On why I abandoned CTP2, and whether mods make it worth another look

[nbarclay]

Unlike many people, I actually got my start in Civilization-type games with the original Call to Power. I had no prejudices of hero worship for Sid, and no prejudices about what a Civ game ought to play like.

For the most part, I loved the game, and I have no idea how many hours I lost to it. My only really first-class annoyance with the game was how the unconventional warfare units are implemented. Real nations can outlaw slavery, the preaching of foreign heresy, the opening of foreign corporate branches without permission, and so forth, and not automatically start a war if they enforce their laws. And just imagine how far a German injunction against production in an English city (or vice versa) would have gotten in the middle of World War II! (And could a nation really collect profits from a corporate branch in an enemy nation in the middle of a war?) I'm not saying I inherently don't think unconventional units belong in a civ game, but the implementation left a sour taste. In any case, in spite of the occasonal annoyance at not being free to simply kill trespassing slavers, I got a huge amount of enjoyment out of the game.

So when I heard that Call to Power II was coming out, I was thrilled. I was hoping for something significantly better than to the original, and I bought it shortly after it came out.

And I stopped playing in the middle of about my second or third game and haven't played it since.

So what happened?

(1) The loss of ability to change what tiles I worked took away one of my key management tools. Worse, I got the distinct impression that it can seriously devalue tile improvements depending on population levels, because the improved tile is only one of several being worked instead of being fully utilized. (I'm not positive I'm right about that, but it's the impression I got.)

(2) My strategies in the original CTP were heavily overloaded toward production (and the growth needed to support that production, of course). But CTP2 uses pollution to put an effective ceiling on how much a city can produce. So if I keep the production slider high so new (or recently captured) cities will be highly productive, I end up with gargantuan numbers of specialists in my core cities to keep their production down enough I don't have pollution problems. The basic concept of the sliders seems like something good, but that kind of limitation transforms them from something fun into a major annoyance - especially since they have to be set on the empire-wide level when the optimal settings for a huge metropolis and a struggling town are completely different.

(3) At the time, I almost always played huge maps. CTP2 cut the number of cities allowable in half from the original CTP in compensation for how much bigger the cities get. But no one told the AI to change its city build patterns to make sure cities can grow to full radius. As a result, when I captured AI cities, I ended up with a significantly higher than optimal city density relative to the land available, and that played havoc with how much territory I could control. I've seen CTP2 fans (among others) complain about the alleged "need" to raze in Civ 3 (I play it on Monarch and Emperor, and you could probably count the number of cities I've razed in my entire year-long career on one hand), but I'll take that over the pain involved in weeding out excess cities in CTP2 any day.

(4) I got the distinct impression that there was some sort of cheating going on (or some kind of very odd rule being followed) for one of the AIs to essentially keep up with me in tech. That might have just been me not knowing the tech system very well, but in a couple games, it looked almost as if there was something deliberately rigged to keep the human from running away with a tech lead.

(5) The straw that finally broke the camel's back came with the new, "improved" diplomacy system. I had been at war with another civ, but was finally getting on good terms with them. That civ was at war with a smaller civ that I had formed an alliance with, and my ally called on me for help. Now here's where as a clear superpower, I SHOULD have been able to tell the other civ, "Hey, I have an alliance with these guys, and if you keep fighting them, I'll be bound by treaty to declare war on you." And if they had the brains of an amoeba, they should have at least given the matter some serious thought. But that little nuance was left out of the diplomacy system! The system gave me just enough tools to obligate me to protect an ally, but not enough to even attempt to provide that protection through diplomatic means! Worse, I was already right around the limit on number of cities from previous conquests, so if I did go to war on behalf of my ally, what would I do with captured cities?!? I was so disgusted with that situation that I walked away from the game, and I never went hack. I've played more of the original CTP since then, but no more CTP2.

Since then, Civ 3 came out, and I fell in love with it. The only really major annoyance I've found (from my pserspective) is that peace treaties don't obligate the loser in a war to respect the current borders until the end of the treaty (i.e. obligate them not to accept culture flips), and that's no more ridiculous than the CTP series' inability to outlaw slavers' operating in your territory. Yes, mutual protection pacts can force me into unwanted wars, but they're easily avoided and of finite duration if I do want one in some unusual case.

But I'm still thinking that with how mature the CTP mods are by now, the game might be worth another look if most of what annoyed me about the game originally has been dealt with adequately. The question is, has it?

Nathan

[Maquiladora]

1) You cant change specific tiles you work around your cities radii (because you work them all), but that doesnt devalue tile imps. As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time.

2) Im certain pollution overflow levels have been altered in most mods, and CtP2 is not about pumping out production and gold at least, although commerce is most important. But doesnt it make complete sense that the handicap you make by moving your sliders should effect all your cities? At least theres no out right specilist cities anymore.

3) You can raze cities in most CtP2 mods now.

4) Hmm i never saw any obvious cheating by the AI, other than the numbers in diffDB.txt which define the human handicap for each difficulty level, there really isnt anything radical to help the AI. For example, seeing the whole map.

5) That hasnt been added/fixed in the diplomacy system AFAIK.

Theres actually a thread topped in this forum for CtP2 Mod n00bers but its quite new so i dont know if it covered some of the stuff you mentioned. As always though if you see something you want in a mod (no matter how complex) im sure someone will help.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
1) You cant change specific tiles you work around your cities radii (because you work them all), but that doesnt devalue tile imps. As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time.

What does, "As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time" mean?

2) Im certain pollution overflow levels have been altered in most mods, and CtP2 is not about pumping out production and gold at least, although commerce is most important. But doesnt it make complete sense that the handicap you make by moving your sliders should effect all your cities? At least theres no out right specilist cities anymore.

Every 4X game I've ever played (not that it's been a huge number) has ultimately been about investment, and production and the growth to support production tend to be the most important forms of investment. Get those right and you can build everythng else you need.

What gets me is that the game created a problem that's real-world solution should be obvious to anyone with half a brain but refused to offer the options necessary to implement that solution. When the limiting factor on production in a particular city is pollution, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it makes sense to operate the city's factories fewer hours a day and pay the employees correspondingly less. (That, or cut back the number of factories, but Civ-style games don't deal in numbers of factories.) But there's no even remotely rational reason why cities in less polluted areas couldn't run longer hours and pay their employees more in return.

In the original CTP, I didn't mind that the sliders operated on a national basis because it was almost unheard of for a setting that's good for growing new cities to be truly stupid for the older, more established cities. But when I tried to carry my production-centric strategy over to CTP2, I ran into a brick ceiling. I don't mind the basic idea of keeping production in check, since it did seem to get a bit out of hand in the original CTP. But doing it in such a clumsy and heavy-handed way really undermined my enjoyment.

Nathan

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by nbarclay

What does, "As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time" mean?

Most CtP'ers either play with 100% PW or 0% PW, it makes little sense to have it constantly on 20% for example, well at least thats how i play. So you have to choose when to max out PW for a turn or two, so if you needed a few cannons on those border towns it probably wouldnt be a good idea to do it yet.

Originally posted by nbarclay

Every 4X game I've ever played (not that it's been a huge number) has ultimately been about investment, and production and the growth to support production tend to be the most important forms of investment. Get those right and you can build everythng else you need.

...and basically to place farms early to up the population and then just place commerce imps [b]everywhere[b] because the early population alone can hold the production at a decent level for a while.

Originally posted by nbarclay

What gets me is that the game created a problem that's real-world solution should be obvious to anyone with half a brain but refused to offer the options necessary to implement that solution. When the limiting factor on production in a particular city is pollution, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it makes sense to operate the city's factories fewer hours a day and pay the employees correspondingly less. (That, or cut back the number of factories, but Civ-style games don't deal in numbers of factories.) But there's no even remotely rational reason why cities in less polluted areas couldn't run longer hours and pay their employees more in return.

In the original CTP, I didn't mind that the sliders operated on a national basis because it was almost unheard of for a setting that's good for growing new cities to be truly stupid for the older, more established cities. But when I tried to carry my production-centric strategy over to CTP2, I ran into a brick ceiling. I don't mind the basic idea of keeping production in check, since it did seem to get a bit out of hand in the original CTP. But doing it in such a clumsy and heavy-handed way really undermined my enjoyment.

Nathan

But you just add more labourers (production specialists) in cities where production is more important or less polluting, thus reducing science/gold/food. Or conversely add more scientists/farmers/merchants in the high polluting cities. I think thats a pretty simple solution, unless i misunderstood you.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
(1) The loss of ability to change what tiles I worked took away one of my key management tools. Worse, I got the distinct impression that it can seriously devalue tile improvements depending on population levels, because the improved tile is only one of several being worked instead of being fully utilized. (I'm not positive I'm right about that, but it's the impression I got.)

I miss the worker system too, but the way it is set up in CTP2 has its advantages too. Less micromanagement in the later stages of the game when you have a lot of cities, and specialists actually work on the same principle as civ3/CTP1. Since there is a specialist for all of the main needs (gold/food/science/production) using specialists in one area will reduce effectiveness in another - same as moving workers.

The thing to remember about tile improvements is to build then in groups. So a player should improve all of the tiles in a city radius ASAP. And the challenge/choice is to figure out which city to improve first???

Originally posted by nbarclay
(2) My strategies in the original CTP were heavily overloaded toward production (and the growth needed to support that production, of course). But CTP2 uses pollution to put an effective ceiling on how much a city can produce. So if I keep the production slider high so new (or recently captured) cities will be highly productive, I end up with gargantuan numbers of specialists in my core cities to keep their production down enough I don't have pollution problems. The basic concept of the sliders seems like something good, but that kind of limitation transforms them from something fun into a major annoyance - especially since they have to be set on the empire-wide level when the optimal settings for a huge metropolis and a struggling town are completely different.

In my mod (Cradle), pollution is used more as a happiness modifier. And I have also reduced the power of specialists in the current update (they come later, for example), so they do not have such an overpowering effect.

Sliders have also been downplayed in my Mod - I always considered the use of them overpowering in the default game and it was one of the first things I worked on. You can use them, but at a heavy cost to unhappiness. Again, the challenge is to get to the point where you can use them effectively.

Originally posted by nbarclay
(3) At the time, I almost always played huge maps. CTP2 cut the number of cities allowable in half from the original CTP in compensation for how much bigger the cities get. But no one told the AI to change its city build patterns to make sure cities can grow to full radius. As a result, when I captured AI cities, I ended up with a significantly higher than optimal city density relative to the land available, and that played havoc with how much territory I could control. I've seen CTP2 fans (among others) complain about the alleged "need" to raze in Civ 3 (I play it on Monarch and Emperor, and you could probably count the number of cities I've razed in my entire year-long career on one hand), but I'll take that over the pain involved in weeding out excess cities in CTP2 any day.

Razing is an option in Modded CTP2 (at least in Cradle) to give players the option to quickly weed out those cities. Personally, I do not use it though, preferring the challenge of making those cities work for me.

The thing I do not care about in civ3 is that for the most part, razing captured cities is what a player has to do, because those cities are too much of a burden to the player - high corruption, and very prone to culture flip in a war. Again, this is not necessarily bad, and does create a challenge, but I find it to be what I end up doing, especially in a protracted war.

Originally posted by nbarclay
(4) I got the distinct impression that there was some sort of cheating going on (or some kind of very odd rule being followed) for one of the AIs to essentially keep up with me in tech. That might have just been me not knowing the tech system very well, but in a couple games, it looked almost as if there was something deliberately rigged to keep the human from running away with a tech lead.

Cheats happen in every game, and CTP2 has its share.

I can say this, the cheats in the default CTP2 game were less than in civ3 - in fact when the AI had a certain lead, it game itself an handicap to allow the human player to catch up. Be warned - this has been altered in the Mods.

But I would venture to say that the diplomacy model in civ3 does the same thing with tech. The AI trades tech heavily, and it is this trading that forces a player into the strategy of trading tech rather than building up his own science. Again, it provides a challenge, but it seems to me counter-intuitive, and the main thing is that players are funneled down a particular strategic path, at the expense of others.

Originally posted by nbarclay
(5) The straw that finally broke the camel's back came with the new, "improved" diplomacy system...
Since then, Civ 3 came out, and I fell in love with it. The only really major annoyance I've found (from my pserspective) is that peace treaties don't obligate the loser in a war to respect the current borders until the end of the treaty (i.e. obligate them not to accept culture flips), and that's no more ridiculous than the CTP series' inability to outlaw slavers' operating in your territory. Yes, mutual protection pacts can force me into unwanted wars, but they're easily avoided and of finite duration if I do want one in some unusual case.

I would agree that the civ3 model is superior to CTP2, (that and a more focused military AI in civ3, especially in regard to diplomacy AI/AI and AI/human alliances) but at the same time, there are a whole lotta things that I prefer in CTP2 - stacked combat, multiple government choices/tile improvements, PW, no infinte Railroad sleaze, a deeper tech tree and on and on...

Originally posted by nbarclay
But I'm still thinking that with how mature the CTP mods are by now, the game might be worth another look if most of what annoyed me about the game originally has been dealt with adequately. The question is, has it?

Well, you have the game already, so giving a Mod a try isn't such a committment. The nice thing is that if you need help, there is always someone here to walk you through any problem, and we contunually try to upgrade our Mods (see Creation thread - This Packs military AI sucks thread for an example)

Hex

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
But you just add more labourers (production specialists) in cities where production is more important or less polluting, thus reducing science/gold/food. Or conversely add more scientists/farmers/merchants in the high polluting cities. I think thats a pretty simple solution, unless i misunderstood you.

Which brings us (at high production slider settings) to the ludicrous situation of cities with huge radii that don't dare actually use all those tiles, and of having multiple types of mines available but not daring build any of them lest pollution strike. That kind of bad balance of the features against each other is just plain ugly. I wouldn't have a problem with not being able to build the most advanced mines available on every tile on high production slider settings, but not daring to build any?

Also, how does using tons of specialists affect the advantage obtained from tile improvements? If people have to work improved tiles to get the advantage of them, design decisions that make it impractical to work all a city's tiles have the side effect of undercutting all forms of tile improvements, not just mines.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by hexagonian

I miss the worker system too, but the way it is set up in CTP2 has its advantages too. Less micromanagement in the later stages of the game when you have a lot of cities, and specialists actually work on the same principle as civ3/CTP1. Since there is a specialist for all of the main needs (gold/food/science/production) using specialists in one area will reduce effectiveness in another - same as moving workers.

Which brings back the micromanagement that getting rid of workers was supposed to eliminate. Oops.

The thing to remember about tile improvements is to build then in groups. So a player should improve all of the tiles in a city radius ASAP. And the challenge/choice is to figure out which city to improve first???

What's the advantage of building lots of tile improvements in one city compared with spreading them out? Is it just connected with the idea of once you have the tile improvements in place, you stop using specialists much in that city in order to get maximum use of the tile improvements, or is there something else involved?

In my mod (Cradle), pollution is used more as a happiness modifier. And I have also reduced the power of specialists in the current update (they come later, for example), so they do not have such an overpowering effect.

Sliders have also been downplayed in my Mod - I always considered the use of them overpowering in the default game and it was one of the first things I worked on. You can use them, but at a heavy cost to unhappiness. Again, the challenge is to get to the point where you can use them effectively.

The down side to penalizing players just for using sliders is that it takes away a lot of the variability in governments. In the original CTP, for example, I used Theocracy but pushed the food consumption down to minimum and salaries up to maximum. My changes balanced, so the net effect on happiness was zero, although I was still subject to random riots for some (to the best of my knowledge) completely undocumented reason. The point is that to a considerable degree, the sliders let you create your own government instead of being stuck with the tradeoffs the designers picked.

On the other hand, what you can do with sliders in standard CTP2 struck me as significantly more extreme (especially with regard to production) than what could be done with the original CTP. It's almost as if the designers caught a bad case of, "If some is good, more must be better." Indeed, what could be done with production was so extreme that high production slider settings (great for building up new or newly captured cities) didn't get along with other techniques for boosting production.

Razing is an option in Modded CTP2 (at least in Cradle) to give players the option to quickly weed out those cities. Personally, I do not use it though, preferring the challenge of making those cities work for me.

The only reason I would even consider wanting to get rid of cities is that there's a limit on how many you can have. But when the number of cities you can have is vastly smaller than the number in the world, you have to either get rid of some of them or stop conquering.

The thing I do not care about in civ3 is that for the most part, razing captured cities is what a player has to do, because those cities are too much of a burden to the player - high corruption, and very prone to culture flip in a war. Again, this is not necessarily bad, and does create a challenge, but I find it to be what I end up doing, especially in a protracted war.

Corruption has been toned down a lot in the Civ 3 patches, and keeping totally corrupt cities around doesn't really hurt; basically, they're just useless. And as I said in my orignal post, I play Monarch and Emperor (lately more Emperor than Monarch) and almost never raze. The one residual nuisance for me is the need to take out a civ completely when practical to eliminate all risk of culture flips, but I've gotten so used to that that I don't care so much about it anymore. By the way, with the Play the World expansion pack, you can turn culture flips off if they bother you too much.

Cheats happen in every game, and CTP2 has its share.

I can say this, the cheats in the default CTP2 game were less than in civ3 - in fact when the AI had a certain lead, it game itself an handicap to allow the human player to catch up. Be warned - this has been altered in the Mods.

Were the cheats in the default CTP2 really less, or just more subtle? In my view, having the AI's bonuses/penalties vary depending on how it is doing compared with the player takes away a lot of the idea that the AI is bound by rules at all. How do you measure your success when the AI's competitiveness depends on how well you play? In Civ 3, the AIs play by rules that give them some advantages, and some of those advantages are pretty blatant, but at least they do always play by the same rules.

But I would venture to say that the diplomacy model in civ3 does the same thing with tech. The AI trades tech heavily, and it is this trading that forces a player into the strategy of trading tech rather than building up his own science. Again, it provides a challenge, but it seems to me counter-intuitive, and the main thing is that players are funneled down a particular strategic path, at the expense of others.

You're talking to someone who, on a good map, routinely goes toe to toe with the AIs in research even on Emperor in the ancient era. Granted, I don't play Deity because there, the problems are much as you describe, but pick the right level and you have a wide range of options open.

Further, the benefits of pulling away with a tech lead in Civ 3 are enormous. I can do tech-for-luxury trades to keep my people very happy, and get some gold in the process to help fuel further research. And if I can beat the AI to key military techs, it gives me a major military advantage as well.

Granted, the tech tree is smaller, with not as many choices of what to research. But there are still choices to make. Do you "waste" time on optional techs to try to get wonders or change governments (Democracy and Communism), or do you move straight through toward the next era? How do you prioritize Sanitation (hospitals to let cities grow past size 12), Industrialization (factories), Replaceable Parts (workers build tile improvements twice as fast), and Scientific Method (Theory of Evolution for two free techs, providing a clear shot at Electronics and Hoover Dam). And Play the World adds Corporation to the list of things you might or might not prioritize by providing a wealth city improvement with it. Granted, a given player is likely to have his preferences and follow those preferences over and over, but is that really so different in the CTP series?

I would agree that the civ3 [diplomacy] model is superior to CTP2, (that and a more focused military AI in civ3, especially in regard to diplomacy AI/AI and AI/human alliances) but at the same time, there are a whole lotta things that I prefer in CTP2 - stacked combat, multiple government choices/tile improvements, PW, no infinte Railroad sleaze, a deeper tech tree and on and on...

Stacked combat has its advantages, but the CTP games have an annoying tendency of letting a well-designed attack annihilate the enemy with essentially no losses of its own. Just pound the defenders to a pulp first. That's a lot harder in Civ 3, especially under Democracy or Republic. Bombardment isn't lethal, so you can't kill units outright with it; someone has to go in and finish the job and may get killed in the process. War weariness becomes a huge problem if you take the time to bring up a lot of artillery for every city you want to capture. And if you don't bombard, first, the first units in have a very significant possibility of being killed even if your units are both technologically and numerically superior.

In my view, each combat system has its advantages and its disadvantages. CTP2's system is more sophisticated, while Civ 3's has what I view as an elegant simplicity.

Well, you have the game already, so giving a Mod a try isn't such a committment. The nice thing is that if you need help, there is always someone here to walk you through any problem, and we contunually try to upgrade our Mods (see Creation thread - This Packs military AI sucks thread for an example)

I make a good enough income and keep my financial "needs" simple enough that the time involved in learning a game as complex as Civ 3 or CTP2 is a significantly bigger investment than the money to buy it. I'm a micromanager by nature, so if I get back into CTP2, I'll spend a lot of time reading the rules (including mod rules) and trying to figure out the best way to make use of them. And I don't really want to do that if I'll just end up abandoning the game in frustration again.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Oh, a couple other things:

Public works - Until I got into Civ 3, I viewed Public Works as a clearly superior system, partly because that's what I started on. But there are things I like about the fact that once a worker is built, he's built and he keeps working, so I don't have to keep fiddling with the choice between building infrastructure and other things. Further, while workers require some management, that management makes it impossible not to know when an improvement is finished and ready for use. In contrast, the original CTP had its own micromanagement nightmare trying to keep track of which improvements in which parts of my empire would be finished in a given turn. (And I've already said what I think about CTP2's decision to "solve" the problem by taking the choice of what tiles to work out of the player's hands.)

"Infinite railroad sleaze" - Railroads are Civ 3's answer to more advanced forms of mines and irrigation. You don't replace the old ones; you add railroads to make them work better. Similar effect, different way of getting it. And when you consider just how big a tile is in terms of square miles, how would it make sense to have tiles that don't get served by the road and rail system? (The Call to Power games have the opposite problem: without a commercial benefit, there tends to be little reason to prioritize building roads and railraods at all, especially beyond a few central arteries for moving military forces.)

Numbers of techs and governments - Those make CTP2 a bigger game, but not necessarily a better one. It's the old trade-off between high levels of size and sophistication and elegant simplicity. Firaxis had good reasons for not getting into an "arms race" with Activision over who could provide the most techs, governments, etc. My own view is that which approach is better is a matter of personal taste, and personally, I don't care a great deal one way or the other.

Nathan

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
That kind of bad balance of the features against each other is just plain ugly. I wouldn't have a problem with not being able to build the most advanced mines available on every tile on high production slider settings, but not daring to build any?

See my post above...I should of clarified that pollution (in Cradle and I am 90% sure, in MedMod) has been reworked so that it affects happiness more and destroys fewer tiles. (at least I have not heard from any players that pollution is causing rampant tile destruction in Cradle in the late game.) I have only played Cradle through through Medieval times (about 750 turns) though with no tiles lost to pollution.

BTW, Cradle was originally designed to play about 800-1000 turns but I have left the modern age in so that players could play as long as they want (about 1350 turns).

Originally posted by nbarclay
Also, how does using tons of specialists affect the advantage obtained from tile improvements? If people have to work improved tiles to get the advantage of them, design decisions that make it impractical to work all a city's tiles have the side effect of undercutting all forms of tile improvements, not just mines.

Using Cradle 1.34 as the example, here's how it will work. Realize that specialists are not all available in Cradle at the begining of the game either. Farmers come into play at turn 0-60, laborers come in from turn 200-300, merchants come in at turn 500-600, and scientists come in at turn 600-700. So if you are planning on using all of them to negate the need of tile improvements, you will not be able to because you will not be able to cover the full spectrum of your needs. And by the time you get them all, improved tile improvements will lessen their strength.

If anything, tile improvements are more important now, because you get a benefit from them even if only a few tile are worked. It pays to have all of your tiles in a ring improved. In civ3/CTP1, you have to work the tile to get the benefit.

You will have a benefit of tile improvements even if you use some specialists, because the improvement will add to the total that a ring will produce. It works on the principle that each ring has a total number of gold/production/food that is produced. This figure is then divided by the number of workers that are working the ring, and also figuring in the government bonus and crime rate. So if a ring has a total of 80 production, and it is worked by 4 workers, then the total production collected will be 40 (this is assuming that you have a government coefficient of 1.0 and no crime, and not counting the tile under the city or buildings either - I'm not going to use those numbers because they are unneeded for this example).

Now the labor specialist is worth 25 production, so at this stage of the game, it will pay to use them in many situations, but you will not have access to merchants and scientists, so using them willy-nilly in all cities will hurt your science and commerce. (Generally, I have specialist cities, focusing on certain aspects of my needs.) And by the time you get Merchants, you are also close to getting Advanced Mines that will nullify the need of laborers. Nullify is too strong a word - they will have certain uses, but mainly in cities that cannot gain too much from those types of tile improvements.

Again, there are times that using specialists can be counter-productive - but look at it this way. If you have a production-poor city, using laborers can pay off (even with Mines on swamps, your production per tile is not as high as with a laborer, but using laborers could still cause you to lose food growth and gold.

In a city with high production tiles like mines, you could be better off keeping them in the fields. It makes sense, because you have a production apparatus already in place (Mines on mountains). Specialist are more along the lines of getting a bonus in situations where you have very few options, or to accent a city with a boost up to a point.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
"Infinite railroad sleaze" - Railroads are Civ 3's answer to more advanced forms of mines and irrigation. You don't replace the old ones; you add railroads to make them work better. Similar effect, different way of getting it. And when you consider just how big a tile is in terms of square miles, how would it make sense to have tiles that don't get served by the road and rail system? (The Call to Power games have the opposite problem: without a commercial benefit, there tends to be little reason to prioritize building roads and railraods at all, especially beyond a few central arteries for moving military forces.)

The main problem with IRS is that it completely nullifies the need to think defensively and it negates the need to commit a force to a front. If I conquer a city, I can instantaneously move a foce into it to maintain a garrison, if the enemy had rails in place around that city. If attacked, all I need to do is keep a huge force in the heart of my empire and instantaneously move it to where it is needed.

CTP2 has this to some extent, because you get a nice movement bonus with rails, but it is not infinite...

And it is butt-ugly - better that they introduce upgraded tile improvements to build along with rails forcing a player to choose either movement or better production/food.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Which brings back the micromanagement that getting rid of workers was supposed to eliminate. Oops.

Its still less because I'm not clicking and dragging workers onto separate tiles to get the number I want. Simply pushing a button and seeing the numbers...much quicker and efficient.

Originally posted by nbarclay
The down side to penalizing players just for using sliders is that it takes away a lot of the variability in governments. In the original CTP, for example, I used Theocracy but pushed the food consumption down to minimum and salaries up to maximum. My changes balanced, so the net effect on happiness was zero, although I was still subject to random riots for some (to the best of my knowledge) completely undocumented reason. The point is that to a considerable degree, the sliders let you create your own government instead of being stuck with the tradeoffs the designers picked.

The point is that you have to work a little harder at at to use the sliders, but the option is still there to do so. They were too extreme though...and the beauty of it is that it's an incredibly easy thing to modify to your tastes if you want to change the txt file that controls the sliders.

Originally posted by nbarclay
Corruption has been toned down a lot in the Civ 3 patches, and keeping totally corrupt cities around doesn't really hurt; basically, they're just useless.

Then why would I want to keep a worthless city - its just more terrain to defend. Yeah, I know, to deny the land to the AI. But I guess that's the whole reason...

Originally posted by nbarclay
Were the cheats in the default CTP2 really less, or just more subtle?

From the DiffDb.txt file (Impossible)

# % amount to multiply advance cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_TECHNOLOGY_COST 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_TECHNOLOGY_COST 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.5

# % amount to multiply production cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

# multiplier for gold collected for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.1

# % amount to multiply advance cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_AHEAD_TECHNOLOGY_COST 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_TECHNOLOGY_COST 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.2 1.1

# % amount to multiply production cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_AHEAD_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.1

# multiplier for gold collected fo ai
AI_MIN_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0

MAX_HUMAN_ADVANCES 3
MAX_AI_ADVANCES 8
HUMAN_SCIENCE_BONUS 0.8 # % amount to add to advance cost for the player
HUMAN_FOOD_BONUS -0.4 # % amount to add to food collected for the player

The largest one was a (+80%) Advance cost to the human player for advances, and the beginning stuff that goes to the AI, and the bonuses if the AI is hopelessly behind.

But look at the handicaps if the AI is ahead of the human...In civ3, I've heard the bonus for the AI is a cost10 (human)/cost6(AI) across the board for Deity. Does the AI benefit by a tech trade system that gives more favorable rates for AI/AI trading over Human/AI trading? That could fall into the realm of a cheat, since it boils down to human against the AI

Originally posted by nbarclay
In my view, having the AI's bonuses/penalties vary depending on how it is doing compared with the player takes away a lot of the idea that the AI is bound by rules at all.

I'm not going to deny that in the Mods, there are some cheats built in, (and I'm currently tracking down Cradle's incredible science rate and am trying to lessen it) but bottom line for me is that I am looking for a good game... Cheats are needed, and I favor added bonuses for civs that are very far back, because once the human gets a good advantage in any game, the game becomes easier and those small civs are picked off easily.

Originally posted by nbarclay
How do you measure your success when the AI's competitiveness depends on how well you play? In Civ 3, the AIs play by rules that give them some advantages, and some of those advantages are pretty blatant, but at least they do always play by the same rules.

Is there any truth that the AI in civ3 sees the entire map, knows where all the good are before they appear and beelines to undefended cities?...and that the civ3 tech tree is set up to cost more for whoever is the first to research a tech and less for those wh bring up the rear???

Originally posted by nbarclay
Granted, the tech tree is smaller, with not as many choices of what to research. But there are still choices to make. Do you "waste" time on optional techs to try to get wonders or change governments (Democracy and Communism), or do you move straight through toward the next era? How do you prioritize Sanitation (hospitals to let cities grow past size 12), Industrialization (factories), Replaceable Parts (workers build tile improvements twice as fast), and Scientific Method (Theory of Evolution for two free techs, providing a clear shot at Electronics and Hoover Dam). And Play the World adds Corporation to the list of things you might or might not prioritize by providing a wealth city improvement with it. Granted, a given player is likely to have his preferences and follow those preferences over and over, but is that really so different in the CTP series?

No, but I like the wider diversity of choice in the Modded game (yeah I'm biased toward my mod), especially with the government choices. In CTP2, I feel more of a progression in government choices.

Originally posted by nbarclay
Stacked combat has its advantages, but the CTP games have an annoying tendency of letting a well-designed attack annihilate the enemy with essentially no losses of its own. Just pound the defenders to a pulp first.

...which is why I activated the counterbombard flag in my Mod. Hit a city with a bombard unit inside and you will lose your units - though I generally just march in with my units and slug it out. (and early bombards come later in my game - turn 300-400)

Does the civ3 AI effectively use artillery?

The civ3 battles are easier to program because there is no limit on how powerful a stack can be - it can hold infinite units. CTPs limits are harder for the AI to effectively use - so I give civ3 the edge. But I'm more of a builder-style player rather than a warmongor - but I know that the AI in Modded CTP2 can be a real pain.

Both AIs do stupid things...

My experience with civ3 is not extensive - a few games on the mid-level just to see if I liked it - my last game I was comfortably ahead, and went back to CTP2. Don't get me wrong, I do like civ3, and there are features that are excellent, but its a matter of preference...

[Pedrunn]

There is no way i can keep up with this thread anymore!!!

You guys surely like to write

[Maquiladora]

Yeah i know

Lets not make it into another comparison thread though! I would just urge you to read about all the added stuff in the mods and decide to try out one or two.

[nbarclay]

Regarding specialists in stock CTP2, my big complaint is that pollution kept pushing me into using specialists instead of working and improving tiles. It sounds like Cradle does a pretty good job taking care of that, from what you say.

If I understand you correctly, a tile improvement does not provide 100% of its potential benefit unless you're working every tile in the ring. That's something of a drawback compared with the old way of being able to choose which tiles to work so you can work the improved tiles first. Am I understanding correctly?

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by hexagonian


The main problem with IRS is that it completely nullifies the need to think defensively and it negates the need to commit a force to a front. If I conquer a city, I can instantaneously move a foce into it to maintain a garrison, if the enemy had rails in place around that city. If attacked, all I need to do is keep a huge force in the heart of my empire and instantaneously move it to where it is needed.

CTP2 has this to some extent, because you get a nice movement bonus with rails, but it is not infinite...

And it is butt-ugly - better that they introduce upgraded tile improvements to build along with rails forcing a player to choose either movement or better production/food.

I'm not going to get into an argument over aesthetics; that is entirely a matter of personal taste. In regard to gameplay, I'll definitely agree that having infinite movement on railroads significantly reduces the level of strategy required in military operations. But that would be true even if railroads were only used to connect cities and other key locations together. Keep a unit on a railroad hub and it can hit any square within three road tiles of the railroad even with just one movement point.

On the other hand, Civ 3's culture system keeps you from using enemy roads and railroads until after you've captured their city. If I recall correctly, CTP2 has no such restriction on the ability to take advantage of enemy roads and railroads, so you can use roads to move even slow units in and attack an enemy city the first turn of a war. That's an area where Civ 3 requires a bit more strategy; units with one movement point have a much harder time getting to the target.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by hexagonian

Its still less because I'm not clicking and dragging workers onto separate tiles to get the number I want. Simply pushing a button and seeing the numbers...much quicker and efficient.

Managing workers became a lot easier in Civ 3 with the 1.17f patch when they added a form of stack movement. That allows moving entire gangs of workers at once. It's still a bit of a pain sometimes, but not as bad as it was originally.

Then why would I want to keep a worthless city - its just more terrain to defend. Yeah, I know, to deny the land to the AI. But I guess that's the whole reason...

That, and you can't rule the world if you leave cities in other people's hands. Basically, my approach is to only attack civs whose territory I can't make productive if I'm going for a domination or (in extremely rare cases, since I hate razing) conquest victory. But in the later patches, with courthouses and police stations, I can make a pretty good percentage of the world at least marginally productive if I position my forbidden palace well and later use a leader to move my palace to another continent. I'm not entirely thrilled with the system as it stands, but I like it a whole lot better than CTP/CTP2's approach of imposing arbitrary limits on how many cities it's practical to have. (The worst is having someone attack me and not being able to capture their cities because I already have as many as I can handle.)

But look at the handicaps if the AI is ahead of the human...In civ3, I've heard the bonus for the AI is a cost10 (human)/cost6(AI) across the board for Deity. Does the AI benefit by a tech trade system that gives more favorable rates for AI/AI trading over Human/AI trading? That could fall into the realm of a cheat, since it boils down to human against the AI

The 1.17f patch was notorious for giving a "human against the world" flavor to the research system, but it's gotten a lot better since then. I'm pretty sure the AIs do sell to each other on more favorable terms than they do the human on the higher levels, but the same mechanics would work in the human's favor on the lowest levels. In any case, whatever the level of discrimination is, it's by no means enough to squeeze the human player out of the tech trading game.

In regard to Deity level, I think it's a mistake to use that as your benchmark. Firaxis pulled out all the stops to make that level next to impossible to beat, so things are supposed to be almost impossibly loaded against the player on that level. Most of us (at least in the "Apolyton University" crowd) seem to just write off Deity as next to impossible and content ourselves with winning on Emperor.

I'm not going to deny that in the Mods, there are some cheats built in, (and I'm currently tracking down Cradle's incredible science rate and am trying to lessen it) but bottom line for me is that I am looking for a good game... Cheats are needed, and I favor added bonuses for civs that are very far back, because once the human gets a good advantage in any game, the game becomes easier and those small civs are picked off easily.
...
Is there any truth that the AI in civ3 sees the entire map, knows where all the good are before they appear and beelines to undefended cities?...and that the civ3 tech tree is set up to cost more for whoever is the first to research a tech and less for those wh bring up the rear???

The best way I can put it is that different aspects of the AI's personality know different things about the map. Yes, it definitely knows things it "shouldn't," and I can see how people can get miffed over that. But personally, I don't regard it as that big a deal; the AI doesn't get enough extra mileage out of it to bother me.

Making techs cheaper as more of the civs you know learn them is Firaxis's answer to keeping civs that are behind from facing quite such a hopeless situation. It is also eminently realistic that the first civ to research something will have a harder time than those who can see the technology in action in the entire rest of the world. And it's consistent: it's not something contrived based specifically on where the AIs are relative to the human.

But waiting for everyone else to learn a tech so you can get it cheaper also has enormous drawbacks. (1) You can't build useful city improvements as soon. (2) Any time you go to war, your enemies will be at least as advanced as you and likely more advanced. (3) You have no opportunity to boost your economy through the sale of techs to others. (4) You start off behind in all the wonder races. In contrast, the civ that gets a tech first can recoup a good chunk of its expenses selling the tech to others, and with enough of a research advantage, it is quite possible to sell some techs and keep others in order to build up a major tech lead. (In a game I'm playing now, on Monarch level, I'm eight techs ahead of the rest of the world and taking in five luxuries and well over a hundred gold per turn from the sale of Medicine. Who says doing your own research doesn't pay?)

...which is why I activated the counterbombard flag in my Mod. Hit a city with a bombard unit inside and you will lose your units - though I generally just march in with my units and slug it out. (and early bombards come later in my game - turn 300-400)

Does the civ3 AI effectively use artillery?

No. Actually, I make little use of artillery either. I prefer to do my fighting in the eras dominated by fast offensive units (cavalry and modern armor, and to a lesser extent knights and tanks). WWI-style infantry warfare is too bloody for my taste. The counterbombard addition does sound like a major advantage over the stock CTP2.

By the way, my general style of play is builder interspersed by periods of warmingering when I have cities with nothing better to do than to build troops or when I need more territory to support the technological pace I want.

My experience with civ3 is not extensive - a few games on the mid-level just to see if I liked it - my last game I was comfortably ahead, and went back to CTP2. Don't get me wrong, I do like civ3, and there are features that are excellent, but its a matter of preference...

Nice to hear. I'll probably give Cradle a try after my current Civ 3 game, and I hope my impression of that is at least as good as yours of Civ 3.

[nbarclay]

Are the bonuses the AI gets when the human is ahead based on where the AI stands in one particular area (e.g. a research bonus based on relative technology) or on overall standings? If the latter, that could explain the situations where CTP2 AIs kept up with me in research even though it seemed like it should have been impossible. My empires had lots of cities, lots of city improvements, lots of people, and were production powerhouses, and if that would have triggered a bonus that affected AI research....

Nathan

[child of Thor]

Hi nbarclay,
I hear your misgivings over CTP and CTP2. And it's interesting to read your perspective having not played a 'Civ' game before you got into CTP.
I'd always loved the genre more than any other. I'd played the origonal Civ and then Civ2 and a couple of preciv games in the 8-bit days.
I bought CTP and then CTP2 before discovering apolyton and for the most part was very happy with both of them. They allowed me to guide my chosen nation through history - and i enjoyed the experience. Of course there were a few things that i'd wished they had done better or in a different way, but for the most part i feel i got my money's worth.
It's been 3 years i've been playing these games(not so much Ctp these days but i still got it), so that's not bad.
As to the Mods i'd say they've added more of a challange and some of the things that have been done and the different 'flavour' they give the game, make them worth trying.
But CTP2 is still CTP2, without Activision giveing the sourcecode to the guys here, there is only so much that can be changed(but IMHO it's amazing what has be done to improve it and is still being done).
Still the fact you are here asking questions and putting points across shows that you still have a glimmer of interest
If you got the time and connection then just try a mod and see what you think.
At the very least you will appriciate what real fans, given a decent amount of modding ability by the CTP2 creators, can acheive.
And even after Activision gave up on CTP2 shortly after it's release, the fact it shipped with a comparatively strong modding langauge, makes it stand as a rare rough gem in a synical games market where good idea's and intentions come a very second place to the publishers desire to make a fast buck(and it's not getting better).
Try it again and see, you don't have much to lose.
Oh yeah and maybe you can change the things you don't like

[Turambar]

Give Cradle a go a see what you think.

Also if you don't like PW there is a Civ3 workers mod you can use too!

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
If I understand you correctly, a tile improvement does not provide 100% of its potential benefit unless you're working every tile in the ring. That's something of a drawback compared with the old way of being able to choose which tiles to work so you can work the improved tiles first. Am I understanding correctly?

Using my above example, if you have a +5 production bonus Tile Improvement on all tiles of the ring, the max production of that ring would be 120 (80+40). With 4 workers (1/2 of the total number of workers for the inner ring) your total intake of production would be 60. So you would not get the full benefit of all the tile improvements (+5 per TI) but 1/2 benefit (+2.5 per TI).

With 4 workers and 4 laborers (each 25 production), you could theroretically get 160 production out of that ring instead ofg 120 if you went with all workers, but you may be sacrificing gold/food/overall growth to do so.

Originally posted by nbarclay
Are the bonuses the AI gets when the human is ahead based on where the AI stands in one particular area (e.g. a research bonus based on relative technology) or on overall standings? If the latter, that could explain the situations where CTP2 AIs kept up with me in research even though it seemed like it should have been impossible.

I'm not sure if it is based on overall, or the related area. I've always assumed that it was based on overall... but having played EU2, where small nations get huge breaks, I do see the value of keeping the small nations competitive. And it's actually the same principle as in civ3 - lead the game and those behind you can ride your coattails with lower costs. And as you noted, being in front has the advantage of first shot at wonders/buildings/units.

I guess the only difference is that in CTP2, the human player does not get to ride those coattails himself - he has to scratch and claw his way to the lead. In that sense, when I do win, I feel I earned it. Not to say that you can't have that feeling in civ3, because it is a hard game, (and Soren did a VERY good job on the AI).

Originally posted by nbarclay
In regard to Deity level, I think it's a mistake to use that as your benchmark. Firaxis pulled out all the stops to make that level next to impossible to beat, so things are supposed to be almost impossibly loaded against the player on that level. Most of us (at least in the "Apolyton University" crowd) seem to just write off Deity as next to impossible and content ourselves with winning on Emperor.

I kinda did the same with Cradle - players have had success with it though, so it is not truly impossible, and certain map settings and even when you have contact with another civ does make a difference.

If you want, I can email you a pdf of my tech tree and units. And there are a few things I'll need to point out to you regarding the setup itself.

As pointed out in this thread, the fact that you are here says that there are elements in the CTP2 setup that you do like - if not you wouldn't be considering playing CTP2 again. All I can say is that since you have the game, you do not have too much to lose - an afternoon of play should clear up whether you want to continue or go back to civ3. And the beauty of the community here is that we try to address the problems/inbalances that are reported. Cradle's latest update (1.34a) is a direct result of indepth comments and suggestions made by Velociryx and Ogie.

[Straybow]

I hate the CTP2 city model. If the city is at the edge of a desert glacier icecap it can't just ignore the worthless tiles, as any boneheaded AI in Civ or whatever would do. How hard would it be to program the AI to concentrate on improved tiles and ignore tiles below some threshhold value as long as workers have good tiles to use? The CTP2 method seems sheer laziness under the guise of "simplicity."

The dilution of PW value primarily effects the second ring. Small cities use the terrain poorly in any case. You can load the first ring and it is well utilized above size 4. As soon as the city expands to the traditional Civ radius you're screwed. Any outer tile you improve will only have 1/12th of its full effect for each additional worker. You might as well wait until the city grows to 12-14 because the return on investment is worse than a size 1 city. The problem is doubled again as the city grows to the third ring (unless I've misunderstood something). I gather from what people have said here and in the FAQ that the first ring is always used at 100% as long as you have enough workers, so that outer rings are penalized even more when using specialists.

I do have questions that remain unanswered. The city radius grows at 7, and the FAQ says the first ring is utilized at 1/6 for each worker up to six, but there are obviously 8 tiles, meaning there is a hidden bonus to the first ring. Here you say it takes 8 to work the first ring, so either the 7th and 8th workers give you absolutely nothing, or the 1/6 utilization in the Top FAQ is in error, or there remains uncertainty about how workers are handled.

Any city may not be able to fully claim a ring, for various reasons. I've seen nothing to indicate that reducing the number of claimed tiles affects the utilization ratios. I hang around in the Civ2 section, and there are some wonderfully obsessive people who tested with hundreds or thousands of events to determine values in the code. Has anyone here been able to find out what happens with partial rings?

In any case, after one long game experimenting with various things I decided that allowing a city to grow to the 3rd ring is amost always a waste of resources. The main exception is reaching an ocean special that would be inaccessible otherwise. Replace food improvements with commerce improvements and twiddle with specialists until growth is minimal. After a long period of time at size 18 build a settler to knock it back to 17, just in case.

Anyway, suppose I want to place a new city in a gap. There is no way to alter the borders of established cities to allow for reasonable growth in the new city. There should be a tool for managing city territories: cede to or claim from other civs via diplomacy or war, block out worthless areas, swap between friendly cities, etc. At the very least, a new city should be able to claim first ring tiles from outer rings of neighbors without a fuss.

There is no "upgrade value" to tile improvements. It costs the same to build an Adv Farm on a Farm, or an Adv Mine on a Mine, as it does to build on an unimproved tile. That makes no sense at all, and it can't have been that hard to fix in code (SLIC may be capable of it, for all I know). At least with Civ2 you have Farming augmenting Irrigation as an extension of the same Settler/Engr function, and the RR serving as an extension of roadbuilding and a limited augmentation of shield production.

Nonetheless, I'll be trying out some of the mods as time permits.

[nbarclay]

Hexagonian, I think you've created a monster. TWELVE techs on the second level? I have a 21-inch monitor and I still can't get them all on the screen from top to bottom at once in a particularly readable way. I've downloaded and installed Cradle and puttered around just a little, but I'm not sure how much I will or won't try to get into something that huge.

Nathan

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Straybow
I hate the CTP2 city model. If the city is at the edge of a desert glacier icecap it can't just ignore the worthless tiles, as any boneheaded AI in Civ or whatever would do.

Players can ignore or minimize the bad tiles by using specialists. As I said earlier, in a situation like this, specialists are the way to go. When building on a mountainous area for example (poor food), I will automatically use farmer specialists because I need to grow that city.

So in civ2, you would irrigate and have the worker work that tile - in CTP2 you would designate that worker as a specialist, and at the same time improve all the tiles in your radius, preferably all at one time.

I guess it is the apparent loss of control that a player has when he no longer can pick and choose which tiles to work, but the end result is still the same in that eventually in both civ3 and CTP2, that type of city will hit the ceiling in terms of how much it can grow.

Originally posted by Straybow
How hard would it be to program the AI to concentrate on improved tiles and ignore tiles below some threshhold value as long as workers have good tiles to use?

With the exception of dead tiles and glaciers, there is some benefit that can be squeezed out of a tile - remember that the principle involved here is that you take the total amout that a ring offers. So ignoring the tile will actually lessen the total resources that a city takes in. Basically, you would have to go back to the city worker system - this is one area that probably could not be modded back in.

Originally posted by Straybow
The dilution of PW value primarily effects the second ring. Small cities use the terrain poorly in any case. You can load the first ring and it is well utilized above size 4. As soon as the city expands to the traditional Civ radius you're screwed. Any outer tile you improve will only have 1/12th of its full effect for each additional worker. You might as well wait until the city grows to 12-14 because the return on investment is worse than a size 1 city.

Generally, this is what I do. I improve all the inner rings of my cities before tackling the outer rings, and then improve the largest city first. At that point I usually have access to better TI too, so

Originally posted by Straybow
I do have questions that remain unanswered. The city radius grows at 7, and the FAQ says the first ring is utilized at 1/6 for each worker up to six, but there are obviously 8 tiles, meaning there is a hidden bonus to the first ring. Here you say it takes 8 to work the first ring, so either the 7th and 8th workers give you absolutely nothing, or the 1/6 utilization in the Top FAQ is in error, or there remains uncertainty about how workers are handled.

This has been fixed in Cradle - city expansion to the next ring happens AFTER all inner ring tiles can be potentially worked by a worker - if you are using specialists, the city will still expand. So a city will expand after it hits size 8, instead of 6 in the default game.

Originally posted by Straybow
There is no "upgrade value" to tile improvements. It costs the same to build an Adv Farm on a Farm, or an Adv Mine on a Mine, as it does to build on an unimproved tile. That makes no sense at all, and it can't have been that hard to fix in code (SLIC may be capable of it, for all I know). At least with Civ2 you have Farming augmenting Irrigation as an extension of the same Settler/Engr function, and the RR serving as an extension of roadbuilding and a limited augmentation of shield production.

Yeah, I wish this was possible

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Hexagonian, I think you've created a monster. TWELVE techs on the second level? I have a 21-inch monitor and I still can't get them all on the screen from top to bottom at once in a particularly readable way. I've downloaded and installed Cradle and puttered around just a little, but I'm not sure how much I will or won't try to get into something that huge.

Well, I'm not going to apologize for creating an in-depth Mod.

It is heavily focused on Ancient/Medieval ages, and it does start out slower than a civ3 game too.

I guess that's why I offered to send you the pdf file beforehand...

[Straybow]

Players can ignore or minimize the bad tiles by using specialists. As I said earlier, in a situation like this, specialists are the way to go. When building on a mountainous area for example (poor food), I will automatically use farmer specialists because I need to grow that city.

Yeah, well you might as well say, "Hey, everybody gets the same handicap" (like that's a good deal). I'd still rather not have to make up for being short-ended by the model. It can't be hard to prioritize tiles with wide differentials in values.

With the exception of dead tiles and glaciers, there is some benefit that can be squeezed out of a tile… So ignoring the tile will actually lessen the total resources that a city takes in.

No, m/n·(sum of n specific tiles) is never more than (sum of m greatest values of n specific tiles). Do the math. Unless you stop m before it reaches n in the second case but continue on to m=n in the first, truncation of lower values is always better.

Let's say I cut off 3 tiles from the corner of the second ring because they're desert. After I use up 8 workers on the inner ring and 9 workers on the second ring the remaining 3 workers before the city expands become specialists without diminishing the efficiency of the remaining workers. Why? Because all available tiles can be fully utilized, just as if the ring were full and no specialists were used.

But if the model fails to account for diminished availability of tiles (or fails to consider specialists worth more than working negligible tiles), then we're shafted. It is even more important if the city is on the edge where there are no tiles to count, or if the city radius was blocked by an existing city's radius of control. (More on that to follow…)

"I don't mean to go off on a rant here… Yes I do!"
Furthermore, the model says that specialists are a zero-sum game or worse. For example, if a researcher produces 25 beakers but some arbitrary number of units of tangible goods, food, and money are lost to "inefficiency." That is only true of what is called opportunity cost—if that specialist would have been more efficiently employed on the farm, mine, or behind a cash register.

But if the other choice is sweating his arse off herding scraggly goats in a desert, nothing is diminished by finding something else to do. And then his sweaty-butt neighbor can take over the abandoned territory and increase his efficiency. Now both are better off.
OK, rant over.

[City expansion] has been fixed in Cradle… So a city will expand after it hits size 8, instead of 6 in the default game.

And, I assume, the second ring goes to 8+12 = 20, and the third to 44, etc. What happens when a city (as described above) doesn't have the full 8 tiles in its first ring? If there are only 6, does CtP2 total the 6 and divide by 8, thus robbing the city of capacity? I suspect it is so, and txt files can't fix it.

[child of Thor]

Straybow you could try CTP (the first one), this was a good civ varient too and had a more hands on approach to worker placement within a city radius. I never did try the Mods for it, but i think Wes(the creator of Medmod for CTP2) also did a Medmod for CTP - so that might be worth a try and less irritating for you?
I never had a problem with CTP2's system once i had adjusted from my Civ preconceptions of how an historic tbs should be. It just made me think about city placement more than i used too, which IMO isn't a bad thing.
And overall the feeling of actually participating in the rise of your nation is something that the CTP games do very well, that IMHO is what make these games favourites of mine and others here. No game is perfect but these are both good games in my experience, and add to the genre in a mostly positve way.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Straybow
And, I assume, the second ring goes to 8+12 = 20, and the third to 44, etc. What happens when a city (as described above) doesn't have the full 8 tiles in its first ring? If there are only 6, does CtP2 total the 6 and divide by 8, thus robbing the city of capacity? I suspect it is so, and txt files can't fix it.

Several edits later on this post...It helps to write it out.
Now there are two possible ways on this, and I'm not sure which model CTP2 uses, not having tested it (I suspect like Straybow, #2).

First a basic premise...I consider each ring to be a single large tile that needs to be built up with TI and workers. The size of the ringtile is dictated by surrounding conditions. If it is smaller, then most likely, its capabilities will be less. The game allows limited control over the size of those ringtiles in that as you set up your cities, you can exercise some control by placement.

OK, lets figure this out...a city with access to only 6 tiles instead of the normal 8. Say each tile in that city's radius generates an average of 30 units of commerce/food/production (very possible with tile improvements). So the total capability of that ring is 180 commerce/food/production.

Now the CTP2 model may use the following 2 ways to figure it out. The city either gets 1/8 of the total pie per worker or 1/6 of the total pie per worker.

Option A
That city, if it were at pop. size 3 would generate 90 commerce/food/production - at pop. size 6 it would generate the max amount that it could from those tiles (180). The question then becomes, what if that city is pop. size 8 - what do the additional workers do? The city is already generating the full amount it can from the tiles.

At that point, those 2 workers need to be switched over to some form of specialization to get something out of them. Neglect to do that and you are shafting yourself, but you can only blame yourself, because the model has provided a means for you to still get a benefit from those additional workers.

This is the same principle in civ3 too, because with overlapping cities, you will eventually run into a time when EVERY tile will be worked and you have no place to put additional workers - but at that point you have access to tax collectors, scientists to put those workers to use...Its just that in CTP2, you have access to specialists that also cover production and food.

Option B (the most likely way it is in CTP2...)
The city at size 3 would generate 68 commerce/production/food and would not get the full benfit until it reaches size 8. That city WILL be less efficient than the city in Option A because it is getting less bang for the buck per worker, but it is also working under the principle that a ring is actually a single tile and that the number of workers that can potentially work that ringtile remains constant (In those situations, specialists should be more valuable too because worker efficency is lower.)

Taken to the extreme - a ring only has 1 or 2 tiles. In those situations players are much better off using specialists and shouldn't bother upgrading that ring at all. One thing in favor of the player is that specialists are removed from the outer ring first, so his more productive rings are safe.

I do not have a problem with Option B though because it works within the framework of the game (the rule is constant) and there is a certain logic to it based on the initial premise - and it will make placement of cities more important than civ2/civ3 from the standpoint that future growth does have to be factored in as pointed out by CoT.

Given the choice, option A is better though, but as I said earlier, it is not achievable without going back to the worker system, (and I have also said that I do miss it). Its just that the current system is not a backbreaker for me in terms of my enjoyment of the game...

[Straybow]

Yes, coT, I did try CtP. Unfortunately, no matter what I did, it didn't work right on my system after about 50 turns. When cycling through the units the cursor would appear where the unit had been at the start of the previous turn. Weird, huh?

hex, is the "efficiency" simply a ratio of worker productivity at current specialist settings over what worked tiles would be worth w/o any specialists?

[hexagonian]

Well in my example above, the efficency would be

Option A
Each worker would generate 30 units gold/food/production

Option B
Each worker would generate approx 23 units gold/food/production.

So if a specialist generated 30 food, you might want to consider using them in Option B because they give you more units. It's more of a tossup in Option A because you are getting 30 units either way - the question then becomes what you want to focus on???

And in an extreme situation when each worker only generated 10 gold/food/production (very possible in situations when the ring has been truncated by other cities or with very terrain-poor cities) specialists suddenly become the way to go.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Not to throw a monkey wrench into the equation but where does crime come into the picture. Is it applied to both specialists as well as workers on a given ring.

If so the comparison holds.

If not and specialists are immune to crime losses, then specialization is still favored all other resources gathered being equal.