Quick Questions and Answers

[nascarfan999]

3)
5) Trade route yield is based on amount of cities connected. That's all.

I am pretty sure some people have said it is also dependent on the size of the cities, which seems in line with what I've observed, but I don't know.

 

[Guardian_PL]

My first post, and a couple quick questions:

1a) Is there any benefit to capturing a city state other than to appease some other city states request? They seem more valuable as allies with their benefits rather than as some puppet state to me, am I doing anything wrong? Do you get the benefits they offer as allies if you capture them or something?
1b) Declaring that you will protect a city state - whats the point? It doesn't seem to increase their happiness with them, is it just to warn other civ's not to mess with them? If so, has this protection notice proved useful in anyone's game here?

Great Scientist use. I settled 4 or so in the last game and am now thinking it is a waste as the last turn in nearly all of research targets had a huge beacker overflow - if these beakers are lost then I may as well just used them on the spot. I also tried slingshotting to a tech in another age once (I had all the prerequisites) yet I was not able to choose the tech.. so..

2a) Is there beaker overflow in the game??
2b) Is there some kind of a restriction to using your GS in a current age tech?

Domination victory. On a standard map size with standard time, I have yet to see the Industrial Age before these wins on King. This last game was odd, I had all the capitals but 2, Monte's and Siam's. Monte was left, but his original capital was under China's control. China was left, I had her capital. Lastly, Siam was left with his original capital as well. So only Siam had his original capital. Monte asks me to declare war on siam and I tell him 10 turns. 10 turns come, I declare war, Monte takes Siam's capital and then the game is immediately over - I won by domination??

3a) How does a domination victory work? I read somewhere in the game that it requires every civilization to have lost their original capital city - but it never explicitely said to one civilization (which is what I thought it was, and always played as such). This would make sense of this weird win; Monte had no original capital but he had Siam's, China had no orignal Capital but she had Monte's, Siam had just lost his capital and I had all the rest.
3b) Does domination get tougher past King? I'll find out soon as I need a challenge, but curious as to what I can expect.

4) In the upcoming patch notes it says we can sell off obsolete buildings. Since I have never seen the industrial age, am just curious as to what buildings become obsolete with age? Just stables?

5) Trade route yield, is the income based on distance from capital, or the cities own wealth, or the cities size, or..?

@1a)
No, not really. However - they might have an awesome city spot, with gold/silver etc that you feel could work better under your heelwise rule - Marketplace+Mint+3xgold/silver is money powerhouse. If it's like next to your capital some other player (AI is too dumb atm, but in multi it matters) may buy it into ally, declare on you and cause some trouble. You might be boxed in and have room for like two cities - then conquering a CS might be a viable option.
But so far I conquer them almost exclusively only when two other CS's want that particular CS dead.

@1b)
In my opinion it's one of many useless features right now (like advisors for instance), possibly to use in Multi to let others know to leave particular CS alone (but you can do the same through chat). If other AI wouldn't be psychotic idiots then protecting CS could prevent them from conquering your ally.
From my experience if you're like 1st in the army size then declaring protection over a CS deters other AI's from attacking it. But tbh if you're first in army size than you've already won and should move up to Deity

@2a)no
@2b)no

@3 vide Bybloshex' post
I guess on Deity Domination is harder cause you have to mow down bazillion of AI's units in order to get to a capital, but at the same time because they wage war with each other like pack of rabid dogs you often have to conquer one or two capitals to win domination (which is completely stupid imo), so it's kind of even-steven, it just drags on longer.

@4 vide Bybloshex's post

@5 Trade route yield is roughly equal to (Connected Non-capital City Size * 1.25). For more information read this thread.


Lastly, welcome to civfanatics!

 

[kataran]

Thanks for the replies! I have one more question. Is it considered an exploit/cheap if you make trade deals with a civ on the same turn that you declare war with them?

If the civ I want to attack is sitting on 700 gold (or even 100g, I don't care), I'll trade them anything I have for them, including luxury resources I only have one of. My happiness will plummet, I declare war, I get all the resources back, my happiness is back to normal, and I have a ton of gold while my opponent now has none. It seems like a huge exploit, but at the same time, why would I want my opponent to have a gold advantage at the start of a war? Is such a strategy common behanviour?

 

[Guardian_PL]

Thanks for the replies! I have one more question. Is it considered an exploit/cheap if you make trade deals with a civ on the same turn that you declare war with them?

If the civ I want to attack is sitting on 700 gold (or even 100g, I don't care), I'll trade them anything I have for them, including luxury resources I only have one of. My happiness will plummet, I declare war, I get all the resources back, my happiness is back to normal, and I have a ton of gold while my opponent now has none. It seems like a huge exploit, but at the same time, why would I want my opponent to have a gold advantage at the start of a war? Is such a strategy common behanviour?

It's not that much of an exploit as to sell freshly-conquered cities in rebellion at size 2 for 70gpt and/or 1500 gold to another AI, signing research agreement and declaring a turn later to get the tech (will be fixed in next patch) or basically that AI always accepting resources trade, regardless of its own happiness, strategic resources amount or gold.
Also, this brilliantly coded AI we've got has only three stances for signing peace - first stage "give me all you've got!", second stage "peace for peace, nothing else" and third stage "I'll give everything I have for peace". Just bash the units it'll churn out at you and wait for the third stage.

One note - beware from selling all luxuries you've got - they might not come back and you'll be left hanging ^^

If you want to have remote fun from the game, play on Immortal. When it'll get too easy (and it will, quite fast) switch to Deity and get bored to death with skeetshooting contest.

 

[Zlater]

Can anybody tell me if they have seen a modder come up with a way to edit saved games like the old world builder did? I have tried to make a mod with starting points and units but it doesnt seem to work. I just want the ability to add some units and tech to different civs in the game.

 

[DrakenKin]

Just bash the units it'll churn out at you and wait for the third stage.

Often they never reach that stage. My last game (on king difficulty) I had 3 units surrounding montezuma's last city (not even the capitol), he had no troops and no workers and the city was half dead, yet he would not give anything but straight up peace for peace. I tried asking for 1 gold, one single gold for peace and he still refused.

 

[viator]

MOD BROWSER GOES BLANK PROBLEM

I'd really like to install this mod, but it seems you can't do it from this page as there's no file attached, and my mod browser doesn't work at all...

still no attached file in the OP! Please!
Mod browser is not working, after some few seconds it goes all blank...

THE SOLUTION I found on the 2K Forum:

if you are using a router, and the router has its own firewall on, it causes problems.
At your own risk of course turn off your router's firewall, BUT not the windows one!

Maybe something to put in this QandA thread?

Well, I hope it helps some of you,
Greetings
Viator

 

[Guardian_PL]

Just bash the units it'll churn out at you and wait for the third stage.

Often they never reach that stage. My last game (on king difficulty) I had 3 units surrounding montezuma's last city (not even the capitol), he had no troops and no workers and the city was half dead, yet he would not give anything but straight up peace for peace. I tried asking for 1 gold, one single gold for peace and he still refused.

That's another great invention of CivRev2 Civ5 squad - on GDC 2010 conference Meier is talking about this "awesome" concept of Moral Clarity (roughly 13mins in) that when you're about to finish off a civ the AI acts tough so you won't feel guilty for wiping its civilization - it was to streamline the experience, so you won't have to think too much if it's right or wrong to act in such way.

And that's is also why you haveonly these three stages of peace treaty with "diplo" in Civ5 - it's streamlined so you won't have to ponder what's the situation - you go to the AI and it tells you "RAAARGH! Me strong! You give me yours!!!", or it says "RAAAARGH! My is same as yours, too much thinking for you to win, call it peace now and come to kill me laterrrr!!!", and eventually "RAAARGH! You strong! I give you all mine, you win!!!". Finally, when there's nothing to give away to the player the "No moral dilemma" thing kicks in and AI stays defiant to let you finish it without all this unnecessary thinking if it's good or bad to make mass genocide.

Probably same "streamlining" was applied to religion and slavery - mainstream audience don't want to deal with such tiresome (dangerous) concepts, they just want to have fun!

 

[ByblosHex]

Often they never reach that stage. My last game (on king difficulty) I had 3 units surrounding montezuma's last city (not even the capitol), he had no troops and no workers and the city was half dead, yet he would not give anything but straight up peace for peace. I tried asking for 1 gold, one single gold for peace and he still refused.

That's because there is a difference between you requsting peace, and him requesting peace.

 

[DrakenKin]

He was the one requesting peace initially. I then tried to negotiate but he would not concede to anything.

And I watched that video and I disagree on a lot of what he says. You can have a civ leader pay you to survive, without having that "please don't hurt us we are weak and have women and children dying" moral dilema. It is the same as when you talk to a civ leader and he says "I know i am staring at the face of defeat"... you can have elegant loss without going into the begging and hard decisions... not that would bother me anyway, it would give some taste to a conquest victory, nothing like seeing your enemies tremble. (Just add an option to disable this for the faint hearted, just like some games have an option for gore.)

I also don't like his views in general. Sure you might make games that sell better, but giving in to the most common denominator and trying to make the most illiterate gamer happy (check his math example, he obviously agrees that some of the gamers he tries to accommodate are just idiots) is no way to design a civ game. His first creations might have all been flawed somehow, but they were more interesting games and had character. This is also why games made in the 80 and 90s were far superior to what we do now, at the time there were no "101 game design" rules, and playing a game was always an experience even if not always a user friendly one... but today a lot is done by the book and you get cookie cutter games that do many things right, but lack the originality to really engage the player and hit him with something he hasn't seen or done before.

 

[Dermond]

Alright, this is my first post, and I've read every post in this thread.

Bought the game Saturday night, and it ate my brain. Devoured it, for every waking hour until 5am last night. Needless to say, I like it. It's my first Civ game.

My question(s):

The "Workable Hex Range", I've learned, is a three tile radius around the city. I wish I knew that last night, before my city spread out like syrup on a plate, and then wasting an hour trying to figure out if it was a bug. I couldn't easily find anything about it in that in-game help system. Now, my city is a behemoth, and I've got tiles under this city's influence up to six or seven away.

1a) What do I do with the tiles? They've all got farms and TPs and roads but are they completely useless to me other than a handy way to drain my wallet?

1b) Can I drop a settler in territory I already own to fill the unworkable gap between City A and City B? (Or can you only drop one in unclaimed territory?)

1c) Will I ever be able to work these tiles? Do they have a purpose other than grabbing up land before the other leaders?

1d) Why does Gandhi have the traits he does if you can't build a megacity?

That's about it. Still puzzled about the whole city size limitation and whether or not I missed some really obvious in-game warning about reaching maximum workable tiles.

 

[SewerStarFish]

Alright, this is my first post, and I've read every post in this thread.

Bought the game Saturday night, and it ate my brain. Devoured it, for every waking hour until 5am last night. Needless to say, I like it. It's my first Civ game.

My question(s):

The "Workable Hex Range", I've learned, is a three tile radius around the city. I wish I knew that last night, before my city spread out like syrup on a plate, and then wasting an hour trying to figure out if it was a bug. I couldn't easily find anything about it in that in-game help system. Now, my city is a behemoth, and I've got tiles under this city's influence up to six or seven away.

1a) What do I do with the tiles? They've all got farms and TPs and roads but are they completely useless to me other than a handy way to drain my wallet?

1b) Can I drop a settler in territory I already own to fill the unworkable gap between City A and City B? (Or can you only drop one in unclaimed territory?)

1c) Will I ever be able to work these tiles? Do they have a purpose other than grabbing up land before the other leaders?

1d) Why does Gandhi have the traits he does if you can't build a megacity?

That's about it. Still puzzled about the whole city size limitation and whether or not I missed some really obvious in-game warning about reaching maximum workable tiles.

1a in Civ V don't build a road unless you really need it, unworkable tiles with resources should still be worked. Each tile controlled adds to your point total and cannot be settled by the ai IIRC

1b Yes

1c enemy ai and barbarian units will often diddle away their assault by stopping to pillage improvements so at least they buy you time

1d Gandhi's and every other leaders' traits are more for when you are using the leader not the ai.

 

[Dermond]

1a in Civ V don't build a road unless you really need it, unworkable tiles with resource should still be worked.

1b Yes

1c enemy ai and barbarian units will often diddle away their assault by stopping to pillage improvements so at least they nuy you time

1d Gandhi's and everyother leaders traits are more for when you are using the leader not the ai.

Thanks for the reply.

That's mostly good news.

1d) I'm Gandhi in this particular scenario. Apparently all the other leaders can reduce their happiness tax from number of cities down to zero, but Gandhi can't (according to a poster in this thread). So now I'm stuck with a guy who can't reduce unhappiness to 0%, but has to build a ton of new cities anyway. Is this correct?

 

[Xger]

Thanks for the reply.

That's mostly good news.

1d) I'm Gandhi in this particular scenario. Apparently all the other leaders can reduce their happiness tax from number of cities down to zero, but Gandhi can't (according to a poster in this thread). So now I'm stuck with a guy who can't reduce unhappiness to 0%, but has to build a ton of new cities anyway. Is this correct?

There are two sources of unhappiness, number of cities and number of citizens (the number next to the city name). The standard is 2 per city, and 1 per citizen point. For Gandhi, those numbers are 4/city and 1/2/citizen.

The thing you are talking about is combining Forbidden Palace and Planned Economy. Each of those gives -1/city. So while using those, you may not have the same benefit for cities of size 1, 2, or 3, but for any larger at that point, you are better off than any other leader.

2. Is the citadel even remotely worth it? Seems like a stupid ability that a good player would never need, but then again, at one point in time, on Civ4 I assumed HC was the worst leader ever, so I've learned never to trust my instincts about Civ-related things.

If you are behind, or want to defend a certain choke point, these could be worth it. Outside of that, they are probably not.

How can I delete a HOF item?

Search this thread, there is an answer to this, you have to edit a database.

How do I stop a city state razing a city?

I was weakening a city, when a city state stepped in and took it They then proceeded to raze it to the ground

You don't have control over this, and I don't think we ever would.

I checked civtopia and read the manual, I can't find the answer to this question anywhere.

If you check the military overview screen it mentions supply status. Every unit takes up a supply it seems. What is this supply limit, and what happens if I go over it?

Unit supply and strategic resource supply are different. The formula for unit supply was given earlier in the thread, and if you surpass it, I believe it just costs more, though I am not positive on the latter portion.

 

[davbenbak]

I downloaded the demo from file planet. After installation it starts with the legal, licence stuff and then terms and conditions for Steam. Do I have to pay for a subscription to steam in order to play the demo?

 

[dfn]

I downloaded the demo from file planet. After installation it starts with the legal, licence stuff and then terms and conditions for Steam. Do I have to pay for a subscription to steam in order to play the demo?

No, you don't.

 

[davbenbak]

Cool, thanks. Got an account set up without having to give any credit card info but can't get the demo to run. It doesn't show up on the steam page. I've got four files, the first titled "Sid Meiers Civilization V-Demo_disk1.sim" the rest similar in the folder I unzipped the file to so I don't see why I would need to download it again from the steam site. Any ideas?

 

[worldsenvy]

Do cavalry not upgrade to anything? It would seem to be the case but some people have mentioned upgrading to tanks or modern armors so just wanted to make sure something isn't wrong with my version?

They really should upgrade to *something*, feels such a waste to destroy a cavalry with 100+ xp because they become worthless in the modern age.

 

[Calculating]

Hi, I'm new to the forums, so I'm sorry if this question is already answered somewhere.

I'm playing a long game on a huge map and after ~ 200 turns I feel like I could use a more challenging AI, so I'd like to raise the AI level.

Is there any way of doing that in mid-game?


Thank you for your response.

 

[SewerStarFish]

Hi, I'm new to the forums, so I'm sorry if this question is already answered somewhere.

I'm playing a long game on a huge map and after ~ 200 turns I feel like I could use a more challenging AI, so I'd like to raise the AI level.

Is there any way of doing that in mid-game?


Thank you for your response.

No, sorry.