Seven very noobie questions

[Hrothgaar]

I have some very nooby questions regarding the Wildmana mod, I hope some could help me out here (even if some might sound stupid)

1. Does someone know what the benefit in building a city on a tile with "fresh water" sign on it is?
I did not find anything in the FfH2 Wiki or in-game help book.

2. How do you select your places to build your cities? I know that hills give 25% defense bonus to a city and thats important to have resources nearby but rather than that what do you look for and how do you choose the places which are most important.

3. What does the option "Influence Based Wars" (or something like that) mean? How does it affect the game?

4. Another option which is not clear to me is the "Wild mana" option. What does it do?

5. What is the meaning of the different symbols next to my enemies names on the lower right corner of the screen. One of them is the religion, that I found out, but I have no idea about the others all the others .

6. What is the meaning of the sand-watch in the upper part of the city screen with a defense bonus behind it? Could this mean "cultural defense bonus" - I read about this somewhere in the forum. How can I rise this bonus?

7. Is there any city-view as in the previous Civ games? Where you see your city from birds view very detailed with all the buildings you have placed so far? Or is the zoom-in funktion of civ 4 something which is used to replace the detailed view from previous parts?


Thank you in advance!
Hrothgaar

 

[Goodgimp]

1. Unsure what the benefit of building a city ON a fresh water tile. Fresh water can irrigate farms, however.

2. Hills are extremely nice to build cities on when possible, especially in early game where I'm trying to weather brutal barbarian rushes. Other than that it depends on my needs. When I play the Amurites, I tend to prioritize mana nodes greatly. As a general rule, I try to have cities which either specialize in Income, Specialists (i.e. food), or Production.

I also like coastal towns early as, with fishing, it's easy to build up some cash in short order to get your tech moving.

3. There's a writeup on this somewhere around here, but this is all I could find on short order. You can see the readme here with the download that contains details:
http://civilization4.filefront.com/file/Influence_Driven_War_v11;72842

4. It allows for Creation and Force mana in the game. A few turns into the game the Raw Mana nodes also convert to nodes of a specific type (i.e. a Raw Mana node might turn into a dormant Nature node, for instance).

5. I don't know all those yet, sorry.

6. Unsure what you're referring to off the top of my head, I'll have to load the game and go take a look and get back to you

7. City graphics change on the world map as buildings get constructed, but I'm unaware of a detailed city view that shows all your buildings graphically.

 

[Afterthought_bt]

1. Does someone know what the benefit in building a city on a tile with "fresh water" sign on it is?
I did not find anything in the FfH2 Wiki or in-game help book.

I don't think there is any - the benefit of fresh water is that you can build farms next to it but you get nothing special for building a city on it afaik. Having said that, if your city is next to a river, then it can use that to connect to other cities in trade rather than roads, so it can still be useful.

More generally, in Wildmana, with the Advanced Terraforming option, you can also use Sun 1 (Scorch) to terraform your squares to desert, and Water 1 (Spring) to create floodplains - for extra food yield but -1 health. Also, with Nature 3 (Vitalise), you can upgrade terrain (e.g. desert to plains, plains to grassland) and so increase your food supply further. Flood plains can not be created on squares with forests.

2. How do you select your places to build your cities? I know that hills give 25% defense bonus to a city and thats important to have resources nearby but rather than that what do you look for and how do you choose the places which are most important.

If possible, I like to build on hills, as you say. Try not to build on a resourse - although you'll immediately get the resourse if you've the required tech, thinking long term tells you that you'll miss out on the yields of that square if you build a city on it. Avoid desert, unless you can use spring to create floodplains/turn it to plains (depending on if you're near a fresh water supply or not) for base desert gives -25 defense. I try to avoid my cities having unworkable squares (mountains, or workable by one of my other cities).

3. What does the option "Influence Based Wars" (or something like that) mean? How does it affect the game?

Winning battles, and pillaging squares will give you some of your opponents culture depending on the level of your unit. (The higher the level, the more of your opponents culture you'll get. An excellent way of getting around the problem of taking opponents cities an then immediately losing them to culture. Avoids a lot of the ugly necessity of razing in late games.

4. Another option which is not clear to me is the "Wild mana" option. What does it do?

With Wild Mana option, a few turns into the game many of the nodes will turn into a type of mana rather than just being neutral. Two of these are new types of magic, creation and force. These can only be spawned in the wild, although you may get them in your palace with the more mana option. With Deadly Wild Mana option, these nodes will be guarded by creatures, the strongest of which has a spell book it drops when killed. Grab these with an arcane unit as soon as you can! When read they will give your unit some xp, and free magic spell promotions. Best saved up imo, for the more magic techs you have researched, the better the spells you will learn. Each arcane unit can only carry one at a time I think, but you can always drop the spell books in your capital and leave them there 'til you want to use them!

5. What is the meaning of the different symbols next to my enemies names on the lower right corner of the screen. One of them is the religion, that I found out, but I have no idea about the others all the others .

Errr - Can't really remember off the top of my head. A fist means that they are planning for war. There's an icon for trade, and one for open borders. The smiley faces tell you what they think of you.

6. What is the meaning of the sand-watch in the upper part of the city screen with a defense bonus behind it? Could this mean "cultural defense bonus" - I read about this somewhere in the forum. How can I rise this bonus?

Not sure what you mean. If someone else hasn't answered it before I get a chance to look I'll get back to you. Cultural defense bonus is, I imagine, simply the defense bonus you get by expanding culture. In FFH you get 10% defense for each level of culture. You can also get extra defense from buildings like palisades. You'll see as you look through the world that cities have a percentage by them. This is the total defense bonus they get from culture and buildings - 70% gives your defenders an extra 70% strength when fighting (apart from the units which say they can't defend cities - like Werewolves). The higher this value is the better.

7. Is there any city-view as in the previous Civ games? Where you see your city from birds view very detailed with all the buildings you have placed so far? Or is the zoom-in funktion of civ 4 something which is used to replace the detailed view from previous parts?

AFAIK the zoom in is the 'replacement'. To be honest, it never really interested me much, so I wouldn't know...

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I can't believe that no one mentioned that building a city on a freshwater tile gives +1 health to the city ( or maybe +2, can't remember ) . that's from base civ4

 

[Afterthought_bt]

I can't believe that no one mentioned that building a city on a freshwater tile gives +1 health to the city ( or maybe +2, can't remember ) . that's from base civ4

Oops.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

It's +2.

 

[Doug Piranha]

2. How do you select your places to build your cities? I know that hills give 25% defense bonus to a city and thats important to have resources nearby but rather than that what do you look for and how do you choose the places which are most important.

The best way to learn is to do a "dotmap" where you mark a screenshot with planned city locations. Start a thread with a screenshot of your starting location and the surrounding terrain, ask for help with city locations, and wait for the arguments to start.

That said, your starting city should ideally have a high-food tile (corn, pigs, fish, etc.), a high-commerce tile (spice, gold, gems, dye, etc.), and some production tiles (hills, cows). Later cities should have food and either commerce or production. You may have to build a few low-food cities to grab key resources (copper!), but food is usually the most important element of a good city.

6. What is the meaning of the sand-watch in the upper part of the city screen with a defense bonus behind it? Could this mean "cultural defense bonus" - I read about this somewhere in the forum. How can I rise this bonus?

City culture bonus is improved by increasing the culture in the city. Each time the city radius expands (10 culture, 100 culture, 500 culture, etc.), the city defense bonus increases by 10%. Great artists or disciples can increase culture (and end anarchy!), but the best way is to build monuments, carnivals, theatres, pagan temples, and other culture buildings. The Hope spell (castable by Royal Guards) is great to get a quick border pop in a just-built city.

 

[Goodgimp]

Oops.

Double oops from me too! Anyone else wanna climb aboard the Oops boat?

Thanks for the info, Gekko

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

no problem mate, have fun with FFH and WM and post any other questions you might have... someone will eventually know the answer

 

[scutarii]

instead of contaminating game threads with new posts"aaarghhh, I do not get this game" like threads, take your time, and for god´s sake your brains, make tests....there is no such thing as "city in the right place". Put your city "there" and observe what happens.


seems that thread opener is even unaware even of Civ4 game mechanics. Learn Civ4 first and then play mods.


I know it is discouraging post but I am lil´annoyed how newcomers open new thread just to report what they think might be a bug....

i am not saying don´t ask but there is plenty of stuff for yourself to discover first.

 

[lumpthing]

Rather than create another nooby thread I thought I'd to add to the general noobiness here.

I installed Wild Mana, played it, everything was fine. Then I deleted the original FFH mod folder. Now Wild Mana won't work (something about a "GFC Error"). I thought Wild Mana copied all the FFH stuff it needed so it should be fine without the FFH folder. Am I wrong?

UPDATE: I solved it by renaming the Wild Mana folder "Fall From Heaven 2"

 

[Valkrionn]

Rather than create another nooby thread I thought I'd to add to the general noobiness here.

I installed Wild Mana, played it, everything was fine. Then I deleted the original FFH mod folder. Now Wild Mana won't work (something about a "GFC Error"). I thought Wild Mana copied all the FFH stuff it needed so it should be fine without the FFH folder. Am I wrong?

There are a few files which need to be modified with the WildMana folder path for it to work without FfH... Found this out the hard way when I made RifE a complete download.

CvModName.py, if it exists in Wild Mana. (Doubt it, was used for a custom INI in FF for the state names)

Civ4.thm, in Assets/Resource.

Civ4ArtDefines_Misc

 

[lumpthing]

Aha, thanks! Although it doesn't come up with any error messages any more (as a result of my update in my previous post). Do you think some things are still secretly not working?

 

[Valkrionn]

Aha, thanks! Although it doesn't come up with any error messages any more (as a result of my update in my previous post). Do you think some things are still secretly not working?

No, renaming the folder is all that's needed. Those files just reference the mod path; They still read as Mods/Fall from Heaven 2/Resource/Civ4.thm, for example. Changing the name is the only thing needed.

It's a pain to change the name in the Civ4.thm file, doesn't seem to open with Notepad++... Opens fine in WinMerge though, which is what I used to change it.

 

[Deon]

instead of contaminating game threads with new posts"aaarghhh, I do not get this game" like threads, take your time, and for god´s sake your brains, make tests....there is no such thing as "city in the right place". Put your city "there" and observe what happens.


seems that thread opener is even unaware even of Civ4 game mechanics. Learn Civ4 first and then play mods.


I know it is discouraging post but I am lil´annoyed how newcomers open new thread just to report what they think might be a bug....

i am not saying don´t ask but there is plenty of stuff for yourself to discover first.

This is a quite consistant question thread so it's not a "noobish" thread, also it showed to lots of people who played for a long time some useful info. So if you're lil' annoyed, go hug a badger or something.


I am aboard the Oops boat too by the way, thank you for pointing that out.
When you build a city on Jungles which are considered Fresh Water, does it remove this bonus along with jungles too or the bonus stays?

 

[Deon]

6. What is the meaning of the sand-watch in the upper part of the city screen with a defense bonus behind it? Could this mean "cultural defense bonus" - I read about this somewhere in the forum. How can I rise this bonus?

It's not a sand-watch, it's a TOWER. And it shows how much defence does the city provide.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

jungles considered fresh water?

all that I know is that a jungle can be ON a freshwater tile. if you build a city on it, you get rid of the jungle, so no malus from that jungle and you get the freshwater bonus.

 

[Fafnir13]

seems that thread opener is even unaware even of Civ4 game mechanics. Learn Civ4 first and then play mods.

But Civ 4 is BORING.

Well, for me at least. I bought the game for my dad (originally). Thought I'd give it a whirl but wasn't really impressed by it. Then, ages later, I stumbled across a random thread on some other forum that mentioned the mod. Tried it out and was hooked.
At that point, I really didn't understand the game but, unlike when playing base Civ 4, I wanted to learn more about it.
Had I taken your advice, I would have played base Civ 4, gotten bored, and never learned "enough" to move on to the mods. Also, I wouldn't have sold my brother and two room mates on getting their own copies of Civ 4 + BtS so that we could play FFH2. I don't think any of them have even played a game of regular Civ.

 

[lumpthing]

wow, that's an amazing testimony to the power of fan-created games