Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[jmas]

You must try the espionage economy some time. It's really good for those games where you have a hard time keeping up with the AI tech rate, the ones where you play at the edge of your abilities. Especially when you can control the state religion of your neighbours. This allows significant espionage bonuses and makes technology stealing fairly cheap compared to normal research.

That sounds interesting, Roland. Thank you for the suggestion. I think I'll give that a try sometime.

By the way, is there some information about how the Statue of Zeus works in Civ4? It looks like the "war weariness mechanics" article in the War Academy was written before BtS came out.

One of the AIs has the Statue of Zeus in my current game. What is the effect? Is it:

1) From the time I invade his territory and start fighting there, I accumulate twice as many "points" of war weariness from each battle with him, or

2) I accumulate only the standard number of points of war weariness, but the effect of those points toward adding unhappy faces in my cities is doubled, while I'm still at war with that civilization and while they still have the Statue.

It seems to me that if it's # 1, then it is more important to capture the Statue as quickly as possible. All you can do about the extra accumulated war weariness that you get before you capture it, is wait for it to go away. Whereas if it's # 2 , then the effect can be reversed completely at any time by capturing the Statue.

Also I'm interested to know if anyone can explain at what thresholds of WW you start getting WW unhappiness. Right now I have two size 18 cities, both with jails; one is my capital, the other of course is not (it's actually my HE city). The capital has +1 , the HE city does not. Can anyone explain this? Thank you in advance..

 

[bestbrian]

There's an article in the War Academy that explains the War Weariness mechanics.

 

[jmas]

There's an article in the War Academy that explains the War Weariness mechanics.

As I wrote above,

It looks like the "war weariness mechanics" article in the War Academy was written before BtS came out.

So it doesn't cover the Statue of Zeus.

That article also does not explain at what thresholds of WW you start getting WW unhappiness in cities.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

How do I take a screenshot, find it, and put it on the forum?

During the game you press Print Screen (or Prt Scr or something like that). Then, when you want to post the screenshot, you leave the game and find it in your computer. I think it changes depending on your OS, but on Vista it's going to be in "username\Documents\my games\Beyond the Sword\ScreenShots". Alright, then I suggest you open an account in one of the free image hosting services like Photobucket or Picoodle and upload your image there. Don't upload it to the forums, it looks crappy. Then, went you post, click "go advanced" or "post reply" and choose the icon that looks like a photograph. It will ask you for an address, just paste the address of your picture there.

Have I been clear? Sometimes I'm not, so feel free to ask if you don't understand.

 

[Roland Johansen]

That sounds interesting, Roland. Thank you for the suggestion. I think I'll give that a try sometime.

By the way, is there some information about how the Statue of Zeus works in Civ4? It looks like the "war weariness mechanics" article in the War Academy was written before BtS came out.

One of the AIs has the Statue of Zeus in my current game. What is the effect? Is it:

1) From the time I invade his territory and start fighting there, I accumulate twice as many "points" of war weariness from each battle with him, or

2) I accumulate only the standard number of points of war weariness, but the effect of those points toward adding unhappy faces in my cities is doubled, while I'm still at war with that civilization and while they still have the Statue.

It seems to me that if it's # 1, then it is more important to capture the Statue as quickly as possible. All you can do about the extra accumulated war weariness that you get before you capture it, is wait for it to go away. Whereas if it's # 2 , then the effect can be reversed completely at any time by capturing the Statue.

I vaguely recall having checked this once in a game and believe to recall it was 1. But I'm not sure.

Also I'm interested to know if anyone can explain at what thresholds of WW you start getting WW unhappiness. Right now I have two size 18 cities, both with jails; one is my capital, the other of course is not (it's actually my HE city). The capital has +1 , the HE city does not. Can anyone explain this? Thank you in advance..

Is the unhappiness caused by war weariness or something else? For instance fighting brothers of the faith unhappiness is related to religions and those could be different in both cities I guess. I have actually never read about the exact mechanics of that unhappiness. There's also unhappiness caused by 'wanting to join the mother country' which occurs in every city with enough foreign culture on its centre city tile. It would be weird to have 2 cities of the same size with similar war weariness reducing buildings suffering different values of war weariness. The capitol should have 1 extra happiness from the palace.

 

[jmas]

I vaguely recall having checked this once in a game and believe to recall it was 1. But I'm not sure.

Okay, thank you for weighing in on that.

Is the unhappiness caused by war weariness or something else? For instance fighting brothers of the faith unhappiness is related to religions and those could be different in both cities I guess. I have actually never read about the exact mechanics of that unhappiness. There's also unhappiness caused by 'wanting to join the mother country' which occurs in every city with enough foreign culture on its centre city tile. It would be weird to have 2 cities of the same size with similar war weariness reducing buildings suffering different values of war weariness. The capitol should have 1 extra happiness from the palace.

After posting, I wondered whether I should edit that post to specify... I did mean +1 from WW, not "brothers of the faith" or wanting to join the motherland. It does have the +1 from the palace, but it also has +1 from "war, what is it good for" that the HE city doesn't have, even though they are both the same size and both have a jail.

I agree it's weird. But that's what I'm seeing.

 

[dbalez]

ive been playing the normal civ epic but how do I advance or Extend my game of Civ with a whole new Future Era that lets players build Mechs.Or is that just the scenario?I was told i need to use a specific civilization is this true?

 

[bestbrian]

As I wrote above,

So it doesn't cover the Statue of Zeus.

That article also does not explain at what thresholds of WW you start getting WW unhappiness in cities.

My bad; I missed that.

However, does it really matter? Statue of Zeus or not, the mechanics are still the same, you just have the modifier from the wonder.

 

[bestbrian]

ive been playing the normal civ epic but how do I advance or Extend my game of Civ with a whole new Future Era that lets players build Mechs.Or is that just the scenario?I was told i need to use a specific civilization is this true?

The Next War Mod that shipped with BTS extends the future era and includes Mechs and stuff. And you can use any civ in that mod; you're not tied to a specific one.

 

[jmas]

My bad; I missed that.

However, does it really matter? Statue of Zeus or not, the mechanics are still the same, you just have the modifier from the wonder.

If you mean the accumulation of WW points, then it certainly could be the same as explained in that article (assuming it hasn't changed since Vanilla), but multiplied by 2, as Roland said he thinks it works. But then we still don't know at what point we get unhappy faces. I'm starting to think it could be complicated--read on:

Since I haven't been playing Civ4 that long and it appears I'll be in for more warring than ever before for a domination win in my current game, I opened up my most recent save and tried declaring on each of 3 civs, reloading in between each one. Declaring on Pacal, whom I recently took 4 cities from, added 1-2 war-weary (WW) in each of those 4 cities...seems fair. Declaring on Zara, with whom I have no accumulated WW points (anymore ), added no WW that I saw--OK.

But! (Re-)Declaring on Sury, from whom I very recently took 1 city, appeared to add 1 or 2 WW in that city (it's still in resistance), and added 1 WW in only 1 other city (out of 16 total other cities I have)--one of Pacal's former cities, and certainly not my largest, nor even close to being largest. And they're not in a master/vassal relationship .

 

[Roland Johansen]

After posting, I wondered whether I should edit that post to specify... I did mean +1 from WW, not "brothers of the faith" or wanting to join the motherland. It does have the +1 from the palace, but it also has +1 from "war, what is it good for" that the HE city doesn't have, even though they are both the same size and both have a jail.

I agree it's weird. But that's what I'm seeing.

I've noticed something like that a few times too. In the cases that I observed it could be explained by rounding effects. I'll explain.

What if the game first calculates the unhappiness percentage in a city (from all sources) and then applies it to the population (resulting in more unhappiness in bigger cities)? A size 20 city which would suffer 1% unhappiness due to foreign culture (want to join our mother country), 2% unhappiness due to religious issues (we won't fight our brothers and ...) and 3% unhappiness due to WW would have a total of 6% unhappiness which is equal to 1.2 population likely to be rounded down to 1 population. But how will this unhappiness be named? My guess is that the game decides for the biggest source of unhappiness in this case WW.
Another size 20 city which doesn't have foreign culture and religious problems would only suffer 0.6 unhappy people which is likely to be rounded down to 0 unhappiness.

But I'm not sure if it works that way. Maybe there is even an order in applying the type of unhappiness, maybe 1% WW unhappiness and 4% foreign culture unhappiness would still be named WW-unhappiness as long as the foreign culture unhappiness isn't a full pop point by itself.

 

[Timpanzee]

During the game you press Print Screen (or Prt Scr or something like that). Then, when you want to post the screenshot, you leave the game and find it in your computer. I think it changes depending on your OS, but on Vista it's going to be in "username\Documents\my games\Beyond the Sword\ScreenShots". Alright, then I suggest you open an account in one of the free image hosting services like Photobucket or Picoodle and upload your image there. Don't upload it to the forums, it looks crappy. Then, went you post, click "go advanced" or "post reply" and choose the icon that looks like a photograph. It will ask you for an address, just paste the address of your picture there.

Have I been clear? Sometimes I'm not, so feel free to ask if you don't understand.

Very clear. Thanks.

 

[jmas]

I've noticed something like that a few times too. In the cases that I observed it could be explained by rounding effects. I'll explain.

What if the game first calculates the unhappiness percentage in a city (from all sources) and then applies it to the population (resulting in more unhappiness in bigger cities)? A size 20 city which would suffer 1% unhappiness due to foreign culture (want to join our mother country), 2% unhappiness due to religious issues (we won't fight our brothers and ...) and 3% unhappiness due to WW would have a total of 6% unhappiness which is equal to 1.2 population likely to be rounded down to 1 population. But how will this unhappiness be named? My guess is that the game decides for the biggest source of unhappiness in this case WW.
Another size 20 city which doesn't have foreign culture and religious problems would only suffer 0.6 unhappy people which is likely to be rounded down to 0 unhappiness.

But I'm not sure if it works that way. Maybe there is even an order in applying the type of unhappiness, maybe 1% WW unhappiness and 4% foreign culture unhappiness would still be named WW-unhappiness as long as the foreign culture unhappiness isn't a full pop point by itself.

Good points about possible effects of rounding. Rounding could explain that peculiar effect I commented on in my last post about declaring on Sury, where I got +1 WW in a former city of Pacal's, but no in any of my other cities (setting aside Sury's former city). It could be that that city of Pacal's was very, very close to having an additional unhappy face (probably from "motherland"), and activating the 19 points of WW that I had with Sury took it over the threshold for that unhappy face, which the interface then labeled as "war, what is it good for."

Another thing I've noticed in my current game is that, when "war, what is it good for" has appeared in cities other than those of the civ that I'm beating up on, it has tended to be in the cities of mine that are closest to the fighting. For example, my capital has been closer to the fighting I've been doing in the last couple hundred years than the HE city... so maybe that's why the capital had a WW until I made peace with Pacal and the HE city did not. This could apply to the situation with declaring on Sury as well, since the city that got the unhappy face was probably the closest city to the fighting (Aksum might be just a little closer, and if it is then I suppose the reason that it didn't get was because it wasn't as close to the threshold for an additional ).

By the way, is "we will not fight against our brothers and sisters in the faith" unhappiness more severe if you are running the same (state) religion has your opponent? I am running free religion right now, but it looks like I will have to switch into the AP religion shortly to avoid the cities I've conquered being reassigned to their so-called "rightful" owners.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Good points about possible effects of rounding.

...

By the way, is "we will not fight against our brothers and sisters in the faith" unhappiness more severe if you are running the same (state) religion has your opponent? I am running free religion right now, but it looks like I will have to switch into the AP religion shortly to avoid the cities I've conquered being reassigned to their so-called "rightful" owners.

Ok, it seems that rounding would explain a lot then.

I don't know how the religious unhappiness is calculated. I have never taken a close look at it as it usually not a big problem and I almost never use free religion. Do you suffer from it in free religion?

Right owners? Might makes right!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Why is it when I select "auto-explore," the units just go in circles?

 

[LordValuna]

Why is it when I select "auto-explore," the units just go in circles?

back in civ2 if you did a goto across the international dateline the ship would go to dateline then head for the south pole

 

[Sisiutil]

Why is it when I select "auto-explore," the units just go in circles?

'Cause it's the AI and it's stupid.

 

[bestbrian]

It moves. Check RNG, "Which way to go?, goes that way, repeat, ad infinitum. This is why when you hit auto-explore, your scout beelines into territory YOU'VE ALREADY EXPLORED, usually to pet a friendly Bear.

 

[12tn2]

What do "farms spread irrigation" of Civil service and "enables bridge building" of Construction mean? I'm playing ver 1.0.

 

[dalamb]

• "farms spread irrigation": after Civil Service, you can farm land adjacent to a farm, not just adjacent to fresh water.
• "enables bridge building": before Construction, there effectively isn't a road across a river, so it costs a movement point to cross one. After, the road is "bridged" and you get its full effect even across rivers.