Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Strong Reaction]

I have Civ Gold Edition, in the manual it says, " You can also find the complete manuals to both Civilization IV and Civilization IV: Warlords on Disc 3."

Ok I cant access these manuals from disc 3. I tried clicking on the "data4" icon. I have tried right click and "open with" various programs, i.e. word, wordpad, adobe acrobat reader ect. nothing... wth what am I missing?

 

[ggganz]

You're not missing anything. This is an outright lie that is present in averyone's copy of Gold Edition.

 

[Strong Reaction]

Ok, so there isnt a manual on disk 3? Wth is disk 3 for then? Frisbee?

 

[Reffie2]

I asked some of these questions before but didn't get answers, maybe some of you can help.

1#
When playing CIV IV(no expansion) on a custom game, huge map, 18 civs etc. I have no lag at all, everything runs fine.
When playing Beyond the Sword with the same settings, everything runs slow in the later era's. Diplomacy screens is taking 1 minute to load, finishing/starting a turn takes another minute, zooming in and out is very slow. Why? I have all the latest patches, BTS doens't have improved graphics compared to the main game. BTS is becoming unplayable, but the main CIV IV is running fine.

2#
In worldbuilder, when I rename a unit, the name I gave disappears when I reload/play the custom scenario. Why?

3#
In wordbuilder, I want to change a warrior's strength to 15. I don't want to change ALL the warriors, just one. Do I have to hack many files or can I just change this easilly?

4#
In WBS, Hannibal and Russia have the same color and some other nation's colors are pretty much the smame. Could this be changed?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=256978

5#
On normal settings, when you are attacked, the camera zooms in and you see a battle. Why can't I see the battles(that includes the camera zooming and the animation) from the AI? Just like in CIV3.

6#
Where can I find information about the music in CIV IV? Like downloading, I mean buying.

7#
I have 10 cities on a continent and 1 city on a smal island nearby. I can go to my domestic advisor and grant the islandcity independence. A pop-up appears telling me to give the city to a neighbourcountry. How could this be usefull?

8#
If some or all of these questions aren't being answered, what could I do? Should I ask again? Should I pray or should I go away?

Thanks for the help and happy new year by the way.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Ok, so there isnt a manual on disk 3? Wth is disk 3 for then? Frisbee?

Two games for the price of one, Civilization and frisbee. Why are you complaining about!

I don't know if civilization gold edition has a manual. However, there is a lot of useful information on this web page. This reference material might be interesting: Civ4 Reference Charts.

Real strategy information won't be in any game manual, but can be found on this site's War Academy. Visit it sometime when you need some strategy tips or want to know more about game mechanics that are somewhat hidden.

I asked some of these questions before but didn't get answers, maybe some of you can help.

1#
When playing CIV IV(no expansion) on a custom game, huge map, 18 civs etc. I have no lag at all, everything runs fine.
When playing Beyond the Sword with the same settings, everything runs slow in the later era's. Diplomacy screens is taking 1 minute to load, finishing/starting a turn takes another minute, zooming in and out is very slow. Why? I have all the latest patches, BTS doens't have improved graphics compared to the main game. BTS is becoming unplayable, but the main CIV IV is running fine.

2#
In worldbuilder, when I rename a unit, the name I gave disappears when I reload/play the custom scenario. Why?

3#
In wordbuilder, I want to change a warrior's strength to 15. I don't want to change ALL the warriors, just one. Do I have to hack many files or can I just change this easilly?

4#
In WBS, Hannibal and Russia have the same color and some other nation's colors are pretty much the smame. Could this be changed?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=256978

5#
On normal settings, when you are attacked, the camera zooms in and you see a battle. Why can't I see the battles(that includes the camera zooming and the animation) from the AI? Just like in CIV3.

6#
Where can I find information about the music in CIV IV? Like downloading, I mean buying.

7#
I have 10 cities on a continent and 1 city on a smal island nearby. I can go to my domestic advisor and grant the islandcity independence. A pop-up appears telling me to give the city to a neighbourcountry. How could this be usefull?

8#
If some or all of these questions aren't being answered, what could I do? Should I ask again? Should I pray or should I go away?

Thanks for the help and happy new year by the way.

1) I don't have these issues, so I don't know why you do. I do know that civilization 4 is very dependent on huge amounts of memory when playing the largest maps. On the settings that you mention, it is nice to have 2 GB's of memory.
You could visit the Technical Support subforum for a better answer concerning this issue.

2) No idea. But you can rename a unit ingame without the world builder.
You could ask about this question in the Creation and Customization subforum.

3) It's not that hard to mod the xml-files to change unit values, but then you will change the strength value of all of the warriors. However, if you were to create a super promotion (also by xml modding) which is normally inaccessible to units and gave this super promotion to this warrior, then that might work.

Most modding of this game doesn't happen in the World Builder. The world builder is just an enhanced map creator. Most modding happens by changing xml-files (pretty easy to read) and modding python files (these cover some of the rules of the game) and C++ modding with the SDK (Software Developers Kit). There are some modding guides in the Creation and Customization subforum.

4) Yes, it can be modded, but I don't know how. I again refer you to the Creation and Customization subforum.

5) It's a developers choice. They probably noticed during play testing that most players don't want to spend the time watching those battles up close.

I believe I played a mod once where both your offensive battles and your defensive battles can be seen up close. I'm not sure, but I thought it was the Total Realism mod. If I remember correctly, then you could ask them how they did it.

6) The music is stored in certain game files, for instance ...\Civilization 4\Assets\Sounds\Soundtrack and ...\Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\Sounds\Soundtrack. The names of these files could help you find out the names of the music.

7) It might be useful when the city has a huge maintenance cost, but generally that is not useful.
You can't grant them independence, they have to join another civilization on that island? I must admit that I don't know a lot about the colony system because I don't like it and thus tend to disable it at the start of the game.

8) Nobody knows the answer to every question. You can always ask, but it's not a natural thing that someone knows the answer. Your questions aren't really easy ones either. They're not the question of a beginning player like: how do you connect a resource to your cities?. So it's not a natural thing that someone has all the answers. However, you should try to ask the questions in the right forum. That might help a bit.

 

[rantzzz]

1) Are the benefits of luxury resources (clams, plantations, etc) given to the city that they are connected to, or do the benefits apply CIV wide once they are connected to a city?

2) Does a road need to run from the resource to the city itself in order to be 'connected' or does the road need only touch the BFC of a city?

3) What type of water unit should I build to harness sea resources like whales, clams?

 

[Roland Johansen]

1) Are the benefits of luxury resources (clams, plantations, etc) given to the city that they are connected to, or do the benefits apply CIV wide once they are connected to a city?

2) Does a road need to run from the resource to the city itself in order to be 'connected' or does the road need only touch the BFC of a city?

3) What type of water unit should I build to harness sea resources like whales, clams?

1) The food, production and commerce produced by the tile are local benefits. They only benefit the city in which area the resource is being harvested (as long as the tile is being worked). However, the special resource is transported by roads, rivers and oceans to your other cities. Iron will allow you to build swordsmen in the cities connected to the resource, gold will increase the happiness of your citizens in the cities connected to the resource, corn will improve the health of your citizens in the cities connected to the resource.
You only need 1 instance of a resource to get its benefits. The others can be traded away for other resource or maybe some gold.
The expansion pack Beyond the Sword has an additional late game effect of multiple instances of the same resource through the corporation game mechanic.

2) It has to go to the city itself.

3) Workboats.

 

[ggganz]

Guys, GUYS, GUYS!! The third disk of Gold Edition, isn't that Warlords??
Oh, and BtS DOES have improved graphics; some of the units are shinier. But the slowdown is mostly because the game has a lot more to keep track of, with Corporations and Espionage, etc...

 

[Roland Johansen]

Guys, GUYS, GUYS!! The third disk of Gold Edition, isn't that Warlords??
Oh, and BtS DOES have improved graphics; some of the units are shinier. But the slowdown is mostly because the game has a lot more to keep track of, with Corporations and Espionage, etc...

I don't think there is a huge increase in the amount of things the game has to keep track of due to the new game elements of espionage and corporations. There are some things that tend to require lots of computational capacity and some things that don't. I'm not that knowledgeable about this, but I have read something about pathing algorithms (calculate the shortest path between two points on the map) and they tend to require some large calculations when the map becomes large. On huge maps, the game also has to remember a lot of graphics. I can imagine that this might explain some of the high memory requirements of this game. I just can't see why espionage and corporations should require a lot from a computer. They are really nice game enhancements, but I don't expect them to use a lot of computational capacity or use lots of system memory.

Something that might (and I stress the might) explain an increase in computational requirements is the improvements in the AI. These improvements have changed the AI to build more units (especially on the aggressive AI setting). More units means more things to remember, more unit-pathing calculations, more waiting while you see units moving along your borders (you can switch that one off if you wish). This could lead to a slowdown in the late game.

In programming, it's the slowest part(s) of the program that decide(s) the speed of the program.

 

[CharlieM]

A Diplomacy question:

In my current Noble game, I'm David of Israel (Esnaz Israel Mod). I founded Judaism. Frederick of Germany is to my immediate west, and he's Jewish. My current rating with him is +5 (+1 for peace, +5 for same religion, +1 for helping him, -1 for warring with a friend of the faith, and -1 for stopping trading with him).

On top of the diplomacy screen, it says he is "pleased" with me. Yet he won't even talk to me right now, saying "we have nothing to discuss."

Why does a guy with +5/pleased refuse to talk to me? I didn't think that was possible.

 

[ggganz]

Because you canceled trade with him. It's just the game's way of stopping you from continuing to trade for a certain number of turns, regardless of how he actually likes you.

 

[rantzzz]

1) The food, production and commerce produced by the tile are local benefits. They only benefit the city in which area the resource is being harvested (as long as the tile is being worked). However, the special resource is transported by roads, rivers and oceans to your other cities. Iron will allow you to build swordsmen in the cities connected to the resource, gold will increase the happiness of your citizens in the cities connected to the resource, corn will improve the health of your citizens in the cities connected to the resource.
You only need 1 instance of a resource to get its benefits. The others can be traded away for other resource or maybe some gold.
The expansion pack Beyond the Sword has an additional late game effect of multiple instances of the same resource through the corporation game mechanic.

2) It has to go to the city itself.

3) Workboats.

Will I get the benefit if I connect the resource via another city?

Example:


Resource ===== City 1 ===== City 2
road road


Will City 2 get the benefit?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Will I get the benefit if I connect the resource via another city?

Example:


Resource ===== City 1 ===== City 2
road road


Will City 2 get the benefit?

Yes, it will.

 

[Mike Hussey]

Hey guys, can someone explain trade routes to me please? I have no idea how they work or how to generate them etc pretty much need a newbie's guide to them.

Thanks!

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hey guys, can someone explain trade routes to me please? I have no idea how they work or how to generate them etc pretty much need a newbie's guide to them.

Thanks!

A short guide:

You automatically get trade routes between connected cities. You can connect cities by roads, rivers and coastal areas in the early game and ocean tiles in the mid game.

The number of trade routes per city is mainly determined by your technology level. You start with 1 trade route per city. This is increased by 1 when you discover currency and again increased by 1 when you discover corporation. The free market civic increases the number of trade routes by 1. The airport building also increases the number of trade routes by 1. And last but not least, the Great Lighthouse wonder increases the number of trade routes in coastal cities by 2. The unique building of the Carthaginians (the Cothon) further increases the number of trade routes per city by 1.

If you can visibly trace an unblocked path between your cities and the border of a foreign civilization with whom you have an open borders treaty, then you will start getting so called foreign trade routes. This means that some of the names of the cities with whom your cities are trading are foreign cities (visible in the city screen). Foreign trade routes are hugely more profitable than domestic trade routes (about 2.5 times as profitable).
Each foreign city can only trade once with one of your cities, so if you want to have lots of foreign trade routes, then you will have to have lots of open borders treaties with other civilizations. (If you have 10 cities with 3 trade routes per city, then you need to have open borders with civilizations whose combined number of cities is more than 30 to get foreign trade routes in every one of your cities.)

Trade route income is increased by the effect of
-foreign trade routes: +150%
-The harbor: +50%
-the customs house (Beyond the Sword only) in cities with oversees foreign trade routes: +100%
-the size of the city with whom you're trading
-the size of your city
-the distance of the city with whom you're trading
-whether it is an oversees trade route or not: +100% for oversees trade routes (Beyond the Sword only)
-connected to the capitol: +25%

Your best trading cities (large cities with harbors and such) will get assigned (the best) trade routes first. Then the lesser cities get their trade routes. So a large city with a harbor will typically get a foreign trade route with a huge distant foreign city. A tiny just founded city might just get a trade route with one of your own cities (if you don't have enough foreign cities to trade with).

This article about trade routes contains a formula for the value of trade routes, but I'm not sure if it's up to date as Beyond the Sword has added a few elements to trade routes. You can also see some rudimentary calculation of the value of trade routes in cities in Beyond the Sword. This was not shown in earlier versions of the game.

 

[Canadian Ninja]

I have a question about how the Financial trait works. It says +1 commerce on plots with 2 commerce. It's rather vague. Does it only apply on plots with 2 commerce and not 3 or 4? Is it an extra commerce per 2 commerce? How does it work?

 

[ggganz]

With Financial---------------Without Financial
0----------------------------0
1----------------------------1
2----------------------------3
3----------------------------4
4----------------------------5
5----------------------------6
6----------------------------7
7----------------------------8
8----------------------------9
And into infinity and beyond...

 

[ecd1973]

Hi. New to the Civ world, and loving every minute. Here's my newbie question:

Occasionally, I'll see small patches of land marked by another civ's colors, but not connected to their main borders in any way. How does this happen? Is there a way I can somehow "claim" a tile outside of my main borders that I'm missing? Sorry if this has been answered 10 times before, but I didn't notice a previous post about it. Thanks!

ECD

 

[Mknn]

When you capture a city, what do you get? I know the population stays, but what else? When I first began to play, I thought that I got the buildings already built, but the last bunch of cities I've captured have all been empty--has it always been this way, or did I unknowingly change a setting somewhere?

Also, do you receive the technologies of conquered civilizations?

 

[MrCynical]

When you capture a city, what do you get? I know the population stays, but what else? When I first began to play, I thought that I got the buildings already built, but the last bunch of cities I've captured have all been empty--has it always been this way, or did I unknowingly change a setting somewhere?

When you capture a city:

World Wonders always survive
National Wonders never survive
Culture generating buildings never survive
All other buildings have a chance of surviving, but may still be destroyed.

Also, do you receive the technologies of conquered civilizations?

No. The closest you can get is extorting technology in exchange for peace.