CIV IV
MISCELLANY

The Concept

The entire purpose of this page is to clean up my notes regarding CIV IV... or more specifically, the Image Gallery on my phone, as I take a lot of screen-shots.

But even as I say that, I already know there will be collateral damage (random comments that have nothing to do with CIV IV), as the first entry concerns a Computer Game, which is not Civilization IV... the topic of almost every other entry on this page.

Got it?

I'm consolidating my notes, scraps, and whatnot.

Welcome to my Clutter Drawer.

Zero-K

I will not be playing Zero-K, because at the present time (as things may well change in the future), I desire to play all of my games off-line. Nor do I wish to load any program, which I cannot control (to have and to hold) until the end of time.

Fair enough, I'm running Windows 10. And that's about as closed sourced as a thing can get. But it is one of the few exceptions.

Anyhow, as to Zero-K...

A while back, I was perusing some Computer Game Magazine (is there more than a single glossy paper title left), which listed out a bunch of free games. And within the week, I had downloaded a bunch of them.

Zero-K was one of more promising amidst the lot. But I cannot get the program to run off-line (it wants to check for updates prior to running). So, I have deleted it.

But then, as I was doing that, I thought to myself: Hold up there a second, son. Shouldn't you make note of that somewhere?

And this page is the result.

Bulbing Beakers

Beakers = 
    Great_Person_Type * Speed_Factor
    +
    3_OR_2 * Population


Where:

  Great_Person_Type
    Great_Scientist = 1,500
    Great_Anything_Else = 1,000

  Speed Factors
    Marathon = 3
    Epic = 1.5
    Normal = 1
    Quick = ⅔

  3_OR_2
    3 for Great Scientist
    2 for All Other Great People

  Population
    Sum(City_Sizes)
    Um, this might be wrong

The real takeaway from all this is that Great Scientists are worth 500 Beakers more than any other Great Person Type on Normal Game Speed and 1,500 on the Marathon Speed, making it worth one's while to prefer Great Scientists for Bulbing.

And although I never do this, cashing in a slew of Great People at once is a fantastic way of zooming ahead in the Tech Race.

Expansive

Expansive Leaders cannot get Barbarians from Popping Huts... or so I've been told.

Events

The modifications needed in the XML to Trigger an Event ASAP (once all conditions have been met):

XML\Events\EventsTriggerInfos.xml

  iWeight => -1
  iPercentGamesActive => 100

Though, there is a good wiki covering the XMLs at CivFanatics. So, I'd look there if wanted to modify anything in the XML... which I probably don't, as I've been unable to get any modified XML to work with The Bug Mod. And playing with The Bug Mod is more important to me than playing with or modifying Events.

Chops

1 Pop Whip ==> 1 Chop in the Big Fat Cross with Mathematics ==> Monument Hammer Cost ==> ½ Granary Hammer Cost

Yeah, sure. This might be wrong. I don't pay attention to Chops at all. But 90 Hammers for all the rest on Marathon looks about right.

OK. I looked into Chops. One gets twenty Hammers at Normal Speed plus an additional fifty percent bonus for Mathematics (+10H), which gives a grant total of thirty Hammers. And times that by three for Marathon (my preferred speed) and everything looks correct.

In other news, one gets the same amount inside the Fat Cross and one beyond that. But the yield decays any further out.

The Monument or ½ Granary is the real trick, however. As I will probably be able to remember that and look it up while playing in-game should the need ever arise.

Religious Map

It's not the most useful. But in The BUG Mod (if not elsewhere), when one scrolls the map out to Satellite View, another group of Toggle Buttons appear. One can see where Religions are present along with Cultural Dominance. But the functionality I will likely use the most is the drawing of simple lines. It may make my write-ups better.

Circles

○     ○
●     ●

I have been carrying around a screen-shot for the last year (well, for the last ten months) reminding me about those two HTML Codes. Originally, it was in research of a Chess project... wherein, I was (likely) thinking about spinning off into Checkers, which I think the above two symbols may well work to represent the two sides.

Nearby those two codes (in a numeric sort of way), we also have a bunch of other interesting (to me) symbols.

◉, ◍, ◎     ◉, ◍, ◎

■, □     ■, □

▢, ▣     ▢, ▣

▤ ▥ ▦ ▧ ▨ ▩     ▤, ▥, ▦, ▧, ▨, ▩

▲, △     ▲, △
▶, ▷     ▶, ▷
▼, ▽     ▼, ▽
◀, ◁     ◀, ◁

◆, ◇, ◈     ◆, ◇, ◈

And if you really want to understand the motivation behind this page, it's these symbols. They represent research for a project that has long since been discarded. But I don't want to throw out the results (and/or information) just yet. So, this page is as good a way as any to bury said data.

After all, I will come across all of this information again on those dark and lonely nights when I peruse my website. And then, having spent all this time writing the page up (along with the edits), it's sort of likely I will remember for a little while (who knows exactly how long) where I have this information tucked away. And then, a while after that, I'll stumble across the page, having totally forgotten about it... and either be quite pleased... or highly embarrassed.

Anyhow, for now, this is the parking place for these HTML Code Numbers. I'd call them HTML Entities, but I'm going to reserve that syntax for Named Entities (such as © for © instead of ©).

And yes, this has precious little to do with CIV IV. But it does have everything to do with clearing my phone of screen-shots of which this is one.

Eh, it's a little late for me to worry about a total lack of focus on this website.

And besides, I really have no reason to apologize for diverging from CIV IV on a post whose first entry was about Zero-K... a totally different game, altogether.

Hammer Decay

I won't say that I routinely switch between Builds. But it happens often enough. I put a few turns into one thing. And then, I realize I would be better off Building another thing first. Well, the Hammers start to decay after awhile.

TYPE	DELAY	RATE
Unit	10 Turns	2% Turn
Building	50 Turns	1% Turn
Wonder	- - -	- - -

Thus, Units lose 2% of the remaining Hammers (rounded up, so at least 1 Hammer per Turn) after 10 Turns of inactivity (a counter which never resets).

Wonders never decay, which is good for Fail Gold.

Further, for Game Specific (or more accurately, Mod Specific) information, one may want to look in the GlobalDefines.xml (in the base XML directory) and the relevant values for xxx_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME and xxx_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT.

Leaders

XML/Civilizations/CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml defines how the various AI Controlled Leaders behave. Some leaders I respect and some I do not. The idea was to change some of the Leaders Flavour XML Values (so, Flavours, I think this would be called for short) with the view of creating Leaders that I wanted as Allies... and by the same token, feared.

Since I've never figured out how to modify The BUG Mod (and since I don't really want to play without it at this point), this idea sort of stalled out. But one never knows.

XML/Civilizations/CIV4TraitInfos.xml defines the Bonuses for the various Traits. And though the original idea was to create a New Trait, at this point I'd likely just modify an existing one if that's what I wanted to do. Giving Industrious a 100% Bonus to Building Wonders (in lieu of 50%) or gifting the Financial Trait the benefits of Creative (as well) would be a fairly easy numeric substitution. I should note that if a change is made in this manner, the changes would apply to all Leaders with the appropriate Trait. It is not a Leader Specific (or Civilization Specific) change.

And now, having said all that, I can delete 648kb of back-up information that has been residing on my desktop for well over a year.

Psycho Killers

I like the idea of a Civilization or Trait that earns Gold for Combat... say one Gold per Strength for every Unit destroyed. Though, I am sure the exact amount of Gold would need to be tweaked. And since this would need to be enacted in the code, I have little expectation of ever doing this myself.

Unlimited Wonders

It would be a different game, indeed, if all the Wonders and National Wonders were treated like Regular Buildings... or Wonders like National Wonders and National Wonders like Buildings.

That Is All

In truth, I thought this page would be longer. But as far as I can tell, those are the outstanding notes and ideas that have been sitting in limbo for time untold.