ICP & Bonus Squares

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Geronimo I think Dom meant human players would hold back those two move settlers, not the AI.

With respect to my question about the AI 'holding back' their settlers I wasn't referring at all to the kind of 'holding back' that DOm was referring to. That was just unfortunate similarity in wording. What I was refering to was the fact that the AI never lets it's settlers move anywhere that I have seen without making sure that a defensive unit will be stacked with it at the end of each move. I was wondering if the AI would only move it's two move expansionist settlers only 1 tile each turn so as to ensure that the defensive unit could keep up. That's what I meant when I asked if the AI would "hold back" it's two move settlers. I guess Dom might know from observing expansionist AI civs in his mod of the game.

Originally posted by vmxa1
The settler blitz is basically where you bring some settlers with you to an invasion or attack. You raze cities and drop your own town with a settler and now have access to all tiles in its borders and can blitz to the next city.

This is a killer when you break through the defended towns and find the core nearly empty of defenders. It is more useful against humans who will leave empty interior cities.

The ai is exposed as bit as well as it will have only 2 units in most cases, but at the highest levels the better cities will have more than two. So those nice rails are now offering free move to within striking range. The ai will not often cut the roads/rails to its towns, only yours.

sounds like smart strategy so I don't see where the problem arises. Historically the most enduring conquests all involved large migrations of settlers alongside the conquering armies. The expansion of the US at the expense of the native americans certainly followed this model as did the expansion of Russia and almost any other conquering nation that established a long term hold over their conquered territories.

If anything this 'problem' suggests that 2 move settlers should eventually be available to all of the civs rather than just the expansionist civs.

Capturing railroads was also very important and as far as I can tell this is the only way in the current game system to allow this to occur.

I wonder if most of the objection to use of settlers in this way stems from the perception of most player of conquest as being a strictly military affair and that civilian participation is somehow 'unrealistic', historical precedent notwithstanding.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Geronimo
I hadn't considered any sort of blitzing exploit. could you elaborate a little on how that works and the problems it causes?

More or less what vmxa1 said. The only thing completely stopping you from conquering an enemy civ in 1 turn once you have Railroads and Cavalry is that sometimes 3 moves is not enough to reach some cities due to large cultural radii. A Settler with 2 moves virtually eliminates this problem, ensuring that you can reach any AI city from any other AI city (it places its cities a maximum of 6 tiles apart). In fact, with 2-move Settlers you could conquer some empires in 1 turn even prior to Railroads.

Do you find that the expansionist AI civs hold back their 2 move settlers to one move per turn so they can keep them stacked with a military unit such a spearman or do they let the settlers move at their full 2 moves per turn without waiting up for the defensive unit?

No, the Settlers are never held back by the slowness of their would-be escorts. In fact, some cities newly-founded cities are sometimes left undefended for a handful of turns. On Monarch difficulty and above, where the AI gets free units, this does not seem to be a problem because the AI knows to divert some of its exploring/wandering units to defend an empty city. On Regent and below I can imagine this being more of an issue; I play Demigod/Deity, so I find it very hard to test anything at the lower difficulties. From a few debug games I've played with the mod, I can say that it's not as big a deal as it might seem.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Geronimo
I wonder if most of the objection to use of settlers in this way stems from the perception of most player of conquest as being a strictly military affair and that civilian participation is somehow 'unrealistic', historical precedent notwithstanding.

No, it's more the fact that once you know how to pull this off, you can take out AI civs in the blink of an eye, before it has any chance to react (you declare war, they do not get a next turn). The fact that the AI is not programmed to defend against this strategy makes it easy to beat, and the game less interesting. Faster combat Settlers would only amplify the problem.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Dominae


No, it's more the fact that once you know how to pull this off, you can take out AI civs in the blink of an eye, before it has any chance to react (you declare war, they do not get a next turn). The fact that the AI is not programmed to defend against this strategy makes it easy to beat, and the game less interesting. Faster combat Settlers would only amplify the problem.

If the player has enough raw destructive power to eliminate every last unit the AI has in their empire through conventional means in a single turn what difference really is few extra turns for the AI going to make? It seems that taking away access to the railroads won't make it any less lopsided, just more prolonged.

A game turn is supposed to be at least a year long.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Geronimo
If the player has enough raw destructive power to eliminate every last unit the AI has in their empire through conventional means in a single turn what difference really is few extra turns for the AI going to make? It seems that taking away access to the railroads won't make it any less lopsided, just more prolonged.

A game turn is supposed to be at least a year long.

You get their cities earlier, you get out of War Weariness earlier. MUCH earlier, I should say, especially on big maps. Lots of things can happen while you do a 20-turn conquest. Things that won't hurt a 1-turn conquest at all. If the price are a few Settlers, it's too cheap a price. Hence, it's an exploit, at least agains the AI. PBEMs usually allow it.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Modo44

You get their cities earlier, you get out of War Weariness earlier. MUCH earlier, I should say, especially on big maps. Lots of things can happen while you do a 20-turn conquest. Things that won't hurt a 1-turn conquest at all. If the price are a few Settlers, it's too cheap a price. Hence, it's an exploit, at least agains the AI. PBEMs usually allow it.

20 turns vs one turn? please. If the player spread his forces out amongst fully loaded transports He could still take every last coastal city in one turn and after that it's certainly not going to take 20 turns to reach the rest. Someone with enough firepower to clear every last city in one turn is going to be able to plow pretty damn far on that second turn.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Geronimo
20 turns vs one turn? please. If the player spread his forces out amongst fully loaded transports He could still take every last coastal city in one turn and after that it's certainly not going to take 20 turns to reach the rest. Someone with enough firepower to clear every last city in one turn is going to be able to plow pretty damn far on that second turn.

Still, you get there earlier. Even 5 turns of offensive war can find a Democracy in serious doo doo. Plus, a 1-turn conquest allows for no counter-attacks, which do some damage on higher difficulty levels. And, if you haven't noticed, no Alliances/Embargos will get signed against you.

[aksully]

Dom and any others that mod...can you set up a mod of two players where both are human with no AI? If so how? I tried this yesterday to test some combat and movement trials and the game starts to load and then it quits altogther? When I made the scenario I created it with 2 Civs and clicked Human player for both. Can this be done...having just two humans so I can run some different tests? Thanks!
Sully

Oh and Theseus..thanks for the tip on modifying your leaderhead! I never knew you could do it and I'm one of those that DO read manuals!

[aksully]

Originally posted by Dominae


No, it's more the fact that once you know how to pull this off, you can take out AI civs in the blink of an eye, before it has any chance to react (you declare war, they do not get a next turn). The fact that the AI is not programmed to defend against this strategy makes it easy to beat, and the game less interesting. Faster combat Settlers would only amplify the problem.

This is the first I've read about this "Combat Settler Scenario" other than I think it was the "Virtue of Being Industrious" by Bamspeedy I think. That focus was on what would have likely called, Combat/Offensive Workers. Where you have a stack of workers building roads right behind your stacks/Armies. Then your Settlers can follow and build where needed. I might be wrong on the above reference but you get the point.

Is this Settler gambit written somewhere? I've utilized this strategy from time to time. Nice to know it has its merits. I've been hesitant to use it fairly regularly due to the possibility of a rapid culture flip of my new city deep in the heart of a culture-strong civ. Feel free to comment!
Sully

[aksully]

The Virtues of Being Industrious was penned by Velociryx...apologies to him.

Sully

[aksully]

It was by the way, ver informative.

[Theseus]

Hmmm... I cannot recall anyone writing up an extensive strategy article on 'Settler Blitzing', but rather have seen it discussed mostly in AU games, some special games put on by Aeson and others, and a few other places .

[vmxa1]

Hum, I seem to recall one game where we used it T, rather recently.

Anyway landing in numerous locations an attacking is not so easy to do. It is much easier to land a large force in one place and fan out using settlers. The wiping occurs, because many cities are not defended or very lightly. If you are going to take 4 or more turns to get to all those cities, then drafting will allow extra defenders and make some of those larger cities very hard to take.

You can end up not being able to even take them. This is because a metro that is empty is a snap, if it has drafted a few MI's, that lone tank is not going to get the job done.

If this is an invasion, you have limited forces that can start to be chipped away at and hard to reenforce. I think Hot Enamel has a nice post about such an event.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Hum, I seem to recall one game where we used it T, rather recently.

Thus my use of the 'wink' smiley.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Geronimo
If the player has enough raw destructive power to eliminate every last unit the AI has in their empire through conventional means in a single turn what difference really is few extra turns for the AI going to make? It seems that taking away access to the railroads won't make it any less lopsided, just more prolonged.

The AI does not keep all its units in its cities; at any time more than half its unit are out in the open, waiting to do something (probably to mitigate the effect of cultural flips, or nukes). Thus the cost of blitzing is far less than taking out every unit in the AI empire.

Furthermore, Longbowmen and Cavalry, which the AI absolutely adore, are a joke on the defensive. When you declare war and win in one turn you do not need to worry about a counter-attack, so you are effectively replacing 30+ Infantry (or other defenders) with 5-6 Settlers - no a bad ideal no matter how you look at it.

If you want to look at the realism aspect, consider how unrealistic turn-based games really are: during the entire year that you are running over another country, that country is utterly paralyzed, unable to react in any way to your offensive. Civ3 is a strategy game, not a historical simulation.