Retarding big empires

[Bluevoss]

When I play TOT, one of two things happen - either I get huge and fend off pin-***** attacks while I leasurly build my spaceship, or I fall way behind and get booted around the blook by some massive AI empire.

Are there things in Rules.txt that can be set so an empire will start having problems (more riots, etc) the bigger it gets? I moved the Riot Factor from 15 to 7, but that didn't seem to make a dent on the Vikings in my current game (who are sprawling all over the place).

I'd like to make it so that as empires get bigger, their overall costs rise and slow them down so others can catch up.

Any ideas?

Bluevoss-

[Scouse Gits]

What difficulty level to you play at bluevoss?
The primary effect of playing at the higher levels is that it makes empires harder to handle as they grow.

Welcome to out little corner of Apolyton

Stu

[Bluevoss]

I feel like Im making a confession here - whats the second level, warlord or something like that? I play at 2nd level, and I win pretty handily. I play at 3rd level and I end up looking like something like Tunisia by the end of the game (i.e. a small little second-rank country).

I generally try to play as realistically as possible (i.e. I dont sell my aquiducts and sewer system once a city gets as big as it can be). However, I find that, regardless of the level, big empires get bigger, and small ones get clobbered.

I love the fact that the civ games allow us to modify the game to suit our play - I put riot level way down (so you start getting riots at pop=4, meaning temples, colloseums, and cathedrals are suddenly very important). I just want to figure out a play ballance.

Thanks.

Bluevoss-

[Scouse Gits]

Aha - all is explained.

Put the riot level back to standard and start playing at King level - you will get clobbered hard - at first.
But the game becomes much more fun - happiness is the key issue - aim for the Hanging Gardens as your first WoW - personally I try for the HG as the first improvement in my capital.
Read up some of the strategies in the Great Library - topped thread in the Civ2-Strategy forum - keep posting here - we are a friendly bunch and will happily talk you through your problems. You will soon be playing at Deity.
Look at the Succession Games in this forum - download some of the saves and see how different players develop the game at various stages - join in and face the RCC (Robust Constructive Criticism) - you will be made welcome.

Good civin' Stu

[Bluevoss]

Something else I forgot to mention - since I love ancient history and ancient combat, I use one of the map generators to make normal sized maps (with the defaults, you get a continent or two, some island starts, but a lot less land). I also set for seven civs. This means that you will be bumping into other races pretty quick, so there is a lot of military tension in my games (including some trireme battles and hoplites having it out on the fields under Troy).

I figure that this makes the games a little different - a strong military is needed to defend the homeland (meaning resources divererted from civic and science needs). Its common in my games to see 3-4 races get polished off before 1000BC or so (though some might be restarted two-time losers).

Bluevoss-

[debeest]

Welcome, Bluevoss. I see that you are a Prince registered in 2000, so you're far from new at Poly, but welcome to our little corner, as SG said.

You may already know that it's possible to win games, even at deity, with only a single city. Many people prefer to play with only about 8-12 cities. Others swarm cities all over the planet. Even when AI civs grow large, there are well explored ways to beat them.

Read Paul's OCC (One City Challenge) strategy and the Super Science City (SSC) strategy in the Great Library (topped thread in Civ2 strategy), and Solo's early landing strategy (also a topped thread), and you'll learn huge amounts about how to beat 'em without having to join 'em in growing huge empires.

Be aware that stepping up a level makes YOU face greater challenges with unhappiness, but the AI always normally plays with King levels of unhappiness, so you won't change the AI's growth patterns by changing play levels. I'd bet there's a way to tweak the game files to increase AI unhappiness with growth, but I can't help you there.

Mid-size world with 7 civs is my usual play mode, and I don't feel as if I meet the other civs too soon. Nowadays I tend to grow my own empire big; in that case, the AI fears me too much to fight much. But if you don't grow big, you just have to be friendly (easy to do if you give them stuff -- it pays to do that) and maintain a good tech lead that makes your units more powerful than theirs.

Study the threads in the Great Library (thanks SG!) and you'll soon be rolling your tanks over their pathetic little AI horsemen.

[Hasdrubal]

One other option you might consider, is not choosing 'expansionist'-civs.

I am not quite sure if you are more interested in a more evenly-balanced game, or whether you dislike massive AI empires in general.

In either case, selecting the AI's characteristics that suit your prefered kind of game you can overcome the problem that most other rules.txt changes affect the human player as well.

You can just pick opponents with your prefered styles of play, or change the rules.txt to force them to play with your favourite characteristics in the first place.

Avoid expansionist, maybe militaristic. Try civilised, perfectionist. That should help some.

[Bluevoss]

You caught me out. Yeah, I used to be in here about 4 years ago. Liked TOT, except for those horrible maps. I hated them so much I got out of playing. Started clowning with CTP2 (which I liked the maps, the battles, trade, and public works, but the AI stank to high heaven). Screwed around with about a half-dozen mods until I was so tired of never completing a game (the AI sucked and fell apart when the modern age came in), that I dropped out completly.

Had a glimmer of getting back into it when Civ3 came out, but it dosn't have much of anything I liked. Played a little bit, and dropped it. The real world hands me enough defeats, thanks.

Happened to start playing TOT when I was bored one night, and really got back into it. A little looking about found that map generator, and that cleared up most of my problems with TOT. Still seeking the perfect historic game - dunno if I'll ever find it, but Civ2/TOT is one of the best so far.

I'll start looking through the stratagy postings and see what I can make of the whole thing.

Hey, Hasdrubal, you arn't really in Carthage, are you? Just curious - visited Tunis/Carthage two years ago. Just wonderin....

Bluevoss-

[Scouse Gits]

Another thought - if you are very keen on mediaeval and ancient warfare - you might find that some of the scenarios are just the thing for you - the ones that come with MPGE are not bad but if you go to the directory or the Scenario League or the Spanish site - all here at ACS you will find many that restrict the game to that era....

Stu

I have had great fun playing the very basic 'Rome' scenario that ships with all versions of Civ

[Mercator]

... But he has ToT, so he can't play most of those scenarios (except by converting them first), nor does he have the Rome scenario...

Speaking of Rome and Carthage, though, there's a recent scenario about the second punic war in this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105748

It's for MGE, but I also posted a ToT version in the thread somewhere.

[Bluevoss]

I'll be honest - I'm not quite sure what to make about the early landing tactics. Its certainly the most effective way to play the game, but I have to ask, is it really realistic, or more a way to take advantage of a boundry condition the developers didn't anticipate (sorta like the chariot rushes of the first version)?

Its rather like we had a game about forest fires, and suddenly someone finds that if you allow a fire to burn just so, it burns through the crust of the earth, a massive volcano errupts, and the ensuing firestorm chars the entire earths surface. Very effective, but is it really a game about forest fires when you play this way?

Please note, I'm not faulting people if they wish to play this way. Me, I'm a history buff - I want to found my civilization in 4000BC and dream about Ur and Sumer. I don't want to think about it in terms of prime cities and helper cities. That removes my whole interest in the game.

My personal belief is that empires are like living things - they should grow to a certain point and then get so large, they become unwieldy. That was the purpose of my question, to find if there was a way to keep the AI OR the player from running away with the game when they get ahead. There should be a natural point at which an empire cannot expand beyond (think about the Roman Empire - even if you froze technology at 300AD and played for thousands of years, the empire could really never expand beyond its fronters - communications and travel times would ensure it to remain at a specific size, and any outgrowth beyond this would be pointless). I was just hoping that there was a variable that would check expansion at such a point.

Still, I did learn a number of things - clearly, I have to pay more attention to how much gold I'm pulling in. That seems critical, even in a normal game. I'll have to try another game and focus more on the tech than simply producing units to take other cities.

Still looking for answers, but appriciating the comments,

Bluevoss-

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Bluevoss
I'll be honest - I'm not quite sure what to make about the early landing tactics. Its certainly the most effective way to play the game, but I have to ask, is it really realistic, or more a way to take advantage of a boundry condition the developers didn't anticipate (sorta like the chariot rushes of the first version)?

Bluevoss-

I'm not sure what you're questioning, the tactics or the terminology.

As far as the tactics are concerned, I think there is a reasonable objection to devices that provide information about the map, such as "black-clicking" and hut finder. Some people use them, some don't - but that subject has been done to death and I don't really want to start it up again.

I also think there is a reasonable case against rearranging all your workers before a van delivery and then returning them again afterwards. It would be better (IMHO) if the delivery bonus related to how they were arranged when the turn is processsed. Perhaps we should introduce a new "self denying" rule on this.

And I suppose that there is a reasonable objection to Xining, although I don't think it gets used very much in early landing games.

However, the concept of an SSC seems OK to me (even though you can object to the jargon). Similarly, the micro-management may be fun or tedious depending on your personality, but appears to me to be legitimate.

How about ship chains? They are certainly artificial, and probably exploit a game bug, but on the other hand, they make up for the unrealistic element in the game where travel takes so long - there's no seaport in the world that a modern transport can't reach in well under a year. So artificial, but on balance acceptable to redress a weak point in the game.

So (in my view) while there are aspects that are questionable, much of the early landing strategy is about understanding what is the optimum way of organising your resources within the constraints set by the game rules. If you like, to understand what the limits are and how close you can approach them.

Well that's my 2 bits worth anyway.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Scouse Gits]

One other thing that we haven't mentioned to you, bluevoss, is the importance of TRADE!
Are you aware that you get the same bonus in beakers that you do in gold?
Early trading makes an enormous difference to the strength of your empire - try it!

Stu

[Bluevoss]

You know, I wanted to try trade early on (I'm a big fan of the Phoenicians in real life, so I like to try to set up early trade empires). Would you believe it - I couldn't find anyone (in a tight map) until 160AD. It was like playing solitare, other than some humerous barbarian interludes. Right now, I think I own about a third of the map.

As per my earlier comments, I guess what I'm looking for is a game where I stay fairly close to historical timelines, and it remains competative all the way through. Unfortunatly, in a 2nd level game, I win every time, where as a third level game, I usually lose every time. Not sure if tinkering with the game mechanics helps - I dropped Empire size from 15 to 4, but don't see a difference. Still, I'll keep plugging away at it.

BV-

[debeest]

BV, step up a level. The AI civs grow faster at higher levels (just one of the reasons you're losing there), so you'll meet them sooner. You also learn much more from losing than from winning, and you'll gain satisfaction from improving your game and starting to whup the AI at higher levels.

My experience is that in nearly every game, one civilization comes to dominate. If it's not you, it will be an AI civ. I don't know if it's random or designed, but the AI civs just never seem to prosper equally.

If a major goal for you is to have the AI civs develop at roughly equal rates, you might be able to manage it by warring with the strongest powers and gifting things to the weaker ones. That would be very artificial, but I think it could work. Marco Polo's Embassy would be very valuable in that regard, both for knowing who's strong and for being able to gift the weak.

As you learn more about the game, you'll find many ways to keep any of the AI civs from dominating you, without you having to grow a large empire yourself.

I wish I could help with the game mechanics, but I can't. But keep playing, use the Great Library and the early landing strategy manual and the OCC manual, and you'll find ways to accomplish your goals. As many people have said before, one of the wonderful things about Civ is that you can play it successfully in so many different ways.