Do number of buildings in a city change anything, like add maintenance costs or affect amount of population?
There are few hidden effects, none which effect the maintenance of cities or the maximum city population.
Some buildings (barracks, walls, castles, Heroic Epic, etc) increase the power rating of a civilisation as visible in the power graph (F9).
Big number of happiness resources can cause city to have celebration day, which saves maintenance cost for that day. Does big number of health resources have any additional benefit besides negating unhealthiness?
There are two requirements for a celebration day: the city is healthy and the city is happy. The amount of happiness and healthiness doesn't matter.
I can't think of additional effects of extra healthiness in a city. Extra resources can in general be traded for other resources or gold per turn or be given away for free in order to get better relations.
Just got round to buying Civ 4, really enjoying it but I've got a few questions, and this place seems like a pretty good place to ask. I've had a look around but couldn't find the answers I'm after, so here goes:
1. I just started trying slavery, and it seems like a pretty powerful tool. What happens to your food levels after the population drop though? Is there an optimum point to use the slavery option? Does it differ if using a granary? And again if you use up more than one population?
Slavery is seen as one of the most powerful civics in the early game. Some players even like it in the late game. It allows individual cities to convert population into production. It works best when you can grow back the population quickly due to a large food surplus and a granary. It's pretty useless in cities that have a low food surplus and lots of production from hills (or late game workshops).
Because the early city sizes require the least amount of food, regrowth is cheaper when the city is small and thus the slavery civic is more powerful when cities are small. When other sources of production are available and cities grow larger later in the game, then the civic becomes weaker.
2. Does cut wood from anywhere on the map go to your nearest city even if not in your fat cross or 3x3 square? Does it have to be within borders? If it's closer to an enemy city than yours, does it still go to you?
Yes, you will get the production from chopped forests in the nearest city independent from how far the forest was away and whether it was inside your cultural borders but you can't chop forests in someone else's land. However, the production boost gets significant penalties dependent on whether the forest is inside your borders or not and dependent on the distance to your closest city. You only get the full production value when it is both inside your borders and inside the fat cross of a city.
3. What are the exact mechanics of cultural borders being pushed back? If I've got an enemy city encroaching into into my territory, what formula is needed to calculate how much culture I need to regain that ground, or in reality is it incredibly difficult to regain it?
That's actually a pretty hard question as the formula for culture on tiles is not simple. Tiles deeper inside your borders get extra bonus culture on top of the culture produced in your cities which means that old cities which have expanded their borders several times will produce large amounts of culture close to the city.
The exact mechanics can be read in this article:
Culture Mechanics Disassembled.
Note that the exploit mentioned in the article about the culture bomb is reported to be fixed in some way in one of the patches.
4. Is it just my experience or is the auto-explore function pretty poor?
I wouldn't know as I never use it. How would the computer AI know in which direction I would want to explore. It isn't psychic.
5. What difficulty is the most even (in terms of bonuses), yet with the smartest AI? If there isn't one, can I mod the game to get custom difficulties?
Noble difficulty is close to being even although there are still some small advantages for the AI at this difficulty but the bonuses are almost all gone. The AI isn't getting smarter depending on the settings. There is a BetterAI mod project which improves the AI.
6. What happens if I take a rival city that has the same wonder as one of my cities?
World wonders can only be constructed once in the world. National wonders can only be constructed once per civilisation. If you capture a city with a national wonder while you have already constructed that wonder, then it is automatically destroyed. I recall to have read that if you capture a city with a national wonder while you haven't constructed this wonder yourself, then you could get a city with national wonder (and unable to construct it yourself). I have never encountered that situation though. Buildings (except world wonders) have a chance to be destroyed on city capture.
Like I said, couldn't seem to find answers so it's be great if someone could help me out. Thanks!
That's what this thread is for.
Welcome to civfanatics!
