Ye 'ole Iron Works

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by MyOlde
I'm playing a Standard map now and coal is so far away (and belongs to others) that I haven't a hope of ever getting it. And the AI won't run roads to it so that I could even trade for it!

This sparked a thought that is a bit off topic, but I'll go ahead and share it anyhow.

One option in that kind of situation might be to sign a ROP agreement, send over your own workers to build the needed road, and then arrange a deal. If the AI has more than one copy of the resource and you complete the road during your turn (making sure it's linked up to the AI's trade network), you should be guaranteed a chance to negotiate a deal before the AI can trade it to someone else. Then, as long as the AI doesn't go to war with you (and assuming you're willing and able to pay), you can keep negotiating a new trade every twenty turns.

I'm not sure how the timing sequence works out if your workers complete the road in between turns. If the road counts as finished at the end of your turn, the AI might get a chance to trade the resource between the time the road is finished and the time you get a chance to negotiate the deal. If that's the case, the trick would be either to use enough workers to build the final link in the road in a single turn or to have enough extra workers join the project when it is almost finished to finish it during your turn. (For example, on a nine-turn road, two workers could road for four turns and a third worker could then finish it during the player's turn.)

Note that I haven't actually tried this strategy to gain the ability to trade for a resource. But it seems like it ought to work, at least unless something's screwy about when trade route connection calculations are performed.

[Theseus]

Orrrr.....

JUST GO KICK THEIR *SS!!!

[MosesPresley]

It was hard enough to get the Iron Works in PTW, I have never had the opportunity to build it in Conquests.

[Firefly]

Only once on a random map, but at least it was in a city that wasn't too corrupt.

[Nikolai]

The few times I've got the cance at all it mostly is greatly affected by corruption or the city gives too little shield output for me to be able to build it at all.

[Shr3dZ]

I thought this was funny. The other day Im playing Civ3 and finally iron works pops up, first time in a long time! But of course they city that can build it is at the far reaches of my empire so the corruption is uber high. I start it anyways and it shows that itll take 75 turns to complete.... so as time goes on I finally get down to about 22 turns left, WHEW! But then uh-oh, war breaks out and its me and 2 allies against 4 other civs, and what do the evil bastids do!?! THEY SABOTAGE PRODUCTION OF THE CITY BUILDING IRON WORKS!!! bahaha... so a couple dozen turns later I got a GL from a TOW Inf. and hurried the production... :P

[Shogun Gunner]

poetic justice - sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's actually a good idea, probably one of the top uses for a MGL at that stage of the game.

[Theseus]

Yay!! Just built it in a fairly good core city... with a Factory, it's a great city to pre-build Hoovers.

[Muad'Dib]

The higher the difficulty you play, the less resources you have in your territory. You are basicaly forced to play a warlike strategy and go conquer the tiles you need. The current game I'm played, not one Civ is able to build Iron Works. In the last game I played, I had to go out on conquer the citiy that had coal & iron near it but not in it. So using 3 transports loaded with Elite Inf., Tanks, and Artillery, plus a settler and a couple of workers. I captured the target city, razed it (since it was a size 25 city I got a lot of captured workers from doing that), cleared the surrounding area of the enemy and 2 smaller cities (more workers), built my own city so that coal & iron are in the radius, and than rush built Forbidden Palace to eliminate 99% of the corruption than followed with another rush to build Iron Works.

Forbidden Palace/Iron Works is one helluva combo. I always dely building the Forbidden Palace with the hopes that I have the opportunity to build Iron Works.

[Aramis]

I haven't built or seen the IW since I got the 1.22 patch. Hardly seen it since I got Conquests.
I assume its just coincidence, and someday, yes someday, I will see iron and coal in the same city radius. But I will only see it from afar, as if in a dream, because it will be a dream. C3C killed the Iron Works, but at least we got bananas

[barbeerhj]

I never did think Bananas were much of a resource improvement....

Only got them in jungles and would not be too useful unless you chopped the jungle and did something with the grassland left.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by barbeerhj
I never did think Bananas were much of a resource improvement....

Registered Apolyton members should get a +1 bonus for bananas.

[Aramis]

Originally posted by Vince278


Registered Apolyton members should get a +1 bonus for bananas.

PolyPlus members +2!

[joncnunn]

It doesn't look to me like number of strategic and luxary resources on the map has anything to do with the difficulty level.

Now, at higher levels the AI REX advantage is more pronouced both from it's extra settlers and higher production.

I did note that it's only the first settler the AI always wants to found in place on the replay of Mesopotana. (All civs including myself founded the first settler on turn 1. Most including myself founded the second one on turn 2 and the last one on turn 3.)

[pedrojedi]

I'm sorry I didn't take any screenies - I will sound like some big-a** Munchausen liar - but yes, I played in a map that had no less than 3 (THREE - DREI - TRÊS - TRES) different places with iron and coal so close to hook up to make a IW city. That felt like some kind of waste of luck.

edit: typo