Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Lord Parkin]

Or press F9, and select the "Graph" tab and select "Power".

 

[Gwynnja]

can anyone tell me how I can set my autosave preferences?

 

[6K Man]

I've been at war with Katie for some time, and when I mouse over her name, the statement "War Weariness: 257" appears. What does that number represent? How can I tell how that compares with my war weariness?

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

I'm playing vanilla if that info is needed....

How does maintenance actually work? I know you pay per city, but am I really paying for per city? And why are all the crappy beginner civics "low maintanace"? Is that actually an oxymoron and really MORE expensive? And why/how is early expansion said to be a crippler?

Also about Luxuries/Recources: If I gain extra on certain resource or luxury, does each additional quanity add it's benifits up to how many of that luxory/resource you have? Or in other words would I lose the hapiness/healthiness/commerce benefit if I traded 1 (that I have a surplus of) away? (I know I can turn 1 commerce into more on some deals but I'm wondering if I lose a happy/healthy face with it.)

Oh and specialized cities: What's wrong with hybrid cities where you strengthen each tile with your worker improvements like in Civ III? Shouldn't you want to give a tile that already has 2 food and 1 hammer some commerce or vice verca if it lacks and needs a hammer?

Last question: How does a leaders favorite civic (as is listed in the Info center with their traits) actually affect those leaders in the game if you switch to it when you are playing as them?

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

I've got a city that won't stay out of revolt... It's a pretty big holy city, a former AI capital with a rich bfc. What can I do?

Another idea is to starve and drain the population so they aren't all a hostile nationilty, and then to build it back up with your own civ's citizens as they are born and it grows.

This turns the culture from theirs to yours.

 

[Crowqueen]

When you have the Great Wall, are barbarians able to come within cultural boundaries not protected by it or are they permanently excluded from all my territories?

 

[ggganz]

can anyone tell me how I can set my autosave preferences?

Go to My Documents\My Games\[name of game] and open the CivilizationIV ini file. It will look like a gear with a piece of paper.

I've been at war with Katie for some time, and when I mouse over her name, the statement "War Weariness: 257" appears. What does that number represent? How can I tell how that compares with my war weariness?

That number represents how much her cities are enduring. You can look at your cities and see how much is because of war by moving the mouse over the pictures.

I'm playing vanilla if that info is needed....

How does maintenance actually work? I know you pay per city, but am I really paying for per city? And why are all the crappy beginner civics "low maintanace"? Is that actually an oxymoron and really MORE expensive? And why/how is early expansion said to be a crippler?

Also about Luxuries/Recources: If I gain extra on certain resource or luxury, does each additional quanity add it's benifits up to how many of that luxory/resource you have? Or in other words would I lose the hapiness/healthiness/commerce benefit if I traded 1 (that I have a surplus of) away? (I know I can turn 1 commerce into more on some deals but I'm wondering if I lose a happy/healthy face with it.)

Oh and specialized cities: What's wrong with hybrid cities where you strengthen each tile with your worker improvements like in Civ III? Shouldn't you want to give a tile that already has 2 food and 1 hammer some commerce or vice verca if it lacks and needs a hammer?

Last question: How does a leaders favorite civic (as is listed in the Info center with their traits) actually affect those leaders in the game if you switch to it when you are playing as them?

You pay maintenance for cities, units, and civics EACH TURN. Cities get need more maintenance depending on how many cities you have (i.e. each city has more maintenance when you build a new one) and also they are more expensive if they are farther away from the capital city. (I think also how big the city is too.) You get a number of "free" units which have no maintenance, and after that each has maintenance. They cost more when they are outside your borders. Civics also require maintenance. Low Maintenance is not an oxymoron, there are Civics with "No Maintenance", "Low Maintenance", "Medium Maintenance", and "High Maintenance". They also get higher if you have more/bigger cities.

Courthouses will reduce City maintenance, but nothing else. An organized leader will reduce Civic maintenance.

 

[ggganz]

When you have the Great Wall, are barbarians able to come within cultural boundaries not protected by it or are they permanently excluded from all my territories?

They are permanently excluded from all your borders on that continent. The wall will not move but will keep them out of your borders.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

Is there a way to switch production from 1 thing to another in the middle of production just like you could in CivIII?

Every time I try it, all it does is interupt the thing I was building for the new item, and if I try to click on the original it will take it off and then start it all over again thus throwing all those hammers and turns away.

 

[Roland Johansen]

can anyone tell me how I can set my autosave preferences?

1)Go to the civilization 4 subdirectory which you're actually playing. So that may be the main civilization 4 directory or the Warlords or Beyond the Sword subdirectory.

2) Find the link _Civ4Config and double click it

3) The civilizationIV.ini file will now be opened in your standard editor. Find the line:

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 4

You can change the autosaveinterval here to any number.

The line above this one is named:

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 5

This defines the number of autosaves which are saved before the oldest ones will be deleted.

I'm playing vanilla if that info is needed....

How does maintenance actually work? I know you pay per city, but am I really paying for per city? And why are all the crappy beginner civics "low maintanace"? Is that actually an oxymoron and really MORE expensive? And why/how is early expansion said to be a crippler?

There is city maintenance, civic maintenance and unit maintenance.
City maintenance is higher for larger cities and for more distant cities. If you have a high number of cities, then the maintenance per city is also higher making the total cost very high (2 cities costing 2 per city (4 total) versus 6 costing 4 per city (24 total) versus 10 costing 5 per city (50 total)). City maintenance in a single city can be halved by building a courthouse in that city.
Civic maintenance is higher when you have many cities and when these cities have a lot of population. It is also dependent on the type of civics that you're using. Low maintenance civics have a far lower upkeep than high maintenance civics. Civic maintenance is halved for leaders with the organized trait.
Unit maintenance is dependent on the number of units (both military and non-military) that you have. If you have many big cities, then the number of units free of maintenance is higher and thus your maintenance costs are lower.

Early expansion can be a crippler because small undeveloped cities might not be able to pay for the high city and civic maintenance costs. You need some well developed cities which produce good amounts of commerce to pay for all of these costs. Some of the technologies which allow the economic development of your cities also take a while to develop.

The high maintenance costs are a bigger obstacle for expansion on the higher difficulty levels. You might not find them really crippling on the lowest difficulty levels.

There are various articles in the War Academy which explain these types of costs in more detail and the various consequences that these costs have on gameplay.

Also about Luxuries/Recources: If I gain extra on certain resource or luxury, does each additional quanity add it's benifits up to how many of that luxory/resource you have? Or in other words would I lose the hapiness/healthiness/commerce benefit if I traded 1 (that I have a surplus of) away? (I know I can turn 1 commerce into more on some deals but I'm wondering if I lose a happy/healthy face with it.)

A single resource of a certain type is enough to supply your entire empire. All the others can be traded away for other resources or money. You do have to remember that these resources can help your opponents. Strategic resources are valued far higher than luxury or food resources.

Oh and specialized cities: What's wrong with hybrid cities where you strengthen each tile with your worker improvements like in Civ III? Shouldn't you want to give a tile that already has 2 food and 1 hammer some commerce or vice verca if it lacks and needs a hammer?

You're talking about specialised tiles versus generalised tiles instead of specialised cities versus generalised cities.

A city will get the sum of the resources of all of the tiles which are being used (the white circles inside the city screen).

Specialisation of a city is mainly important when you're considering national wonders. Some national wonders give a large boost. For instance, Oxford university gives a 100% bonus to research, but can only be constructed in a single city. It's therefore interesting to create a city which has a very high basic research output from tile improvements, trade and science specialists and then add this national wonder to this city to maximize the bonus research that the wonder will give you.

Last question: How does a leaders favorite civic (as is listed in the Info center with their traits) actually affect those leaders in the game if you switch to it when you are playing as them?

There is no effect in this case.

The effect of the favourite civic is different. If a foreign leader is using their favourite civic and you're also using their favourite civic, then you'll get a large bonus in diplomacy.

I've been at war with Katie for some time, and when I mouse over her name, the statement "War Weariness: 257" appears. What does that number represent? How can I tell how that compares with my war weariness?

If I'm not mistaken, this number symbolises YOUR war weariness towards this civilisation.

The number multiplied by some factor and then multiplied by the population points in a city determines the base war weariness in this city. This base war weariness is then modified by buildings like the jail and the national wonder Mount Rushmore and the civic Police State.

Another idea is to starve and drain the population so they aren't all a hostile nationilty, and then to build it back up with your own civ's citizens as they are born and it grows.

This turns the culture from theirs to yours.

This is true in civilization 3 and absolutely not true in civilization 4. Culture is related to a tile and not to the citizens in a city in civilization 4.

Is there a way to switch production from 1 thing to another in the middle of production just like you could in CivIII?

Every time I try it, all it does is interupt the thing I was building for the new item, and if I try to click on the original it will take it off and then start it all over again thus throwing all those hammers and turns away.

Production invested in a buildings or unit is permanently assigned to that building or unit. You can't reassign it to another building or unit. However, if you invest 20 hammers into an axeman and then remove it from the build queue and start building a granary for 4 turns, then those 20 hammers will still be invested in the axeman. When you click the axeman again, it will have those 20 hammers and the hammers invested in the granary will also not be forgotten when you remove it from the build queue.

Note that hammers invested in units will start to decay slowly after 10 turns and hammers invested in buildings will start to decay slowly after 50 turns. So you can't wait forever to finish a building project. But the rate of decay is very slow, so not a really big problem when it would occur a few times.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Is there a way to switch production from 1 thing to another in the middle of production just like you could in CivIII?

Every time I try it, all it does is interupt the thing I was building for the new item, and if I try to click on the original it will take it off and then start it all over again thus throwing all those hammers and turns away.

Firstly those hammers aren't wasted they are kept in "limbo" until you start building that item again (though after quite a while, any hammers expended towards an item will start to disappear).

To add something to the start of a queue hold ctrl and click the item. To add to the end of a queue, hold shift and click the item.This can be repeated multiple times.



Edit: Ha, beaten to it by RJ

 

[Roland Johansen]

Edit: Ha, beaten to it by RJ

Ah, but you mentioned the useful SHIFT and CTRL buttons. I forgot about those things after that lengthy post.

 

[JujuLautre]

Oh and specialized cities: What's wrong with hybrid cities where you strengthen each tile with your worker improvements like in Civ III? Shouldn't you want to give a tile that already has 2 food and 1 hammer some commerce or vice verca if it lacks and needs a hammer?

Here is a simplified example:
Consider you have two cities.
In the first situation, both of these cities produce 20 science and 10 hammers.
In the second, one produces 40 science, and the other 20 hammers.

Let's say you want to produce units and science.
If you want to produce better units, you need a barrack. In the first case, you will have to build a barrack in both cities. In the second, one barrack will be enough.
If you want a better science output, you need libraries. In the first case, you will need a library in both cities. In the second, only one library is sufficient.

This example is obviously oversimplified, because you will also need *some* hammers to build a library, but the idea is here.

 

[Mknn]

I am playing the Sioux, and just saw a message that said

A high ranking Portuguese Official has just defected to the Sioux government.

What does this mean? Does it impact me in any way?

 

[wgene]

Sorry if this question has already been asked.

I have problem when i click on a city which has Units. How do i get the camera of that city and also the units. I usually find the city i have clicked on if i click on a unit the unit gets highlighted. If i got to another city and then do a turn it will go back to the original city with the same units showing on screen.

 

[JujuLautre]

I am playing the Sioux, and just saw a message that said

A high ranking Portuguese Official has just defected to the Sioux government.

What does this mean? Does it impact me in any way?

This is a random event. You should have had a pop-up about it, since it concerns you.

 

[wgene]

This is a random event. You should have had a pop-up about it, since it concerns you.

What do you mean by a random event. And i haven't seen any pop ups what should i be seeing.

Even if i don't do a turn the camera is still on those units in that particular city. If i go to another city it is the same thing with those units.

The reason why it worries me because i have a lot of units so it takes some of the screen up.

 

[JujuLautre]

A random event. Things that happened: defection of a politician, mariage, volcano erruption... they were introduced with BTS.

It's strange, but it seems in fact that it was an event concerning the portuguese, not you. So you just know something happened, but not what

 

[Roland Johansen]

Even if i don't do a turn the camera is still on those units in that particular city. If i go to another city it is the same thing with those units.

The reason why it worries me because i have a lot of units so it takes some of the screen up.

The easiest way to get rid of the units is by waking them and fortifying them again. Press the f-button twice.

 

[mystyfly]

The easiest way to get rid of the units is by waking them and fortifying them again. Press the f-button twice.

Does the unit lose its fortify bonus this way?