The Reference Guide

[TheDS]

Hello, all!

Last year, when I was very much into Civ4BTS, I came across a set of reference sheets. Long ago (pre-BTS), I had made my own set, but never got them finished, and seeing these were so much better, I started using and then modifying them to my own purposes.

Originally started by Kroym, then Michelangelo started keeping them updated for a while. I made my own from his, and then life interupted and I've been out of the scene for a while.

I got a message from DanQ the other day, which has brought me back (for a little while, at least), and I figured that, with no updates from anyone else, and this file languishing on my hard drive, it would be a good idea to go ahead and let everyone have it since I don't think there have been any updates for a while.


IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. I removed all non-BTS information. If you're not playing BTS, these sheets aren't for you.
2. I corrected a lot of errors that are in Michelangelo's sheets. I told him what many of them were as I found them, but I slacked off and lost track of them.
3. I reorganized some things so they looked better to me. I also tried to make the sheets look prettier.
4. I added a LOT of information and charts. Some of this I consider to be "notes to self" to help me understand what I'm looking at, some of it I find fascinating illustration of some of the cool features and synergies of the game.
5. I put the title page in the MIDDLE of the other tabs, so that, as long as your screen is wide enough, you should be able to click back to the title page no matter which tab you're on. I renamed many of the tabs in the hopes they'd all fit on your screen.
6. Many charts have been duplicated on the same sheet and then reordered. Sometimes you want to look up by name, sometimes you want to look up by type. DO NOT TRY RESORTING CHARTS!!! You will damage things. In every case, I put the second chart below the first chart. Typically, I have the alphabetical listing first and the organizational sheet second. (Or was it the other way around?)
7. I removed the macros or whatever they were that were added to filter out certain items. They just got in my way. If you liked them, you'll have to learn to do without.
8. I decided not to bother to remove two pages of notes-to-self. You can see what other things I was considering adding, and I'm going to use those incomplete ideas as the reasons why I never released this sooner.
9. Since this is incomplete, and I haven't used it in many months, there could still be oddities. I did what I could to make it all look pretty, and I glanced through it again a minute ago, but no promises. As far as I know, the only "problem" was that I still had those pages of ideas to add that never got completed.
10. As I'm extremely busy lately, and not likely to be playing again for quite some time, I'm not very likely to be able to update this sheet if errors are found, nor will I be able to complete it. If someone wants to take it upon themselves to keep it updated or if they want to work on the incomplete ideas and can figure out what I was getting ready to do, be my guest. (If you can't figure it all out, PM me and I'll try to explain, but ONLY if I receive a PROMISE that you will make a sincere effort to try to finish the work. I don't have time to explain things to 50 people who are merely curious.)
11. Lastly, I did most of the work before 3.17 came out. I tried updating to 3.17, but there may be omissions, especially in the more graphically intense pages. Otherwise, it's updated to 3.17 standards.
12. Even more lastly, the spreadsheet may tell you it has macros. It doesn't. I can't fix this erroneous error.

Not responsible if any of the above rambling didn't make any sense.

I hope this helps you.

And just because I like polls, there's one here too.

EDIT: (added 6/11/09)
Ah, well, nice of them to go and release 3.19 right after I release this sheet. One of the charts in my sheet tells what the differences are between a vanilla unit and its unique units, plus the charts that tell what exactly each unit does. It looks to me like this is the only relevant change to the sheet:

Conquistador ignores walls, to be consistent with Cuirassier

So I'll let you guys use that information as you see fit.


EDIT/UPDATE:

Today (3/14/10) I had some spare time and went through and checked my sheet. A few errors had been found in Michelangelo's, and a couple of those were still in mine, plus there were a couple others I found. I also wanted to check that 3.19 change that needed to be made, and as it turns out, I didn't notice that Conquistadors couldn't ignore walls, so that wasn't a problem after all.

Here's the new file for 3.19. The old one for 3.17 was downloaded 580 times.

 

[The_J]

Good collection .
Would maybe more readable as a pdf.

 

[TheDS]

Thank you, kind sir! If you would like to make a PDF version, I'll add it to the original post.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

Thanks

 

[Michelangelo]

Hi TheDS,

Good thing you did what you did. I'm also still finishing my ref-sheets, but RL doesn't allow. But I can help you, methinks atleast, with the macros. Only fair, as I put them there in the first place .

When you go to the visual basic editor, you must remove the now empty modules. That will also remove the macro-warning.

See ya,

M.

 

[MorbiusInCT]

very nice ss. looks like it was a lot of work and a lot of fun.

 

[TheDS]

dang double posts!

 

[TheDS]

Aw, dude, I was just in the process of uploading the new file when you posted! Sorry about that. Thanks for the pat on the back!

I've made some minor updates because someone found some errors, and while I had it open, I found a couple more. Anyway, I've attached the new file to the original post. Enjoy!

 

[MorbiusInCT]

you are welcome. it's good to be up to date. fyi... about 7%-10% of males are red/green color blind so i assume the wordless blobs on the title page actually say something like the tab title they go to when clicked. be kind. don't combine red and green. and yes... traffic lights can be a problem for me when there is no yellow (orange?) one in between and they are on their side. anyway... thanks for the fix. ya done a good thing... again.

 

[TheDS]

You're welcome!

On my screen, it's yellow (golden) text on white background to go with the color scheme of the Civ4 graphic. It's possible your monitor is screwed up (or mine is). But yes, they are links. Feel free to change them to a more useful color. It's just text with hyperlinks, you can select the whole lot and change the text color or the background color if you like. Let me know how it all goes, if you care to.

 

[TheDS]

Well, this is embarrassing... I found another couple of minor errors. Heh, I go and correct the sheet and then come to notice I missed something innocuous. It had to do with the cross-indices; two of the corrections centered around what the starting techs for civs were, and the cross-indices tells you this information too, but I forgot to update it. But it's updated now! Sorry. Two people downloaded that before I caught it.

 

[feelotraveller]

Thanks a lot - this is brilliant. Just had a quick glance but I'm sure I'll learn lots when I get a chance to spend some time. Noticed that the unit costs for marathon speed are 3/2 of what they should be. Units only cost double on marathon.

Real good just the same.