Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[ori]

I wager a guess:
each unit gets assigned a unit ID when it is created and the game probably goes through them in this order - oldest first...
I did not look through the code though, but that is what I would do if I were lazy coding something like this

 

[CharlieM]

I wager a guess:
each unit gets assigned a unit ID when it is created and the game probably goes through them in this order - oldest first...
I did not look through the code though, but that is what I would do if I were lazy coding something like this

OK, sounds reasonable.

So do others have the problem I have? Any suggested solutions? How do I "force" the game to stay on a part of the map that I want to stay on, and not jump to a unit half-way around the world?

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't think it works that way, since the map always jumps to spots close to where I was ordering a unit. But I do think that if you give units wait orders, then they won't come up again before you have finished ordering all other units, so for instance:

Units A1 till A10 in spot A, units B1 till B10 in spot B.

You are asked to give orders to units A1 till A10. Several of the A units don't get orders yet because you want to use the siege units in this stack first and then the other units so they are given wait commands. Then the game jumps to units B1 till B10. You click back to one of the A units and give it an order. After this order, the game jumps back to the B units again and so on. The rest of the A units are moved behind the B units, so you won't be asked to give them orders until you have given some orders to the B units.

I could be that skipping units without actually giving the wait order has a similar effect, they are moved back in the cycle in which you are asked to give them orders.

I'm of course not sure it works this way, but it does seem to follow my in game observations.

You could give the entire A-stack the wait order (select them all together as a stack and give the wait order) so that you first order all the other units and are then asked to give them an order. Maybe that will work better for you. Grouping units together in a stack during the unit cycling always makes it easier for me. Nothing is as annoying as giving 20 individual units a wait order.

 

[Scrybe]

Basic Trade Question:

I'm offered a Hit Musical (+ ) in return for Spice (+Gold + ). If I take that deal aren't I just losing a gold for no reason? The Spice goes away when I trade it, right?

And how about Iron, Copper, Coal that give a hammer. How does that hammer affect my economy? Does it give each city an additional hammer?

 

[ori]

the from Iron etc. is a fluke - it does not exist the way the manual seems to describe it. You just get some extra on the tile the iron etc is.
The from resources does not add up - so if you have spices you still only get the from one of those, the rest are surplus so its good to trade them away. I am not sure what gold you are talking about

 

[lungnut]

I've played seven or eight games now, and I'm having loads of fun.

It just dawned on me mid-game last game that I haven't really explored the possibilities of alliances. I've traded opportunistically as the occasion presented itself, but I've never thought ahead of the particular moment (e.g., "Isabella and I share the same religion, but Monty is a bastard. Don't trade w/Monty and make a stronger friend from Isabella."). This thinking has generally gotten me the general disdain of the AI--I'm always received with "Cautious" or "Annoyed" disclaimers.

So next game, I think I'm going to work on this, and I'm going to try to avoid getting those "traded with our worst enemy" hits. But do those hits come from when you trade techs with "the enemy" as well? Or just resources and open borders?

 

[lungnut]

I'm going to try cultivating some alliances in my next few games. I was wondering, though, whenever a friend asks me to go to war, can I join in, steal a few key cities, and then try to broker a treaty? Or am I going to be in it for the long haul if I want the max benefit for the alliance?

I've always declined the invitation to war up until now, so this will be something new for me.

 

[Sisiutil]

I've played seven or eight games now, and I'm having loads of fun.

It just dawned on me mid-game last game that I haven't really explored the possibilities of alliances. I've traded opportunistically as the occasion presented itself, but I've never thought ahead of the particular moment (e.g., "Isabella and I share the same religion, but Monty is a bastard. Don't trade w/Monty and make a stronger friend from Isabella."). This thinking has generally gotten me the general disdain of the AI--I'm always received with "Cautious" or "Annoyed" disclaimers.

So next game, I think I'm going to work on this, and I'm going to try to avoid getting those "traded with our worst enemy" hits. But do those hits come from when you trade techs with "the enemy" as well? Or just resources and open borders?

I'm going to try cultivating some alliances in my next few games. I was wondering, though, whenever a friend asks me to go to war, can I join in, steal a few key cities, and then try to broker a treaty? Or am I going to be in it for the long haul if I want the max benefit for the alliance?

I've always declined the invitation to war up until now, so this will be something new for me.

"Traded with our worst enemy" demerits come from trading anything with their worst enemy--techs, resources, maps, OB, etc.

It's totally up to you how you handle the request to join in a war. You get positive modifiers the longer the struggle lasts. But you get those diplo brownie points regardless of whether you even fire a shot or not, so you can also engage in a "phony war" just for the diplo bonus it will get you.

On your own, you've hit upon the basics of a popular diplomatic strategy in Civ IV called triangle diplomacy, where you cultivate two friends (who are ideally friends with one another) at the expense of everyone else. You can read about it in more detail elsewhere in the forum.

 

[JujuLautre]

"Traded with our worst enemy" demerits come from trading anything with their worst enemy--techs, resources, maps, OB, etc.

Are you sure about this? It seemed to me that it's only about one-time trades: golds, techs, maps, but not trades that stay in time, like ressources, OBs, DPs... For these, they already ask you from time to time to cancel them, so adding another demerit would not be fair

 

[Sisiutil]

Are you sure about this? It seemed to me that it's only about one-time trades: golds, techs, maps, but not trades that stay in time, like ressources, OBs, DPs... For these, they already ask you from time to time to cancel them, so adding another demerit would not be fair

I've had leaders ask me to stop trading with an enemy when all I have in place is OB, so I've always assumed that it therefore counts as trading with the enemy. I could be wrong though; I often am.

Suffice it to say that once you get your triangle diplomacy partners set up, it's usually best to avoid trading at all with your partners' designated worst enemies. Just keep checking who that is, because it can change over time.

 

[NSPaintball]

Is the scenarios available on Civ4 or they are only on BTW?(ex road to war, final frontier)

 

[Sisiutil]

Is the scenarios available on Civ4 or they are only on BTW?(ex road to war, final frontier)

Each release (Vanilla Civ IV, Warlords, Beyond the Sword) has different scenarios included. In fact, that's the only differentiator between Warlords and BtS.

You need Vanilla for either expansion pack, so you'll have its scenarios. If you want to play the other scenarios, you'll need the appropriate expansion pack.

If you're asking if you can play a BtS scenario in Vanilla so you use its rule set, as far as I know you cannot. I don't think the later scenarios are even listed when you run earlier versions of the game.

 

[JujuLautre]

I've had leaders ask me to stop trading with an enemy when all I have in place is OB, so I've always assumed that it therefore counts as trading with the enemy. I could be wrong though; I often am.

No pb with the OB thing; what I'm saying is that you have two different things:
- diplomatic negative modifier for "you traded with our worst ennemy"
- request for "stop trading with XXX"

What I think is that the first (modifier) only applies for one-time trades (techs, gold, cities, maps...), and the second one (requests) applies to trades that appear in the "current deals" section of the foreign advisor, which exist in time (OB, DP, ressource). If that's the case, you will got no diplo demerit for trading ressources or OB with a civ, but you will eventually have a request for stoping this deal which could in turn result in a negative diplo modifier ("you refused to stop trading with our worst ennemy")

 

[Scrybe]

the from Iron etc. is a fluke - it does not exist the way the manual seems to describe it. You just get some extra on the tile the iron etc is.

I don't understand. I'm talking about in the context of a resource trade deal. THEY offer me Iron. Next to the iron on the trade screen is a hammer. I want to know what that hammer will give me. Since the Iron mine is on the other Civ's land I can't just get "some extra on the tile", can I? And if so, where do those go? To one of my cities? Distributed across all of them?

The from resources does not add up - so if you have spices you still only get the from one of those, the rest are surplus so its good to trade them away. I am not sure what gold you are talking about

So if I have 5 Spice tiles my cities only get one from all that spice? That's good to know. What I meant by gold is that on the trade screen when I offer my Spice it has a icon and a gold icon next to it. I don't understand what exactly I'm giving up when I trade that Spice with the and gold. Am I losing 1 gold per turn by not having the Spice?

 

[ori]

I don't understand. I'm talking about in the context of a resource trade deal. THEY offer me Iron. Next to the iron on the trade screen is a hammer. I want to know what that hammer will give me. Since the Iron mine is on the other Civ's land I can't just get "some extra on the tile", can I? And if so, where do those go? To one of my cities? Distributed across all of them?




So if I have 5 Spice tiles my cities only get one from all that spice? That's good to know. What I meant by gold is that on the trade screen when I offer my Spice it has a icon and a gold icon next to it. I don't understand what exactly I'm giving up when I trade that Spice with the and gold. Am I losing 1 gold per turn by not having the Spice?

you don't get any from iron - you just get iron - I am not sure what the trade screen thing is you are talking about though, could you post a screenshot?
You only get 1 for 1 spice and you still only get 1 for 100 spices - so any trade is good as long as you retain 1 spice... Here as well I have not seen any gold icon in the trade screen so I am unsure what you mean...

 

[MrCynical]

I don't understand. I'm talking about in the context of a resource trade deal. THEY offer me Iron. Next to the iron on the trade screen is a hammer. I want to know what that hammer will give me. Since the Iron mine is on the other Civ's land I can't just get "some extra on the tile", can I? And if so, where do those go? To one of my cities? Distributed across all of them?

This hammer, and the corresponding food and commerce labels on other resources are one of the most irritatingly confusing bits of the civ interface. Iron does not give you an extra hammer in all cities, whether you trade it or work the tile. The justification offered by Firaxis is that it represents the extra hammer the resource gives to the tile it is on. This is obviously drivel, since it appears for traded resources (where it is 100% meaningless). Despite this, these misleading labels have still not been removed.

So you don't get any extra hammers from the iron. Period.

So if I have 5 Spice tiles my cities only get one from all that spice? That's good to know. What I meant by gold is that on the trade screen when I offer my Spice it has a icon and a gold icon next to it. I don't understand what exactly I'm giving up when I trade that Spice with the and gold. Am I losing 1 gold per turn by not having the Spice?

See above comment - that gold (nitpick that should read commerce, and the two aren't the same), purely indicates that the spice gives an extra commerce to the tile it is on, and that cannot be traded away. Again, this label in the trade screen really doesn't mean anything relevant.

If you have multiple spice resources, and a foreign civ has, say, multiple wine resources, it is in both your interests to swap one, since you'll then each get two happiness instead of one, since it's purely on types of resources.

 

[ggganz]

I don't understand. I'm talking about in the context of a resource trade deal. THEY offer me Iron. Next to the iron on the trade screen is a hammer. I want to know what that hammer will give me. Since the Iron mine is on the other Civ's land I can't just get "some extra on the tile", can I? And if so, where do those go? To one of my cities? Distributed across all of them?




So if I have 5 Spice tiles my cities only get one from all that spice? That's good to know. What I meant by gold is that on the trade screen when I offer my Spice it has a icon and a gold icon next to it. I don't understand what exactly I'm giving up when I trade that Spice with the and gold. Am I losing 1 gold per turn by not having the Spice?

and are not part of the resource you trade away. They stay on the tile from which the resource is obtained. All other effects ), , ability to build Swordsmen from Iron, etc...) are the part you trade away, and having more than one of a certain resource will not give you any more than you already have.

 

[Samson]

What tech allows vassal states in BtS Rhye's and Fall of Civilization?

 

[rantzzz]

1) How do I change the color of my civilization

2) What are military stacks

3) Are roads leading to the capital required for every resource tile to be converted into hammers or food? I've seen some guides where they say that the copper resource must be 'hooked up' or something

 

[Samson]

1) How do I change the color of my civilization

No eyed deer.

2) What are military stacks

When attacking into an enemies territory, it is usually best to keep your units all on the same tile. This has a number of advantages and 1 dissadvantage. The disadvantage is that you are suseptable to collateral damage units, so if a catapult attacks your stack 6 units will be damaged rather than 1. The advantages are: It allows the best unit you have to do the defending (ie. if a spearman attacks your axeman will defend, if a catapult attacks your horse archer will defend); it provides protection for your damaged units, eg. if a unit wins a fight but is severly damaged, if it was on its own it would be picked off easily, but if it is in a stack the other members of the stack will defend until it is healed.

3) Are roads leading to the capital required for every resource tile to be converted into hammers or food? I've seen some guides where they say that the copper resource must be 'hooked up' or something

Every reasorce must be 'hooked up' to recive the civ wide benifit of it (in this case providing copper for units). You do not need to conect it to get the tile benifits (in the case of copper 4 hammers). This connection can be with roads, rivers or by sea (with the appropriate tech and only between cities). If the reasorce is coonected to some cities and not others only those it is coonected to recive the benifit. It must be connected to the capital to allow you to trade it to other civs.