The newbie (but not only so) Guide to Civ4

[Robert]

Provost is right.
A religion can only spread automaticly to a city if there's no religion in the city yet.
After that a missionary is needed.
And the probability that the missionary will succeed is lower for every religion that's already in the city.

Spreading a 2nd religion is much easier then spreading the 7th religion.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Krill
really? Well, you know so much about the game Provost, that I suggest you quit your day job and go work for Firaxis. Because you certainly know how this game works better than the testers and programmers.

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


And people who actually pay attention to the game rules rather than trying to infer them through experiment.

Have you two finished speaking out of your collective arses? It is a well established fact that religion will not automatically spread to a city that already has one.

And Krill, I don't know where your attitude as of late has come from. You always used to be quite cool but you seem to be being a bit of a d*ckhead at the moment. As for Kuci, well, I never expected any better.

Now shall we see if we can get the attention of a passing Firaxian to confirm this?

[Solver]

CHILL! That's not the kind of posting that belongs in here...

[Provost Harrison]

I think you'll find it is. This place is full of bullsh*tters with no substance.

[Solver]

Uhm, no, PH. This isn't the OTF, you don't get to call people names here.

[Provost Harrison]

No names, just statement of fact. I pointed out their complete and utter lack of knowledge on this situation. The two little bumlovers try and gang up on me. Fact is, they should keep themselves to themselves when they don't know what the hell they are talking about

[Solver]

Hmm, I must have missed it, when did you turn into a Civ4 expert ?

[Provost Harrison]

Being an expert or not is irrelevant, I am right...

[Solver]

But you post with the conviction of a true expert .

[Shrapnel12]

If you don't mind, I'd like to divert everyone's attention from the hostilities, by asking another newbie question. The initial poster included modding as a part of the subject of this thread, but I've so far found very little help on modding on this site at all. I even started a thread to ask questions, and it died rather quickly. Is modding not very popular with Civ IV? In your opinion, where are the best resources located for learning about modding? I don't need to learn how to program, I just need documentation on where different features of the game are controlled. I've got the XML files down pretty well (for my purposes at least), but not the Python files.

[Solver]

Yes, sadly, we do not have anything resembling comprehensive modding documentation here - for which I should partially take the blame.

Civ4 modding is extremely popular. The biggest place for mods is at the CFC forums - their Creation forum, and their Modding tutorial forum, which contains a lot of reference material.

As far as Python goes, though, we have a very good Python API reference here, it's very convenient for looking up Python classes and their functions.

If you want to know which Python files do specifically what, you'll just have to look around yourself. CFC has tutorials on programming, and tutorials on specific tasks (create a unit, etc.), but I do not recall a good general "what's where" explanation over there.

[Kuciwalker]

Solver, it's okay. PH is just sore from the thrashing he usually takes.

[Shrapnel12]

Darn, I was really hoping to find something here. Stupid Websense blocks my access to these sites and my town is so technologically backwards all I have is dial-up at home. I wanted to get wireless broadband through Verizon and I couldn't even do that as there was no coverage in my area.

[Targonis]

Originally posted by Toby Rowe
Hi mate,

Thanks for the reply.

I can't get a word wrap choice so have to view as written.
How dominant is the culture aspect?, is it logical when it happens, or random as in Civ 3? Is the religious aspect programmed into this "sneaking through the back door of your defences" or is it purely cultural?

If any of you chaps and lassies have the time, how would you say Civ 4 compares against Civ, Civ 2 and Civ 3? or is Civ 4 too different to be comparable?, if yes, for better or worse?

Toby

I didn't see a response to your questions(it's still a bit early so may have missed it), and it's been a WHILE since this was asked, but I figure I may as well answer.

Without the formula that comes into play, cultural boundaries are fairly simple. Each city generates it's own culture, and when each city hits a growth point, it expands. In the city screen, you can see how many culture points the city generates, as well as how many total points are needed to reach the next culture stage.

It gets a bit more complicated when two different civs have an overlap in a culture boundary. Each tile shows the percentage control the current owner has. If your civ is producing more culture in a tile than the other, that tile will slowly convert to your control, and you can watch the percentage change. Once you have the highest percentage control of that tile, the tile converts to your control. I know I am not explaining it well, but I am half asleep at this point.

As an example, you have a city, and a neighbor has a new city a few tiles beyond your cultural boundaries, but with that city has it's influence right at the edge of your cultural edge. Now, your city expands it's cultural borders. Depending on the amount of culture the other civ's city is generating, you will see the tile drop from him/her having 100 percent to 99 percent or less. With each turn, that percentage will drop, unless the other city has it's culture grow and has more influence. So it's your culture pushing out from your city, and the other civ has it's culture pushing out. It can take a LONG time if the cultural "push" from two civs is high, since in the late game, you may have a city with over 100 culture/turn pushing against a city with 90 or more culture per turn. In this case, it will take a while for your culture to convert the tile(s) to your control.

This applies to all civs, so you may find a neighboring civ will be pushing into YOUR cultural borders. If you check the edge, and you see you have less than 100 percent, and over time that percentage goes down, you know what is happening. Now, you can decide how to deal with this in a number of ways. One is to build more culture producing buildings in the city. You can have the city produce culture directly, which converts production to culture. You can have artist specialists(if available). You can also select to push culture civ-wide at the cost of research percentage. Note that you need the right techs for some of these things. But, as long as your cities are pushing more culture than "the competition", you shouldn't have much of a problem.


Now, going into the spread of religion, there is the "automatic" spread of religion, and there is also the spread of religion via missionary. The spread of religion has a bit more of an impact on things than just the cultural. If you have the holy city of a religion and then build the holy building(via priest specialist), you will get 1 gold per city with that religion per turn. So, if you are the founder of multiple religions and build the holy cities for them, that will give you a big advantage in terms of money, so you can grow your civilization faster. Having religions in a city will allow that city to build structures around that religion. Temples for example will help with happiness, but unlike previous Civ games, you can only build temples for the religions in that particular city. So having 7 religions in a city will allow you to have 7 temples(one for each religion). Temples and other religious structures generate culture as well, so if you are doing a culture war, you may not want to spread a lot of religions to the border cities of "the competition".

With religion though, if you spread your state religion to your neighbors, they may convert, which will boost the relationship with you(if you and your neighbors are of the same state religion, that improves relations).

Overall, Civ 4 is a huge change from previous Civ games. In most ways, Civ 4 is MUCH better than previous games. From religion to culture to AI and combat, Civ 4 has come a LONG way. The graphics are a nice improvement as well, since Civ 4 doesn't look like the previous games with just some new features. In most ways, Civ 4 is an all new game, but with enough similarities to make it a true member of the Civilization family.

The biggest change over previous Civ games is that the old "spam-build" of new cities method of growth in the early game is now dead. If you build too many cities too early in the game, your research rate will suffer, which means you can fall behind the other civs in terms of technology. So you need to balance the addition of new cities with your technology research and money output from cities. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's very hard to go back to previous games after all the improvements that Civ 4 brings compared to the previous games.

Warlords added Vassal States to the game, which changes the game a bit. It wasn't a "great" expansion, but Vassal states does add a bit to the game. Beyond the Sword will add so much more to the game than Warlords, that it will be a "must have" based on what has been posted. Both expansions are the type of things to enhance the game without forcing too many changes to tactics(except perhaps your short, medium, and long term goals). Warlords adding The Great Wall for example helps if you play with rampaging barbarians turned on(barbarians attack a lot more and have a bit more strength than normal). So, if you play with that option, having that wonder may be more important than some alternatives.

The mods for Civ 4 also should not be ignored. There are some really really great mods out there to enhance the game. If you are new to playing Civ 4, you may want to get used to the regular game now, since Beyond the Sword will add a lot to the game, and many mods may break with the new expansion.

I hope this somewhat verbose post helps...

[Toby Rowe]

Hi Targonis,

Firstly thank you so much for this excellent guide, and secondly I apologize for not having replied until now.

I now have a new 'puter but have been busy studying in a mid-life career switch.

On the few hours I've had free ;-)......I've been playing EU3, and discovered that the latest patch effectively ends colonisation by all nations bar you after the first 50 years, and colonisation created wealth and impressed your neighbours (vassalisation), your gonna win......

Thus a foregone conclusion the minute you begin........so no programmers actually playing the product they've created- a bit like inventing a car without ever checking if it actually works!

You however have mapped out a balanced game within which the company has actually checked the product prior to release!!

(I also brought Sid Meiyers latest rubbish- A railway game called "Railroads!" which has maps so tiny you could put them in your pocket....

If I want to build a Railway, what is the first thing I want in a map?

It's space!!

Space to expand, new cities to connect to, vast continents to connect the length and breath of, what did Railroads! offer?

A sandbox and pretty graphics and a claustrophobic feeling viewing the tinie-wennie, incy little maps: great for young nippers having fun after school; rubbish if older than 12)

Anyway,

Thanks once again for the time and effort on explaining the game in detail, you did a good job mate.

Toby