Civ4 Q&A thread
 

Especially for n00bs and the like ;) a thread for all your short questions!

Perhaps our esteemed admins could make a subforum if this thread fills up too quickly.

How the hell do you rush things with cash in this game?

What techs and where do you find the button to do so?

erm, cant really answer the question, but I did wonder the same thing. I suspect you need a tech/civic state before you can cash rush (like in Civ3, you need an appr. government) but I dont know if that's correct. Mostly because I never read manuals. :)

thanks for the answer [hmm] I guess [mischief]

I think you need slavery civics before being able to pop-rush.

true... I'm looking for cash rush though

If you want to rush with gold, you need the civic Universal Sufferage. This comes with democracy. A tip: take a look in the civics screen and look what the differences are.

Wow that takes quite a while to get to then !

I appreciate the help though

Indeed. It's even "after" nationalism this time! But the pyramids unlocks all civics, so if you really want to...

You can speed up your production with engineers as well. You need a forge (also increases production) which comes with metal casting, right after bronze working. So there's a way to increase production way before the industrial revolution.

Kemal was a beta tester for cIV? Wow. was that cool?

Where did that come from?

I asked for a list of beta testers @ CFC and Civrules posted: [url=http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3235123&postcount=12]

Congrats Kemal.

Anyways, any of you can answer this question: WHEN WILL AMAZON SHIP WHAT I PREORDERED 2 WEEKS AGO??

I have the games now on DVD.

However its asking me to insert the correct CD to run??!?!?!

Tech Support says to insert Disk 1 [lol]

Will their stuff ever work? ITS ON 1 FUCKIN DVD YOU IDIOTS!!

Deodorant anyone?

Melifluous

I have a question: is the only advantage of spawning a religion that you don't have fog of war in the cities with that religion? The advantage of that is strategic/military, which is rather opposite to that AI being nicer to you when you have the same religion, isn't it?

Secondly, the more religions you have in a city, the more temples, monastries and cathedrals you can build. So isn't it a good thing to have as many religions in as many cities as possible?

Thirdly, you don't have to pay maintenance for buildings?!

Fourthly, why would you want another civ to take over your civic? What's the tactic in that?

1. Once you have the shrine built, every city in the world that has your religion contributes gold to your economy. I think its 1 gpt per city but not sure.

2. I think so, especially when you can change to the Free Religion civic later on.

3. Maintenance is calculated by distance from the capitol, and number of cities you possess. Buildings are essentially free.

4. Better relationships is the only thing I know.

Don't forget that if you possess the holy city and have the shrine for that religion built, every city with that religion in the entire world will get you +1 gold to your income via the shrine. Also, the AI will sooner convert to the religion you have been spreading in its cities because it has more cities with that religion that way, giving you the friendship bonus and thus better trading options.

True, except that if an AI has a shrine, it will get money from your cities as well with that religion. On the other hand, in free religion, with a lot of religions present in a city, the happiness bonus can get quite big. Plus, there are the religious buildings, as you pointed out.

You don't pay maintenance for buildings, only for cities and units.

Having a civ take on other civics can be quite potent, it could for example destroy a large relationship bonus it has with another 3rd party civ because of "you have chosen your civics wisely" bonus, thus weakening relations between those 2 civs. But also, some empires are profiting more from certain civics than others, having the AI change civics can seriously hamper or encourage their development (and even your own). A good example would be having a civ adopt mercantilism, which (iirc) prevents all foreign trade routes, meaning every other civ gets hit commercially because it loses trade routes with that civ.

Anybody have a clue how to disband a city??? (my manual is still at the office [cry])

Thanks for the answers on my questions. It does make me wonder how the difference will be between AI and humans in tactics, since humans don't care whether they have the same religion or civic as you. It still matters of course, but differently.

Yep, I was wondering about that, too, and I even had the manual right in front of me (I stopped playing after a couple of hours because, well, it sucks. Constant crashes [bosd] and slooooow game [whatsthis with a 3800+ PC is just not appealing to me). :([mad2][mad][rant][saiyan]

I already ranted at CFC http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=136983 so I'll spare you this time except this: How this game could have been released (after internal testing, feedback from betatesters) is beyond me. Some nice ideas but SO many things just simply screwed up it is unbelievable, even for a pessimist like me (if you remember my pessimistic expectations before cIV was released). Worst of all it all the gaming sites that hailed the game. I will henceforth NEVER trust in a magazine again and play a demo/copy (you can rent computer games here for 1.25€/day) before even thinking of buying it. Sad world, really. [sad]

Cities cannot be disbanded once they are built. Only way to get rid of cities permanently is razing on capture, iirc.

Is that a question? ;) I have really no problems at all running the game. The problems do sound very familiar, initially I couldn't get battlefield2 to run stable. Apparently BF2 has some issues with nvidia cards, whereas civ4 has issues with ATI cards. Adding a lot of RAM and increasing the page file helped a lot as well for playing larger maps. Note that the minimum system reqs might be the absolute minimum for playing the tiniest, ugliest and slowest map possible.
It's impossible to test every combination of hardware. These days it's common practice to release something and then let the public betatest it again for some time. Compared to EA games Firaxis is really fast with new patches, if it is of any condolance.

On a more serious note, let's keep this thread for QUESTIONS.

P.S. Unable to disband cities sucks, I want to get rid of those tiny useless crappy cities that flipped to me!

Once in Slavery civics, how do you whip cities ? Please !
That (translated) manual is totally unreadable...

I haven't tried it yet, but I know that in the lower left of the city screen there are several rush options available.

Not being able to disband a city is a serious problem imo. I suppose this is done to prevent some 'abusive' strategies but I think disallowing abondement as a while is a measure out of proportion.

Not really Q&A but some things I found out the hard way:
- irrigation spreads through farms but only when the connection to the fresh water source is intact. I could build a new farm next to an old one after disconnecting the original farm next to the river. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature, for sure it is different than Civ 3.

- desert can't be irrigated. Damn annoying as well, especially when you cant disband cities. So no option to 'irrigate-jump' a hill or desert by building a temporary city. [cry]

- I experienced a lot of crashes in wonder sequences and battle zoom. Disabling the movies in the ini file and the battle zoom in the options worked wonders.

- The tech tree is confusing imo. Pottery needs the wheel, but there's no line between them, they're just positioned on the same height.

- When I read the civpedia about religion I thought that you can see all cities that follow the religions that you own the holy cities of. Apparently that only works for the religion that is your state religion and you own the holy city of as well.

As for the tech tree, don't forget that mandatory tech requirements are noted in the upper right corner of the tech they are required for, via a little tech icon. You always need those techs in the upper right corner to research that tech, whereas the lines, iirc, indicate that the tech the line comes from "leads to" a "new tech" (you only need to possess one tech of those that have an arrow leading to the "new tech" to research that new tech, not *all* the techs that have arrows pointing to this "new tech").

I think I'm entering the world of games-in-English users. ;) Still, I'm surprised you got the game in French (manual and tech tree), or am I missing something ? You have Civ3 in English if I'm not mistaken.

It's funny, it seems I know the game better than some people here (at least on some features, like the required techs which made PP wonder about it), despite not having purchased it yet. I guess I have too much time reading the forums on my hand. [blush]

I never read fora or manuals beforehand. I believe in learning by doing.

Also I believe that advisor screens like a tech tree should be made in a way they can be understood intuitively.

I don't believe in anything. It just occurs to me that you can learn the game by both playing it yourself and reading the forums or the manual. So I do both. :)

So, which one is it?
That's just a matter of getting used to. Desert is now as useless as tundra is in both Civ3 and 4.
I agree! There's a tech tree screenshot on CFC where they added the lines of alternative paths; they should've used that. The icons in the upper right corner are not distinctive enough.

Right under de draft button in the city screen.

I got it now. You can only build a farm when connected to irrigation (connected to water directly via other farms after researching Civil Service). But all the farms you disconnect from a water source won't work anymore! Well, it does make sense. :)

I have to choose between using my only source of stone with a mine, or irrigate it, so that the backland (plains) has water. :(

I have the same with my marble source

The only way to get rid of a city apparently is to gift it to an AI and then declare war and raze the city.

I'm again completely puzzled as to how corruption works. It is there and it is very high on higher difficulty. Very notable on Monarch. Have not tried anything above that yet.

Reading the fora now is pretty much useless since the only thing that the articles do is just retype what is in the manual and poster with tech tree. The only exception seems to be Arathorn's/BomberEscort article on combat mechanics. There is already a calculator online made by some Russia guy (apparently Gramphos).

Actually, the manual is rather unreadable in English as well. It is a very boring read. I've felt asleep yesterday trying to get through the worker actions. But it seems to be rather comprehensive so far.

Just curious. Don't you find that the game is a hybrid of civ2 coupled with TAM mod? Or course, there are huge new features, especially religion. But overall it all looks more like civ2/TAM mod in terms of gameplay.

Also, early development seems to really even more important than in civ3 (unlike civ2). Seems that having some bonus food and good terrain on start is critical. I've never abandoned any start in civ2. Here, I mean in civ4, some locations are completely unplayable. Also, seems that the map generator tries to be more gentle with the human player. I've noticed AIs are sometimes given complete wasteland as a starting location. Anyone else noticed this?

I'm playing a monarch game atm, but apart from 2 very quick and short starts that were meant to get some feel for basic gameplay I didndt play anything.

Monarch is still pretty easy though.

hm, I am so far stumped by a few things, but I always try to get as many religions as possible and that seems to help a lot with upkeep, due to the gold I earn.

My expansion rocks even on higher levels. Problem is cash. Seem to get broke way too fast.

KR, build many hamlets, and also see that religion brings you cash. I always go Hinduism and start it ASAP, build a temple ASAP, this spreads Hindu far and wide. 1st religious leader rushes the Hindu Religious wonder - atm, e.g., I have a game on earth where I earn around 17/turn only by paying cities from other civs! All but Persia have Hindu as state religion, too, btw.

My game crashes when I build a wonder, so I've avoided them...way to win now seems to chop all the forests and build a huge mili. Some forests generate 40+ hamers! I could beat Emperor if it weren't for not having wonders.