OCC-gone-wrong conquest strategy questions

[atawa]

Originally posted by DaveV
The most important use for spies is to destroy city walls, so you can reduce the city population by 1 for each defender destroyed. Another, slower, way to reduce city size is to put units on all the squares around the city. With no food tiles to work, the city should starve down to one population eventually (and one defender, if rep/dem). This doesn't work for water tiles, though.

When you have spies why even bother with units?
Just take down citywalls, poison the city to size 1 and send in a single howie....

[Mercator]

How successful are spies at poisoning cities, and what happens when they are successful? Are they sent back to your capital (as happens with inciting a revolt) or will they be able to continue and just lose a movement point or two (as with investigating a city)?

Of course, I could check this myself, but I'm on a computer without Civ2 at the moment, so I'd only test it when I get back to playing.

I've played a little more this weekend. Nothing much has changed, though. I've just been building up my army. I've got a bunch of Howitzers, Armor and Spies ready in fortresses and I'm now busy building plenty of Fanatics to add to those... I might change that to spies if poisoning isn't too bothersome.

Oh, and did lots of transforming in my city radius to get the highest possible production. Most squares are mined hills now, with as little farmed Grassland/Wheat left to get enough food.

There was one strange thing, though. I'm not entirely sure yet if it is anything. I'll have to investigate more next time I play... I was building Fanatics while I had a production of 50 left, yet with the last one before I quit, my production had suddenly changed to 49... I checked the unit stats as well, so I don't think I missed any units. Do Fanatics really require no support, or is it actually only the first 24 for each city that don't require support?

[Straybow]

Since we're pointing and laughing again, care to post a save?

[Mercator]

Sure thing... I'm playing ToT, though.

I was getting a little bored building up that army, so I finally went for the kill last time I played. The conquest so far is about as tedious as the build-up though.

I was fighting the Chinese, but they've already been destroyed by now.

I first captured the "Viking continent" Southwest of Karakorum (I'm going for the capture and starve method, rather than trying to destroy everything which would be the proper OCC way). That was actually tougher than anticipated, so I was a little afraid my invasion force was too small. But the other continents so far haven't been so well-defended.

After that I went for the Chinese capital Verona (just North of the Viking continent), and after that the subsequent Chinese capitals Cannae, Tatung and Capua, each causing a schism. The last of these actually wiped out the Chinese, splitting into 0 cities for the Chinese and 6 for the Japanese.

The other cities I captured were two of the more significant islands and more capitals. I bribed Cunaxa.