Answering Questions Again
Roland Johansen said:
One additional question, it is probably a difficult one.
According to what I read in previews (and some forum discussions about these previews), you can't infinitely expand in the beginning of the game because of the city upkeep, but it is possible to maintain a large world spanning empire in the end of the game. This probably has to do with the buildup of infrastructure (terrain improvements, health/happiness improvements and resources, courthouses, marketplaces/banks, etc.) and the development of the right civics and maybe some other things that get enabled by certain technologies. Also the resistance of the more efficient smaller nations is probably not easy to overcome (at a difficulty level that is challenging for the player, clearly noble is not challenging for you ).
Now imagine that you play a game with totally no enemy opposition, no other civilisations, no barbarians, no wild animals, no opposition to stop your expansion, except for the city maintenance (yes I know, boring...., but it is just a theoretical game ).
At what point in the game would it be feasible to maintain a world spanning empire for you? I don't mean the moment that it becomes profitable to do so, but the first moment that you could build such an empire that doesn't go bankrupt while running 100% tax. With point in the game I don't mean a year, but more a general indication like late renaissance or early modern age.
The second question is: at what point in time will it be economically beneficial, meaning that every city produces more in science+commerce+culture than it costs in maintenance.
A long question, but I do in fact understand what you mean. There are certain techs on the tree that are critical for cutting down on the overhead of your civ and allowing you to expand faster. I have in fact played out some games that were close to being pure builder ones (like starting alone on a large island and being isolated until Astronomy). So in my experience, the critical techs are Code of Laws (which enables courthouses) and Currency (which enables Markets AND gets you +1 trade routes per city). Banking, which enables Banks, is also quite important.
Once you have courthouses, you can start cutting down on the maintenance costs in your cities, and building a lot of them does indeed have a drastic effect on how much cash you're bleeding out in maintenance. You can also build a Forbidden Palace once you have enough courthouses (see below). Markets and banks increase the gold your civ is producing, allowing for more expansion and ironically, also usually letting you increase your research rate as well! (since you are getting the same amount of gold from a smaller percentage of wealth on the sliders). So while that's not an absolute answer, courthouses and markets help out enormously when fighting maintenance costs. As for the second question, that's one that depends on each individual city. Some will be worthwhile right away, others might have to be built up for a while first.
Balastulin said:
What exactly are the effects of the Forbidden Palace? And how does distance maintenance work? I've still got to wait about two weeks...
Maintenance costs are counted in two ways: first, the number of cities you have (more cities overall means higher maintenance costs) and secondly, the distance from the palace. Colonies on another continent will have higher maintenance costs because they are far away from the palace. The Forbidden Palace (and also the Versailles world wonder, by the way) act as another palace for maintenance cost purposes, thus dropping the "distance from palace" element of maintenance costs in nearby cities. The overall effect is somewhat similar to Civ3 - build the Forbidden Palace to act as a second palace, and your costs will drop significantly.
Aussie Lurker said:
1) With Civics maintainance costs, is the final cost in any way connected to the number of cities in your nation?
2) Unit maintainance cost looks awful low (1+1 for supply=2!!!) Why is this the case, how much does EACH UNIT cost to maintain-and is this cost effected only by if your units are inside/outside your territory?
3) Sort of a linked question. Can Great Merchants travel across oceans and, if so, can they be killed if their transports are attacked? Connected to this is the more general question of can Great People be in anyway harmed/captured and, if so, does this impact much on relations?
1) I'm not entirely sure on this one. I do know that the civics costs increase slowly over time as you proceed through the tech tree, but I don't know if it's also linked to the size of your territory. Sorry if I can't give a conclusive answer here.
2) The maintenance costs are low because this is Noble and I get a fair amount of free units. Crank up the difficulty, and the unit costs tighten up like a vice. The unit cost is determined by how many units you have, the supply cost is determined by where they are located (0 in your territory, increased when in enemy lands).
3) Great Merchants can travel on caravels across oceans, along with a couple of other unarmed units (missionaries, scouts, spies, etc.) If their boat sinks, they go down to the bottom too. The Great People can all be attacked and killed, so be careful with them. This doesn't have an effect on relations, but you may be seeing red if Montezuma kills one of your Great People!
bugmenot17 said:
Did you or will you make a similar walkthrough for Civ3 as well?
I did not make one for Civ3 (I learned that game the same way as anyone else), but I do have more than 20 full-game reports on the Civ3 portion of my site that will shed a lot of light on that game for those who are interested.
Krikkitone said:
What's Inflation by the way (I gather some sort of reverse Wall Street effect?)... is it also the thing that leads to the loss of stored shields/beakers?
Inflation is not the thing that makes you lose shields over time on builds (we usually refer to that as shield decay or shield loss). Inflation is rather a slow, gradual buildup of costs to reflect the increased expenses of running a large empire. It will grow over time as your civ grows in size and complexity. There's not a whole lot you can do about inflation other than be aware of the fact that it's there and you need to counter it with increased revenue.
Aussie Lurker said:
Well, thats why I said 'looks' awful low-because I am looking at it through the prism of Civ2 and 3. I guess my main purpose was in asking-how does the game 'calculate' the costs of your armies-is it a direct 1gold per unit, or does it work in some other fashion now? I confess that I am VERY confused about how unit maintainance works.
Oh, and I do have another question. It says galleys can only operate within your cultural borders. Now, can you still use them to enter SOMEONE elses border (say if you have Open Borders or are at War)? If yes, then can you traverse 'open sea', as long as you end your movement within a border, or is it a blanket ban on moving outside of a cultural border?
I believe that the unit costs are simply one gold per unit for each one that is over the amount of free support. Keep in mind that 20 units is a VERY large army in Civ4, whereas it would have been of minor notice in Civ3 (not everyone will like this, but IMO it greatly cuts down on the game's tedium - fewer units that are each more important and can be individually customized with promotions). It will make more sense once a copy arrives in Australia and you can start playing around with the numbers, Aussie.
Regarding galleys, you misread this one slighly. The ban on galley movement isn't on limiting them to your borders, it's limiting them from entering OCEAN tiles. They can't ever enter ocean tiles EXCEPT if they happen to be within your cultural borders. I'm not 100% certain if you can enter ocean tiles that are within the cultural borders of a civ with which you have Open Borders, but I think you can. If you are at war, you can't have Open Borders with a civ by definition, and you definitely can't enter ocean tiles in their territory. They can and often will explore neutral territory, but galleys have to hug the coastlines because they can't enter the ocean.
TheERat said:
looking at one of the screenies, I have to say, the concept of 'no need for road everywhere' must have gone wrong since I do see a lot of roads, in fact everywhere
And that looks awfully messy...modders can surely get this better
Well... personally I think it was a bad decision by marketing to take the angle of "no more need for roads everywhere!" Technically, that is correct - you don't *HAVE* to build a road on a tile because the commerce bonus has been eliminated from roads. But tell me this - you have a worker on a tile that's just finished a tile improvement, and you're NOT going to have him build a road on it? Granted, there are some cases where it's more important to go on to the next tile improvement, but 9 times out of 10, I'm going to have the worker build a road on the tile that he's on to facilitate easier movement. So while you can choose to keep your cities linked only by one road, that's going to be counterproductive if another civ invades, and you don't have a road network in place for your units. The alternative - PENALIZING the player for building extra roads - would be worse than the problem though. (This really doesn't bother me at all, I'm not sure why some people seem to want fewer roads.)
Good questions. More coming in Part Six tomorrow - is Gandhi's come-uppance at hand?
! I have just looked over the Financial advisor-and two key questions come to mind:
