Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions
- Thread starter Civrules
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Eliz
Chieftain
I recently bought beyond the sword. I've been trying to play the defense scenario/mod but all I can seem to do is build a city. I can't seem to buy any units, technologies anything. So I have an empty city and a lion comes over and defeats me. Am I being stupid or is there some bug?
I can see the tech tree but don't seem to be research anything. The only city improvements (?) I can see are city ruins and tribal village .
I can see the tech tree but don't seem to be research anything. The only city improvements (?) I can see are city ruins and tribal village .
Hi, I just started playing Civ4 BTS a few days ago, this is actually the first turn based strategy game I'm playing too. I have a whole lot of questions but I've been reading some newbie guides and they've been helping a lot. I've read Sisiutul's guide and the "winning noble" guide on the strategy forum. So 2 questions for now:
1. What settings/map do most people play on?
2. Do you happen to know anymore good guides?
1. What settings/map do most people play on?
2. Do you happen to know anymore good guides?
I asked the same question a few days ago and it seems like people enjoy playing what they enjoy playing. I looked at the hall of fame for settings and it has a nice verity. Personally I enjoy Continents standard size and normal speed and sometimes fractal.
IAM
Emperor
Earth 2, Huge map, marathon speed, raging barbarians
Silv Something
Pi(e) Loving Maniac
In vanilla, if you control the holy city of a religion, (you do not have to have the shrine) when that religion spreads to a foreign city you can "see" the city and the 8 tiles around it as if you had a unit stationed there. This even works if you are at war with that civ. You can't do this in BtS. There might even have been a patch that changed this in vanilla, but I'm not sure.
That's weird. I don't know about that scenario, but it is very strange.
Just about everything in the War Academy is useful, and not all of it is about war. Just a catchier name than the "Peace Academy".
Roland Johansen
Deity
In vanilla civ4 and the first expansion pack warlords, it works as Silv Something says. In the second expansion pack, BTS, this mechanic is replaced by an expanded espionage mechanic. In BTS, you can acquire espionage points and if you reach a certain threshold of espionage points against a foreign civilisation, then you see their cities. However, even in BTS, it still helps when you control the holy city of a religion that has spread to foreign cities. In this case the cost of all espionage missions against those cities is lowered among which the 'sight' effect.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Everyone has their favourites. I'm fond of marathon speed on archipelago maps with snaky continents and low sea levels--lots of interesting choke points and canal possibilities. I usually play a custom game with advanced start (avoids the boredom of the first 100 turns on marathon), choose religions (for flavour/slightly more historical accuracy), and random personalities (making the AI a little less easier to predict).
All of mine.
Seriously, as Silv Something suggested, check out the war academy. I recommend choosing one article at a time that catches your interest and/or addresses something in your game you'd like to improve. Play a game or two and apply the article's lessons. When you feel like you've incorporated what you've learned into your game, come back to the war academy and repeat the process with another article.as far as the spaceship parts, the different 'types' for each part. does it matter what you choose?
at first I wasn't paying attention, but then I noticed the Docking Bay and Stasis Chamber fit together a certain way, and I was like "oh crap! is there a specific combination for these things? is my spaceship goin to blow up on the way because I put the wrong combination of doohickies on there?"
so, is it?
at first I wasn't paying attention, but then I noticed the Docking Bay and Stasis Chamber fit together a certain way, and I was like "oh crap! is there a specific combination for these things? is my spaceship goin to blow up on the way because I put the wrong combination of doohickies on there?"
so, is it?
3drawegroeg
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2009
- Messages
- 77
Can I destroy a tile improvement? I want to let my Angkor Wat city return to nature.
Yeah, if you take a unit and use the pillage option on it. You have to use a military unit to do it though.
yes vassals do count. it explains it in the Cpedia. /Game Concepts/Vassalage
-make more cats than anything else. they will die. first bombard defense to 0, then attack with some catapults. after a few, check with your Melee/Gpowder units what the odds are, and check the health level of the enemy. you will lose a few catapults, but as the defender health gets low, your cats have a greater chance to survive.
-use your Axemen and Macemen to finish the city. if you do it right, they will hardly ever die. so...
this way, you should be able to mop up a whole region with a good stack of 10 Melee units, just keep the catapults spamming. (don't worry about cities with promotions for the cats too much... maybe a couple of special cats u want to use only when u think they'll survive.)
-but, make sure you make some longbows or something to garrison the cities with.
YES, there is such a thing as too much whipping. you will get some unhappiness each time you do. sometimes, you will get a slave revolt. heavy garissons can help to prevent this. however, just be careful how much you whip, pay attention to the happy faces, and you'll be okay.
also, sometimes it's better to kill off citizens to keep the Happy Faces more than the Sad... sometimes it works out that way, if cities start getting too populated before you have enough happy face buildings.
this is a good question for its own thread.
Roland Johansen
Deity
No new traits were added in BTS, so there's no new traits file in BTS. The Warlords version is the one you need to use as it is the most recent one and the one used by BTS.
By the way, this is more a question about modding which belongs more in the Creation and Customization forum.
No. It's just graphics which allow you to design your own look for the space ship. It doesn't have any influence on the success rate of the ship.
1) Yes, they add half their land and population towards your victory goals.
2) There's no right answer to this. If your enemy sends a hundred units into your lands after you've declared war, then you'd better have some normal units to actually kill them as the catapults and trebuchets can only wound them. But you'd better have some siege units too as they will have to weaken that mega stack of 100 units before you attack with normal units.
In general, you'll typically lose the siege units as they fight the first battles and afterwards you'll have to mop up with normal units. The normal units are also used to defend the siege units, so you need enough of them to do that.
A typical war pattern for me is this:
a) Declare war or be declared upon and wait until the big stack of units of the enemy arrives.
b) Assemble a large force of units to defeat the large enemy stack near the expected attack area of the enemy. This force needs sufficient units to weaken the enemy stack (say at least 1 siege unit for every 5 enemy units) and lots of normal units to mop up the enemy in a reasonable amount of time (at least 1 normal unit for every 2 enemy units). It is required that I can hit first (which is reasonable as I have the advantage of my roads) as I need the collateral damage effect of siege units to win with less units against the enemy numerical superiority. Note that these values are the bare minimum and more is certainly better.
c) Move onto an enemy city with a force consisting of
-enough siege units to remove the defence bonus of the city in 1 or maybe 2 turns
-enough siege units to weaken the defenders
-enough normal units to defend the stack against enemy reinforcements and mop up the weakened defenders
-1 or 2 healers
It depends a bit on the era of the game how many siege units you need to crack the defence bonus and weaken the city defenders. This value is different when the enemy has a city with a castle and 12 drill promoted longbowmen than a city with only a 40% culture defence bonus (and not even walls) and 2 unpromoted longbowmen. You can calculate how much defence is removed per bombardment of the siege units and thus calculate how long it takes to remove the entire defence bonus. And you need to have at least one siege unit for every defender (except when the enemy has many defenders, then you need less).
d) Keep building new units to reinforce the attack stack. You'll lose mostly siege units, so you need to replace them or your attack will come to a halt. Move the replacement units in groups towards your attack force so they're not vulnerable to attacks from lone enemy units.
3) Whipping causes unhappiness for 10 turns per whipping (normal game speed value) and kills population. Both are very negative effects and thus of course you can do too much whipping.
In general, it's better to have a big populous size 10 city which is using many improved tiles than a size 2 city which has whipped several buildings. The first city will have a much greater output of hammers and commerce. However, there are also limits to using improved tiles namely the happiness cap, health cap and the worker force needed to improve tiles. That last factor can be largely controlled and thus shouldn't be a main issue. But the happiness cap and health cap are often hard to increase and when the city is going to grow above these caps, then it's better to do something with this growth than let it go to waste. This is where whipping allows you to convert excess population into hammers and thus buildings or units. But creating buildings and units just because you can whip is not a great move. The strength of a city has two main contributing elements: the value produced by the sum of its tiles and the multipliers offered by the buildings in the city. If one of these values is small, then then the product of these values won't be significant.
There are several exceptions to the above:
- A granary and to a lesser extent a lighthouse can significantly contribute to the growth of a city. So whipping these buildings makes the city smaller in the short term but larger in the long term. So whipping offers an extra building and a bigger city in the long term.
- Whipping a courthouse in a distant city can be a good move as the cost of the city can be crippling before the courthouse. This is typically true for a conquered distant city which is going to starve anyway.
- Whipping something crucial like units to defend yourself against eminent disaster.
In most other situations, you will mainly want to whip in a sustainable manner close to the happiness and health caps. You'll want the growth of the city over 10 turns (the unhappiness period) to make up for the population loss of the whipping.
One last remark: an instance of whipping causes 1 unhappiness and removes several population points. If you use it when you're at the happiness cap and only whip a single population point, then you're still at the happiness cap which will be a problem when the city grows. So it's better to whip 2 or more population points and regrow them as the unhappiness dissipates. Usually whipping more than 2 population points take too long to regrow.
dumppldontalk
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2010
- Messages
- 3
Is it always advantageous to increase ur cities population cos im struggling to support the population as the city im building is production based, i do not have enough land to build farms to support. So in this case, is it normal to have cities with a stagnant population?
Roland Johansen
Deity
That depends on many factors among which the happiness and health cap and the exact nature of the land surrounding the city. It's a waste to not use good tiles because you haven't constructed enough farms, but it's also a waste to build farms when you're close to the happiness and health caps or when the extra tiles are poor.
In general, a tile that can be made to have a food + hammer output of greater or equal to 3 is going to be useful to a hammer city when this city has the capability to use the tile (enough happiness and health).
So show us a screenshot of the city view.
Zeusophobia
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2005
- Messages
- 29
Are the combat results pre-determined? I ask this because I am perplexed after what I've just seen. Here's the story - I'm HC, neighbouring me is Isabella. Early in the game, she decides to build a city in a really annoying place, so I decide to declare war and to raze the city at once. My Quechua against her Warrior - apparantly a 70% chance of success. I lose, naturally I'm a little annoyed, particularly when I have just lost 2 previous Quechua to barbarian bears. So I decide to reload the game. I lose again. I have kept doing this and I'm on my 9th attempt of actually winning the so called '70% chance'
So I have done 8 tries, with 3/10th's of a chance of losing each time, that's 6561/100000000 of a chance of those 8 consecutive fails occuring. Near impossible, and I've just done a few more tries, failed each time. What only proves my point further is that Isabella's Warrior is left with 0.7/2 strength every single time, as I had a scout nearby to see this.
Why is it that they show a 70% chance when in fact, I was fated to lose every single time? I thought the combat system was bad enough as it is, now are they telling me that the luck-based system isn't in fact true at all?
So I have done 8 tries, with 3/10th's of a chance of losing each time, that's 6561/100000000 of a chance of those 8 consecutive fails occuring. Near impossible, and I've just done a few more tries, failed each time. What only proves my point further is that Isabella's Warrior is left with 0.7/2 strength every single time, as I had a scout nearby to see this.
Why is it that they show a 70% chance when in fact, I was fated to lose every single time? I thought the combat system was bad enough as it is, now are they telling me that the luck-based system isn't in fact true at all?
Roland Johansen
Deity
All games use so called pseudo random number generators to generate random values. These aren't truly random values but they're very very close to being truly random. They're actually created by mathematical formulas which generate a new 'random' value out of the previous 'random' value used by the game. The previous random value is called the seed of the new random value. This previous random value, the seed is stored in the save game file so that reloading creates the exact same random value and doesn't create different results (as long as the random values are used in the same order for the same in game actions).
This doesn't mean that some results in the game are predetermined in the sense that you can predict the outcome of a random event based on previous events. No one will be able to accurately predict new events in the game based on previous events. However, if you've already seen the outcome of an event and reload the game to the moment before the event, then the outcome will be the same.
To allow people to cheat the random number generation and get different outcomes for events that they've already experienced, the game designers have allowed a special pre-game setting (in the custom game setup) called 'New random seed on reload'. If used exhaustively, this could even allow you to win any battle if you're willing to reload after every battle loss. Many other elements of the game are also controlled by random values, so these could also be controlled by reloading ad infinitum.
Many players consider reloading cheating and especially when the option 'New random seed on reload' is active. It isn't allowed in the 'Hall of Fame' competition or the 'Game of the Month' competition in this community, but there's no harm done when you use it for your private games. Be warned however, that most players in this community won't consider your victories in this game 'true victories' and that using reloading to change events can become addictive which will eventually lessen your enjoyment of the game as you spend more time reloading than playing the game. But as long as you use it for your private games, it's your business and no-one else's.
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