass a large area - bigger than the fat cross - and you build a lumbermill or cottage in an area on the fringe of the bigger area - does it get worked...

No. Don't confuse your fat cross with your cultural borders. They are different things.

On trying to get more great people... How many specialists is recommended to optimize this?

The best way to generate great people is to concentrate wonders and specialists in one or two cities. A good rule of thumb is to grow your city to its cap, then assign as many specialists as you can without going into starvation. If you want to concentrate on a specific type of GP (Great Scientists, for example), you will get your best results if you run the Caste System civic, which gives you an unlimited number of slots to assign to specialists.

In a GP Farm, you will usually prefer farms to cottages, unless you are already running as many specialists as your buildings and civics will allow.

And on city specialization. What is recommended? And what do I build there?

And are the recommended buildings generally a good idea? It seems that the system tries to get certain things build everywhere. (For example, do I really need an observatory everywhere?)

The AI recommendations are reasonable, but should always be taken with a grain of salt. Generally, you will have 3 types of cities: GP Farms (emphasize ), Production Cities (emphasize ), and Commerce Cities (emphasize ).

Production cities are straightforward. Build stuff that increases yield.

For Commerce cities, generally build + buildings over + buildings. The big exceptions are cities with holy shrines. These should emphasize gold over science.

Also, if your economy is suffering (< 50&#37; science), then you will need to build + buildings until your economy recovers.

Of course, there are some buildings that are useful regardless of your city "specialty," such as granaries, courthouses, jails, and any + or + buildings. Also, it is sometimes good to build + buildings even in "commerce" cities.

I'm on a war footing right now and trying to emphasise infantry. I had almost knocked out one AI - and another is now pissed off at me and just declared war. I might be in trouble because I am sparsely defended near him. And I've been depleted millitarily trying to wipe out the one AI. Any thoughts???

Make peace as quickly as you can with the first AI, and maneuver yourself into a defensive position against the second AI until you are ready to either call a truce or fight a major campaign against the second.

I generally bypass the recommendation at time like these and build military units (infantry, for now). So, unitl the citizens complain, I keep building military - because I need them to defend us (or attack them...). So, unless they complain (this is a cesspool...) I just keep building military. When/If I wipe them out, I will go back and concentrate on commerce, science, etc.

This is correct. However, you will probably get better results from offensive units like cannon, artillery and tanks.

 

[Pres. Slayback]

Hey...Noob to the forums here

Is there a George W Bush Civ IV Leaderhead for download??