Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Gwynnja]

In BtS: If I build Stonehenge, do the notional Monuments that result count as "built" monuments for purposes of building the Statue of Zeus?

as long as you have enough cities

 

[Renata]

How does flanking work against artillery units?

What causes it, that when I try to bring down the city defenses in some cities with artillery units, the defense %-age appears higher when the artillery unit is on top than when a "normal" unit is? And what makes the artillery not take off as high a percentage as is advertised?

Edit: BTS 3.17

 

[ori]

the artillery takes of a percentage of the defense, i.e. if artillery takes down "25%" and the defense is 50% it will take down 12.5% with each bombardment. The difference is due to the fact that you have non-gunpowder units in your stack - the artillery ignores walls and citadels while the warriors you brought to the fight as cannon artilleryfodder () still see those walls etc extra. Note that even if they see e.g. 100% while the artillery sees 50% - 4 bombardments in my example will get it down to 0.
Disclaimer: I cannot remember the exact values for all of these so the numbers are pure fiction...

 

[Renata]

My example was actually the other way around: I had a stack of mostly cavalry and rifles, with a few outdated trebuchets as I had kept forgetting to upgrade them before sending them into enemy territory again. I think I have most of it figured out now: when the trebuchets were up, they saw the wall+castle city defense of 100%, but the cavs and rifles, being post-gunpowder, saw only the "real" 60% or whatever. So far so good. But what caused the trebuchets that didn't have accuracy to take only 4% at a time off of that 100% rather than the 8% they're supposed to manage? Is that another benefit of walls and/or castles, or was that something else?

And I still have the flanking question. One time while attacking a stack containing several catapults with a horse archer, I noticed that the catapults all suffered damage. But it only happened that once. So what conditions are needed to make flanking work?

 

[JujuLautre]

Is that another benefit of walls and/or castles

It is; walls and castles reduce bombardment.

Flank attack works when a horse archer/knight/cuirassier/cavalry/chopper attacks a stack with some siege units of the same area or lower, and survives the attacks (whether it is by winning the battle or by retreating).

 

[Renata]

Does it work when the siege units are in a city, or only in the open? (And by "same area or lower", do you mean "same strength or lower""?) Are there any other requirements? Because I don't know how many times I won battles against siege-containing stacks with my horse units, but I only saw the flanking result once.

 

[JujuLautre]

Only in the open, sorry I forgot that.

With the era stuff, I meant you don't flank above-era siege units: horse archers flank cats (maybe trebs?), knights flank cats and trebs, cuirassiers and cav flanks the same plus cannons, choppers flank those plus artillery and mobile artillery.
Also, if you don't have the 3.17 patch, flanking only work for same-era units: cuirassiers don't flank trebs for instance.

 

[DroopyTofu]

On the same game as I was playing earlier, I discovered the Americas(Earth Map, 18 civs). I went to look to see if anyone wanted to be my vassal, but all three of the leaders had it redded out, and it said, "Sorry, it's out of our hands." What does that mean. None of them were vassals to other empires. I tried bribing Roosevelt out of war with Monty, but it still said that. Has anyone ever had this happen to them?

 

[a4phantom]

Is the AI absolutely compelled or just strongly influenced to switch to (for example) Confucianism if it has the Confucian Holy City and no other Holy Cities? If every known civ is Hindu, and the Americans found Confucianism, does Washington have to become a Confucian and face the inevitable dog pile?

 

[JujuLautre]

Nope, it doesn't have too. The AI will usually take into consideration its cities in which a religion is present to determine which religion is best. The religion in the capital as well as the presence of the holy city (perhaps also of the shrine, not sure) influence this decision, but do not make it automatic.

For the shrine, since it makes it more keen to spread the religion, in a sense it helps to switch to that religion.

 

[Hegel]

Hi guys etc.,

If you start a game on a continents-map with two AI opponents, will one of these AI's *always* be placed on the same continent as the human player, leaving the other AI with a continents of it's own? Are there any "rules" for placement of AI's in general?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Hi guys etc.,

If you start a game on a continents-map with two AI opponents, will one of these AI's *always* be placed on the same continent as the human player, leaving the other AI with a continents of it's own? Are there any "rules" for placement of AI's in general?

No, all players are assigned starting positions independently of whether they are human or AI. Thus there is no factor that will change your starting location depending on whether you are a human or an AI. In the situation you mention above, with 3 players on a continents map, you could reasonably expect to be on the continent with 2 players 2/3 of the time, and the continent by yourself 1/3 of the time, due to simple statistics.

 

[TheRealBitter]

I recently updated my computer to Vista SP1 and it highly recommended I download the latest .net framework v3.5SP1 so I did. Now I tried to open Comrade to play CivIV, and I can't because it says I need framework 1.1
What do I do? Downgrade my .net framework?



Bitter.

 

[Hegel]

No, all players are assigned starting positions independently of whether they are human or AI. Thus there is no factor that will change your starting location depending on whether you are a human or an AI. In the situation you mention above, with 3 players on a continents map, you could reasonably expect to be on the continent with 2 players 2/3 of the time, and the continent by yourself 1/3 of the time, due to simple statistics.

Right - I did not expect a 50/50% distribution Thing is (and yes - I also know this is an inductive, not a conclusive argument) to test this, I started ten games on continent map with two AI opponents (albeit on a tiny map to ensure that I met the eventual opponent quickly) and every single one of them I shared my starting continent with an opponent. But that's a fluke, I guess...

 

[metalmidget]

Dunno if something weird is happening here or I'm making a dumb mistake. I'm having trouble placing farms. Barely any of my tiles seem to eligible for farms, which is making growing my cities difficult. In the screenshot below, why can't I build a farm on that tile?

Is it because I need to be next to a river or oasis? I thought the tutorial said coast tiles were OK as well. I've also got civil service researched which "spreads irrigation." What exactly does that mean?

cheers,
metal

 

[dalamb]

You need to be next to a river initially, even during Civil Service. CS just lets you build a farm next to another farm. I don't know whether an oasis lets you build a farm, but practically speaking many of its neighbours would likely be desert anyway.

And welcome to CivFanatics!

 

[metalmidget]

"initially"? What lets you build farms elsewhere?

 

[dalamb]

Like I said, Civil Service lets you build farms next to other farms.

 

[metalmidget]

Oh, right. I thought you meant there was some research later on that lets you build them anywhere, or on any flatland or something like that.

cheers,
metal

 

[Peter Principle]

1) Are Hollywood, Rock n' Roll and Broadway the only ways to get a Hit Movie/Song/Musical?

2) Are there any other ways to promote your units besides barracks/dry docks, Vassalage, Theocracy, West Point, Pentagon and fighting animals, barbarians and enemy units?