Don't blame me for my rookieness

[Gunter]

I have played every CIV game since the first one and now I am thinking if it the case to play Civ 4.

Could you please ( elder civ fans much appreciated ) shortly answer to these very few questions ?

1 ) Is the latest patch satisfying ?

2 ) Does it exist an editor to use in order to allow f.i. helos to fly over mountains or to tweak a bit things to suite my own preferences ?

3 ) Is still present the way to play it without any time limit ?

4 ) which is the best or more popular mod and why ?


Thanks a lot for your contribution to my lost cause


Gunter

[Nikolai]

1) What are your requirements for satisfying? I think the patch soon to be out is very good.
2)There is no editor as in Civ3, but Civ4 is very moddable as it is, and when the SDK is released to the public most things can be modded heavily.
3) Not sure what you mean?
4) Good question, over to the next person in line.

[Gunter]

Hi Nikolai,

first,thanks for your answers,

1 ) for satisfying I mean no major bugs still present or very fastidious ones like f.i the impossibility to trigger events cause bugs.. etc..

The patch soon to be out ? Do you mean a patch new patch is coming soon ?

2 ) do you know when the SDK will be released ? Some months ago I heard such " editor " would been out on January 2006,so I take your statement as a bad news ?



3 ) The way where no game over will pop up, the way where I can freely decide to play 1 minute , a day or all life long

4 ) I will search


Cheers


Gunter

[Nikolai]

1) It is indeed coming out soon.
2) Yeah, it has been postponed, but it's very close to being released now.
3) If you start a custom game, you can disable the time victory and play as long as you want.
4) Do that.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Gunter

The patch soon to be out ? Do you mean a patch new patch is coming soon ?

It will probably be out within a week, maybe two at the most. There was a notice by Firaxis that it was sent to Take Two for final approval a short while ago.

Some months ago I heard such " editor " would been out on January 2006,so I take your statement as a bad news ?

It's probably not going to be an editor in the way that you're thinking. What it will do is allow someone with programming knowledge to make changes to the actual game code. It's been delayed because it's tied in with the upcoming patch and that took longer than expected to get all the bugs out of it.

An editor like we had in Civ3 is probably not going to happen, there's just too much information that can be changed in the current setup. However, all you need in order to edit is Notepad, or some other basic word processing program.

[Zoid]

If you´re a N00b at programming, an XML editor is even better.

[Aro]

A new patch?
Give me a link, folks... I've been away for some time.

[Nikolai]

It's not out yet.

[Gunter]

Thanks guys,

I'll keep an eye on the upcoming patch and the ohter one on the SDK.

Till now I havn't played even the demo but I already hate helos that can't cross mountains......so if you know how to tweak this maybe even via notepad or XML editor please let me know the value to modify.

Do Spies still exist ? I tell this because I read from Solver that if your army is weak the AI is very inclined to declare war to you , but how the hell the AI knows if my army is good or not ?

Thanks and Cheers

Gunter

[Nikolai]

Spies are in. But I don't think spies has neccessarily anything to do with DoWs.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Gunter
Do Spies still exist ? I tell this because I read from Solver that if your army is weak the AI is very inclined to declare war to you , but how the hell the AI knows if my army is good or not ?

a) If you have an "open border" agreement the units of that civ can freely move inside your territory.
b) IIRC, if your cities are converted to a religion that's the official religion discovered by another civ, that civ can see inside your cities.
c) The AI probably cheat a bit on that kind of info a human can try to guess using human brain logic...

[Willem]

Originally posted by Gunter
Till now I havn't played even the demo but I already hate helos that can't cross mountains......so if you know how to tweak this maybe even via notepad or XML editor please let me know the value to modify.

Look for CIV4UnitInfos.xml, it's in Assets/XML/Units. Somewhere in that file is the setting for the Gunship that you want.

[Solver]

The AI doesn't cheat to find out how good your army is, but it sees some of your units and knows, of course, your technological level.

Civ4 has very few bugs, nothing really game breaking. THe last patch improves Civ4 a lot technically (faster loading times, less memory used, etc.), and fixes some bugs, but there weren't any really serious bugs to begin with.

Helicopters that can't cross mountains are indeed not a big problem, but you can mod it, the value is something like CanCrossImpassable, I don't remember right now.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
b) IIRC, if your cities are converted to a religion that's the official religion discovered by another civ, that civ can see inside your cities.

As long as foreign cities practice a religion you found, you get to see in these cities. Furthermore, if you build the holy shrine, you get 1 coin per city per turn.

[Jmaz]

The 'Advisors' are different in CIV IV. They are always available though. (the F buttons or a set of icons on the top right of your screen).
The furthest to the right hand of these icons is the "graphs'. A pull sown menu lets you see where you compare to the other civs. Once you have 'met' a civ their graphs are also available, so if you have a weak army it will show in the graphs and all will know it open borders or not.
Hope this helps.