It's been remarked that the game can sometimes change almost completely between versions, whether it's from patch to patch or when you throw in an expansion pack. The result of course is that strategy and tactics must change to accomodate the game changes, which is fine so long as you can keep up with everything.
And that's the problem. Keeping up with everything is hard unless you're an oldbie! I've been around since Vanilla Civ3 (and Civ2:ToT and SMAC/X for that matter) but I only play the game extensively on the off occasion, and the same went for browsing through the forums here. So I don't hear about every single little change as it happens.
But some of the best threads and documents on strategy are the older ones, such as Vel's thread, and we can't just ignore them just because some parts are obsolete and some aren't. But it's hard to know just what is obsolete, and why it's obsolete.
Here's a specific example. Pop rushing in despotism has interested me, and while recently I've found some tips on the way it's used in later versions of the game, I also come across older information. One of these was an apparently infamous doc on CivFanatics...I looked through its associated message board thread to see if anybody has information on how to adapt it, if possible, to newer versions. But the last thread I found said something to the effect of, "Can we lock this thread? Recent patches change everything and the information is obsolete." Well, that's just great. Go ahead, tell me it's obsolete and leave me without a clue what makes it so.
Of course, I could always refer to the Civ3 patch readmes. So I looked through the PTW readme for "pop" and found nothing relevant. Then I looked through the vanilla Civ readme and found a bugfix (first citizen 20 shields now), a change of unhappiness from pop rushing from 20 to 40 turns, and a mysterious and unhelpful line, "Eliminated 'Despot Pop Rushing'." What eliminated it? The unhappiness change? Something else? Did it really eliminate it or did it just make it a less effective but viable strategy?
So, I propose we use this thread to document the changes in strategy and tactics from vanilla to Conquests...I'm looking more for "big things" (pop rushing) than "little things" (map making doesn't allow trading maps anymore), but anything that can have a significant impact on strategy would be fine...it'd also help anybody who, for some reason, may have been playing vanilla all this time and on a whim buys Conquests, but my main goal is to help us keep our facts straight when consulting older documents and ultimately give us a more solid "knowledge base" for this game.
- Kef
And that's the problem. Keeping up with everything is hard unless you're an oldbie! I've been around since Vanilla Civ3 (and Civ2:ToT and SMAC/X for that matter) but I only play the game extensively on the off occasion, and the same went for browsing through the forums here. So I don't hear about every single little change as it happens.
But some of the best threads and documents on strategy are the older ones, such as Vel's thread, and we can't just ignore them just because some parts are obsolete and some aren't. But it's hard to know just what is obsolete, and why it's obsolete.
Here's a specific example. Pop rushing in despotism has interested me, and while recently I've found some tips on the way it's used in later versions of the game, I also come across older information. One of these was an apparently infamous doc on CivFanatics...I looked through its associated message board thread to see if anybody has information on how to adapt it, if possible, to newer versions. But the last thread I found said something to the effect of, "Can we lock this thread? Recent patches change everything and the information is obsolete." Well, that's just great. Go ahead, tell me it's obsolete and leave me without a clue what makes it so.
Of course, I could always refer to the Civ3 patch readmes. So I looked through the PTW readme for "pop" and found nothing relevant. Then I looked through the vanilla Civ readme and found a bugfix (first citizen 20 shields now), a change of unhappiness from pop rushing from 20 to 40 turns, and a mysterious and unhelpful line, "Eliminated 'Despot Pop Rushing'." What eliminated it? The unhappiness change? Something else? Did it really eliminate it or did it just make it a less effective but viable strategy?
So, I propose we use this thread to document the changes in strategy and tactics from vanilla to Conquests...I'm looking more for "big things" (pop rushing) than "little things" (map making doesn't allow trading maps anymore), but anything that can have a significant impact on strategy would be fine...it'd also help anybody who, for some reason, may have been playing vanilla all this time and on a whim buys Conquests, but my main goal is to help us keep our facts straight when consulting older documents and ultimately give us a more solid "knowledge base" for this game.
- Kef
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