Hacker Public Radio

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.

In our next look at the game mechanics for Civilization V we examine a new feature in Civilization 5, City-States. These are independent cities controlled by the computer that are also players to some degree in the game, and you can interact with them. And they are key to winning a Diplomatic Victory.

Playing Civilization V, Part 9 - City States

This was a newly introduced feature in Civ 5, and they play an important role in the game. They represent the small countries that are not running the world. They do not produce Settlers, so they do not expand beyond the one city, though that city can, and will expand its borders in a similar way to how your cities can grow. They do not start with a military unit, but they can produce military units and defend themselves. They can also build buildings in the city, but not Wonders. They do have a single vote each in the World Congress (or later the United Nations), making them a key to a Diplomatic victory.

City States start out neutral with regards to the players, but your interactions with them can affect how they feel about you. For example, if you send units through their territory they will get hostile, but if you give them gifts they will get friendly. And if you wish you can go to war with them and take them over. This will affect your diplomatic relations with other players and other city states, but if you have decided on a war of conquest as your victory type, that won’t matter to you, right? As mentioned, if you want to go for a Diplomatic victory you want to be allied with as many of them as possible to get their votes in the World Congress or the United Nations. But even if you don’t need their votes, there are other benefits from friendly relations. There are two levels to friendly relations: Friendly, and Allied, and the benefits get better as the relations improve.

City State Types

With the expansions there are 5 types of City State: Militaristic, Maritime, Cultured, Mercantile, and Religious. The benefits you get are:

Militaristic – If you are friends the city state will periodically gift you a unit, which will appear in your city which is closest to the city state. If you are allies the units will show up more often.

Maritime – If you are friends they will add two food to your Capital city. If you are allies they will add one more food to every city you have.

Cultured city states share their culture with you, at one rate if you are friends and at double the rate if you are allies.

Mercantile city states give you an added 3 Happiness when you are friends. If you are allies you keep the added happiness, but in addition get access to a luxury resource that cannot be obtained any other way, and that also adds Happiness.

Religious city states give you a one-time bonus of Faith when you first meet them, then provide added Faith per turn.

Note that Cultured and Religious city states increase the amount of Culture or Faith they provide with each new era, so the earlier you develop your relations with them the better the benefit.

Managing Relations With City States

There is a mechanism in the game which keeps track of points to define your relations with city states. On this numerical scale, Neutral has a value of 0, Friendly 30 or above, and Allied 60 or above. In the other direction, once you go into negative numbers they become Angry, if if you go negative enough it becomes War. A city state can only ever have one ally. If only one player has more than 60 influence points, that player will become the patron of the city state and they will ally to that player. If two or more players have more than 60 influence points, the player with the most points gets the ally. As the game goes on, you may get a message that a city state you had as an ally has suddenly allied to someone else. This is the result of the other player gaining influence points in some way, often by gifts. You can also gain influence points by promising to protect a city state, but do this with your eyes open. If you do not follow through on your promise it will enrage the city state and you will lose a lot of influence with them.

Your influence with a city state has a natural resting point at 0, or Neutral. That means that barring other factors, a positive number will fall over time, and a negative number will rise over time. So if you sent one of your units through their territory they will be angry for a period, but if nothing else happens they will return to Neutral. But on the other side, you don’t stay allied with them forever unless you find ways to keep adding influence points. One way is to eliminate barbarian camps near to the city state. In fact, this is one exception to the rule about sending units through their territory. If you are doing it to attack the barbarians, you are seen as a protector, not an invader, and there is no penalty. Another way to gain influence is by completing a quest from a city state. Each city state you are in contact with will periodically give you a quest, and if you fulfill it you will gain influence points. This can include killing a barbarian camp or killing nearby barbarian units (though you can do that at any time, you don’t need a quest). Some others include acquiring a Great Person of a certain kind, building a certain World Wonder, bullying another city state, finding a Natural Wonder, and so on. You do not need to fulfill a quest. For example, if your strategy calls for allying with other city states, you might want to pass on bullying another city state. There is no penalty for not fulfilling a quest, just a bonus when you do fulfill one.

Another way to gain influence is with gifts. The most effective is Gold, and one large sum is more effective than several small ones. For a Diplomatic victory strategy, you should plan on having a large Treasury as you approach the end game so that you can buy allies in time for the crucial vote. You can also gain a small amount of influence points by gifting units. I make it a practice to do this whenever I have units that I don’t want any longer. These could be obsolete units that have no upgrade path, for instance. I don’t want to pay maintenance on them as that is a drain on my Treasury, and I could just delete them, but gifting them to a city state gives me a small amount of influence. Another way to get a big jump in your influence with a city state is to capture and then a return one of their Workers. Most often this happens when a barbarian has captured the Worker, and then you capture it. You have the option of keeping the Worker for yourself, and in the early game I would probably do that because the Worker is so valuable. But at a certain point I have enough Workers, and getting the 45 influence points for returning it starts to be more effective. Remember that you have to keep earning influence points to keep up your relations, so even if you get an ally of a city state for a few turns. it will naturally decay back to Neutral. By around the middle of the game if you playing well you can start to invest the resources needed to maintain your relationships.

City States and War

If you are allied with a city state and you get into a war with another player, a city state you are allied with will join you in the war. Of course, the same is true for the other player, so the war between the two players could also involve 3-4 city states dragged in as allies. You cannot make peace with a city state while it is allied to a player you are at war with. You have to first make peace with that player (or wipe them out if that suits you). However, if you can get more influence with that city state and supplant the other player you can get that city state to ally with you can turn around and attack your enemy. Generally a large cash gift can do this, once again showing the utility of a fat Treasury.

Exploration

You cannot have diplomatic relations with a city state you haven’t met, so this reinforces the idea that you have to explore the map as soon as possible. Of course, you have to balance this with other priorities, such as expanding your cities and defending them, but finding the right balance is what all the Civilization games are about. On most maps this means you should be giving some attention to developing your naval power and technologies. There seems to be a bias to city states being coastal, and in many cases they are on small islands. Of course there are a number of motivations for exploring the map. First of all, you need intelligence of what you are up against with the other players. And unless you are on a very large land mass, you will want to find added lands for settlement. Finding Natural Wonders adds to Happiness in your Empire, so finding them all is important. And last, the unexplored sections of the map have a strong tendency to spawn barbarian units against you.

Early on you cannot traverse Ocean tiles and need to stick to Coastal tiles. The unit here is the Trireme, which you can build once you discover Sailing. I will usually build 1-2 Triremes in a coastal city to go around the coast of the land mass I am on and scout out the situation. If another land mass or island is sufficiently close I can cross to it without entering an Ocean tile and extend my exploration. But to really explore the whole map you need to get to Caravels. This Renaissance Era unit becomes available when you discover Astronomy, and is essentially a naval scouting unit. It can enter Ocean tiles.

Links:

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/City-state_(Civ5)

https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Detailed_Guide_to_Diplomacy

https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-v/playing-civilization-v-part-9/

Provide feedback on this episode.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.

With permission of Ahuka the warning about
the reserve queue was removed to the policy change on the
mail list https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2026-January/004951.html



I am subscribed to a number of YouTube channels, and I am sharing
them with you.


Links:




https://www.youtube.com/@TimeGhost




https://www.youtube.com/@timeghostpodcast4469




https://www.youtube.com/@TobyHadoke




https://www.youtube.com/@TomSiddell




https://www.youtube.com/@touropia




https://www.youtube.com/@tpmtv




https://www.youtube.com/@TrekCulture




https://www.youtube.com/@TullTapes




https://www.youtube.com/@UrsaRyan




https://www.youtube.com/@VanBradley




https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium




https://www.youtube.com/@VikingCruises




https://www.youtube.com/@Viking-TV




https://www.youtube.com/@vlogbrothers




https://www.youtube.com/@washingtonmonthly9554




https://www.youtube.com/@WhoCulture




https://www.youtube.com/@woltersworld




https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo




https://www.youtube.com/@xkcd_whatif




https://www.youtube.com/@YouCantUnhearThis




https://www.palain.com/





Provide feedback on this episode.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.

Dave and Kevie return with another episode of the Beer Garden, this time with a focus on Belgian Scotch Ales. Dave samples
Silly Scotch
, whilst Kevie goes for
Mc Chouffe














Connect with the guys on Untappd:







Dave






Kevie










The intro sounds for the show are used from:







https://freesound.org/people/mixtus/sounds/329806/






https://freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/123003/






https://freesound.org/people/greatsoundstube/sounds/628437/








Provide feedback on this episode.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.

This is the first column in a series dedicated to exploring little-known—and occasionally useful—trinkets lurking in the dusty corners of UNIX-like operating systems.


This month's column was inspired by an
article on the




Linux Journal




web site


1
describing a custom-built script that would contain a binary tar archive and, when run, would extract the contents onto the user's system. Upon reading this, memories immediately came rushing back of the days of Usenet, before
MIME-encoded e-mail made sending file attachments standard


2
, and where we walked ten miles each way to school (uphill both ways!) in three feet of snow.



Yes, at that time, you had to put everything into the body of your message. But what if you needed to send a bunch of files to someone? There was
tar
, but the format differed between systems, and e-mail and Usenet could only reliably handle 7-bit plain-text ASCII anyhow. You could send separate e-mail messages (but what if one goes missing?) or put "CUT HERE" lines to designate where one file ends and another one begins (tedious for the recipient). The solution was a shell archive created by the
shar
program. This wraps all your files in a neat shell script that the recipient can just run and have the files magically pop out. All he needs is the Bourne shell and the
sed
utility, both standard on any UNIX-like system.



Suppose you had a directory named "foo" containing the files bar.c, bar.h, and bar.txt, and wanted to send these. All you'd need to do is run the following command, and your archive is on its way.



$ shar foo foo/* | mail -s "Foo 1.0 files" [email protected]



When the recipient runs the resulting script, it will create the foo directory and copy out the files onto his system. You can also pick and choose files; if you wanted to leave out bar.txt, you could do
shar foo foo/bar.c foo/bar.h
or, more simply,
shar foo foo/bar.?
.



Different versions of
shar
have varying capabilities. For example, the
BSD


3
and
OS X


4
editions can only really manage plain-text files. If you had a binary object file bar.o, it'd likely get mangled somewhere along the way if you tried to include it in an archive. They also require, as in the examples above, that you name a directory before naming any files inside it (the typical way is to let the
find
command do the work for you; it produces a list in the right order).



The GNU implementation is more flexible and can take just a directory name, automatically including everything underneath. It can also handle binary files by using uuencode—a method for encoding data as ASCII that predated the current base64 MIME standard. GNU
shar
rather nicely auto-detects whether the input file is text or binary and acts accordingly, and can even compress files if asked. However, unpacking encoded or compressed files from such an archive requires the recipient to have the corresponding decode/uncompress utility, and the
documentation is littered with (now somewhat anachronistic) warnings about this


5
.



Looking at other UNIX systems,
the HP-UX version


6
also can uuencode binary files, and as a special bonus adds logic to the script that will compile and use a simple uudecode tool if the recipient doesn't already have one. It will even handle device files and put the corresponding
mknod
commands into the script, probably making it the most full-featured implementation of all. IBM's AIX doesn't appear to come with
shar
. Neither do SunOS and Solaris, which seems quite odd as original development of the program is
credited to James Gosling


5
!



And so we bid farewell to
shar
. Next time you're considering rolling your own script for a particular purpose, consider whether such a tool might already exist, just waiting on your system for you to use it.



References:







Add a Binary Payload to your Shell Scripts
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/add-binary-payload-your-shell-scripts





MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1521





BSD shar manual page
https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=shar&sektion=1&manpath=4.4BSD+Lite2





macOS 26.2 shar manual page
https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=shar&sektion=1&manpath=macOS+26.2





GNU shar utilities manual
https://www.gnu.org/software/sharutils/manual/sharutils.html





HP-UX Reference (11i v3 07/02) - 1 User Commands N-Z (vol 2)
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=c01922474&docLocale=en_US







This article was originally written in May 2010. The podcast episode was recorded in February 2026.


Provide feedback on this episode.

This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host.

New hosts
Welcome to our new hosts:
Vance, not_toby.
Last Month's Shows
Id Day Date Title Host 4566 Mon 2026-02-02 HPR Community News for January 2026 HPR Volunteers 4567 Tue 2026-02-03 Movie Recommendations for Hackers Deltaray 4568 Wed 2026-02-04 Book reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll Henrik Hemrin 4569 Thu 2026-02-05 Kiosk with guest mode on Linux Klaatu 4570 Fri 2026-02-06 Playing Civilization V, Part 8 Ahuka 4571 Mon 2026-02-09 Data processing retrospective Lee 4572 Tue 2026-02-10 Uncommon Commands, Episode 3 - strace Deltaray 4573 Wed 2026-02-11 Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 6 Thorium Reactors Whiskeyjack 4574 Thu 2026-02-12 UNIX Curio #0 - Introduction Vance 4575 Fri 2026-02-13 Making First Contact Ken Fallon 4576 Mon 2026-02-16 Responce to Lee/Elsbeth eps operat0r 4577 Tue 2026-02-17 HPR Beer Garden 10 - Scotch Ale/Wee Heavy Kevie 4578 Wed 2026-02-18 Alex's journey into Amateur Radio thelovebug 4579 Thu 2026-02-19 Happy by shower Antoine 4580 Fri 2026-02-20 The First Doctor, Part 4 Ahuka 4581 Mon 2026-02-23 Sharp Intake of Breath City (A.K.A.) How I learnt to stop worrying about the fork bomb not_toby 4582 Tue 2026-02-24 Hackerpublic Radio New Years Eve Show 2026 Episode 1 Honkeymagoo 4583 Wed 2026-02-25 Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 7 Small Modular Reactors Whiskeyjack 4584 Thu 2026-02-26 Recording a show, and crappy audio Archer72 4585 Fri 2026-02-27 mpv util scripts candycanearter Comments this month
These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows. There are 37 comments in total.
Past shows
There are 2 comments on 2 previous shows:
hpr4562 (2026-01-27) "Software development doesn't end until it's packaged" by Klaatu.
Comment 1: Steve Barnes on 2026-02-03: "(Yeah!)"


hpr4564 (2026-01-29) "MakeMKV error" by Archer72.
Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2026-02-05: "regression testing?"


This month's shows
There are 35 comments on 11 of this month's shows:
hpr4566 (2026-02-02) "HPR Community News for January 2026" by HPR Volunteers.
Comment 1: Whiskeyjack on 2026-02-03: "Community News for January - Scheduling of Episodes"
Comment 2: Ken Fallon on 2026-02-04: "response to Whiskeyjack"
Comment 3: Whiskeyjack on 2026-02-04: "response to Ken Fallon - Episode Scheduling Guidelines"
Comment 4: Ken Fallon on 2026-02-04: "You're right"
Comment 5: candycanearter07 on 2026-02-06: "my two cents"
Comment 6: Whiskeyjack on 2026-02-06: "Response to candycanearter07 on episode scheduling"
Comment 7: Ken Fallon on 2026-02-07: "re "reschedule shows which don't need to be on a specific date forwards or backwards""


hpr4567 (2026-02-03) "Movie Recommendations for Hackers" by Deltaray.
Comment 1: Kinghezy on 2026-02-03: "Office space lumbergh"
Comment 2: Antoine on 2026-02-04: "An attractive invitation to watch"
Comment 3: Henrik Hemrin on 2026-02-04: "Inspiring recommendations"
Comment 4: ClaudioM on 2026-02-05: "Awesome Episode!"
Comment 5: Jim DeVore on 2026-02-06: "Great Show!"
Comment 6: hobs on 2026-02-23: "Loved the show!"


hpr4569 (2026-02-05) "Kiosk with guest mode on Linux" by Klaatu.
Comment 1: operat0r on 2026-01-18: "weee"
Comment 2: candycanearter07 on 2026-02-05: "very informative!"
Comment 3: Jim DeVore on 2026-02-06: "I learned some things that I will try out"
Comment 4: candycanearter07 on 2026-02-06: "RE: I learned some things that I will try out"


hpr4571 (2026-02-09) "Data processing retrospective" by Lee.
Comment 1: Henrik Hemrin on 2026-02-10: "Conversation"
Comment 2: Beeza on 2026-02-18: "A Special Episode"


hpr4572 (2026-02-10) "Uncommon Commands, Episode 3 - strace" by Deltaray.
Comment 1: Ken Fallon on 2026-01-13: "My future self thanks you"
Comment 2: candycanearter07 on 2026-02-10: "fantastic learning and debugging tool!"
Comment 3: Some Guy on the Internet on 2026-02-11: "It's MAGIC!"
Comment 4: Paulj on 2026-02-18: "Great Information"


hpr4574 (2026-02-12) "UNIX Curio #0 - Introduction" by Vance.
Comment 1: brian-in-ohio on 2026-02-12: "This will be a good series"
Comment 2: Vance on 2026-02-14: "Thanks, brian-in-ohio!"
Comment 3: Paulj on 2026-02-18: "Thanks for your first show, and upcoming series!"


hpr4576 (2026-02-16) "Responce to Lee/Elsbeth eps" by operat0r.
Comment 1: Elsbeth on 2026-01-16: "Thank you"


hpr4577 (2026-02-17) "HPR Beer Garden 10 - Scotch Ale/Wee Heavy" by Kevie.
Comment 1: Gan Ainm on 2026-02-18: ""Scotch" Ale from the Baltic Sea"


hpr4578 (2026-02-18) "Alex's journey into Amateur Radio" by thelovebug.
Comment 1: Archer72 on 2026-02-17: "Congrats!"
Comment 2: Trey on 2026-02-18: "Congratulations! "


hpr4579 (2026-02-19) "Happy by shower" by Antoine.
Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2026-02-20: "timing"
Comment 2: Antoine on 2026-02-26: "Re # 1 -"


hpr4581 (2026-02-23) "Sharp Intake of Breath City (A.K.A.) How I learnt to stop worrying about the fork bomb" by not_toby.
Comment 1: Archer72 on 2026-02-17: "First episode"
Comment 2: Trey on 2026-02-23: "Welcome!"
Comment 3: Steve Barnes on 2026-02-24: "Potted Plant Emoji"


Mailing List discussions
Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman.
The threaded discussions this month can be found here:
https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2026-February/thread.html Events Calendar
With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar.
Quoting the site:
This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page.Provide feedback on this episode.