Julian Delphiki
Anton's key
Once and for all-thread has some good info, but it's getting spammy 
.
I made a compilation about mostly game related notes on it. I used my own consideration for leaving out the ones that i considered either factually wrong, spam, or not-game related (use search is a good one, but i'm not gonna add it here).
Feel free to yell at me for leaving your comment out, mutilating it, or just to give feedback. I'm gonna update OP when new ones come up, and try to fix typos and spelling.
I was also too lazy to note who-posted-what. You know who you are, keep up the good work
UU = Unique Unit
UB = Unique building
For Once and All - CIV 4
# 01. Organized does not reduce city maintenance cost organized does not reduce city maintenance cost organized does not reduce city maintenance cost! Only thing it reduces is [civic] maintenance cost.. Civics happen to cost more when your empire is larger, so yes it helps that way in having larger empires, but it doesn't directly reduce city maintenance cost!
# 02. Without Bhruic's patch, you cannot found corps under Mercantilism! Also, regardless of patch, you cannot found, spread or use corps under State Property! Always check your civics first.
# 03. Passive spy missions are passive! They happen automatically!
# 04. You need Feudalism and at least 2 cities on another land mass (completely separated by water, no matter the size, from the one where your capital resides) in order to create a colony. The "fist" icon in the F1 city screen will help you out in creating it! Also, "You must have Vassal States Enabled" on game settings!
# 05. You don't need Warlords to play the BtS expansion, you only need Vanilla Civ IV unless you want to play the Warlords scenarios, as everything else is included.
# 06. Civ IV vanilla means the game without any expansion packs (which are Warlords and Beyond the Sword)
# 07. The fans have run extensive tests; the random number generator/combat odds are NOT weighted towards the AI.
# 08. You need all 5 casings to make sure your ship does not crash. Launching a ship with missing casings gives you a significant chance of failure (20% / 40% / 60% / 80% / 100% success rate for 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 casings).
# 09. The AI is smarter in BtS than in previous versions. They fight better. They will attack you if they see you are weak. Plus, they will always be able to support more units than you.
# 10. If you're not good at warring, build more siege.
# 11. Yes, the AI will try to win by other methods than space. It's your mistake for not checking victory conditions if you get beaten by cultural victory. Deal with it.
# 12. If you hate the Apostolic Palace so much, why don't you build it first?
# 13. If the Apostolic Palace is a problem, then go in with your military might and burn the city down!
# 14. After buying the AI's World Map for 10 gold, the next turn later, the AI would want to exchange maps with you, despite the fact you already did get their crappy map for a low price and that you later on find out when trading your map for money to them, that your map is worth 200 gold, not their crappy 5 gold map.
# 15. Don't automate Workers.
# 16. Don't build nuke power plants, unless you really have to. Nuclear plants cause global warming when they blow up.
# 17. Civ IV is not a history simulation... deal with it.
# 18. Global warming in Civ IV doesn't have nothing to do with CO2 , but with nuke contamination... and it doesn't melt ice or tundra... deal with it
# 19. when having a problem with a game or when asking advice on what to do, post a save and/or screenshots.... no one is psychic and if you want more than hunches or educated guesses, you have to give people some intel.
# 20. Hitler is not in the game and he won't be in the game. Don't start a thread about it.
# 21. If multiple AIs declare war on you in the same turn, it is very likely that the act has something to do with the Apostolic Palace.
# 22. No, there is no way to counter 5 barbarian archers in 3500 B.C. Just start a new game, but only if they came straight for you and actually conquer your capital - they might just leave you alone and wipe out your neightbours instead.
# 23. Yes, airships are game-technically and historically absolute nonsense, but don't think Firaxis is going to remove them just because you yell it loud at some forum.
# 24. If a certain aspect of the game really bugs you, either deal with it or edit it out in the XML.
# 25. If your city is not growing, but does not have health/happiness issues and still has food to grow you've probably checked "avoid growth" button on the bottom of city screen.
# 26. 5 Units of only one kind are usually not sufficient army to take a civ down unless you're doing a really early rush.
# 27. Cavalry is not a good unit to defend a recently conquered city... if you have cavalry, you have rifles... why not use them ?
# 28. Unidimensional stacks will be eaten alive by their counter and BtS AI is smart enough to do that
# 29. To allow flying camera, search My Documents\My Games\(name of version) and open CivilizationIV.ini with notepad and change AllowFlying = 0 to AllowFlying = 1 then in game press Ctrl+Alt+F to enable/disable it.
# 30. Praetorians (Roman UU) are really, really, really good and easy to use. To get the most out of them go Bronze working, Wheel, Iron Working, then worker techs. It works, just make sure to not totally crash your economy by keeping too many cities.
# 31. No, you can only have 1 UB and 1 UU per Civ.
# 32. The tactics of the space race - build a space ship. Beat AI at race. Who cares if an extra engine only takes away two more turns. If they're both built at the same time along with the AI's ship and they haven't got a second engine once launched, you win by 2 turns!
# 33. If you win every single game you play, you really do need to move up a level.
# 34. Don't be ashamed because you're playing on a low difficulty. That's what you're used to, you can play by it and if anyone says you should move up, use your own judgment, but don't be forced to move up because they told you to. Unless you're going to play online, then there's no need to get up to levels like Prince or Emperor any time soon.
# 35. Firaxis will not add religion-specific traits, ever, because (a) there is not universal trait for any religion and (b) it would offend many people.
# 36. Score is unimportant unless you're pursuing a Time victory, because it doesn't reflect:
-Armies ( AI checks the power graph... so should you )
-Big tech scheme ( Rifling can be more important than democracy if you're planning a war... but Democracy worths more and weights more in score )
-Diplo ( a DP partner can be pretty useful .. and again that doesn't appear in score )
# 37. Forts in BtS:
- Can connect resources, like if it was a mine, a pasture, a farm a plantation, a well, but it does not give the extra yields.
- Can host air units.
- Can host naval units.
- 2 Seaside or lakeside forts can act as a canal between water bodies. And fort, city , fort and city, fort, fort doesn't work unless the middle element is waterside as well.
- A seaside fort can serve as a trade route connector if inside or your cultural borders. Same applies to connecting resources in small islands inside your cultural borders.
- Paratroopers can make paradrops from forts.
# 38. Some units have ATTACK bonus against others - classic example being Chariot, which has +100% ATTACK against Axeman. As it is ATTACK bonus, Chariots do not DEFEND well against them. OTOH, some units have all-around bonuses against others - Spearman has always +100% against any mounted unit, on both ATTACK and DEFENSE.
# 39. Razing cities in the early game is not supposed to produce a handful of game-breaking partisans. This has been determined to be a bug in 3.13, and fixed in Bhruic's patch & the HOF mod (now it only happens if city owner is running under emancipation). Yet another reason to install the unofficial patch.
# 40. When moving up a level, be prepared (for some playing styles, for some level jumps) to sometimes face something more than "greater challenge." Some "monochromatic" playing styles (e.g. be a builder and never an aggressor in war) simply become untenable to win above a certain level.
# 41. If you play BTS into a later tech tree era, you are really missing something if you have not yet come to know "The Power of Sushi".
# 42. Dun (Celtic UB) grants the Guerilla 1 promotion ONLY to units that can normally get it. As melee units can NOT normally get this promotion, the Gallic Warrior (Celtic UU) is not useless.
# 43. Dikes (Dutch UB) can be built in a city which is EITHER coastal OR river-side. Levee needs a RIVER.
# 44. If you lose, don't blame the game, blame yourself and try to understand why you lost.
# 45. The 'missing' trait combinations are PHI/IND, CRE/CHA, and ORG/PRO.
# 46. Don't underestimate the power of trade embargos (request an AI to break trade with another AI). Forcing/Requesting an AI to declare a war is expensive but trade embargo requests can be cheaper. They lower relations between AIs (many times the difference from pleased to cautious) which is nice for your war plan. Your foe looses a friend and you may gain one ally in the future
# 47. Settling on a resource will give you immediate access to resource, and smaller bonus than (+1hammer,+1c etc) actually improving that tile with correct improvement. It's not necessarily bad choice, since resource cannot be easily pillaged and you save some time (few turns might be crucial for settling for stone and building a wonder or when settling on copper/ planning axe rush etc.). Normally city tile will give 2/1/1, unless the tile's unimproved stats are greater. Ex. a city on grass corn will give 3/1/1.
# 48. Don't cry when some of the known maniacs (as Monty, Shaka, Alex, Caesar, Boudica, Cathy, Khan, Joao, Ragnar, Toku) just wiped out your civ, when having nearly any military but a TON of wonders
# 49. Unless you are playing the game in the "Always War" or "Always Peace" mode, the AI will ask you to declare war on someone else pretty much everytime you play.
# 50. Never trust your opponents, AI or human!
# 51 National Park removes access to coal for city it has been build in.
# 52. You cannot release a vassal. They might break away and declare war on you if you make arrogant demand they don't want to give in, but don't count on it. This does not apply to techs, demanding those just keeps stacking negative modifiers.
# 53. You still keep resources that are "consumed" by Corporations.
# 54. Apostolic Palace gives +
for all of it's religion buildings.
# 55. BtS Reference Sheet is actually better source of correct info than manual that comes with game.
# 56. About Flanking: Units can only inflict flanking damage to siege units of its own or adjacent eras. Example: Cuirassiers won't flank against catapults. Deal with it
.
# 57. Poland is not in the game. Deal with it.
# 58. "The World Considers You a Villain" unhappiness message in your cities = You defied AP or UN resolution by voting "Never!".
# 58. Watching a few movies on a subject that is tangentially related to Civ, (say, military science or cultural advancement) does *NOT* make you an expert in the field. Just because you saw 300, does not mean you can dispute Hansen on hoplite warfare.
# 59. Save at least one ruin somewhere in your borders (city ruin / event caused ruin are both OK), as this almost always gives you a research boost sooner or later (assuming you have [x] random events, that is).
# 60. Save some cash..... there is nothing more than losing a valuable building because you only have 1 gold left in treasury (like a forge fire when building the Colossus ....![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
).
# 61. Barrage promos only increase the collateral damage power of the siege units... so , unless you want to damage more units and/or tackle them in the field (some people forget that siege also works in open field..... ), normally CR or Drill promos are better.
# 62. Specializing cities may be a good idea if you're going with a specific strategy. If you want to be ahead of the game in technology and have a decent economy, having a city dedicated to working cottages (finance city) will help, great person farm city with lots of food dedicated to running specialist is good for getting lot's of gp's and production heavy city dedicated to building military units, perhaps with Heroic Epic and even a military academy and possible military instructor(s) will help you to keep up on power with other civs.
# 63. Only found religions if they're part of your strategy (tip: always have a strategy in mind).
# 64. Only work best tiles available - city governor can be ******** sometimes, so it's good idea to check what tiles cities are actually working every now and then. Also, only build as many improvements around a city as it can work for now. Early worker turns are precious, so don't waste those (example: you have happy cap 6 in capital - why farm/mine/cottage every tile? Just hook up resources and a couple of farms/mines so the city can be as productive as possible at that moment.
.I made a compilation about mostly game related notes on it. I used my own consideration for leaving out the ones that i considered either factually wrong, spam, or not-game related (use search is a good one, but i'm not gonna add it here).
Feel free to yell at me for leaving your comment out, mutilating it, or just to give feedback. I'm gonna update OP when new ones come up, and try to fix typos and spelling.
I was also too lazy to note who-posted-what. You know who you are, keep up the good work
UU = Unique Unit
UB = Unique building
For Once and All - CIV 4
# 01. Organized does not reduce city maintenance cost organized does not reduce city maintenance cost organized does not reduce city maintenance cost! Only thing it reduces is [civic] maintenance cost.. Civics happen to cost more when your empire is larger, so yes it helps that way in having larger empires, but it doesn't directly reduce city maintenance cost!
# 02. Without Bhruic's patch, you cannot found corps under Mercantilism! Also, regardless of patch, you cannot found, spread or use corps under State Property! Always check your civics first.
# 03. Passive spy missions are passive! They happen automatically!
# 04. You need Feudalism and at least 2 cities on another land mass (completely separated by water, no matter the size, from the one where your capital resides) in order to create a colony. The "fist" icon in the F1 city screen will help you out in creating it! Also, "You must have Vassal States Enabled" on game settings!
# 05. You don't need Warlords to play the BtS expansion, you only need Vanilla Civ IV unless you want to play the Warlords scenarios, as everything else is included.
# 06. Civ IV vanilla means the game without any expansion packs (which are Warlords and Beyond the Sword)
# 07. The fans have run extensive tests; the random number generator/combat odds are NOT weighted towards the AI.
# 08. You need all 5 casings to make sure your ship does not crash. Launching a ship with missing casings gives you a significant chance of failure (20% / 40% / 60% / 80% / 100% success rate for 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 casings).
# 09. The AI is smarter in BtS than in previous versions. They fight better. They will attack you if they see you are weak. Plus, they will always be able to support more units than you.
# 10. If you're not good at warring, build more siege.
# 11. Yes, the AI will try to win by other methods than space. It's your mistake for not checking victory conditions if you get beaten by cultural victory. Deal with it.
# 12. If you hate the Apostolic Palace so much, why don't you build it first?
# 13. If the Apostolic Palace is a problem, then go in with your military might and burn the city down!
# 14. After buying the AI's World Map for 10 gold, the next turn later, the AI would want to exchange maps with you, despite the fact you already did get their crappy map for a low price and that you later on find out when trading your map for money to them, that your map is worth 200 gold, not their crappy 5 gold map.
# 15. Don't automate Workers.
# 16. Don't build nuke power plants, unless you really have to. Nuclear plants cause global warming when they blow up.
# 17. Civ IV is not a history simulation... deal with it.
# 18. Global warming in Civ IV doesn't have nothing to do with CO2 , but with nuke contamination... and it doesn't melt ice or tundra... deal with it
# 19. when having a problem with a game or when asking advice on what to do, post a save and/or screenshots.... no one is psychic and if you want more than hunches or educated guesses, you have to give people some intel.
# 20. Hitler is not in the game and he won't be in the game. Don't start a thread about it.
# 21. If multiple AIs declare war on you in the same turn, it is very likely that the act has something to do with the Apostolic Palace.
# 22. No, there is no way to counter 5 barbarian archers in 3500 B.C. Just start a new game, but only if they came straight for you and actually conquer your capital - they might just leave you alone and wipe out your neightbours instead.
# 23. Yes, airships are game-technically and historically absolute nonsense, but don't think Firaxis is going to remove them just because you yell it loud at some forum.
# 24. If a certain aspect of the game really bugs you, either deal with it or edit it out in the XML.
# 25. If your city is not growing, but does not have health/happiness issues and still has food to grow you've probably checked "avoid growth" button on the bottom of city screen.
# 26. 5 Units of only one kind are usually not sufficient army to take a civ down unless you're doing a really early rush.
# 27. Cavalry is not a good unit to defend a recently conquered city... if you have cavalry, you have rifles... why not use them ?
# 28. Unidimensional stacks will be eaten alive by their counter and BtS AI is smart enough to do that
# 29. To allow flying camera, search My Documents\My Games\(name of version) and open CivilizationIV.ini with notepad and change AllowFlying = 0 to AllowFlying = 1 then in game press Ctrl+Alt+F to enable/disable it.
# 30. Praetorians (Roman UU) are really, really, really good and easy to use. To get the most out of them go Bronze working, Wheel, Iron Working, then worker techs. It works, just make sure to not totally crash your economy by keeping too many cities.
# 31. No, you can only have 1 UB and 1 UU per Civ.
# 32. The tactics of the space race - build a space ship. Beat AI at race. Who cares if an extra engine only takes away two more turns. If they're both built at the same time along with the AI's ship and they haven't got a second engine once launched, you win by 2 turns!
# 33. If you win every single game you play, you really do need to move up a level.
# 34. Don't be ashamed because you're playing on a low difficulty. That's what you're used to, you can play by it and if anyone says you should move up, use your own judgment, but don't be forced to move up because they told you to. Unless you're going to play online, then there's no need to get up to levels like Prince or Emperor any time soon.
# 35. Firaxis will not add religion-specific traits, ever, because (a) there is not universal trait for any religion and (b) it would offend many people.
# 36. Score is unimportant unless you're pursuing a Time victory, because it doesn't reflect:
-Armies ( AI checks the power graph... so should you )
-Big tech scheme ( Rifling can be more important than democracy if you're planning a war... but Democracy worths more and weights more in score )
-Diplo ( a DP partner can be pretty useful .. and again that doesn't appear in score )
# 37. Forts in BtS:
- Can connect resources, like if it was a mine, a pasture, a farm a plantation, a well, but it does not give the extra yields.
- Can host air units.
- Can host naval units.
- 2 Seaside or lakeside forts can act as a canal between water bodies. And fort, city , fort and city, fort, fort doesn't work unless the middle element is waterside as well.
- A seaside fort can serve as a trade route connector if inside or your cultural borders. Same applies to connecting resources in small islands inside your cultural borders.
- Paratroopers can make paradrops from forts.
# 38. Some units have ATTACK bonus against others - classic example being Chariot, which has +100% ATTACK against Axeman. As it is ATTACK bonus, Chariots do not DEFEND well against them. OTOH, some units have all-around bonuses against others - Spearman has always +100% against any mounted unit, on both ATTACK and DEFENSE.
# 39. Razing cities in the early game is not supposed to produce a handful of game-breaking partisans. This has been determined to be a bug in 3.13, and fixed in Bhruic's patch & the HOF mod (now it only happens if city owner is running under emancipation). Yet another reason to install the unofficial patch.
# 40. When moving up a level, be prepared (for some playing styles, for some level jumps) to sometimes face something more than "greater challenge." Some "monochromatic" playing styles (e.g. be a builder and never an aggressor in war) simply become untenable to win above a certain level.
# 41. If you play BTS into a later tech tree era, you are really missing something if you have not yet come to know "The Power of Sushi".
# 42. Dun (Celtic UB) grants the Guerilla 1 promotion ONLY to units that can normally get it. As melee units can NOT normally get this promotion, the Gallic Warrior (Celtic UU) is not useless.
# 43. Dikes (Dutch UB) can be built in a city which is EITHER coastal OR river-side. Levee needs a RIVER.
# 44. If you lose, don't blame the game, blame yourself and try to understand why you lost.
# 45. The 'missing' trait combinations are PHI/IND, CRE/CHA, and ORG/PRO.
# 46. Don't underestimate the power of trade embargos (request an AI to break trade with another AI). Forcing/Requesting an AI to declare a war is expensive but trade embargo requests can be cheaper. They lower relations between AIs (many times the difference from pleased to cautious) which is nice for your war plan. Your foe looses a friend and you may gain one ally in the future
# 47. Settling on a resource will give you immediate access to resource, and smaller bonus than (+1hammer,+1c etc) actually improving that tile with correct improvement. It's not necessarily bad choice, since resource cannot be easily pillaged and you save some time (few turns might be crucial for settling for stone and building a wonder or when settling on copper/ planning axe rush etc.). Normally city tile will give 2/1/1, unless the tile's unimproved stats are greater. Ex. a city on grass corn will give 3/1/1.
# 48. Don't cry when some of the known maniacs (as Monty, Shaka, Alex, Caesar, Boudica, Cathy, Khan, Joao, Ragnar, Toku) just wiped out your civ, when having nearly any military but a TON of wonders
# 49. Unless you are playing the game in the "Always War" or "Always Peace" mode, the AI will ask you to declare war on someone else pretty much everytime you play.
# 50. Never trust your opponents, AI or human!
# 51 National Park removes access to coal for city it has been build in.
# 52. You cannot release a vassal. They might break away and declare war on you if you make arrogant demand they don't want to give in, but don't count on it. This does not apply to techs, demanding those just keeps stacking negative modifiers.
# 53. You still keep resources that are "consumed" by Corporations.
# 54. Apostolic Palace gives +
for all of it's religion buildings.# 55. BtS Reference Sheet is actually better source of correct info than manual that comes with game.
# 56. About Flanking: Units can only inflict flanking damage to siege units of its own or adjacent eras. Example: Cuirassiers won't flank against catapults. Deal with it
.# 57. Poland is not in the game. Deal with it.
# 58. "The World Considers You a Villain" unhappiness message in your cities = You defied AP or UN resolution by voting "Never!".
# 58. Watching a few movies on a subject that is tangentially related to Civ, (say, military science or cultural advancement) does *NOT* make you an expert in the field. Just because you saw 300, does not mean you can dispute Hansen on hoplite warfare.
# 59. Save at least one ruin somewhere in your borders (city ruin / event caused ruin are both OK), as this almost always gives you a research boost sooner or later (assuming you have [x] random events, that is).
# 60. Save some cash..... there is nothing more than losing a valuable building because you only have 1 gold left in treasury (like a forge fire when building the Colossus ....
).# 61. Barrage promos only increase the collateral damage power of the siege units... so , unless you want to damage more units and/or tackle them in the field (some people forget that siege also works in open field..... ), normally CR or Drill promos are better.
# 62. Specializing cities may be a good idea if you're going with a specific strategy. If you want to be ahead of the game in technology and have a decent economy, having a city dedicated to working cottages (finance city) will help, great person farm city with lots of food dedicated to running specialist is good for getting lot's of gp's and production heavy city dedicated to building military units, perhaps with Heroic Epic and even a military academy and possible military instructor(s) will help you to keep up on power with other civs.
# 63. Only found religions if they're part of your strategy (tip: always have a strategy in mind).
# 64. Only work best tiles available - city governor can be ******** sometimes, so it's good idea to check what tiles cities are actually working every now and then. Also, only build as many improvements around a city as it can work for now. Early worker turns are precious, so don't waste those (example: you have happy cap 6 in capital - why farm/mine/cottage every tile? Just hook up resources and a couple of farms/mines so the city can be as productive as possible at that moment.
.
. I've also added few ##'s from other threads, feel free to but good suggestions here as well.
