Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Gwynnja]

I don't think obsolete uses any cottages. He basically shows how by depriving the AI of any wonders and settling all his gp in his capital he creates an uber-city, capable of the majority of the empire's economy in and of itself.

 

[Roland Johansen]

OK. I've browsed around more and found this SSE/WE strategy by Obsolete. Seems like something new. The thing is that his screen shots don't show anymore. Can anyone shed some light on what the gist of that strategy is? Also, I guess that the WE is wonder economy perhaps? What's SSE then, settled specialist economy?

I don't think obsolete uses any cottages. He basically shows how by depriving the AI of any wonders and settling all his gp in his capital he creates an uber-city, capable of the majority of the empire's economy in and of itself.

And such a strategy is of course more effective on smaller worlds with many AI opponents. Not only because your empire and your opponents empires don't consist of many cities which makes the influence of the one supercity more felt, but also because the critical resources needed to quickly build world wonders are closer by which helps when you want to concentrate on one major super city with many world wonders.

As far as I've read, he is also an experienced player, so what works for him doesn't have to work for everyone. His tactics don't seem to be widely used by other players. Of course, that can make it all the more fun to try so that you can get a different civ-experience. If you want to try, then pick a smaller world with many opponents, preferably on the normal (not aggressive) AI setting and preferably with non-aggressive opponents. This likely makes the game a bit easier when you first try these tactics.

Note that I haven't tried his tactics yet as I like to play on huge worlds with a normal set of opponents and the aggressive AI setting. I firstly don't think that the tactic will be very effective under those settings and secondly I just like to build a huge sprawling empire, not a single city state. So I'm quite inexperienced with his tactics, my views on the best settings for his tactics are just based on logic not experience.

 

[cleanzero]

Are there specific conditions under which I can't attack units ? I'm playing Aztech and I have a Jaguar near an enemy Archer but for some reason I can't attack it (the red square doesn' pop up) ? Why ?

 

[BrantleyL1]

First:
When the first city is settled, it is essential to scout out the territory. Depending on the civ, you have a scout or warrior. I tend to the civs with warrior, and then build another warrior but that is not the question.

Is it better to send out the scouting warrior in one direction or to circle around your original city? And then send out the second in another direction??

Second... When you are going to war, is it better to systematically pick cities off one end and progress toward the other? Or is it better to go through the middle and then come back and fick off the remaining ones? So I guesss the question is is there any strategic advantage to dividing your enemies territory?

Happy new year to all!!

 

[Supr49er]

Are there specific conditions under which I can't attack units ? I'm playing Aztech and I have a Jaguar near an enemy Archer but for some reason I can't attack it (the red square doesn' pop up) ? Why ?

Is the unit in someone else's territory?
You might also have a 10-turn peace treaty - check it.

Welcome to the Forums cleanzero.

 

[Sisiutil]

First:
When the first city is settled, it is essential to scout out the territory. Depending on the civ, you have a scout or warrior. I tend to the civs with warrior, and then build another warrior but that is not the question.

Is it better to send out the scouting warrior in one direction or to circle around your original city? And then send out the second in another direction??

The main job of your early scouting units is to reveal territory and resources for your first few cities. Ideally, these cities should be close to the capital to reduce maintenance costs and ensure that military units and workers can travel between each city easily. The best pattern for your early cities, if the map allows, is to lay them out in a hub-and-spoke pattern with the capital as the hub. Logically, then, the best pattern for your early scouts to follow is to travel in ever-widening circles around the capital.

Second... When you are going to war, is it better to systematically pick cities off one end and progress toward the other? Or is it better to go through the middle and then come back and fick off the remaining ones? So I guesss the question is is there any strategic advantage to dividing your enemies territory?

Two words: supply lines. If you capture a city or cities in the middle of enemy territory, you'll find them difficult to reach and reinforce. You may also find you can't build or upgrade certain units in these cities because your supply of a vital resource (iron, for example) it cut off. These cities will also be subject to their native culture and will go into revolt frequently unless you garrison an obscene number of units there; every revolt weakens the defenders, leaving the city vulnerable. So it's almost always best to start at one end and laboriously work your way through enemy territory.

That being said, there are reasons why you might go after a more central city first. You may wish to capture (or, in some cases, raze) a city containing a particular wonder, for example. The pyramids are an obvious example. The Apostolic Palace and the Statue of Zeus are examples of wonders I often consider razing to remove their annoying influence from the face of the earth. Conversely, if espionage reveals the enemy is building a certain wonder you don't want them to have (usually because you're building it yourself), you may target that city early on.

If your enemy's forces are largely concentrated in one city (which is often the case), it may make sense to launch your first surprise attack at that city first, even if it's well inside their territory. You may also capture a city as a feint, to draw enemy forces away from another city you're targeting.

 

[cleanzero]

Is the unit in someone else's territory?
You might also have a 10-turn peace treaty - check it.

Welcome to the Forums cleanzero.

Thanks for the welcome. Hope I'll survive to Civ IV because I find it really difficult to grasp. Furthermore, even if I'm in my late 30s I've never been a gamer (just Spore recently). However, back to the question, no, I don't have a peace turn, because I've been able to attack other units from the same civ. Does it matter something if the tile where the archer is contains other units ?

 

[Gwynnja]

Thanks for the welcome. Hope I'll survive to Civ IV because I find it really difficult to grasp. Furthermore, even if I'm in my late 30s I've never been a gamer (just Spore recently). However, back to the question, no, I don't have a peace turn, because I've been able to attack other units from the same civ. Does it matter something if the tile where the archer is contains other units ?

You won't attack the units that you aren't at war with, unless they're barbarians.

 

[BrantleyL1]

Two words: supply lines. If you capture a city or cities in the middle of enemy territory, you'll find them difficult to reach and reinforce.

Totally understand that... Did not state my question very well...

Picture a square. Divide along the diagonal. I'm in bottom left - they are in upper right. Is it a good idea to start in the corner of their territory?? Or do I do more damage by moving through the middle?? Fromthe center of the square to the top right?

 

[Gwynnja]

Take the quickest route to the capital and raze cities you don't want.

 

[Roland Johansen]

First:
When the first city is settled, it is essential to scout out the territory. Depending on the civ, you have a scout or warrior. I tend to the civs with warrior, and then build another warrior but that is not the question.

Is it better to send out the scouting warrior in one direction or to circle around your original city? And then send out the second in another direction??

Second... When you are going to war, is it better to systematically pick cities off one end and progress toward the other? Or is it better to go through the middle and then come back and fick off the remaining ones? So I guesss the question is is there any strategic advantage to dividing your enemies territory?

Happy new year to all!!

There are various reasons for scouting. The most important one (finding new city founding sites) is mentioned by Sisiutil and I fully agree with his exploring strategy of ever widening circles around the capital (where you focus on hills and suchs to optimise your viewing range and defensive terrain to optimise the survivability of your explorers).

Another early game reason for scouting is finding the cities of another civilisation in order to capture them or steal their workers. This can also be achieved by the strategy of ever widening circles around the capital, but once you find one of their cities, your strategy should adjust to this additional information. Their other cities are likely to be close and so you should explore that area. New cities of this civilisation might arise in the fog of war, so you'll have to regularly uncover the fog of war in that area to get updated information.

A third often neglected, but still very important reason for scouting is to explore trade routes to foreign civilisations in order to get foreign trade routes in your cities once you sign an open borders treaty with them (foreign trade routes are about 2.5 times as profitable as domestic ones). Since the earliest long range traderoutes use coastal sea tiles and rivers (long before a road network is in place), it can be vital to your economy to discover such a coastal connection between one of your cities and one of theirs. This of course requires a different exploring strategy where you try to uncover coastal areas and a foreign coastal city.
This third reason for exploring of course takes place slightly later in the game.

The number of scouts needed depends very much on the game situation. On an archipellago game with small islands, you often don't need more than your starting warrior. If the land stretches in every direction around your capital, then you need more explorers in order to find the best city founding locations and to push back the fog of war in order to reduce the spawning of barbarians.

I personally usually start exploring with my starting unit while I build a worker or a workboat and decide later whether I need more explorers for my needs.

Thanks for the welcome. Hope I'll survive to Civ IV because I find it really difficult to grasp. Furthermore, even if I'm in my late 30s I've never been a gamer (just Spore recently). However, back to the question, no, I don't have a peace turn, because I've been able to attack other units from the same civ. Does it matter something if the tile where the archer is contains other units ?

Could you upload the savegame? That way we can take a look at the situation and might be able to explain it.

Civilisation is a game with a steep learning curve, so it takes a while to learn it and it takes even longer to master it. So don't be discouraged when you're having a hard time beating the AI opponents.
Civilization is a game of tough choices. Understanding why one option is better than another and connecting these various small choices into a bigger game plan is what makes the game hard and it is what makes the game fun for those who like strategy games.

 

[BarrageQueen]

A third often neglected, but still very important reason for scouting is to explore trade routes to foreign civilisations in order to get foreign trade routes in your cities once you sign an open borders treaty with them (foreign trade routes are about 2.5 times as profitable as domestic ones).

Whoa! So foreign trade is dependent on route scouting? No wonder I have poor trade economics! So the mechanic is that a trade route must be visually checked? I suppose making a visual check of a foreign city's not enough, but a route must be scouted. So scouting either a road network or coasts/rivers will do the trick then? What about traded maps for this purpose? If a traded map reveals road/waterway routes then that's just as good?

Actually, on this subject of foreign trade, what is the key to having strong trade economics in general? One would be scouting the foreign routes. Wonders such as the great lighthouse and temple of artemis also give a boost, right? Then the customhouses. I've heard some people refer to the trade economy. Can anyone point me to any general guides on this topic?

As for my prior question re SSE/WE, thanks for the replies. I tried out a noble level game with Victoria building a load of wonders, no cottaging, and running representation/bureaucracy/mercantilism. Settling all the great people in the capital. Actually, it worked a charm! And it was fun as well running a zero science slider but winning the liberalism race! Ended up having a truckload of cities actually, mostly producing units for warfare. Won a domination victory in the end. Capturing heavily cottaged cities later in the game did help quite a bit with the gold surplus, though. So I think what I might try in another game is going for a super capital and doing some cottaging in other cities to supplement income.

 

[ianray7]

Whenever i log onto the online game it tells me that i need to download patch 1_74 inorder to play so i download and an error pops up. So i tried downloading it from this website and the same thing happens except that it tells me that the error occurs because an older form on civ4 is installed, 1.09something something somthing. I tried finding 1.09 to uninstall it but i couldn't, what should i do?

 

[ori]

welcome to cfc

install 1.61 first then 1.74 and this:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

 

[andrew121]

Hi All,

When looking at the map, and in general at one of your cities what do the images represent above your Cities growth and production bars. In particular the black rook, and the percentage number.

Apologies as I am sure this has been asked many times before,

Thanks for any help.

 

[Plantagenet_K_W]

Hi folks, I'm very new to Civ IV although I have played Civ III far too much.
I finally got a computer which can handle the requirements of IV (thanks ebay)

I've had a look for my question here but haven't found it. There are a LOT of posts though, so sorry if I should have looked for longer.

Anyway, I loaded it up and started a single player game everything pretty much standard, but when it opened up there was my settler standing on a black tile with the merest hint of a river and a few resources showing but all the tiles around my unit basically black as if I had never explored it.
I gave it a go and (thanks to being on Chieftain level) I was able to play a game despite not being able to see the coastlines or anything. (I tried to walk to Rome with a missionary but he couldn't get there, despite open borders. It turned out that Rome was on a large island next to my continent!)

After quite a few turns, and having a dozen or more technologies under my belt, a few squares began to light up, mainly near the corners of the screen, and steadily more and more became visible until by the time I was sending frigates out to sea, I could see everything I was supposed to.

So my question is,
Is it my computer?
Is it some sort of setting that I need to change?
Is it actually normal and I'm just being thick?
Or something else?

Stop press: My son has just started a game on a tiny map and he can already see almost everything including he can see all the terrain that he has not yet explored. That can't be right surely?

 

[ori]

Hi All,

When looking at the map, and in general at one of your cities what do the images represent above your Cities growth and production bars. In particular the black rook, and the percentage number.

Apologies as I am sure this has been asked many times before,

Thanks for any help.

The percentage tells you the defense bonus your units get in the city due to culture and walls etc.
I am not sure what you mean with black rook

Welcome to CFC

Hi folks, I'm very new to Civ IV although I have played Civ III far too much.
I finally got a computer which can handle the requirements of IV (thanks ebay)

I've had a look for my question here but haven't found it. There are a LOT of posts though, so sorry if I should have looked for longer.

Anyway, I loaded it up and started a single player game everything pretty much standard, but when it opened up there was my settler standing on a black tile with the merest hint of a river and a few resources showing but all the tiles around my unit basically black as if I had never explored it.
I gave it a go and (thanks to being on Chieftain level) I was able to play a game despite not being able to see the coastlines or anything. (I tried to walk to Rome with a missionary but he couldn't get there, despite open borders. It turned out that Rome was on a large island next to my continent!)

After quite a few turns, and having a dozen or more technologies under my belt, a few squares began to light up, mainly near the corners of the screen, and steadily more and more became visible until by the time I was sending frigates out to sea, I could see everything I was supposed to.

So my question is,
Is it my computer?
Is it some sort of setting that I need to change?
Is it actually normal and I'm just being thick?
Or something else?

Stop press: My son has just started a game on a tiny map and he can already see almost everything including he can see all the terrain that he has not yet explored. That can't be right surely?

the black terrain is probably due to a graphics card that is not really able to handle the game - the other stuff though is suspicious - you might want to post this in the civ4 tech support subforum here maybe we can work that out. This thread is too large and fast moving to do meaningful troubleshooting.

Welcome back to CFC

 

[MrCynical]

@Plantagenet_K_W:

That sounds like the black terrain bug that showed up on low spec graphics cards in early versions of the game. It was fixed, at least for some cards, in an early patch, o check if the game's fully patched. 1.74 is the most up to date version.

 

[Supr49er]

Hi All,

When looking at the map, and in general at one of your cities what do the images represent above your Cities growth and production bars. In particular the black rook, and the percentage number.

Apologies as I am sure this has been asked many times before,

Thanks for any help.

That is your city defense %. It includes city walls/castles, and also your cultural defense bonuses.

Welcome to the Forums.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Whoa! So foreign trade is dependent on route scouting? No wonder I have poor trade economics! So the mechanic is that a trade route must be visually checked? I suppose making a visual check of a foreign city's not enough, but a route must be scouted. So scouting either a road network or coasts/rivers will do the trick then? What about traded maps for this purpose? If a traded map reveals road/waterway routes then that's just as good?

It doesn't matter how you get the information, if you can see the route, then you can use it for trading. It's just that many players scout the area poorly and don't discover the connection to another empire until much later in the game. For instance, you should be able to find the location of a foreign coastal city and the sea lanes between one of your coastal cities and this foreign coastal city long before map trading is even available. It should be one of the earlier goals of your scouts, shortly after discovering suitable settling locations.

You don't need to continuously remove the fog of war around that area, you just need to have scouted the area once. If the foreign coastal city is connected to other foreign cities (through any means), then you don't need to have discovered that connection. How trade occurs inside the foreign empire is no concern of yours. You just need to be able to find a connection to one of their cities.

There are many buildings that improve trade, but trade is usually not the only form of commerce income, it's just one of the contributors. However, a small city that has just been founded has very little means of income because of the few improved tiles that it can use. Thus having 2 foreign trade routes (the second one is formed after discovering currency) is very helpful in offsetting the city upkeep cost and civic upkeep cost related to that city. This can be a significant help in continuous expansion early in the game.

Later in the game, with the various trade boosting buildings, trade will be responsible for 20-40% of your commerce (and more if you build very few cottages and your economy is more dependent on specialists and trade).

Hi All,

When looking at the map, and in general at one of your cities what do the images represent above your Cities growth and production bars. In particular the black rook, and the percentage number.

Apologies as I am sure this has been asked many times before,

Thanks for any help.

The green face represents that the city is suffering from unhealthiness.
The red angry face represents that the city is suffering from unhappiness.
The 3 arrows in a triangle represent that the city is connected to your internal trade network (and thus your resources).
The various religion symbols represent that that religion is present in the city.
The various corporation symbols (just for Beyond the Sword expansion pack) represent that that corporation is present in the city.
The lightning symbol represents that the city has a source of power (a powerplant for instance).
The black rook represents a defensive structure and the percentage next to it represents the defense bonus that some units inside your city will get when the city is attacked.