Civ4 Q&A thread - Page 7

Kemal · 08-11-2005, 20:43

On growth, granaries are as solid as before, however (on higher difficulties) I think happiness will become a limited factor real soon, especially if your luxes are calendar-type luxes. After all, what good is a granary if your cities cannot grow past size 4?

On the forest chop: maybe game speed (epic/normal/quick) explains the difference in shields a bit? Also, I suppose when shields are added to a build that your civ-traits give double prod speed for, the amount of shields from the forest is multiplied x2.

Socrates · 08-11-2005, 21:44

(Still no game here, but following the thread nonetheless, dunno why.)

I think Kemal makes a very valid point : many features are tweaked by a various amount of settings : leader traits, map size, game level, game speed, etc, etc... I think it would save us some huge time if everyone made a little extra effort, ie. tell their settings when they speak of something occurring in their games... except if we're sure that no setting can be factored in any tweaking (dumb example : road movement points (and I'm not even sure !

)). The first thing to do would be to compile a list of settings though.

Melifluous · 08-11-2005, 22:53

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by grahamiam

@meli: i'm also curious what negative research does. I've been a bit lazy the past few days, and the treasury drops to zero and rate to -gpt, but I don't think I pay a penalty for it??? (well, other than being bankrupt)

Well eventually all my workers went on Strike. Nothing! All workers went home and wouldn't do shit. Dunno if it's related and couldn't find shit in the civilopedea.

Nevermind.

Melifluous

Kemal · 08-11-2005, 23:27

1. Your units go on strike when running a deficit, so this is related yes.
2. There is no entry on shit in the civilopedia...

Beam · 08-11-2005, 23:36

Don't forget health, poor health is as bad as poor happiness (doctors might link the thing RL, this is just about in-game lol).

@kemal, another proof the civilopedia is fucked up

ProPain · 09-11-2005, 00:45

About food and granaries: I have only played 3 quick-starts and 1 half game untill now, but I dont think a granary is always usefull.

- Especially in worker/settler factories granaries are a waste of hammers, during worker/settler construction your city growth halts so you only reason to ever need a granary in a w/s factory are if you're in dire need of health.

- When you build a settler/worker your excess food is counted as producion hammers, so having lots of food is still beneficial in a w/s fact, but not better than having an equal amount of hammers which will result in the same building speed. A lot different than Civ3 where food mainly determined the possibility of w/s fac. With the mining improvement available only later in the game your chances of getting production bonuses with workers in the beginning are small while farm and pasture upgrade are available a bit sooner, leaving food in a slightly more beneficial light for ealry exp, I still think it's less important than in Civ3.

- Should you be so lucky to start at a sea edge with a bonus resource: go workboat. During the construction of a workboat your pop keeps growing (unlike when you build a landworker!) and you can use the boat to boost your growth by turning it into fishing nets on the resource. This consumes the workboat (while a landworker stays alive) but I feel it's well worth it cause of the early growth you get.

akots · 09-11-2005, 05:36

I've experimented a bit by playing Greek World mod as Rome. I know, it is not a good idea to start with a mod especially since it is quite different from the actual game. It is poorly documented though. OK, it is a large map with limited techs and limited victory conditions (Domination and Conquest). Playing on Monarch. I was able to rapidly conquer the Italian lands and started on Granaries in all cities. Marble, Stone, and whatever food bonus is there were hooked up rather rapidly as well. I can tell you that Granaries rock and rock big. It really boosts the growth and dramatically. So, after playing for about 3 hours and through about 100 turns, all my core cities have reached their growth limit due to happiness problems. There is little sense in building temples because they are ridiculously expensive and provide happiness only to those cities which have State-adopted religion. However, I'm having a nice collection of wonders in Rome including Great Library, Heroic Epic, National Epic, Academy, Flavius wonder (analog of Great Wall) and have also built Stonehedge wonder in Antium. Already generated great merchant and great scientist. Merchant went for cash in Athens and Scientist rush the Academy.

But the victory conditions are only military win. So, I have to build apparently a bunch of pretorians and cats and hammer the surrounding enemies. BTW, Persia had already been destroyed and Jewish civilization as well. So, I'm sitting in the corner with Phenicians and Alexander. Road movement is only 2 and boat movement is 2 as well and I still cannot hook up horses. So, how am I supposed to win this on a large map? Guess these all wonders have been a large waste of everything (except Heroic Epic which double the build rate for military units) and I should have built only units instead.

Very annoying features inherited from Civ3:

1) I was RoP raped by Alexander. We then agreed to peace after some hammering of each others units (no cities taken there). The son of a bitch came back in about 10 more turns and asked for open borders!!! This is ridiculous, you know. If this is a feature, fuck it up. Especially annoying is that I'm supposed to have a trade route with Athens which was a Persian city when my great merchant travelled there. Now it is Greek. [argh]

2) There is a problem with cities having uneven amount of food. They have to starve once they grow over the limit.

3) RNG is extrememly improtant. And yes, you can lose Pretorian (strength 8) to warrior (strength 2) either attacking or defending. And not once but multiple times.

4) Barracks help but very slightly, mostly 10% bonus.

5) Very hard to keep track of units, F3 advisor does not jump to their locations.

6) Very annoying feature - cannot fortify cats or boats in a city.

7) The manual says, you would need many workers. The hell I do. I've built about 1 per city. They work faster and all my land is improved and they are all building roads in the open lands.

8) It is really tough to expand. City maintenance is horrible burden on the budget. Settler are extremely expensive. Overall, it looks like playing TAM mod. However, there is no upgrades and culture is extremely expensive and there is literally no way to rush anything. Might be it is just that this scenario was poorly playtested. Also, I need 7 Courthouses to build a Forbidden Palace. Note that each Courthouse costs 120 hammers. Note also, number of turns in the game is really limited.

9) Techs are extremly expensive apparently due to the map size.

10) Endless unpassable and unworkable mountains everywhere. They are not that all unpassable and unworkable in the real world! Some cities have only 6 tiles to work. not my doing, that were all barbairan cities.

11) There are a few other points, but not really important except that imho all this religion and wonder stuff is really meaningless unless going for a cultural victory. I could have build 3 or even sometimes 4 Pretorians in every 5 turns (numbers variable because of production going to next build) in Rome and am going to kill them all if time permits. Need a bunch of galleys though which are also ridiculously expensive. BTW, I'm number one in everything even in military service.

12) Stonehedge is supposed to give a free obelisk in every city. Well, it does not, at least not in this scenario. I have specifically abstained from learning the Calendar tech. it did center the world map though. Lack of obelisks might have something to do with State Religion although this is not documented anywhere.

13) Barbarians are not just a minor annoyance like they are in Civ3. Beware of them. Fortunately Pretorians are a good unit. but still I've lost a bunch to axemen and even more to horse archers.

14) Cannot take screenshots, it just does not work.

15) AI sucks and sucks big. Again, they don't build any improvements, mostly units and nothing else. not even barracks.

16) Worker automation is horrible, everything is messed up. I've tried for about 5 turns and they build cottages on hills and near river. They do build pastures on pigs and cows but never hook them up by roads. They chop forest and build workshop on it which is a ridiculous waste.

17) Governor sucks big again. As warned in the manual, so this is expected. However I was unable to find the global option of turning the governor off.

18) Micromanagement is really a horrible job without Mapstat on a large map. It is do-able but way more hard than in civ3. may be just need some time to adjust to it though. It woudl be nice to know which cities have grown this turn and need attention.

Overall conclusion: Granaries rock especially if it is possible to chop forest towards them or pop-rush. Pop-rushing is not as horrible as it is in civ3. Penalty is shorter and if there is enough happiness, it does not harm the growth. It also seems the only way to build early wonders on more or less decent difficulties.

akots · 09-11-2005, 05:41

Good features imho:

1) Very nice performance. My specs are: AMD Athlon 1500, 1 Gb RAM, 128 Mb ATI Radeon 9200, apparently unlimited HDD, XP + SP1 (no SP2 here). Everything runs very smoothly, no slowdowns, interturn time about 10-20 seconds, way faster than Rise of Rome in Civ3 on my machine. No memory leaks as well.

2) Nice graphics, nice animations, very decent music.

3) Very different game, lost of intriguing feautres. Unfortunately very poorly documented in the manual.

4) Actually, combat system is really way better. Still there is room for compaining but it is way better.

ProPain · 09-11-2005, 12:31

I still think your 'granaries rock' statement is way too general. Please explain what you consider the use of a granary in an early worker/settler factory. I'm now building a few warriors to achieve some groth and MP and then switch to w/s prod in 1st or 2nd city.

Matrix · 09-11-2005, 13:10

1) I was RoP raped by Alexander. We then agreed to peace after some hammering of each others units (no cities taken there). The son of a bitch came back in about 10 more turns and asked for open borders!!! This is ridiculous, you know. If this is a feature, fuck it up. Especially annoying is that I'm supposed to have a trade route with Athens which was a Persian city when my great merchant travelled there. Now it is Greek. [argh]
Are you sure you had Open Borders? With Open Borders you can stand on the same tile as your 'friend', so it's impossible to declare war by attacking.

And if you declare war via the diplomatic war you have to cancel Open Borders first, which kicks out all your units out if their territory.

If what you're saying is true, it's a bug.

3) RNG is extrememly improtant. And yes, you can lose Pretorian (strength 8) to warrior (strength 2) either attacking or defending. And not once but multiple times.
Hasn't happened to me a single time, even though I had built a lot of Praetorians. Perhaps they were damaged?

4) Barracks help but very slightly, mostly 10% bonus.
Depends on what unit you build. 1st or 2nd strike helps a lot, as well as being able to retreat.

6) Very annoying feature - cannot fortify cats or boats in a city.
Pressing <f> will turn them to sleep. They don't have a defensive bonus, so you can't call it fortify, but that's just it's specification.

12) Stonehedge is supposed to give a free obelisk in every city. Well, it does not, at least not in this scenario. I have specifically abstained from learning the Calendar tech. it did center the world map though. Lack of obelisks might have something to do with State Religion although this is not documented anywhere.
Obelisks are obsolete by discovering Calender. If you build Stonehenge after discovering Calender that was quite useless.

14) Cannot take screenshots, it just does not work.
You don't have to paste it in an image program; the screenshots come directly in the directory: <My documents>\My Games\Civilization IV\ScreenShots\

15) AI sucks and sucks big. Again, they don't build any improvements, mostly units and nothing else. not even barracks.
This is not my experience, playing at Noble difficulty!

18) Micromanagement is really a horrible job without Mapstat on a large map. It is do-able but way more hard than in civ3. may be just need some time to adjust to it though. It woudl be nice to know which cities have grown this turn and need attention.
What is there to micromanage?

I agree with all the issues I left out.

08-11-2005, 20:43	#61
Kemal Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Netherlands. Posts: 3,108	On growth, granaries are as solid as before, however (on higher difficulties) I think happiness will become a limited factor real soon, especially if your luxes are calendar-type luxes. After all, what good is a granary if your cities cannot grow past size 4? On the forest chop: maybe game speed (epic/normal/quick) explains the difference in shields a bit? Also, I suppose when shields are added to a build that your civ-traits give double prod speed for, the amount of shields from the forest is multiplied x2. __________________ <b>\"In the Game of Thrones, you win or you die\" </b>

08-11-2005, 21:44	#62
Socrates Emperor Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 3,946	(Still no game here, but following the thread nonetheless, dunno why.) I think Kemal makes a very valid point : many features are tweaked by a various amount of settings : leader traits, map size, game level, game speed, etc, etc... I think it would save us some huge time if everyone made a little extra effort, ie. tell their settings when they speak of something occurring in their games... except if we're sure that no setting can be factored in any tweaking (dumb example : road movement points (and I'm not even sure ! )). The first thing to do would be to compile a list of settings though. __________________ Sent from my Debian

08-11-2005, 23:27	#64
Kemal Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Netherlands. Posts: 3,108	1. Your units go on strike when running a deficit, so this is related yes. 2. There is no entry on shit in the civilopedia... __________________ <b>\"In the Game of Thrones, you win or you die\" </b>

08-11-2005, 23:36	#65
Beam c00l b33r Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Beat 'm up Scotty!. Lives in the Lands that are Nether. Posts: 5,094	Don't forget health, poor health is as bad as poor happiness (doctors might link the thing RL, this is just about in-game lol). @kemal, another proof the civilopedia is fucked up __________________ That was a pretty good gamble. -- Scotty, The Galileo Seven, stardate 2821.5, Episode 14 Linux never looked this good!

09-11-2005, 00:45	#66
ProPain Customized Admin :) Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: sailing the seas of cheese. Posts: 5,852	About food and granaries: I have only played 3 quick-starts and 1 half game untill now, but I dont think a granary is always usefull. - Especially in worker/settler factories granaries are a waste of hammers, during worker/settler construction your city growth halts so you only reason to ever need a granary in a w/s factory are if you're in dire need of health. - When you build a settler/worker your excess food is counted as producion hammers, so having lots of food is still beneficial in a w/s fact, but not better than having an equal amount of hammers which will result in the same building speed. A lot different than Civ3 where food mainly determined the possibility of w/s fac. With the mining improvement available only later in the game your chances of getting production bonuses with workers in the beginning are small while farm and pasture upgrade are available a bit sooner, leaving food in a slightly more beneficial light for ealry exp, I still think it's less important than in Civ3. - Should you be so lucky to start at a sea edge with a bonus resource: go workboat. During the construction of a workboat your pop keeps growing (unlike when you build a landworker!) and you can use the boat to boost your growth by turning it into fishing nets on the resource. This consumes the workboat (while a landworker stays alive) but I feel it's well worth it cause of the early growth you get. __________________ I fed my Dog the American Dream Well, he rolled over and he started to scream He said, I dig the taste of salt but it don't keep me alive yeah, yeah

09-11-2005, 05:36	#67
akots Nebuchadnezzar II Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Glover Park Posts: 4,459	I've experimented a bit by playing Greek World mod as Rome. I know, it is not a good idea to start with a mod especially since it is quite different from the actual game. It is poorly documented though. OK, it is a large map with limited techs and limited victory conditions (Domination and Conquest). Playing on Monarch. I was able to rapidly conquer the Italian lands and started on Granaries in all cities. Marble, Stone, and whatever food bonus is there were hooked up rather rapidly as well. I can tell you that Granaries rock and rock big. It really boosts the growth and dramatically. So, after playing for about 3 hours and through about 100 turns, all my core cities have reached their growth limit due to happiness problems. There is little sense in building temples because they are ridiculously expensive and provide happiness only to those cities which have State-adopted religion. However, I'm having a nice collection of wonders in Rome including Great Library, Heroic Epic, National Epic, Academy, Flavius wonder (analog of Great Wall) and have also built Stonehedge wonder in Antium. Already generated great merchant and great scientist. Merchant went for cash in Athens and Scientist rush the Academy. But the victory conditions are only military win. So, I have to build apparently a bunch of pretorians and cats and hammer the surrounding enemies. BTW, Persia had already been destroyed and Jewish civilization as well. So, I'm sitting in the corner with Phenicians and Alexander. Road movement is only 2 and boat movement is 2 as well and I still cannot hook up horses. So, how am I supposed to win this on a large map? Guess these all wonders have been a large waste of everything (except Heroic Epic which double the build rate for military units) and I should have built only units instead. Very annoying features inherited from Civ3: 1) I was RoP raped by Alexander. We then agreed to peace after some hammering of each others units (no cities taken there). The son of a bitch came back in about 10 more turns and asked for open borders!!! This is ridiculous, you know. If this is a feature, fuck it up. Especially annoying is that I'm supposed to have a trade route with Athens which was a Persian city when my great merchant travelled there. Now it is Greek. [argh] 2) There is a problem with cities having uneven amount of food. They have to starve once they grow over the limit. 3) RNG is extrememly improtant. And yes, you can lose Pretorian (strength 8) to warrior (strength 2) either attacking or defending. And not once but multiple times. 4) Barracks help but very slightly, mostly 10% bonus. 5) Very hard to keep track of units, F3 advisor does not jump to their locations. 6) Very annoying feature - cannot fortify cats or boats in a city. 7) The manual says, you would need many workers. The hell I do. I've built about 1 per city. They work faster and all my land is improved and they are all building roads in the open lands. 8) It is really tough to expand. City maintenance is horrible burden on the budget. Settler are extremely expensive. Overall, it looks like playing TAM mod. However, there is no upgrades and culture is extremely expensive and there is literally no way to rush anything. Might be it is just that this scenario was poorly playtested. Also, I need 7 Courthouses to build a Forbidden Palace. Note that each Courthouse costs 120 hammers. Note also, number of turns in the game is really limited. 9) Techs are extremly expensive apparently due to the map size. 10) Endless unpassable and unworkable mountains everywhere. They are not that all unpassable and unworkable in the real world! Some cities have only 6 tiles to work. not my doing, that were all barbairan cities. 11) There are a few other points, but not really important except that imho all this religion and wonder stuff is really meaningless unless going for a cultural victory. I could have build 3 or even sometimes 4 Pretorians in every 5 turns (numbers variable because of production going to next build) in Rome and am going to kill them all if time permits. Need a bunch of galleys though which are also ridiculously expensive. BTW, I'm number one in everything even in military service. 12) Stonehedge is supposed to give a free obelisk in every city. Well, it does not, at least not in this scenario. I have specifically abstained from learning the Calendar tech. it did center the world map though. Lack of obelisks might have something to do with State Religion although this is not documented anywhere. 13) Barbarians are not just a minor annoyance like they are in Civ3. Beware of them. Fortunately Pretorians are a good unit. but still I've lost a bunch to axemen and even more to horse archers. 14) Cannot take screenshots, it just does not work. 15) AI sucks and sucks big. Again, they don't build any improvements, mostly units and nothing else. not even barracks. 16) Worker automation is horrible, everything is messed up. I've tried for about 5 turns and they build cottages on hills and near river. They do build pastures on pigs and cows but never hook them up by roads. They chop forest and build workshop on it which is a ridiculous waste. 17) Governor sucks big again. As warned in the manual, so this is expected. However I was unable to find the global option of turning the governor off. 18) Micromanagement is really a horrible job without Mapstat on a large map. It is do-able but way more hard than in civ3. may be just need some time to adjust to it though. It woudl be nice to know which cities have grown this turn and need attention. Overall conclusion: Granaries rock especially if it is possible to chop forest towards them or pop-rush. Pop-rushing is not as horrible as it is in civ3. Penalty is shorter and if there is enough happiness, it does not harm the growth. It also seems the only way to build early wonders on more or less decent difficulties. __________________ Cujusvis hominis est errare; nullius, nisi insipientis in errore perseverare Ciceron (Marcus Tullius)

09-11-2005, 05:41	#68
akots Nebuchadnezzar II Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Glover Park Posts: 4,459	Good features imho: 1) Very nice performance. My specs are: AMD Athlon 1500, 1 Gb RAM, 128 Mb ATI Radeon 9200, apparently unlimited HDD, XP + SP1 (no SP2 here). Everything runs very smoothly, no slowdowns, interturn time about 10-20 seconds, way faster than Rise of Rome in Civ3 on my machine. No memory leaks as well. 2) Nice graphics, nice animations, very decent music. 3) Very different game, lost of intriguing feautres. Unfortunately very poorly documented in the manual. 4) Actually, combat system is really way better. Still there is room for compaining but it is way better. __________________ Cujusvis hominis est errare; nullius, nisi insipientis in errore perseverare Ciceron (Marcus Tullius)

09-11-2005, 12:31	#69
ProPain Customized Admin :) Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: sailing the seas of cheese. Posts: 5,852	I still think your 'granaries rock' statement is way too general. Please explain what you consider the use of a granary in an early worker/settler factory. I'm now building a few warriors to achieve some groth and MP and then switch to w/s prod in 1st or 2nd city. __________________ I fed my Dog the American Dream Well, he rolled over and he started to scream He said, I dig the taste of salt but it don't keep me alive yeah, yeah

09-11-2005, 13:10	#70
Matrix Administrator Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Tampere, Finland Posts: 4,828	1) I was RoP raped by Alexander. We then agreed to peace after some hammering of each others units (no cities taken there). The son of a bitch came back in about 10 more turns and asked for open borders!!! This is ridiculous, you know. If this is a feature, fuck it up. Especially annoying is that I'm supposed to have a trade route with Athens which was a Persian city when my great merchant travelled there. Now it is Greek. [argh] Are you sure you had Open Borders? With Open Borders you can stand on the same tile as your 'friend', so it's impossible to declare war by attacking. And if you declare war via the diplomatic war you have to cancel Open Borders first, which kicks out all your units out if their territory. If what you're saying is true, it's a bug. 3) RNG is extrememly improtant. And yes, you can lose Pretorian (strength 8) to warrior (strength 2) either attacking or defending. And not once but multiple times. Hasn't happened to me a single time, even though I had built a lot of Praetorians. Perhaps they were damaged? 4) Barracks help but very slightly, mostly 10% bonus. Depends on what unit you build. 1st or 2nd strike helps a lot, as well as being able to retreat. 6) Very annoying feature - cannot fortify cats or boats in a city. Pressing <f> will turn them to sleep. They don't have a defensive bonus, so you can't call it fortify, but that's just it's specification. 12) Stonehedge is supposed to give a free obelisk in every city. Well, it does not, at least not in this scenario. I have specifically abstained from learning the Calendar tech. it did center the world map though. Lack of obelisks might have something to do with State Religion although this is not documented anywhere. Obelisks are obsolete by discovering Calender. If you build Stonehenge after discovering Calender that was quite useless. 14) Cannot take screenshots, it just does not work. You don't have to paste it in an image program; the screenshots come directly in the directory: <My documents>\My Games\Civilization IV\ScreenShots\ 15) AI sucks and sucks big. Again, they don't build any improvements, mostly units and nothing else. not even barracks. This is not my experience, playing at Noble difficulty! 18) Micromanagement is really a horrible job without Mapstat on a large map. It is do-able but way more hard than in civ3. may be just need some time to adjust to it though. It woudl be nice to know which cities have grown this turn and need attention. What is there to micromanage? I agree with all the issues I left out. __________________