Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

I was reading through a post somewhere that said making a Trade arrangement with an AI will prevent either side from declaring war for 10 Turns.

I made a Trade to Huyana Capec (sic?) for some desperately needed coal, and I was only able to do about 4-5 turns of railroad construction before he suddenly declared war on me..

wth? =\

what about this? was that 10 turn thing I read out of date or something?
 
what about this? was that 10 turn thing I read out of date or something?

Trades will not give enforced 10 turns of peace. Giving in to requests or demands gives 10 turns of enforced peace. This works for the AI as well as the human player. Gifts (giving or receiving) do not give enforced peace either.

Basically you are demanding that tech or gold or resource in trade for 10 turns peace. But if you are getting something else for what you ask (or vice versa) then it is a trade and you've already gotten what you bargained for so peace isn't part of the deal.

Trades can alter relations so that the AI becomes "Friendly" and won't start planning a war against you. (Each AI has different threshold for this... you can find in strategy section). However, if the war was planned before he/she was friendly towards you, they could DOW you even if they become Friendly before the actual onset of hostilities.

The way to see if an AI is already planned to go to war is to enter diplomacy with them and hover over the "declare war on X" icon on his side of the screen. If the action is denied with the saying "We have enough on our hands right now" (WHEOOHRN) and the AI isn't already at war with someone else... they are planning a war on somebody. BUFFY/BUG mods will give you an easy indication of when an AI goes into war planning mode saving you the trouble of opening diplo with each AI every turn just to find out. The same info is still there if you know how to use it... just easier to manage with the mentioned mods.
 
^thanks. I'm lookin forward to using the BUG Mod with my next game.

what level of relations constitutes 'friendly'

I'm pretty sure I had a +4 or +5, plus a nice trade deal, with Huyana Capec b4 he declared war..
 
When their mood towards you is "Friendly", then they're friendly :)
 
^thanks. I'm lookin forward to using the BUG Mod with my next game.

what level of relations constitutes 'friendly'

I'm pretty sure I had a +4 or +5, plus a nice trade deal, with Huyana Capec b4 he declared war..

I think he means the + # of Diplo that it takes. It varies from leader to leader on this. The more Warlike ones will take more points whereas the more peaceful ones will be lower.
 
Maybe this has been said before, but what the hell...here goes:
If you build your city on -top- of a resource (sheep, corn, etc) do you still get all the benefits of exploiting it via city radius with your citizens?
I've never tried to do it, but on a couple of ocassions it seemed the ideal place between 3 resources, with the one in the middle spot-on for a city.
Thanks!
 
more questions!

--what factors decide what Techs are available to steal? I have had a spy in Ragnar's territory for 5 turns, and I can still only see Divine Right. but he has 3 or 4 other techs I don't have (yes I'm gettin pwned!)

I have No Tech Brokering turned ON.

I have good EP against Ragnar. ahead by 1k or so I think.
 
Maybe this has been said before, but what the hell...here goes:
If you build your city on -top- of a resource (sheep, corn, etc) do you still get all the benefits of exploiting it via city radius with your citizens?
I've never tried to do it, but on a couple of ocassions it seemed the ideal place between 3 resources, with the one in the middle spot-on for a city.
Thanks!

you definitely still access the resource and get the happy faces or health bonuses.

however, you won't get as much yield out of it as you would if it were a workable square.

(I think!)
 
you definitely still access the resource and get the happy faces or health bonuses.

however, you won't get as much yield out of it as you would if it were a workable square.

(I think!)
You are correct, sir.

Generally, it's :smoke: to settle on top of a food tile like wheat or bananas, as food is king in this game and you won't get nearly the yield from it as you would by farming it. Sugar, deer, and spices don't provide as much food, but I would still recommend plantations over settling on top of them if at all possible. Ditto (usually) for high commerce tiles like gems, gold, silver, and dye.

High production tiles (copper, iron, horses) are more of a judgment call: once again, you won't get the yields by improving the tile, but you make the resource pretty much pillage-proof. I prefer to work the tile myself and take my chances with barbs and AI enemies, as fighting them provides valuable XPs.

The more mediocre resource tiles are very commonly settled upon (ivory, wine, silk, furs, etc.). You're not missing much by forgoing their yields, and you ensure that as soon as you have the necessary tech, you have instant access to the resource.
 
How do you fix OOS errors?

Had a crash tonight, rejoined the game with friends and I was OOS. I rejoined again, still OOS. Is a reload of the game meant to fix this? And if it doesn't, do we have to give up a 13 hour game? :|
 
--what factors decide what Techs are available to steal? I have had a spy in Ragnar's territory for 5 turns, and I can still only see Divine Right. but he has 3 or 4 other techs I don't have (yes I'm gettin pwned!)

I have No Tech Brokering turned ON.

I have good EP against Ragnar. ahead by 1k or so I think.
I believe that you must have the :espionage: points for the Tech in question if you're going to get the option to steal it. So if a Tech costs you 2000 :espionage: and you only have 1500 :espionage:, then that Tech won't be listed among the ones you can choose from.

I'm not sure what the No Tech Brokering setting will do as to stealing (a really good question in itself, by the way!), but it would very well be that you can only steal what Ragnar (in this case) has researched himself. But still I doubt it.

One more thing about stealing Techs (and about any :espionage: mission): always let the Spy unit be stationary for 5 consecutive turns before attempting any mission! Because then you'll be getting the full -50% discount on :espionage: points!

If you need to catch up to a rival civ in Technology, have your :gp: spawning cities (the ones that produce to most :gp: points, you can look this up in the City Advisor) run Spy specialists (with a Courthouse, for example). Eventually (well, hopefully) you'll get a Great Spy. Use this unit to "infiltrate" the enemy (and receive say 3000 :espionage: points, depending on game speed, I believe) and have 10-20 regular Spy units ready. Move these unit into the closest enemy city and have them wait for the full 5 turns. Depending on the distance, the game speed and the game era (Techs get increasingly expensive) you might be able to steal up to 10 Techs in one single turn, at a cost of say 300 :espionage: points each on average (with the discounts from distance and stationary Spy units).

This strategy gets less and less effective over time, though, as Techs get more and more expensive. It's really not worth-while to go through the trouble of creating Great Spies if you only get one or two Techs, and eventually the :espionage: points won't even add up to one single Tech. By then you should, of course, already have a Tech lead of your own.
 
That's great, thanks for the info about the resources.
As soon as I remember another of the questions that arise during mid-game I'll come back to this excellent thread ;P
 
more questions!

--what factors decide what Techs are available to steal? I have had a spy in Ragnar's territory for 5 turns, and I can still only see Divine Right. but he has 3 or 4 other techs I don't have (yes I'm gettin pwned!)

I have No Tech Brokering turned ON.

I have good EP against Ragnar. ahead by 1k or so I think.

Baldyr already answered this one. I just wanted to remark that it is quite possible to 'see' enemy technologies while you don't have an amount of espionage points equal to the technology cost of the technology. You can get quite large discounts on the cost of stealing a technology when you have created a large amount of espionage points during the game and have focussed your technological progress around stealing technologies. Also the presence of your state religion in the enemy city will help. (More about these costs can be found in this post. There's a lot more interesting info in that thread.) As long as you have the espionage points needed to steal the technology (which is largely based on the research cost), you will be able to steal it (with the following additional limitation).

There's one additional limitation: you can only steal those technologies that you can research. The only technologies from your opponents that you can see available for trading are those that you can research so this cannot be the reason that you cannot steal technologies that you know your opponent has. However, an opponent can be a lot more advanced than you might think by just looking at the tech trade sereen.
 
Need a bit of help interpreting some of the AI signals. Justinian, my religious brother and closest neighbour suddenly took away the option to trade Feudalism "we don't want to start trading away..." and the fist appeared by his name. Has he met some new guy and instantly wants to beat him up or might he be coming after me? There are about 9 of us on the continent, and he isn't annoyed at anyone. Cautious at the four heathens, pleased with me (due to -2 close borders, possibly), and friendly with the other 3 Buddhist nations. Should I switch to military? It's Monarch, playing as Pacal and I'm top of the leaderboard and he's second, if releveant.
 
How do you attack a Civ with 6 vassals!? It seems impossible without Nukes... :sad:

Can you get other AI's to dogpile them?

Can you launch a city razing war? I often do this with superpowers on other continents. I'll attack their largest coastal cities directly from ships, raze them and pillage the area, then retreat back to my ships. Do that with 4 or 5 coastal cities and you cripple the civ plus more importantly cripple their ability to produce a large threatening navy.

Get your own group of vassals and load them up with military techs.

Whatever you do I would concentrate on destroying the core civ, not just attack their vassals.
 
You are correct, sir.

Generally, it's :smoke: to settle on top of a food tile like wheat or bananas, as food is king in this game and you won't get nearly the yield from it as you would by farming it. Sugar, deer, and spices don't provide as much food, but I would still recommend plantations over settling on top of them if at all possible. Ditto (usually) for high commerce tiles like gems, gold, silver, and dye.

High production tiles (copper, iron, horses) are more of a judgment call: once again, you won't get the yields by improving the tile, but you make the resource pretty much pillage-proof. I prefer to work the tile myself and take my chances with barbs and AI enemies, as fighting them provides valuable XPs.

The more mediocre resource tiles are very commonly settled upon (ivory, wine, silk, furs, etc.). You're not missing much by forgoing their yields, and you ensure that as soon as you have the necessary tech, you have instant access to the resource.

I agree with everything here except for the listing of Fur as being a "mediocre resource". They are accessed with a cheap tech (Hunting), tend to come in bunches (3 or 4 or more is not uncommon), and provide a very respectable amount of commerce once Camped. I love my Beaver. ;)
 
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