Okay, so I finally got it to work...so many unanswered questions have built up

[sootie]

So many unanswered questions have built up over the year. I have created a list.

1) What's the difference between Chieftan and Deity...I know difficulty, but what exactly changes?

2) Everytime, EVERYTIME, I have completed each game to 2020 AD, my people always remember me as ...the Cruel... or something along those lines...how can I bring this up?

3) How can I build the spaceship in time?

4) How can I get on Alpha centauri in Extended Original? I've built the spaceship after 2020, it landed..but nothing happened.

More to come, hopefully.

Ty

[Elephant]

1. Simply put, the AI gets more advantages as the difficulty level goes up, and your own civ management duties go up as well. As you plant cities the first few citizens are content, but the bigger the cities get and the more cities you plant, the fewer citizens are content without you building happiness improvements or setting luxuries to pacify them. Higher difficulty levels can also make Barbarian attacks more successful.

2. The "rating" you get is based on the "victory points" you accumulate, mostly from the number of citizens you have but also from such things as wonders built, size of spaceship landed and future techs researched. You need to learn to build bigger, more happy empires that can build wonders and large spaceships (or take away wonders from other civs...).

3. Faster research and better production (or rush-buying) will help you get your spaceship out earlier. The best single writeup of spaceship strategies is Solo's Early Landing Game Strategy Guide, which you should be able to find Topped here or via the Great Library.

4. Which Civ version are you playing - Test of Time?

[Whoha]

"
3) How can I build the spaceship in time?

4) How can I get on Alpha centauri in Extended Original? I've built the spaceship after 2020, it landed..but nothing happened.
"
exploit caravans. caravans let you build wonders faster by adding their production cost to the wonder, and when they are used to create a trade route they immediately give a cash and science bonus(better trade route = bigger bonus), as well as a continuing trade bonus for both cities involved.

as for the landing, look at the minimap if it is in the form of a globe click on it, then press the up or down arrow to view the other map, you should have units there.

[rah]

Yes CIV II. when in doubt build caravans, and if you're still not sure, build more caravans. If you're not building caravans you should be building settlers.
Did I remember to say Build caravans.

[sootie]

Okay so build caravans, I see, do I send them to my cities or other cities, or both? Also, I tried seeing if the spaceship idea work, about switching maps (only about...30 years later--after the ice caps melted wice), and there was nothing there.



Thank you for your help thus far!

[rah]

You send them to other cities to create trade routes, and you get bonuses of money and science when they're delivered.
Lot's of things make the bonus bigger.
1. if it's demanded. (always good)
2. longer the distance usually equal better payout
3. different continents
4. Optimal conncection path
5. number of trade arrows in trading cities. (you can even maximize the city right before you deliver then change it back before the next turn. (move all city workers to water or trade specials for example)
6. delivering to foreign cities pays a good bonus
7. certain techs wil increase or decrease payouts.

Maximize trade. But remember you can only get enough beakers for one tech a turn so spread them out.

[Elephant]

Sootie, post some intermediary saves so people can comment on your civ development, and read some of the threads in the Great Library on trade. Consider also joining a Game Of The Month or other Comparison/Succession Game to get more input from other players.

[Straybow]

I think somebody may have mentioned that you need to build caravans. But I thought I'd bring it up in case it was overlooked.

Then you need to have some of your cities grow big. Or most of your cities, depending on your playing style. If you look at the score screen, you'll see that you get 2 pts for each Happy citizen and 1 pt for each Contented citizen. More citizens, more points, higher rating.

[rah]

When you cities max out on population you can start creating food caravans and by using 3 city grouping you can grow the cities even more since each caravan will fill the food bin 50% If i remember correctly. Yes it's tedious as hell, but if your record shooting its required since there's a 254 or so limit on the number of cities you can build.

[sootie]

Okay guys, thank you so much for your help, and I have started to take your advice, and have built a lot of caravans, etc. However, i do not notice the affects of them! They just arrive and give me a revenue of 2 or 8 gold ( i once got 100+ gold from this one city far far away [distance]). I went over to the thread to check it out, and think I read somewhere that 8 cities is ideal to hold onto. Some more questions are, I just recently discovered (lol) that you can discover new technologies much faster with democracy--i was using fundamentalism. Is there any better one out there to help me build the spaceship earlier? I still suck at getting it built before 2020, and I read that some guy did it in the 1800s....what is that?!

Also, organized roads/railroads is what I built, meaning all my cities are connected by one, nice, clean road, but it says that they promote more trade....should I just start building roads everywhere?

Lastly, I still cannot see my units on the other map after the spaceship is built..what's goin on?



P.S. Does that mean I post a saved game I have, in response to Elephant! And about my version being used...it's one of the earlier ones, back in the day...I havent thought about downloading a patch...should i?

Thanks!

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by sootie Some more questions are, I just recently discovered (lol) that you can discover new technologies much faster with democracy--i was using fundamentalism. Is there any better one out there to help me build the spaceship earlier? I still suck at getting it built before 2020, and I read that some guy did it in the 1800s....what is that?!

Well, with democracy, you'll research the required techs faster, always a good idea. You'll have to use some luxuries to keep your citizens happy though.

The deal with Dem (and Republic as well) is that every tile which produces at least one trade arrow, produces an extra bonus arrow, and that cities celebrating We Love the (insert title) Days will grow one pop/turn providing there is surplus food. (you can get the trade bonus under other governments, but you need the cities to celebrate.

Originally posted by sootie Also, organized roads/railroads is what I built, meaning all my cities are connected by one, nice, clean road, but it says that they promote more trade....should I just start building roads everywhere?

A road, on most terrains (plains, grassland, desert, any tile which already produces trade (some specials, rivers)), will produce an extra trade arrow. This is crucial to generate the extra trade arrows that will not only boost your tax and science production, but also improve caravans' yelds. So yeah, road everything.

Originally posted by sootie Lastly, I still cannot see my units on the other map after the spaceship is built..what's goin on?

You need the Test of time version to do this, do you? (ie. did you choose 'extended original' when starting a new game, or just 'start a new game'?)

Originally posted by sootie P.S. Does that mean I post a saved game I have, in response to Elephant! And about my version being used...it's one of the earlier ones, back in the day...I havent thought about downloading a patch...should i?

Thanks!

Yeah, post it here and people will point out mistakes, and ways of improving your play. You can get the game version under file -> game options, IIRC, the version will be displayed on the title bar of the window that pops up.

Regarding patches, while yes would be the answer, there's actually 3 different versions people play, some even have all 3 installed:

2.42, which lacks some multiplayer capabilities, but the AI is a bit more 'rational'
MGE, which has full multiplayer capabilities and some more scenario-making tools / possibilities (this is the most comon version AFAIK)
ToT, which is incompatible with the previous two, and not as common, but that's changing bit by bit. It's got multimaps, and thus allows for things like the extended original game. It's also got the ability to use sprites for graphics, and allows for more colours when drawing them.

[Straybow]

If you're only getting a handful of gold I surmise you are delivering to your own cities on the same continent. In general: maximize distance, deliver to foreign civs on different continents.

[Carolus Rex]

A tip on how to build the space ship faster... Build a lot of caravans/freights during the whole of the game (even if you only get food caravans/freights)...

Stock them in your cities (and build more) while you advance through the modern era's techs... Once you discover the space travel techs, start building any available wonder in the cities you've prepared for construction of the space ship...

Use your caravans/freights to "Help build wonder", adding 50 shields each, and then switch to the space ship part (no shields are lost during the switch)... The advantage is that you can rushbuild caravans cheaper than the shields for the space ship parts...

For example... IIRC the structurals are 160 shields, right? Send in three caravans -> 150 shields are immediately added and the remaining ten should be no problem for a city that late in the game... Your city will produce a space ship part in one turn and if you have many cities doing this...

Also, IIRC giving techs away to the other civs reduces the number of science beakers you need to discover new techs... I don't remember which of the civs you should target with your tech giving, but my guess is the one in the final spot... The GL should have the info on that one...

Oh, and people have landed way earlier than 1800 AD... With only one city... Correction, with only one size 1 city (IIRC)... Search for, among others, "samson" and "solo" for early landing strats...

Carolus

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex
A tip on how to build the space ship faster... Build a lot of caravans/freights during the whole of the game (even if you only get food caravans/freights)...

Stock them in your cities (and build more) while you advance through the modern era's techs... Once you discover the space travel techs, start building any available wonder in the cities you've prepared for construction of the space ship...

Use your caravans/freights to "Help build wonder", adding 50 shields each, and then switch to the space ship part (no shields are lost during the switch)... The advantage is that you can rushbuild caravans cheaper than the shields for the space ship parts...

For example... IIRC the structurals are 160 shields, right? Send in three caravans -> 150 shields are immediately added and the remaining ten should be no problem for a city that late in the game... Your city will produce a space ship part in one turn and if you have many cities doing this...

Carolus

A space ship structural is 80 shields ie 1 caravan if you can get the extra 30 some other way.

A component is 160 shields ie 3 caravans +.

A module is 320 shields ie 6 caravans +.

You can get the extra shields by buying, by using an additional van or from the prduction within the city.

There are various space ship configurations, but 15 structurals, 6 components and 3 modules is usually the optimum. This can be built in 1 turn with 24 cities, 2 turns with 12 cities or 3 turns with 8 cities. If you don't have enough vans to complete the space ship straight away, it's usually better to rush more vans rather than use the city's production to complete the ship.

RJM

[jatf]

If I remember ToT correctly, only Chieftain level does not penalise you for changing production. If you start building a wonder say then switch to a spaceship part, you will lose production automatically. You are told about the proposed loss before you switch though.

There was an annoying bug with ToT in that the Extended Original tended to lose track of the multimaps when loading from a save. That could account for the disappearing settlers.

With ToT if the spaceship arrived after you had won the game either in 2020 or by Transcendance, then you were merely informed that your spaceship had arrived safely.

JATF