Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Ignorant Teacher]

Quick question: What is "stack attack"?

It's a game option you can turn on using CTRL+O. It means that, with a stack selected, you can simply send it to attack without having to attack with the units one by one. (You should bombard first). Very useful in MP, but I don't like it in SP because I'm not sure how it picks the order of the units.

This* is what one would call a "SoD" or "Stack of Doom".

*Not my pic.

Cute, but vulnerable to air units. As the AIs don't build a respectable airforce, it's unbeatable.

 

[Silv Something]

Wait a second: I got confused a little between Stack and Stack Attack. Never mind.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Cute, but vulnerable to air units. As the AIs don't build a respectable airforce, it's unbeatable.

I think that player would be especially annoyed if two or three tactical nukes would land on that stack just before invasion...

 

[Silu]

As far as I can tell when attacking with many units selected, the one with best odds goes first. Certainly not highest exp first. Also it prioritizes siege and flanker units, so don't mix those when using it.

The stack attack option by itself does nothing but order each unit to attack after each other if multiple are selected; as opposed to just 1 unit attacking per click if it's disabled. Nothing to do with the order.

It's quite good for bombardment&siege attack&cleanup. Saves lots of time.

 

[IAM]

Can colonies break away like voluntary vassals or are they more like war submitted vassals?

 

[Silv Something]

Why do civs become voluntary vassals? What are the requirements for it?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Can colonies break away like voluntary vassals or are they more like war submitted vassals?

I don't know into which case they fall, but they can surely break free. What makes it difficult is that they have a huge diplo bonus (+10 You have granted us independence) and that makes them like their masters very much. I've only seen a colony break free once, when the master nuked someone the colony liked very much a couple of times.

 

[jmas]

Wanted to respond Roland, though I know it's been a little while:

Spoiler :

My suggestion had less to do with the difficulty level. It just seems that combat is giving you a big edge in your games and tends to end your games early. If you want somewhat more balance and a longer game then these suggestions would help.

Bigger map: It typically takes about the same time to conquer a city, but when you capture 2 cities out of 20 of an AI on a huge map, then that will barely put a dent in that AI while if you capture 2 cities out of 6 of an AI on a small map, then that AI will be crippled.

Aggressive AI: The AI will focus more on military and less on economy. This can hurt the AI in the economic department a bit when you play on the lower levels. The AI barely notices the higher maintenance on the highest levels. The larger military will make it more costly to walk over AI's militarily and will make them capable to harm you militarily. So war becomes a relatively less attractive path to victory. It can even be so that it's best to let the other AI's fight while you try to stay out of it. However, I tend to do some aggressive fighting myself anyway. Wanna have some fun, right!

BetterAI: The mod improves the AI and thus makes the game harder. Especially the latest version seems to be a great leap in AI improvement. The gains in AI ability are militarily and economically. The military gains are more interesting to you, I guess.

Difficulty level: Of course, the difficulty level will make war tougher, but it more generally makes the game tougher, so it's not the change I was trying to suggest for your games.

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm starting to feel more open to less focus on military--I've been looking at threads on cultural and diplomatic victories (I had a Cultural win in Vanilla, and a Space win, but Space is a lot of work, no Diplo wins yet). In my last few games I found it hard to resist warfare, with excellent Globe drafting sites, having a tech lead, playing as Zara with his Oromos, or most recently Lincoln with PHI/CHA.

I think I will try, first, updating to 3.19 (I still have 3.17), then adding BetterAI and playing a game on Prince. It will probably be on Standard size or smaller, though. This last game on Standard size (a Shuffle--Continents, I think) with a lot of water between me and several AIs--took me longer than I would have liked. Granted I puttered around a lot trying to optimize cities, however, maneuvering lots of troops to rendezvous with galleons and then travel to invasion points, and keeping an eye out for any AI ships that might attack, added more "micro" than I really wanted. Also there is some lag on my computer when there are lots of units. I think "Small" size might be a nice contrast and more manageable--and I might make it Pangaea too! Probably Normal speed though. I don't think I'll use Aggressive AI yet, but maybe after a couple more games.

It's not so hard to merge BUG with BetterAI (there's a thread about it in the BetterAI forum).

I think I will have a look at that! I've heard it's not too hard.

By the way, you should of course play the game how you like it. Maybe you like early conquest victories the most and then you should definitely not make any changes to the settings. I just thought I caught a hint of the feeling 'it's a shame I never experience the late game because I tend to win early'.

Maybe, although I wasn't consciously aware of it. I've actually felt a bit of dread around what appears to me to be the greater complexity of the modern era, with corps, air units, more types of units, and what appears to be greater numbers of units in screenshots I've seen. But I may as well try out some new shiny things .

 

[Breunor]

Why do civs become voluntary vassals? What are the requirements for it?

Based on experience alone (I haven't looked at code or anything, so this is just an educated guess) voluntary vassalization usually comes with a fear of military conquest from another Civ. So a weak Civ will voluntarily vassalize itself to you or another Civ for protection, most likely to a Civ with whom it has relatively good relations.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Silv Something]

Thanks!

 

[DoubleCheck]

 

[Krath]

What exactly does 'working a tile' mean? I hear the term often on this site, and ingame, I notice that a Village will say 'Village must work to become Hamlet'. I don't really understand what this means though, so anyone care to enlighten me?

 

[kcd_swede]

Nice tips. I always forget you're playing against thinking people in MP. (I'm not being sarcastic). The dogpile suggestion is very good, thanks.

Please note that in competitive games (such as in a league or a ladder) the Free for all (FFA) games usually have rules that prohibit such activity. You might see "CTON" listed as a type of gameply. (CTON is the name of a player who came up with the set of rules). Basically, diplomacy is turned off. No trading, no nothing. And text messaging is prohibitted, so you cannot tell your buddy that "his stack is in the east" or whatever. It prevents team-making... because honestly, I (a mediocre player) could go online with my two sons (poor civ players) and mop the floor with the very best MP civver out there in a FFA. If its not a team game, teaming up (as Roland seemed to suggest) would unbalance the game so severely it wouldn't be any fun for anyone.

And that kind of stuff happens all the time on MP

Note: when MP games are good they are better than any SP game! But for every good MP game you will have to suffer through 5 lame ones (and for every lame one you will have to suffer through 5 interface-related problems, delays, reloads, out-of-sync events etc).

 

[Mallin]

What exactly does 'working a tile' mean? I hear the term often on this site, and ingame, I notice that a Village will say 'Village must work to become Hamlet'. I don't really understand what this means though, so anyone care to enlighten me?

It means which tiles or being used by the nearest city. When you go into city mode tiles within its two square radius are hilighted. The squares with circles around them are being used or "worked" by the city. Any improvement on these tiles benifets the city, if there is a farm being worked the city will get its food bonus. If there is a gold mine that is not circled you'll still get the gold bonus but the city will not recieve any comerce or production from it until it is being worked. The same holds true for cottages, with the addition that they will not grow until the tile is being used.
Cities start off using just one or two tiles but will work more as they grow. In the city mode you can also change which tiles are being worked which is useful for increasing production, wealth, and food to suit your needs.

 

[Krath]

It means which tiles or being used by the nearest city. When you go into city mode tiles within its two square radius are hilighted. The squares with circles around them are being used or "worked" by the city. Any improvement on these tiles benifets the city, if there is a farm being worked the city will get its food bonus. If there is a gold mine that is not circled you'll still get the gold bonus but the city will not recieve any comerce or production from it until it is being worked. The same holds true for cottages, with the addition that they will not grow until the tile is being used.
Cities start off using just one or two tiles but will work more as they grow. In the city mode you can also change which tiles are being worked which is useful for increasing production, wealth, and food to suit your needs.

I see, thank you! Another question thats kind of related to my previous. When I hover over a tile, for example a Plains tile, it'll show 3 1 for example. If I placed a Farm on that tile, which is +1 Food, that tile would produce 4 Food, but no Commerce, right? And if I placed a Cottage, which would give +1 Commerce, it would give +2 Commerce but no Food?

 

[Lord Parkin]

That's right, goodie huts stay around forever (at least until someone finds them). It is possible (although unlikely) that you may enter the industrial age with goodie huts still on the map. Granted, you would have to a large island/continent all to yourself, have very poor expansion skills, and never scout out the land around you.... so yeah, pretty unlikely.

And yes, the AI is pretty good at finding them, so don't waste any time.

Some map types lend themselves to a lot of late goody huts. Terra, for instance... the new world is full of goody huts when you head over there around Optics/Astronomy.

Two questions regarding MP:

1- What is FFA?

2- How do you position your troops? If you keep a single SOD, the others can see where it is and attack you in the other side of your empire, if you spread your forces all around your land, they can attack you anywhere with a big SOD and you won't have time to group them to fight them off.

Roland already answered these, but just an additional tip: Generally it's best to try to strike first if at all possible. If you're keeping them busy by invading their territory, it doesn't matter so much if your homeland isn't so strongly defended, because (usually, unless they're a very good player indeed) they will be concentrating solely on trying to get you out of their lands rather than sending in their own invasion.

Of course this doesn't work so well when the number of human players in the game goes up, or when you're in the middle of a continent full of players. It's just a fact of life in MP Civ that a nation on the edge of a continent with only one shared border has it easier than a nation in the middle with four or five shared borders.

Diplomacy is probably even more important in multiplayer games. You can't single handedly defeat all the human opponents at once. You can't hope to win when surrounded by enemies from the start of the game. So you need to make deals with several of the human players, maybe to take out another player together or for other reasons. If multiple human players combine their forces against you, then you're in trouble.

This is true, although from experience I've found that diplomacy is usually a minor to non-factor in fast-paced online games. Diplomacy only becomes the heart of the game in much slower-paced games, like PBEM and Pitboss.

But I don't know how much time there really is for making deals. In the tabletop boardgames that I've played with human opponents, deals are typically extremely important. No one is capable of winning those games by themselves.

It's definitely similar in Civ, especially with more players. Once you start getting to 3 or 4 people, and especially when you get up to 16-18 or more, diplomacy starts to become a key aspect to the game. Nobody can hope to win an 18 player megagame by themselves without making some kind of deals along the way with other players.

I see, thank you! Another question thats kind of related to my previous. When I hover over a tile, for example a Plains tile, it'll show 3 1 for example. If I placed a Farm on that tile, which is +1 Food, that tile would produce 4 Food, but no Commerce, right? And if I placed a Cottage, which would give +1 Commerce, it would give +2 Commerce but no Food?

Not sure what you're saying here. Let's say we start with your 3 1 tile. If you build a farm, that tile will get +1 , making it 4 1 . If you build a cottage, the tile will give +1 , making it 3 2 .

In essence, farms/cottages/etc add extra benefits ON TOP of the basic tile yield. Does that make sense?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Please note that in competitive games (such as in a league or a ladder) the Free for all (FFA) games usually have rules that prohibit such activity. You might see "CTON" listed as a type of gameply. (CTON is the name of a player who came up with the set of rules). Basically, diplomacy is turned off. No trading, no nothing. And text messaging is prohibitted, so you cannot tell your buddy that "his stack is in the east" or whatever. It prevents team-making... because honestly, I (a mediocre player) could go online with my two sons (poor civ players) and mop the floor with the very best MP civver out there in a FFA. If its not a team game, teaming up (as Roland seemed to suggest) would unbalance the game so severely it wouldn't be any fun for anyone.

And that kind of stuff happens all the time on MP

Note: when MP games are good they are better than any SP game! But for every good MP game you will have to suffer through 5 lame ones (and for every lame one you will have to suffer through 5 interface-related problems, delays, reloads, out-of-sync events etc).

Hmm, this is the reason why I started my post with 'I don't play multiplayer games'. It shows that I don't know about the conventional rules.

I must say that your post only strengthens my resolve to never play these kind of multiplayer games. It seems that the game is reduced to a military conflict as any other type of contact with your neighbours is prohibited. I do understand why these rules exist, but still a huge part of the game is removed due to these rules. I would think that there would be other better games to play to just enjoy military conflict.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Hmm, this is the reason why I started my post with 'I don't play multiplayer games'. It shows that I don't know about the conventional rules.

I must say that your post only strengthens my resolve to never play these kind of multiplayer games. It seems that the game is reduced to a military conflict as any other type of contact with your neighbours is prohibited. I do understand why these rules exist, but still a huge part of the game is removed due to these rules. I would think that there would be other better games to play to just enjoy military conflict.

I wholly agree that multiplayer games are far more enjoyable (at least for me personally) when there is a good diplomatic aspect on the side. Negotiating trades, border agreements, military alliances and the like just adds to the fun in my opinion.

But every person to their own.

 

[Roland Johansen]

But every person to their own.

Of course. I should have ended my post with a similar statement.

 

[Yibbledorf]

I think I did the stupidest thing ever in a game possible.
I lost my capital. To barbs.
More backstory: Well, I was playing as Justinian, and I had three cities. I got a warning that barb axemen were heading towards my capital, which was only defended by a warrior, so I got to building an axeman myself to defend. However, my only copper mine was right next to one of Qin Shi Huang's cities, and when the city's borders popped I lost my copper, thus stopping all progress. Being rather pissed by now, I could only watch as my capital was overtaken. And I quit.

After starting another game with Pacal, I really wanted to go back to the Justinian game, as I don't like to see a game abandoned. So should I try and erase my error in the old game, or should I just not bother? I still have a save file from before the barbs, so maybe it could be salvaged. Any opinions or comments?