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  • Info: Settlers/Engineers (GL)

    Post 1: This is a special topic, please read Post 3 below for instructions on posting. Click here to view this document in a stand-alone, HTML window.

    1. Settlers and Engineers

    1.1. Comparison
    The Settler is the first unit owned in a standard game. In addition to being needed to found new cities, the Settler has a variety of simple tasks it can perform to improve the terrain. The Engineer unit becomes available for building when you learn the advance of Explosives. If you have Leonardo’s Workshop, and no tribe has learned the advance of Automobile, all of your Settlers will be upgraded to Engineers. In addition to the differences in the table below, Engineers are the only unit that can perform the Transform command, and they perform all work at twice the speed of Settlers. See Section 3.2. The exact statistics are given below. Settlers and Engineers cannot initiate attacks, but they can capture undefended enemy cities.

    1.1.1. TABLE 1-Settler and Engineer statistics

    Settler/Engineer
    __40__ __40__ Cost to build in shields
    0 (N/A) 0 (N/A) Attack
    ___1__ ___2__ Defense
    ___2__ ___2__ Hit Points
    ___1__ ___2__ Movement rate

    1.2. Support
    Other than not being able to initiate attacks, Settlers and Engineers are counted as military units and require the same shield support as military units. In governments where the first (x) units from a city do not require shield support, Settlers and Engineers do count toward the point where support is required for additional military units. In addition, Settlers and Engineers require 1 unit of food support from their home city, which increases to 2 units of food if the government is Republic, Communism, or Democracy. (Regular military units apparently just rob whatever homesteads they pass of their food.) This easily makes Settlers and Engineers the most expensive units to support, which is why NON Settlers and Engineers are so desirable.

    1.3. Getting Settlers/Engineers
    In addition to starting the game with 1 or 2 Settlers, you can obtain worker units in the usual ways: you can build them in your cities, you can discover them in huts (up to around the discovery of the Invention advance), you can bribe them with Diplomats or Spies, and you can bribe cities which have Settlers in them or in a square immediately adjacent to the city. When you build Settlers or Engineers, the city that builds them shrinks in size by 1 point. If you build a Settler/Engineer in a city that is size 1, it will disband the city, unless it is the only city you own. Usually, disbanding a city will result in a worker whose home city is the one nearest to the site where the city was disbanded, but see Section 1.5.
    One trick for obtaining lots of Settlers/Engineers is available only in the Republic or Democracy governments. It requires a city which is celebrating “We Love the __ Day”, preferably one which is producing 40+ extra shields per turn, preferably with a city size larger than 20. If you set such a city to building Engineers, for example, then at the start of the next turn it will build the Engineer, causing the city to shrink in size by 1. Then, if the city has extra food, it will increase in size by 1 because of the celebration, ending at the same size it was last turn. If building the Engineer causes the city to no longer have extra food or 40 extra shields to give, the new unit should be homed to a different city before the turn ends. This way, you can produce a new (Engineer) every turn from that city. If you really want a lot of workers, you can do this trick for more than one city at once.

    1.4. Veteran Settlers/Engineers
    Other than by attacking an opponent and winning, which is not available for Settlers/Engineers, you can obtain veteran workers in the same way you obtain veteran military units. They have a chance to become veteran if they survive an attack, they can be built in a city with a Barracks, or built when Sun Tzu’s is active. Veteran workers have no special advantage other than a 50% cumulative bonus in defending when attacked.

    1.5. NON Settlers/Engineers
    The Settlers you have at the start of the game are NON Settlers; they do not require support from any city. (You don’t have any cities yet!) Building new cities with NON Settlers will destroy them to form the city, but building new cities will not affect the status of other NON Settlers than you own. When you obtain Settlers from huts, they are always NON Settlers. If you bribe a Settler/Engineer, or you disband a city, and the closest city is an enemy city, you will get a NON Settler/Engineer. This effect can be used to purposely get NON units by building a new city nearer an enemy city than any of your cities, and rush-buying a Settler/Engineer, disbanding the city. The presence of water, mountains, or roads is not a factor in determining which city is closest; the distance in squares is the only factor. The distance between two squares touching at diagonals is 1.5 times the distance between two squares that touch on a side. If, after adding up the distance, the result has a .5 on the end, round up. If there is a tie for the closest city after rounding, the city that was built most recently is considered closest.

    2. The Commands

    2.1. Build City-keyboard command (b)

    Most terrain improvements cannot be made to the city square after the city has been built. One slight exception to this is when a city is being built on a hill. If one Settler/Engineer starts to mine the hill, and then another one builds the city on that square, the first Settler can continue to mine until the mine is complete, and the city will then receive the benefits from the mine in addition to the usual benefits of building a city on a hill. However, if a hill square already has a mine, building a city on that square will not give you the benefits of the mine. This trick would apply to building cities on Desert squares as well.
    City squares of all types may be transformed after the city is built. This could be done to increase the production of the city square or to increase the defensive bonus defenders of the city receive. See Section 2.5. However, any terrain types that receive production bonuses from irrigation, farmland, roads, and railroads will automatically receive such bonuses whether or not they were present on the square before the city was built. Therefore, it is not necessary to alter future city sites with these improvements. Other terrain types receive production bonuses when a city is built upon them that are not normally available for non-city squares. Table 1 illustrates these bonuses.

    2.1.1. TABLE 2-Special production bonuses on city squares

    Food/Shield/Trade Terrain type
    _(c)_ _____ _(e)_ Desert
    ____ _(d)__ ____ Forest
    ____ _+1__ ____ Glacier
    _(c)_ _1(b)_ _(e)_ Grassland
    _(c)_ +1(a d) ____ Hills
    ____ _+1__ ____ Jungle
    _+1_ _____ ____ Mountain
    _(c)_ _____ _(e)_ Plains
    ____ _+1__ ____ Swamp
    _(c)_ _+1__ ____ Tundra

    Some notes on the table:
    a. The Hills bonus assumes that a mine was not produced using the trick explained above.
    b. Grassland city squares produce 1 shield whether a shield was already produced there or not.
    c. Hills, Tundra, Desert, Plains, and Grassland city squares receive automatic food bonuses from irrigation (and from farmland, when a Supermarket is built in the city).
    d. Forest (and Hills with the mining trick) city squares receive a shield production bonus when the Railroad advance is learned.
    e. Desert, Plains, Grassland, and rivered city squares produce whatever trade arrows would be generated on such a square if it had a road. Before you learn Bridge Building, this is the only way to get the trade bonus that comes from a river square with a road.

    2.2. Early Commands
    When you begin the game, the only commands for improving terrain available are Irrigate (i), Build Road (r), Mine (m), and Clear Pollution (p). And that last command will be useless for quite a while. Road building is significant for decreasing the cost to move between two adjacent squares with roads to 1/3 of a movement point. Also, Desert, Plains, and Grassland squares with roads, within a city radius, will produce a trade arrow for the city. A river square with a road will have the potential to produce one extra trade arrow, regardless of the terrain type, but you must have the Bridge Building advance before you can put a road on a river square.
    If you establish a trade route between two cities, and the computer determines that there is a road connecting the two cities by the most direct route, you will receive a 50% bonus to the initial value of establishing the route, and a 50% bonus for the turn-to-turn value of the route in each of the cities involved. If the “direct route” road is completed later, the trade route will increase by the appropriate amount. See Post 4 for a link to an explanation of “most direct”.
    Irrigation will increase the food output of Tundra, Desert, Plains, Grassland, and Hills squares by 1. Irrigation can only be built if a square immediately (not diagonally) adjacent is ocean, river, or is a non-city square with irrigation. See Section 2.3 for an idea on how to get around this. If there is a mine on a Desert or Hills square, irrigating there will destroy it. Mining, on the other hand, will destroy any irrigation on a square. See Section 2.8 for information on how to get around this. Mining will increase shield production by 1 for Desert, Glacier, and Mountain squares. It increases shield production on a Hills square by 3.
    The Clear Pollution command is not available except on squares where pollution has occurred. Pollution on a square reduces the square’s ability to produce by 1 of each kind of product; food, shield, and trade. It will not lower the production of any kind below 1, though. If enough pollution squares are in existence at any one time (approximately 15), global warming will occur and terrain types will change, generally for the worse, throughout the world. Using the Clear Pollution command when available is a great idea.

    2.3. Automate Settler
    Generally, the Automate Settler command (k) is not a great idea. Your Settler’s time is too valuable to let the computer waste it on squares you won’t be using right away. One situation where this command is useful is when there are no river or ocean squares in the area. Automating a Settler in this case can result in irrigation without a water source, although the computer may try to build a road or two first. You can wake the Settler by clicking on it after the irrigation is finished. The computer generally tries to “play fair”, so if it looks like there is any chance of irrigating from water, the computer will take it. And if you have more than one city, an automated settler will usually try to make sure they are connected by a road before it does anything else.

    2.4. Build Fortress
    The Build Fortress command (f) becomes available with the advance of Construction. When a square contains a fortress, the defense bonus of any unit in that square is doubled, cumulative with any other defense modifiers. Also, the defeat of any unit in that square in battle results in the destruction of only that unit, not of all units in the square. In Republic and Democracy governments, military units inside a fortress within three squares of one of your cities will not cause unhappiness. It is not possible to build an airbase on a square that already has a fortress. Building a fortress on a square that has an airbase is possible using the keyboard command, but it will destroy the airbase.

    2.5. Changing Terrain
    In addition to building improvements on a square, there are three commands which can change the type of terrain on a square: Clear, Reforest, and Transform.

    2.5.1. Clear
    The Clear command (i) is available immediately in the game, and is treated as an aspect of the irrigation command, having the same keyboard shortcut. Forests can be cleared to become Plains squares, and Jungle and Swamp squares can be cleared to become Grassland squares. See Chart 1.

    2.5.2. Reforest
    The Reforest command (m) is also available immediately in the game, being treated as an aspect of the mining command. Plains, Grassland, Jungle, and Swamp squares can all be changed into Forest squares using the Reforest command. See Chart 1.

    2.5.3. Transform
    The Transform command (o) becomes available with the advance of Explosives, and it cannot be performed by Settlers, only by Engineers. All terrain types but Ocean can be transformed to a different terrain type, although some transformations can be achieved more quickly using the above terrain-changing commands. See Section 3.2. An illustration of how to most quickly move from one terrain type to another can be observed in the following chart.

    2.5.4. CHART 1-Changing the terrain



    The arrows in the chart are labeled with the keyboard shortcut for the Engineer command: “o” for Transform, “i” for Clear, and “m” for Reforest. Notice that over half of the terrain types cannot be returned to once they have been changed. Only Plains, Forest, Hills, and Grassland squares can be changed and then eventually reformed. For normal squares, this is probably not a problem, but for specialty squares it could be an issue. Sometimes special squares are hidden at the beginning of the game.

    2.5.5. Hidden Specials
    Special terrain type squares form a definite pattern on the map, as do untipped huts. Of course, this pattern is not perfect, because of ocean squares. Huts will not appear on ocean squares, and specialty terrain that is too far out to sea to be used by a city will not show up as Fish or Whale. But if we ignore the possibility of ocean squares, the pattern (would look) like this:



    The red squares, of course, stand for special terrain types and the brown houses are huts.
    There is another reason why the pattern does not always look exactly like this in the game. There is no specialty terrain type for Grassland squares. Grassland squares either produce a shield or they do not, based on their own, much simpler pattern, which is easy to observe. (The Grassland shield pattern goes northeast-southwest 2 squares on, 2 squares off, and northwest-southeast alternating squares.) When the computer initially creates a map, if it decides a specialty square will be of the Grassland type, it looks like any other Grassland square. But changing the square to a different terrain type will result in a specialty square, necessarily of the Plains, Forest, or Hills variety, since those are the only kinds you can reach from Grassland.
    Notice that the pattern for specialty squares repeats every 8 squares east-west (along the diagonal). This can be of benefit when searching for hidden special squares. Also, the hut pattern, which only repeats every 16 squares east-west, can be of benefit when searching for specialty squares. Everywhere a hut appears, there is a specialty square 2 squares northeast or southwest. So, if you know where a hut is, and you don’t see a specialty square in one of the two spots where one should be, there must be a hidden special there. A few of them in the graphic above are off the edge, though, and that could happen at the north and south poles in the game too.
    When you alter a specialty square, it stays within one of two groups of specialty square types. The first group is the original Civ kind of specialty squares.

    2.5.6. CHART 2-Specialty square terrain alteration, Original Civ type (Fish type)



    Then, of course, there are the terrain types “new” to Civ2.

    2.5.7. CHART 3-Specialty square terrain alteration, new to Civ2 type (Whale type)



    2.6. Build Railroad
    The Build Railroad command (r) becomes available with the advance of, well, Railroad. It can only be performed on squares that already have roads. Squares that have a railroad on them produce 50% more shields, rounded down, than they would without the railroad. There is no movement penalty for any ground unit that moves between two adjacent squares that both have railroads on them. When you learn the advance of Railroad, all of your squares on which a city is built automatically become railroad squares. The lack of movement penalty makes connecting large stretches of terrain with railroads very important in military campaigns and trading situations. If two cities are connected most directly to each other completely by railroads instead of just roads, the trade bonuses increase from 50% to 100%.


    2.7. Improve Farmland
    The Improve Farmland command (i) becomes available with the advance of Refrigeration. It can only be performed on squares that already have irrigation. Squares that have farmland on them produce 50% more food, rounded down, than they would without the farmland, if the city using the square has a Supermarket built. Regular Desert squares that have irrigation will not benefit from farmland unless you are planning to change the terrain. When you learn the advance of Refrigeration, city squares of types Grassland, Plains, Desert, Tundra and Hills automatically become farmland squares, but they will not benefit from the farmland until they build a Supermarket.

    2.8. Build Airbase
    The Build Airbase command (e) becomes available with the advance of Radio. Airbases cannot be built on squares that have a fortress. The primary purpose of an airbase is to provide a resting place for air units. Air units can end their turn on an airbase square without crashing, and if they move onto an airbase square, they must end their turn, just as when they move onto a friendly city square or carrier unit. Paratrooper units can perform paradrops from airbase squares. Fighters in airbase squares do not, however, scramble.
    The secondary value of airbase squares is the improvement to the terrain. Airbase squares inside a city radius function as though they have the road, railroad, irrigation, and farmland improvements, whether those improvements are already present on the square or not. Airbase squares anywhere function as though they have a railroad on them, as far as troop movement is concerned. Airbase squares do not function as roads or railroads for the purposes of trade route connections, however. Squares in the most direct route between trading cities may need roads and railroads in addition to airbases. The ability to function as irrigation and farmland without actually having irrigation and farmland present on the square means that Hills and Desert squares can benefit from both mining and farmland (or at least irrigation, in the case of normal Desert squares) by having an airbase/mining improvement combo. Since airbase squares function almost like city squares, which also automatically receive road, railroad, irrigation, and farmland improvements, building airbases on Hills squares in the city radius is considered a cheat in One City Challenge games.
    Last edited by Gastrifitis; July 3, 2001, 14:53.

  • #2
    Post 2: This is a continuation of post 1; see instructions in post 3.

    3. Time

    3.1. Travel time
    Travel time for Settlers and Engineers can be more important than for other units, since as the builders of roads and railroads they help determine the speed of all ground units. The movement rate of 2 for the Engineer is a huge bonus, since it can move onto a square with a movement penalty of 1 (Tundra, Desert, Plains, or Grassland) and still have time during that turn to finish building a road on that square. On squares with a movement penalty of 2 or 3, the Settler gains a little time back. Any unit that has its entire movement point remaining for that turn can move on to any adjacent square, so a Settler next to a Mountain can move onto it just as easily as an Engineer. An Engineer with 1 2/3 movement points left is much less likely to be able to move onto an adjacent mountain square than a Settler with 1 movement point left, because the Engineer, having less than its full movement left, has a chance to fail. See Section 3.3. Any Settlers you have left over in the time of Engineers can spend their time well in roading rugged terrain. Another trick for leftover Settlers is listed in Section 4.2.

    3.2. Work time
    How long it takes for Settlers and Engineers to complete their tasks is very important to the course of your civilization, since it determines what a city can produce and how fast troops can move into position. As can be seen from the following table, Engineers perform tasks at twice the speed of Settlers. The time periods in this table are measured from the turn you tell the worker to begin the task until the next turn it can receive orders. So an Engineer that builds a road on a Plains square finishes the road right away, but isn’t ready for new orders until the next turn. The numbers in parentheses are only important if you are using Settlers and Engineers together on the same task.

    3.2.1. TABLE 3-Work time for Settlers and Engineers

    Settler/Engineer To build a road:
    __2__ __1__ On Tundra/Grassland/Desert/Plains
    __4__ __2__ (with a river)
    __4__ __2__ On Glacier/Forest/Hills/Swamp/Jungle
    __6__ __3__ (with a river)
    __6__ __3__ On a Mountain
    __8__ __4__ (with a river)
    Settler/Engineer To build a railroad:
    __4__ __2__ On Tundra/Grassland/Desert/Plains
    __6__ __3__(with a river)
    __8__ __4__ On Glacier/Forest/Hills/Swamp/Jungle
    _10__ __5__ (with a river)
    _12__ __6__ On a Mountain
    _14__ __7__ (with a river)
    Settler/Engineer To irrigate/ improve farmland:
    __5__ 3 (2½) On Grassland/Plains/Desert
    _10__ __5__ On Hills/Tundra
    Settler/Engineer To clear:
    __5__ 3 (2½) Forest to Plains
    _15__ 8 (7½) Swamp/Jungle to Grassland
    Settler/Engineer To mine:
    __5__ 3 (2½) Desert
    _10__ __5__ Hills or Mountain
    _15__ 8 (7½) Glacier
    Settler/Engineer To reforest:
    _10__ __5__ Grassland
    _15__ 8 (7½) Plains/Swamp/Jungle
    Settler/Engineer To build a fortress:
    __3__ 2 (1½) On Grassland/Plains/Desert/Tundra
    __4__ __2__ On Glacier/Forest/Hills/Mountain/Swamp/Jungle
    Settler/Engineer To clear pollution/build airbase:
    __4__ __2__ On any square
    Settler/Engineer To transform:
    ___________ Grassland/Plains/Desert/Tundra to:
    (N/A)_ _10__ Hills/Grassland/Plains/Desert
    ___________ Forest/Glacier/Hills/Swamp/Jungle to:
    (N/A)_ _20__ Grassland/Tundra/Plains/Plains/Plains
    (N/A)_ _30__ Mountain to: Hills

    As noted above, the numbers in parentheses only have meaning if Settlers and Engineers are working together. See Section 4. Some of the transformation possibilities were not shown on the chart. Specifically, Forest to Grassland, Swamp to Plains, and Jungle to Plains have not been considered. This is because, as the table above shows, these transformation moves are much slower than the two-step processes of Forest to (i) Plains to (o) Grassland, Swamp to (m) Forest to (i) Plains, and Jungle to (m) Forest to (i) Plains. Your Engineer’s time is too valuable to waste 7 to 9 extra turns on these transformation moves.

    3.3. Charges
    The ability to alter terrain is accomplished by applying “work-units” to a task, a concept commonly referred to as charges. When considering Settlers and Engineers together, it may be helpful to think of a Settler as offering half a charge per turn, and an Engineer offering a full charge per. (Hopefully, when using Settlers and Engineers together, you have more Engineers than Settlers.) Each turn a Settler irrigates, for example, it applies its charge for the turn, finishing in 5 turns. But until it is finished, the charges are stored in the Settler, not in the ground. If you wake a Settler on the fourth turn of mining by clicking on the unit, move it to a different square, and tell it to irrigate there, the irrigation will appear instantly. It already was holding 4 Settler-charges, and the fifth turn, when it was told to irrigate, it had enough to finish the task. Charges are charges; they can be used for anything (except transforming, in the case of Settlers).
    The idea of charges can be deployed in a variety of ways. When a Settler or Engineer has less than its full move left, and it needs to move onto rugged terrain, there is a chance that it will fail to complete the move, wasting time. Since whatever is going to be done on the next square will probably take more than one turn, tell the worker to start some kind of Settler/Engineer type task instead of gambling on the move (i, m, r, o, e, or f, but preferably not k, and if p is available, keep doing it), and then wake them up immediately. The next turn, they will have a full movement point to complete the trip to the new square for sure, and they will have a charge stored in them to complete the work faster once they get there. Gambling on moves for Settlers and Engineers is not required. When moving Settlers a long distance over roads, you can “steal time” this way by moving the Settler until it has 1/3 of a move left, then starting a job and waking the Settler right away. A full Settler-charge is accumulated each turn this way, as described in the fourth paragraph in this section.
    Another way to use charges is in military campaigns. Moving your units into battle may be difficult because of distance, and lack of defense once they get there may also be a major concern. A blitzkrieg attack supported by charged Settlers/Engineers that quickly build railroads and fortresses can be the difference between victory and defeat. A Settler/Engineer will continue to hold its charges until it completes a worker-type task, at which time any leftover charges vanish. Pressing the space bar to end a Settler’s turn (to wait for the assault to be ready) does not destroy any charges it is already holding, though it does waste its charge for that turn. Saving a game that includes charged Settlers and then reloading does not destroy charges.
    Other units have a situation somewhat similar to charges when it comes to healing. A unit that does not move or fortify, that has damage, will heal itself partially or fully at that start of your turn. This includes units that are already fortified. For Settlers and Engineers, healing seems to happen separately from charges. A Settler in the middle of an irrigation project, that has damage, will heal just as quickly as a Settler that is sleeping. Moving a Settler, however, will affect healing rates. Unlike healing, charges never happen partially. An Engineer that starts a project with 1/3 of a movement point left will put just as much into it as an Engineer that starts a project with 2 movement points left.
    Other results of the concept of charges are described in Section 4.

    3.4. Assessment order
    Other than shipping, assessment order probably affects Settlers and Engineers more than any other type of unit. As your turn progresses, all of your units, even the fortified ones, are examined by the computer one at a time. If the unit is available to receive further orders, it becomes the active unit. Once your active unit has been told to fortify, sleep, wait, end its turn, or runs out of movement points or dies (or, in the case of workers, starts a project), the computer starts assessing your units again. It starts looking on the square where your last active unit ended up. Then it starts looking in the squares immediately adjacent, two squares away, etc. There does not seem to be an absolute rule as to which compass direction the computer starts looking in adjacent squares, it could be north first or perhaps west, etc. If there are several units on the nearest square, the computer first examines the unit that was on that square the longest. If the nearest unit is one that was already told to wait this turn, the computer will probably assess all other units before it comes back to that one. If the only units left are those told to wait, it will pick the nearest one.
    When a Settler in the middle of an irrigation (or any other kind of ) project is assessed, the computer checks to see if it has accumulated enough charges to complete the task. If it has, the upgrade is applied to the square, the Settler’s charges are erased, and its turn is over. If it does not have enough charges, 1 more charge is added to the Settler and its movement points for that turn are gone. Attempting to wake a working Settler after it has been assessed will cancel whatever current project is still underway, leaving charges intact, but the Settler will be unable to move. Waking a working Settler before it has been assessed will cancel the current project, but the Settler will be able to move that same turn. Its charge will not have been accumulated for this turn, though; you still should assign it another project this turn or continue the previous one.
    If a Settler is about to complete a project, and you want it to use its charges for something else, it is very important to wake the Settler before its turn is assessed. Sometimes, this is difficult, because the last unit assessed on the last turn is usually the first unit assessed this turn. If the last thing you did last turn was assign a Settler to a task, and you want to wake him before he is assessed this turn, you have to Zoom to one of the cities the computer notifies you about and wake one of the defenders there with the “activate unit and close city screen” option. If you don’t get a chance to Zoom to one of your cities, you’re sunk. This all applies to Engineers too.

    4. Teams

    4.1. Using two workers on the same task
    The speeds listed in Table 3 for completing tasks can be cut in half when two Settlers/Engineers are placed on the same square and assigned to the same task. If one Settler is assigned to irrigate a square, and another Settler is assigned to put a railroad on that square, they will have no effect on each other. But if two Settlers are moved onto a Hills square and both are told to mine, the mine will be completed in half the time. If two Settlers start irrigating a square at the same time, on the third turn the work will be completed with one charge left over. This will result in the second Settler assigned to the work to wake up and be available for further commands on that same turn.
    The result is the appearance that the two Settlers/Engineers are both holding their charges until the work is complete. But that is not what is happening. Whenever two workers are assigned to the same task, the first one assigned to the task passes all its charges along to the second one. If two Engineers have been trying to transform a Hills square for 8 turns, and you wake up the first Engineer assigned to the task and do something else with him instead, the second Engineer will be able to complete the transformation project in 4 turns. It accumulated 8x2=16 Engineer-charges already, and only 4 more are needed. The first Engineer, whom you moved somewhere else, didn’t keep any charges. It can be hard to remember which worker started the project first. But if you moved them onto the new square one at a time and started them up in that order, clicking on the square will list all the units on that square in the order they arrived. The top Engineer should be the one that started first.
    The result of the above rule is that it is possible to use more than two workers on the same task.

    4.2. Using several workers on the same task
    If you send three Engineers to the same square, tell them to Transform, and just leave them to it, the third Engineer’s efforts will be wasted. The project will not be completed any faster than it would have if only two Engineers were working the square. The game just doesn’t work that way. However, because of the rule in the previous section, that the first “working” Engineer passes its charges to the second, you can use more than two workers on the same project during the same turn.
    One way to describe this is with a trick that makes leftover Settlers more efficient. You can use two Engineers and a Settler as an irrigation team. According to the table, irrigation takes Engineers 2 ½ turns. If you just move all three units onto a square and hit the “i” button for each of them, the irrigation will not be done instantly. But if you tell the two Engineers to irrigate, the first Engineer has already passed its charge to the second. So, wake the first Engineer up. Now, only one unit is currently working the square. Tell the Settler to irrigate the square, and its workload of half a charge will be joined to the Engineer that’s still irrigating. The exact number of charges needed to complete the irrigation project will have been applied, using only two workers at any one time, and the irrigation is finished in one turn. The Settler doesn’t have to go third, it can go first or second just as easily. Second might actually be better, since then there can be no confusion about who should wake up; it has to be the Engineer that’s currently irrigating.
    Another way to use several Engineers at once is with transformation projects, which always seem to take too long. Perhaps the most efficient way to do this is to use ten Engineers as a team, since all transformation work is completed in a multiple of 10 turns. (5-Engineer transformation teams would work too.) With so many workers operating as a team, it is important to keep track of what order they start their work, accomplished by moving them onto the target square one at a time and having them start work in that order. After at least two Engineers have started transforming, the one closer to the top of the pop-up list that shows when you click on the square should be woken before the next Engineer starts its work. As long as one or two Engineers are transforming, and the bottom one of the two that are currently transforming is never woken, the charges will be passed from one Engineer to the next, adding up as they go. Ten Engineers can get Grassland, Plains, Desert, and Tundra squares transformed in one turn. The pop-up list will only show the first 9 units on a square, but you won’t have to wake the tenth unit. If you do wake the wrong unit, you’ve messed up the project for this turn, but try to make a note of which Engineer it was, because it has lots of charges you can use next turn!
    What if your group is tackling a transformation project that won’t be completed in one turn? One possibility, on subsequent turns, is to move all but the bottom two Engineers (who should still be working) off the square and then back on one at a time, continuing the process started last turn. The bottom two Engineers will become the top two, since they’ve been there the longest. Moving Engineers back and forth can be annoying, and doesn’t eliminate confusion, but it does keep you on task. Another possibility is to use the charged Engineer approach. This means charging each Engineer up individually, usually on an unoccupied adjacent square, (and waking each one up immediately,) then moving them onto the target square when they have accumulated enough charges to finish in one turn. To transform a Hills square to Plains, each Engineer in a ten-pack would charge for 1 previous turn, holding a grand total of 10 charges. Once this is accomplished, they add up these charges plus their charges for the current turn on the target Hills square.
    There are two problems with the charged Engineer approach. One is that, since part of the work is being done off-square, you need to know exactly which turn you are on so as to complete the project at the correct time. When using a ten-pack, I charge Engineers the first turn in two groups of 5, on adjacent squares. Then, when I see two groups of 5 Engineers next to each other, I know they’re all holding an extra charge. For Mountain squares, an extra turn of charging is required, so I move one Engineer from one of the groups to the other, and groups of 4 and 6 Engineers showing up next to each other means it’s time to knock down a mountain. You could alter that to groups of 3 and 7 (to indicate that it is turn number 3), but you don’t want to mistake that group of 3 for an irrigation team. The other problem with the charged Engineer approach is that you don’t want to forget to wake the last Engineer up, or it might keep charging on the turn when you want to move him to the target square. See Section 3.4. It sounds like the charged Engineer approach is complicated, but I find it increases my accuracy in using several Engineers on a single project over the back-and-forth approach.

    4.3. Using many (12-30) workers on the same task
    What’s that you say? Three turns is too long to wait for your mountain to die? Don’t worry, you’re covered. You can use up to 30 Engineers on a single project, as long as it’s transforming a Mountain. Nothing else takes that long or longer. The only catch is to be able to wake the top Engineer currently transforming when you can’t see it in the pop-up list. The list only shows the first 9 units on a file, so by the time the 12th Engineer arrives to join the effort; you can’t wake the 10th Engineer like you normally would. Instead, as originally discovered by Xin Yu, you have to go to the home city of the 10th (in this case) Engineer. Click on the Engineer in the Units supported box on the left side of the city screen. Choose the “return to city” option. The Engineer won’t move, because it’s already gone this turn, but it will stop transforming and get the Goto (G) indicator on its shield. This allows you to continue to add Engineers to the effort. Every time you want to add an Engineer to the effort past number 11, you have to do this. This means that every Engineer past number 9 in the effort must be one of the first 8 units supported by their city, or otherwise you can’t click on it in the city screen. None of these later Engineers can be NON Engineers, either, or there will be no city screen to use. And you have to take careful notes, or you’ll wake the wrong one. The return to city trick is complicated, and you have to wake all the Goto Engineers quickly next turn or you’ll have a mess, but it is the fastest way to complete large projects. Settlers could do this too, maybe for knocking out a Swamp or Jungle square, but it’s not as likely that Settlers will get together so early in the game and work as a large group.

    Comment


    • #3
      Post 3

      This topic seeks to cover everything concerning Settlers and Engineers.

      You are invited to post the following:
      Info not currently covered in Posts 1 and 2.
      Clarifications/corrections to above ideas.
      On-topic questions on points not addressed.
      Responses to the posts of others here.

      I will integrate appropriate information into the above posts.

      If your points have been added to the info thread, please delete your post (leaving one character, for some reason, is necessary). If you think I forgot to include a point you wrote about earlier, repeat the point and head the post with the word LOOK.

      Great Library Index

      Comment


      • #4
        Post 4

        Credits: I'll fill this out more when I remember (or am reminded) where I found all this stuff.

        The Lone Engineer at Work
        Multiple Engineers on a Single Task
        Effects of roads and railroads on trade
        Info: Diplomats/Spies
        Settler stopped my troop train
        Last edited by Gastrifitis; July 3, 2001, 14:56.

        Comment


        • #5
          Post 5: Keywords

          {settlers}
          {end1}

          {NON settler}{super engineer city}
          {automate settler}{build fortress}{transform}{build airbase}{farmland}
          {work time}{charges}{assessment order}
          {multiple engineers}
          {end2}

          Comment


          • #6
            Excellent work!
            Last edited by Marquis de Sodaq; July 2, 2001, 10:34.
            The first President of the first Apolyton Democracy Game (CivII, that is)

            The gift of speech is given to many,
            intelligence to few.

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            • #7
              Very good work.
              I tried to read almost as slowly as Slow Thinker would have done and found no mistakes at all.
              Thank you, sir.
              Aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

              Comment


              • #8
                Para 1.1 Third sentence:

                Replace:

                "If you have Leonardo’s Workshop, and have not yet learned the advance of Automobile, all of your Settlers will be upgraded to Engineers. "

                with

                "If you have Leonardo’s Workshop, and no tribe has learned the advance of Automobile, all of your Settlers will be upgraded to Engineers. "

                Comment


                • #9
                  deleted

                  .
                  Last edited by SlowThinker; June 12, 2001, 07:48.
                  Civ2 "Great Library Index": direct download, Apolyton attachment

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    i thought that , slow, so i just tested it and a settler from a hut is always a NON

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      thinking about it, it has to be a NON because it would be easy to disband your only city early in the game from tipping a hut.game over

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Last edited by Gastrifitis; June 13, 2001, 11:18.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Gastrifitis - well done!

                          We are in touch with Ming about the best way to update the GL. I'm hoping we will be able to make additions at the end of the month.

                          -----------

                          SG(2)
                          "Our words are backed by empty wine bottles! - SG(2)
                          "One of our Scouse Gits is missing." - -Jrabbit

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                          • #14
                            Thanks for the superb and detailed work. Kudos for the transformation graphics.
                            Last edited by Bloody Monk; June 19, 2001, 02:31.
                            so long and thanks for all the fish

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Distance:

                              I tested it now and I declare that my definition in "Info: diplomats and spies" thread (4.31) is valid:
                              diagonal distance=1.5 times of straight distance and only integer part is taken.

                              I tested the cost of bribing of units, expelling, disbanding a city.


                              City disbanding:
                              Straight distance of settler's city = 12
                              Diagonal distance of opponent city = 8

                              8*1.41 < 11.5 , and so if the result is rounded then it is rounded to 11. Anyway, Pythagorean diagonal distance would be lesser. But settler wasn't NON-unit.
                              BTW, the settler of civ that had a city diagonally wasn't NON-unit either: it proves that the distance was equal.



                              A note: I tested a position of units via city window ("near Berlin"...):
                              Civ considers the straight distance (12*1) lesser than the diagonal one (8*1.5)!
                              (tested with units of both civs: the same result)
                              In other words, Pythagoras was wrong: the square root of 2 is about 1.50001!
                              Last edited by SlowThinker; July 22, 2001, 08:01.
                              Civ2 "Great Library Index": direct download, Apolyton attachment

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