Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Roland Johansen]

I have a question.

I see dotmaps on these forums that have lines drawn in many splendid colours, but I only seem to be able to draw in the colour of my Civ. (I'm playing vanilla Civ, patched up to the latest version).

I want multi-coloured dotmaps! Is this something that's only available in the expansion packs, or is it a mod, or am I just missing something really obvious?

Thanks!

These dotmaps were probably created with a graphics program like paint. You create a screenshot of your game and then edit this with the graphics program. That's just for showing something on the forum, it's not for in-game use.

So, I've just bought civ4, and haven't played a turn-based game before. here's a few basic questions.

on each turn, will civ4 go automatically to each of your units that can potentially be moved?

It will go to each unit that can be moved as long as you haven't given that unit a fortify or sleep command. Those commands are there to stop these units from bugging you (and gaining a fortification defensive bonus). You typically use those for city garrison units as you don't want to move those anyway.

or do you have to go through and tell them to do something. Also, I notice that while playing, certain popups tell me to research different things. Will it always pop up? or can I research things quicker.

Whenever you finish researching a technology, you will be asked to pick a next one to research. There is a lot of strategy in picking a research path that will lead you to the technologies that you require to improve your empire.

I've played a few games up to about 100AD, and got bored. I've read that this game is incredibly addictive, but not yet for me. I think i'm playing it wrong so help me out

If you want to enjoy a game like Civilization, then you must enjoy empire building. Do you like to see your empire prosper in the world? Do you like to compete with the other empires in the world, try to get a better empire than they have? You compete on the technological level so that your warriors won't face enemy riflemen and you're not building a forge while another civilisation is building a factory. You compete for wonders of the world which can enhance your civilisation in unique ways but can only be build by one single civilisation. And you compete militarily. If you don't build enough units, then the AI controlled civilisation who you've pissed off might visit you with some swordsmen or later in the game tanks. You also compete for territory as there is only a limited amount of land and thus a limited number of cities can be created. And you compete on the diplomatic front. It's good to have friends in this game as you can trade with them and exchange technologies with them.

This is a game of choices. You will have to choose between building a settler to expand your civilisation or a worker to improve the land around your cities or an archer to defend your cities or a swordsman to attack your enemies or a granary to increase the speed of growth of your civilisation. At first when the game is new, you probably can't see good reasons why one choice would be superior to another, but after some games you will learn.
There is also a different level of choices: should you become friends with your neighbouring civilisation so that you can trade with them and both become stronger compared to the other civilisations or should you attack them and take their land and their cities so that you become stronger in that way?
There are choices about research paths. There are choices about whether you want to use a few specialists to get a great person or use the terrain around your city to improve your city. You should choose whether a world wonder is worth the huge hammer investment or that you should just build some settlers or units to expand your empire.

This is a game of intelligent choices to try to create the best empire in the world. If you learn to understand the choices and enjoy building an empire, then it can be the best game you've ever played. If you're blindly moving around units without consciously making intelligent choices to improve your empire and if you don't enjoy building an empire, then it will probably be a very boring game. Try to make long term plans to improve your empire and see how this affects short term decisions.


And welcome to civfanatics, dermoth and connorp28.

 

[JoeCivFan]

I just started playing, and I was wondering how I would change the victory conditions? I havent seen it anywhere and I'm tired of alwasy either wining or losing a space race! Also, i thought that if you built the UN and were elected its leader, then you won a UN victory and the game would end but it hasnt?

 

[Sisiutil]

I just started playing, and I was wondering how I would change the victory conditions? I havent seen it anywhere and I'm tired of alwasy either wining or losing a space race! Also, i thought that if you built the UN and were elected its leader, then you won a UN victory and the game would end but it hasnt?

Go into the custom game menu; you can turn off certain victory options.

To win a diplomatic victory: (1) someone builds the UN (preferably you, usually); (2) someone is elected Secretary-General of the UN (preferably you, again); (3) The S-G proposes a diplomatic victory vote which, yes, preferably, you win.

 

[jdomingos76]

Farm:
Which terrain can be farmed?

Trade routes:
Do I need to make a deal with the IA (example negotiate resources) to gain commerce from trade routes? Or it is just enough to be connected thought trade routes – plus open borders – to gain commerce?

Gold:
In my last game I had gold adjacent to my city, mined and with a road, but only two coins were showed in the tile. Am I missing something here?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Grassland, flood plains, plains can all be farmed as long as they are next to a source of fresh water. This may come from a river or fresh water lake, or after you discover Civil Service, from an irrigation chain (just a chain of farms basically).
Note that jungles and forests will be cleared if you try to farm the underlying terrain.

To get trade routes with AIs all you need is a connection of some sort eg. by road or sea based connection (ie. you need sailing) and you need to have signed an open borders agreement. These trade routes will show up in your cities that are connected to your trade network (connected to your capital) in the left pane of the city screen. You can hover over them to see details I think.

As for your gold mine, that's unusual. A gold mine provides something like 6 coins (I can't remember exactly) when it is worked. You don't need to have a road on it to get the commerce from it, but you do need it connected if you want to use the resource eg. for happiness or export. As long as it is mined, inside your culture borders and inside your fat cross it should be able to be worked for several commerce. The fat cross if you are wondering is the 5x5 square of tiles around your city tile but with the 4 corners removed. This gives 20 tiles around the city inside your fat cross, plus the city tile itself.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Now... for my questions Bear with me if you can.

I recently joined the ladder at www.myleague.com/civ4players.

I've noticed there are many clans that get involved in tournaments etc. Through what channels can I get in contact with people from clans and find out about how I might join one? Or can anyone with some MP tournament experience point me in the right direction. Would anyone who plays ladder teamers regularly like to ease me into a team game or two?



Also, I've taken a liking to duelling in BtS with cton rules. I'm up to challenge anyone who's willing to play me. So I guess the question here is who wants to bring it on?


Lastly, I've never played a PBEM game and I'm not exactly sure how those games work exactly or how they are organised in the first place. Unfortunately I don't know any people who own civ and play multiplayer personally so I have never had a chance to try PBEM out. Would anyone like to show me how one works by playing a game?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not new to MP - so I don't need any tips for how to play etc. I'm just lacking a bit of information on the community who play organised games. Also I want to play some more experienced MPers, because the casual gamers from gamespy etc. aren't enough of a fight anymore and they're often unreliable and impatient anyway. Not that it offends me or anything but it's amazing how offensive the language is that gets thrown around in casual internet games and how verbally abusive some players are to newbs.

Thanks in advance!

PieceOfMind

 

[JujuLautre]

try the multiplayer forum

 

[Giovanni Caboto]

Why can an AI galley enter an ocean tile????
(The Arabian galley in the screenshot is an AI one)
Also earlier in the game I was wandering how the AIs get aquaintance from each other being separated by ocean tiles...

btw. I am still playing vanilla w/ patch 1.74

 

[Roland Johansen]

Why can an AI galley enter an ocean tile????
(The Arabian galley in the screenshot is an AI one)
Also earlier in the game I was wandering how the AIs get aquaintance from each other being separated by ocean tiles...

btw. I am still playing vanilla w/ patch 1.74

Galleys, workboats (and trireme's in Warlords and BTS) can normally not enter ocean tiles. However, they can enter ocean tiles as long as they are within their culture zone. It's not an exception for the AI, it's a general exception to the rules. It's a needed exception so that workboats can connect fish and other sea resources which aren't directly on the coast.

It doesn't stretch the basic rule of not entering ocean tiles very far since culture can only spread up to 2 distance from the coast.

 

[MrCynical]

Farm: Which terrain can be farmed?

Grassland, plains and floodplains can be farmed if they have access to freshwater. Tundra may be farmed, but only if directly adjacent to a river. Any tile with wheat, corn or rice may be farmed regardless of fresh water access.

Do I need to make a deal with the IA (example negotiate resources) to gain commerce from trade routes? Or it is just enough to be connected thought trade routes – plus open borders – to gain commerce?

You must have open borders, and a trade connection (road, river etc).

Gold:
In my last game I had gold adjacent to my city, mined and with a road, but only two coins were showed in the tile. Am I missing something here?

The best theory I can come up with is that the tile is generating 7 commerce, and hence is displaying two coins, and the sack which indicates another five coins.

All of food, production and commerce have two different symbols that appear, one indicating 1 and one indicating 5. For food 1 is indicated by a slice of bread and 5 by a loaf. For production 1 is indicated by a hammer, and 5 indicated by an anvil.

 

[Reidsan]

How do I fix the v1.61 patch, which has deleted Mao Zedong from the XML? If I come across him, or try to play as him, or bother the Chinese at all, the game falls over. It's an XML error, apparently - on starting a new game or loading I get the error:

TAG_LEADER_CHINESE_LEADER in Info class is incorrect
Current XML file is: GameInfo/Civ4DiplomacyInfos.xml

 

[Roland Johansen]

How do I fix the v1.61 patch, which has deleted Mao Zedong from the XML? If I come across him, or try to play as him, or bother the Chinese at all, the game falls over. It's an XML error, apparently - on starting a new game or loading I get the error:

TAG_LEADER_CHINESE_LEADER in Info class is incorrect
Current XML file is: GameInfo/Civ4DiplomacyInfos.xml

I have never heard of that bug, but 1.61 isn't the final patch for vanilla Civ4. 1.74 is the latest patch for vanilla civ4 and it can be found here.

 

[Reidsan]

I have never heard of that bug, but 1.61 isn't the final patch for vanilla Civ4. 1.74 is the latest patch for vanilla civ4 and it can be found here.

Nope. It's still breaking if I try and play as Mao. Additionally, Communism and the Three Gorges Dam are broken. What could be going wrong? Is there a place I can get other, non-broken copies of the XML files from?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Nope. It's still breaking if I try and play as Mao. Additionally, Communism and the Three Gorges Dam are broken. What could be going wrong? Is there a place I can get other, non-broken copies of the XML files from?

It sounds more as if there is something wrong with your installation. Maybe you should reinstall the game after a thorough removal of the game. I can't remember any of those bugs from playing the vanilla game and I really should have noticed those as I always used state property and the Three Gorges Dam.

Oh, by the way, a bit late, but welcome to civfanatics!

 

[Reidsan]

It sounds more as if there is something wrong with your installation. Maybe you should reinstall the game after a thorough removal of the game. I can't remember any of those bugs from playing the vanilla game and I really should have noticed those as I always used state property and the Three Gorges Dam.

Oh, by the way, a bit late, but welcome to civfanatics!

Thanks There's some small cracks in the disk but I can't see why that would spoil 1.7's XML and not 1.0s.

 

[scienide09]

Nope. It's still breaking if I try and play as Mao. Additionally, Communism and the Three Gorges Dam are broken.

Weren't those some of the things that the developers had to change so that CivIV could be officially released in China?

 

[ggganz]

What do you mean?

 

[Mesousa]

As I recall, the 1.61 patch replaced MAO_ZEDONG with CHINESE_LEADER, I think the Forbidden Palace and the Three Gorges Damn got new names in the XML too ... done with the Chinese release in mind, apparently the censors are hard to please. I remember it caused some problems for some people initially. If you do a search for CHINESE_LEADER, you will find threads from that time, they might provide an answer for Reidsan's problem too.

 

[Michael Alan]

Does replacing roads that go to farms, with railroads, increase the food to the city it is going to?

 

[ori]

Does replacing roads that go to farms, with railroads, increase the food to the city it is going to?

No. Railroads only give 1 to mines, quarries (not in Vanilla) and Lumbermills...