Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Roland Johansen]

Whenever I play a team game (2v2,3v3,4v4 whatever) I noticed people manage to place little signs (A rectangle with a arrow pointing down onto a tile), to remind them where to place cities or way to attack. How do I do this?

There are two ways to do this.

1) Use the strategic overlay which is available when you zoom out until you see the clouds appearing above the map. One of the buttons above the minimap allows you access to the strategic overlay which allows drawing on the map and setting signs on the map.

2) While in normal view above the main map, press Alt-s. This will give you a coloured square which can be moved around the map. When you press the left mouse button, then you get the option to enter text and this text will appear at the present location.

The second way is easier if all you want to do is add signs to the map.

 

[UnlockPotential]

Thanks, I kept pressing S , than Alt, just not together >_< Pressed every button on my keybord

 

[DouLou]

Ok I was reading through one of Sisiutils thread and saw something I didn't quite get.

The research bar is at 0% so how is he still researching techs? I figured he either changes the slide before taking the SS to show us how much gold he is making or I'm missing something

 

[Roland Johansen]

Ok I was reading through one of Sisiutils thread and saw something I didn't quite get.

The research bar is at 0% so how is he still researching techs? I figured he either changes the slide before taking the SS to show us how much gold he is making or I'm missing something

There are a number of ways to generate research points without allocating any of your commerce to research (which is what the research slider does). The most common one is by using scientist specialists, but some other specialists or specialists combined by certain civics (representation) and some wonders (University of Sankore) also create research points.

The so called Food Economy or Specialist Economy is even based on the research produced by research specialists. It's usually a good idea to have at least one or a few cities focus on food + specialists as whatever type of economy you're using, a few specialist using cities are always a great asset.

Whole articles are written about this subject and threads with hundreds of posts are written about which economy is the most efficient. You can find articles about the specialist economy in the War Academy, but I must admit that I've never read them so I cannot vouch for their quality. However, they wouldn't be in the War Academy if they weren't interesting.

Don't believe anyone who says economy type A is better than economy type B. There have been some very heated debates about this subject on this site and what type of economy works best for someone is a bit personal.

 

[Canefanatic]

if i found standard ethanol company in one city to have the oil, do i need to spread that corporation to other cities for those cities to get the oil too?

 

[Jerrymander]

if i found standard ethanol company in one city to have the oil, do i need to spread that corporation to other cities for those cities to get the oil too?

I believe so. The corporation effects are limited to the cities that have the corporation, same with religions.

 

[Roland Johansen]

if i found standard ethanol company in one city to have the oil, do i need to spread that corporation to other cities for those cities to get the oil too?

The city gets oil locally, the civilisation gets nothing. This means that you do get the ability to build troops that need oil in that city but you don't get the ability to build railroads when you don't already have oil or coal.

So it works a bit weird, but you can rationalise it by arguing that the corporation is only creating small amounts of oil compared to the amounts of oil produced by a resource patch. It's not a perfect rationalisation, but many elements of the game cannot be perfectly rationalised. It's a very abstract simplification of the real world.

 

[Gwynnja]

I believe so. The corporation effects are limited to the cities that have the corporation, same with religions.

IIRC, all cities within the empire's trade network get the oil. The individual cities get the

I have two questions:
a. is there any way to prevent the city governor to leave my worked tiles the way that I want them?
b. what is the origin of the spear vs. tank that i notice in the threads

 

[scienide09]

<snip>
b. what is the origin of the spear vs. tank that i notice in the threads

In earlier versions of Civ, it was possible for a well-fortified spearman defending a city to defeat an armoured unit such as a tank. Someone else can explain the combat mechanics, but the combat engine itself was completely rewritten for CivIV, in part to eliminate the possibility of this.

Naturally, it was a source of great frustration for the tank owner (the human player) to see his or her unit(s) destroyed by a wholly obsolete, thousand-year-old unit.

 

[MrCynical]

IIRC, all cities within the empire's trade network get the oil. The individual cities get the

No, the oil is definitely only present in cities with the corporation, regardless of whether they are connected or not.

b. what is the origin of the spear vs. tank

In the earlier versions of Civ (particularly Civ 3), there was a greater tendency for strange combat results, mainly due to the lower number of combat rounds. This meant that it wasn't that unusual to lose tanks to vastly inferior units. The classic case was losing a tank to a spearman (which was the most primitive defender in Civ 3), hence the smiley.

It's become a bit less of an issue in civ 4 (though tank losing to longbow I've seen a fair few times). I've never seen a spear beat a tank in civ 4 though, although it is theoretically possible.

 

[Endure]

Newbish question so posting it here..

Why doesn't isabella like me?

I've read many people saying what a great attack dog she'll make if you adopt her religion because she's such a religious fanatic.

Fair enough.

In my recent game, I noticed isabella started on the same continent as me (was a large continent with 5 civ's on it total). I decided to try and turn her into my own attack dog, so I didn't adopt judaism when I founded it and instead waited for her to spread buddism to me and then adopted that as my state religion and spread it to all my cities. I also entered an early war against the greeks when she asked me so I had some positive diplo modifiers there, and I gave in to a couple demands for techs from her for more brownie points.

At this point I was sitting on about +14 total positive diplo modifiers with her and no negatives...but whenever I wanted her to attack someone I had the "we just don't like you enough" message. So eventually theocracy became an option for me and I adopted that because it's her favorite civic. I was up to +17 or +18 positive diplo modifiers with her at this point, without a single negative mark, and she still didn't like me enough.

What the heck?

 

[JujuLautre]

Do you have a vassal? When they need to know their relationship with you, AI do this with the relationship they have for your team. So if she's friendly with you but furious with your vassal, she won't do anything

 

[Endure]

No I have no vassal state, and neither does she. I have no negative diplo marks from her at all.

 

[JujuLautre]

well, that is strange then. Could you post a save ?

 

[Mesousa]

Does she also like the ones you want her to attack?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Newbish question so posting it here..

Why doesn't isabella like me?

I've read many people saying what a great attack dog she'll make if you adopt her religion because she's such a religious fanatic.

Fair enough.

In my recent game, I noticed isabella started on the same continent as me (was a large continent with 5 civ's on it total). I decided to try and turn her into my own attack dog, so I didn't adopt judaism when I founded it and instead waited for her to spread buddism to me and then adopted that as my state religion and spread it to all my cities. I also entered an early war against the greeks when she asked me so I had some positive diplo modifiers there, and I gave in to a couple demands for techs from her for more brownie points.

At this point I was sitting on about +14 total positive diplo modifiers with her and no negatives...but whenever I wanted her to attack someone I had the "we just don't like you enough" message. So eventually theocracy became an option for me and I adopted that because it's her favorite civic. I was up to +17 or +18 positive diplo modifiers with her at this point, without a single negative mark, and she still didn't like me enough.

What the heck?

Are you sure that the reason for not wishing to declare war is still 'we just don't like you enough'? There are many reasons why a civilisation isn't willing to declare war. It can because they think this new enemy would be too strong and then you get a message like 'we're intimidated by their military strength'. It can be because they like this civilisation too much and then you get a message like 'we would never betray our closest friends' and sometimes the civilisation is too distant and war would not result in any gains and then you get a message like 'there is nothing to gain'. Such messages are visible once you hold the mouse pointer over the red option of declaring war on this civilisation.

I have never seen the message 'we just don't like you enough' come up once I had the other civilisation at friendly relations. I guess that with +17 positive relations and no negative relations, this civilisation is friendly with you.

 

[Endure]

I don't have a save unfortunately. I was just relying on my auto-saves as back-ups and didn't think to take one.

In one of the cases (the germans) they had adopted buddism as well, and trying to get her to do anything to them was a "we couldn't betray out closest friends". I understand that. Same goes for civilizations that were on the other continents, I got a "We would have nothing to gain" message which I understand.

But the other 2 civ's on our continent (the greeks and the indians) were both running hindisum so they weren't pals with Isabella, but I still got the "We just don't like you enough" message from Isabella when trying to make her attack them. When defensive pacts became an option she wouldn't sign one with me for the same reason.

However, playing the game through, I was playing with PA enabled (was actually hoping to get Isabella into one since I had so many positives with her and I've never actually been diplomatic enough to have an AI PA with me) she formed a PA with Bismarck shortly after they became an option. She was pretty friendly with Bismarck (+11 or so on the quick glance sheet) but still far behind me in total positives. But I'm guessing regardless of that she just liked Bismarck better.

Oh well. Once that happened I was pretty pissed, rushed to tanks and wiped out Bismarck and put the hurt into Isabella before winning a diplo victory.

Edit:

Might be worth mentioning, I had it set to aggressive AI's (had never tried it before, wanted to see what it was like) and on noble difficulty level. Dunno if that makes a difference.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't have a save unfortunately. I was just relying on my auto-saves as back-ups and didn't think to take one.

In one of the cases (the germans) they had adopted buddism as well, and trying to get her to do anything to them was a "we couldn't betray out closest friends". I understand that. Same goes for civilizations that were on the other continents, I got a "We would have nothing to gain" message which I understand.

But the other 2 civ's on our continent (the greeks and the indians) were both running hindisum so they weren't pals with Isabella, but I still got the "We just don't like you enough" message from Isabella when trying to make her attack them. When defensive pacts became an option she wouldn't sign one with me for the same reason.

However, playing the game through, I was playing with PA enabled (was actually hoping to get Isabella into one since I had so many positives with her and I've never actually been diplomatic enough to have an AI PA with me) she formed a PA with Bismarck shortly after they became an option. She was pretty friendly with Bismarck (+11 or so on the quick glance sheet) but still far behind me in total positives. But I'm guessing regardless of that she just liked Bismarck better.

Oh well. Once that happened I was pretty pissed, rushed to tanks and wiped out Bismarck and put the hurt into Isabella before winning a diplo victory.

Edit:

Might be worth mentioning, I had it set to aggressive AI's (had never tried it before, wanted to see what it was like) and on noble difficulty level. Dunno if that makes a difference.

The +n modifiers don't tell the whole story. The relationship is more determined by the eventual diplomacy relations (friendly, pleased, cautious, annoyed, furious). These diplomatic relations are based upon the numeric relations and some other things. For instance, if you have recently refused to give into a certain demand or request, then some civilisation will not only give you a -1 diplomatic modifier but will also limit the relations to a certain maximum (like you can't get a friendly relation for some time).

Next to that, there are a number of hidden diplomatic modifiers. Some have to do with relative ratings on the scoreboard. Others have to do with the types of leaders. For instance warmonger leaders like warmonger leaders more and peaceful leaders like peaceful leaders more. These values aren't taken into account when calculating the diplomatic modifier that you see, but they are taken into account when calculating the diplomatic relations (friendly, pleased, cautious, annoyed, furious). And these diplomatic relations determine how leaders will react to your proposals, not the numerical values.

If you're playing vanilla civ4 or warlords civ4, then the aggressive AI setting also results in a hidden negative -2 diplomatic modifier.

Still, I have never seen a +17 diplomatic modifier without any negative modifiers NOT result in a friendly relation. And I've never seen an AI refuse a war declaration because 'we don't like you enough' when relations are friendly. So either you're misremembering some details or something very weird is going on here. A pity that you don't have a savegame anymore.

 

[friedonions]

Hi, this is are really stupid question but what do I have to do to steal a technology? I sent my spy onto my ally's cities and the steal tech option doesnt show up.

Someone please help?

 

[JujuLautre]

the stealing option is only available in BTS, so this could be a first reason.

otherwise, you need a spy into an ennemy city, you need to be able to research a tech they have, you need to have stop the spy for at least one turn; the cost of this mission on a per-city basis is shown into the espionnage screen (ctrl-E)

If everything is in order... then post a save