2 questions

[Yosho]

Originally posted by zabrak
One last note - there's a narrow window before an invasion in which it makes sense to trade some big-ticket happiness resources to an AI. You let their cities' population grow, then when you declare war, those extra citizens are either useless or force a suboptimal reallocation of tiles worked. But when you take the city and restore those resources, you've got more citizens with which to work.

Hmmm....but how do you know the AI won't just take the extra food from the health, and instead of growing their cities faster, use that extra food to move some people over to hill mines to get more production?

[zabrak]

If a city is working tiles in such a way that it's netting 0 food (i.e., stagnant), as occurs when it's at the happiness cap, then necessarily one or more of its citizens is a specialist or is working tiles that produce less than two food. If I raise the cap by donating a luxury resource, then in order to grow in population it must shift some citizens from those low-food occupations to higher-food tiles. In almost all circumstances,* this will result in less production and/or commerce. On top of which, if it does grow and I then take away that resource, those new citizens are now worse than worthless, because they consume food but generate nothing - that means to avoid starvation, the city must reassign even more citizens to higher-food but lower-production/commerce tiles.

*The two circumstances I can think of in which this can backfire are:

1) There is an unworked tile which is higher-food AND higher-production/commerce, which the AI is avoiding because it would give it a food surplus. For example, plains cows give 3 food, 3 hammers, while a grassland forest gives 2 food, 1 hammer - I can picture the AI sticking with the latter to avoid growth, but my donation allowing it to switch to the former.

2) You let the gift run on too long, and the AI grows enough extra citizens to start working more lower-food but higher production/commerce tiles, netting enough to build or buy an extra defender.

[Yosho]

To be clear, I was talking about donating health resources; didn't realize you were only talking about happiness resources.

Let me put it this way. An AI city has a +2 per turn food surplus, with -1 health. If you give it a health resource, will it stay at a +3 food surplus and grow faster, or will it move a person working a farm to a square with a cottage and stay at +2 food intead?

[zabrak]

Oh, I see. Well, now I just feel like a jerk.

That does raise an interesting question - I know the AI will try to stay under the happiness cap by arresting its growth. But will it go over the healthiness cap, if it has the food and happy points to support the growth? I know I would (although I'd work to lift it) since there's no downside, but the AI is, how shall we say, less than clever.

Incidentally, I'd support boosting the unhealthiness penalty to -2 food. As it is, unhealthiness is pretty toothless, and there are plenty of readily available ways to deal with it.

[clinton]

What I would do is make unhealthness -1 food for first pop over, -2 for second, and so on. So minor unhealthness is not a big issue but major unhealthyness starts to become a problem that rivals unhappiness.

Even with this system unhealthyness is still no worse than unhappyness as you choose not to grow.

This would increase the power of environnentalism slightly and provide some incentive not to clear cut forests.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by zabrak
If a city is working tiles in such a way that it's netting 0 food (i.e., stagnant), as occurs when it's at the happiness cap...

Not sure what you are saying. A city can be htting happiness or health cap and still produce a massive amount of surplus food.

Unless what you mean is, when that happens, reduce food surplus to 0 by moving the people around, e.g. making some pop into specialists.

[zabrak]

Yes, the latter is what I mean. I'm fairly sure the AI does this with the happiness cap; now I'm wondering how it behaves if it hits the healthiness cap but with plenty of extra happiness and food.

[Sarek]

Re: 2 questions

Originally posted by guermantes
hello,

2) In the following screenshot Alexander declared war on me by coming in an unmanned galley from a different continent. He sat there outside my city for 280 years just looking at me (I tried twice to offer 10 turns of peace but he just frowned and said I had been behaving badly) until he finally came with another ship with 5 horse archers which I whacked speadily with my pikemen. He sued for peace 2 turns later.

Was the AI strategically observing me for 280 years first to see what I was doing or was this just bad AI ? (My pikemen were mainly brought in from afar when I saw him coming so he would not have seen them from his boat during the 280 years.)

Just a thought.
Had a similar situation happen to me in a game against Germany (and others). The German's declared, sent a Caravel to hang out for many, many years.
1) It negates working some of the sea tiles, I believe, by your city.
2) It prevents you from getting out into the sea yourself, unless you create multiple ships of equal value (and if the enemy is promoted, even this may not work...he may pick you off as you come out).
3) It keeps you at war with that Civ for almost as long as that Civ chooses to remain at war, which likely causes you some other problems within the game with other Civs?
4) And, in the case of my game, it disrupted my game by causing me to concentrate on it. In my case, I wasn't able to really dislodge it, so I eventually gave up and just let it sit there. BUT, many years later, the German's launched a MASSIVE sea invasion against me, and because I couldn't dislodge the Caravel way back when, they just walked onshore and tore me to shreds.

* Probably some poor play on my part, but thoughts to ponder!

Get the thing out of there!!!

[trev]

The sea tile the galley is on and all immediately adjacent sea tiles cannot be worked by your city, and therefore sitting it there is a tactic designed to starve your city. Of course the AI is not clever enough to know if it is working as a tactic.

[Ijuin]

Is that right? I was not aware that other nations' ships denied you access to tiles adjacent to them, only the tiles that they themselves occupied . . .

[Guardian]

This is called a zone of control, meaning that the ships are able to control not only the tile they're in, but also the adjacent tiles. You can try this out with one of your own ships if you like. As you look at the map, you will see little boats marking the sea tiles that are being worked. Now, as you move your ship close to an enemy city, you will see the little boats disappear as your ship moves up next to them. As long as your ship is there, those tiles are considered to be controlled by you, hence the enemy can not work them. This will also cut off sea trade if you manage to control all sea tiles adjacent to the enemy city. In other words, naval blockades can be quite effective and can often be enforced by a single ship.

[Generaldoktor]

I thought I heard some griping that Civ4 doesn't have zones of control? I know Civ3 did.

[Guardian]

Well, technically, I guess Civ4 doesn't have zones of control in the way Civ3 did. In Civ3, certain units were considered to have a zone of control (ZOC), defined as an ability to project their power into adjacent tiles. What this actually meant was that whenever an enemy unit moved into an adjacent tile, the ZOC unit would have a first strike chance and the enemy would not be able to strike back unless actually attacking the ZOC unit (ie. trying to move in on top of it). Civ4 does not have zones of control implemented in such a manner, but ships are considered to control all adjacent tiles unless an enemy ship is present. In other words, if you lose the ability to work a tile because an enemy ship is present in an adjacent tile, you can make it workable again by placing a ship of your own there. This will give you back control over the tile that your ship is in, but not the remaining tiles adjacent to the enemy ship. These waters are now considered to be disputed and can not be worked until they are either all occupied by friendly units or the enemy is gone.

[Hermann the Lombard]

The concept that a ship would have a ZOC while land units would not is a tad warped.

[Generaldoktor]

Well, I'm a little confused whether you're saying Guardian is wrong, or you're saying he's right and the designers got it wrong. Ships can sail around and project, over the course of a year in a blockade situation, their presence in a lot of territory. On the other hand, land units can spread out and cover a fair amount of ground too, depending on the perceived notion of how big the land unit is. (In WWII, I recall, 12 linear miles was considered about the best a Western-style "division" could cover, without being ridiculous, though they were often asked to cover more; I forget the figure for corps, but obviously it was much larger.)

It sounds like we should have ZOC, but Civ4 was not supposed to be a "combat" game too much, (which is funny now that the announced XP is reportedly celebrative of combat,) and that may be something they simply tried to "simplify."

I haven't noticed the naval ZOC phenom myself, but I rarely let myself get blockaded.