Portrait of a Civ4er

[ElConejo]

I have been playing Civ4 for quite some time now, and I have to say that I adore it. I am having an absolute blast, although coming up with quite a few questions along the way. I am by no means a great, but I can hold my own thus far (Noble mostly).

Here are some of the questions I have: (they are more or less in order of personal importance)

1st: How can you change the Default name? Mine comes up as ConejoAHEK-2zHKSH or something... which I'd like to stop and just edit so that it comes up Conejo or ElConejo and be done with it. I'd rather not have to retype my name each time... esp when I sometimes forget... I just want it to default to something else when I start a new game in SP or MP. Is there a way to do this? If so how?

2nd: Settling ON resources.. is that a good idea at all? I mean, in Civ3 you'd get them if you settled them, but nowadays we have special improvements and such.. so if I settle on some Iron or Bananas, will I lose them or will it treat it as in Civ3 and pretend it is roaded/mined/farmed etc?

3rd: Has anyone else encountered totally unrealistic continents? There was one in which a contient made a giant "S" shape spanning most of the world... I didnt quite like that... but then again, it could just have been the fall of the chips with the settings I had.

4th: Religion seems to spread quite oddly... I thought (bolded because I do not know ) that religions were spread through trade routes. However, my religion will spread to a city out in the middle of the fog, one that I didnt know existed, much less had trade routes with... so I was just wondering how they DO spread...

5th: Has anyone else played different starting eras? What are your thoughts. I think its a great option to have, and puts alot of new ways to play the game, which I love..

6th: When I am talking to a civ leader, I can ask them to ADOPT certain civics, but I have never (thus far) gotten the option to have them CONVERT to a religion. Theres not even anything there, it just says Convert and then nothing is underneath... I am just wondering why that is...

I have learned alot in my games, and from continuously reading the site I fell in love with back in Vanilla Civ3 I have been able to more or less reign pretty well in my games. And one thing I do want to say is that Vel's strategy guide helped enormously THANK YOU VEL! I'm one of your biggest fans!

Really though, thats far too much to cram into one post. I apologize for it all, I just have a running list while I have been playing and had to get it all out. Thank you in advance for any insight you may wish to bestow upon this thread and myself. It is very much appreciated.

[Jaybe]

1st: How can you change the Default name?
Check out the .ini file. I believe it is there that you can change the default, though the profile (in "other" tab in options) may have something to do with it.

2nd: Settling ON resources
If you do so, you get the resource once the improvement is available (e.g., oil @ combustion for the oil well), but you don't get the extra hammers & commerce. Some game settings (e.g., raging barbs or high difficulty levels) may make doing so a good idea.

3rd: Has anyone else encountered totally unrealistic continents?
What is "unrealistic"? Continents setting generally gives roundish blobs. Fractal (huge fractal is my favorite) can give penninsulas, Phillipines-like islands and all sorts of neat stuff. Once I got one big snakey continent (I don't like pangea, and I didn't like that).

4th: Religion seems to spread quite oddly
Religion may spread from any city that has the religion, so it may have spread from someone else's city. I believe that a city trading with another city is more likely to have religion contagion.

5th: Has anyone else played different starting eras?
No experience to share

6th: When I am talking to a civ leader, ... but I have never (thus far) gotten the option to have them CONVERT to a religion.
They have to have at least one city with a religion to potentially convert to it.

[ElConejo]

Thank you immensely for your input, it helps alot. And regarding:

"What is "unrealistic"? Continents setting generally gives roundish blobs. Fractal (huge fractal is my favorite) can give penninsulas, Phillipines-like islands and all sorts of neat stuff. Once I got one big snakey continent (I don't like pangea, and I didn't like that)."

Unrealistic in the means of the snake like continent that you mentioned, thats actually what I meant in my OP. Wish I would have thought of the word 'snakey' when writing it, it serves a better visual.

But I have searched high and low, and I cant get a description of Fractal.. sounds like it'd be up my alley, could I get the low down on it by any chance? (Pros/Cons etc.)

Again, thank you.

[Jaybe]

Fractal: In early civ4 (before one of the patches), it was "Continents". Then Continents became the blobs/ovals, and fractal took its place, giving opportunity again for various shapes and islands which Continents no longer have. Given we have only a sample of one (Earth) for realistic, I like the variety, and especially the unpredictability of fractal.

Pros & cons? That's totally subjective. Sometimes you get a great lay of the land to settle, sometimes not. Sometimes the total land formation makes for a fulfilling or challenging game, or not. I still like fractal.

[ElConejo]

From a few games I started just to see what it looks like, fractal yeilded quite a few maps that looked like pangeas with a small island all by itself off to the west or east. The very first fractal I ran made my hopes soar because it was just like continents only it looked and felt much more realistic (as you said) but 5 out of the 6 yeilded the same huge landmass with one island or so off to the side... I dont much care for pangea maps and I dont want to ruin the surprise for myself of what the map is like by opening up the World Builder each time to make sure its a good map... do you have any suggestions for making the awesome fractal maps like the first one I saw?

My thanks.

[Jaybe]

My normal settings are fractal, huge, temperate, normal sea level, with 11 civs. I don't know if number of civs has an affect on the number of continents. I would suspect that your 6 samples is too small a sampling; I usually get 2 major continents, in my current game 3 (with me on one all by myself).

[Stuie]

Re: Portrait of a Civ4er

Originally posted by ElConejo
3rd: Has anyone else encountered totally unrealistic continents?

You might want to try the Tectonics script:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145842

It produces very nice worlds.

[Blaupanzer]

I like fractal very much, in part for its unpredictability. I play large map, low sea level, 11 civs, and most often get two continents and a couple of large islands. However, I have gotten continents shaped like a w with only tiny islands, and ones with mostly island size land masses with a couple of them linked by peninsulas. I had one like the latter where mountains occurred on the peninsulas creating three seemingly separated land masses that were actually tied together.

I even had one fractal map where a 1 square wide peninsula 15 squares long linked 2 large land masses. Controller on my side was Tokugawa and he gave no one open borders. So until he was eliminated, no land communication was allowed for the rest of us while he had contact with everyone. (he succeeded in creating a worldwide list of enemies and fought to the last samurai.

(Note: I prefer marathon games and have been having a great time in Civ IV. I've played all of the Civ versions beginning in 1990, and Civ IV Warlords at marathon speed seems to me to be the best.)

[ElConejo]

Re: Re: Portrait of a Civ4er

Originally posted by Stuie


You might want to try the Tectonics script:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145842

It produces very nice worlds.

Thank you very much! The 60% water version is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered! I appreciate the reference.

And Blaupanzer, Marathon games FTW! I love Marathon games as it is exactly the time line I always wanted from the Civ games. I dont have Warlords yet and have been holding it off for the moment though..

Jaybe, I suspect my horribly low sample was indeed incorrect, and I will be trying out more fractals in the future. Thank you for your input and your replies.

Thanks all! Any more comments are of course welcome!