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**SCG** · February 14, 2003, 09:10

after thinking on it, it probably was a bad decision to try and test for railroad bonus - only did 2 - and neither resulted in any loss in movement. However it could have (even if it was a unit not being used and could have gotten anywhere it needed 2 by next turn anyway), and that sets a bad precedent.

No more Goto testing

**cavebear** · February 16, 2003, 16:17

Just a cautionary thought. I hope you aren't actually "playing the game" to determine these things. It's admittedly a gray area, but it is easy to go too far in that direction. We've tried to keep any explorations we've made in the game in the current year, and even that makes me a bit concerned.

I'm just saying let's *all* be careful where we go with our Ministerial work .

**SCG** · February 16, 2003, 16:54

We've established a long time ago a policy of no playing ahead. Railroad adds a tough of grey, since you can move units around on the railroad and then put them back in the same place with no movement loss, effectively leaving the game unplayed.

Until this turn, I hadn't even done that. In an effort to better utilize Samson's formulas for freight delivery, i started to test on the largely railroaded main island for optimal path (provides a bonus). After 2 attempts, and some thought, I decided that was a bad decision and therefore ceased and desisted.

Now I'm back to using 'v' (view pieces on the view menu)and then the arrow keys if i need to check a path or a distance, thereby not touching any units

**Ben Kenobi** · February 17, 2003, 00:46

My philosophy is that you should be able to do your job without ever touching a single unit. Your various advisors should inform you with what you need. I think their is a utility to estimate caravan payoffs in the Civ2 strategy thread.

**SCG** · February 17, 2003, 01:20

Originally posted by obiwan18
My philosophy is that you should be able to do your job without ever touching a single unit. Your various advisors should inform you with what you need.

And i plan not to touch any more units as per described above

I think their is a utility to estimate caravan payoffs in the Civ2 strategy thread.

there is, but it was made in MS Excel, and virtually all of the formulas seem to be incompatible with my version of MS Works... (which was something i complained in jest about elsewhere in this forum

)

Efforts to encode the formulas myself seem to fail when i try and generalize it for a matrix of cities, and i'm not quite sure which variables are the problem... It would be a bit easier in Excel as you can hide info on multiple sheets...

**Six Thousand Year Old Man** · February 17, 2003, 09:58

All that I do that could be called questionable is load up the save, turn science to 0, and fire any einsteins... that gives the base number of beakers per next tech.

Hopefully that's permitted... it's a pretty standard procedure when trying to get exactly x number of turns per tech with no beaker wastage

**cavebear** · February 17, 2003, 13:06

That's what I meant guys, and I'm glad for your responses. As City-Planner, I move Workers around to see what happens, check on diferent completion turns for different structures, etc, but I do not cross that year line or move units out of the cities.

Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.

**Ben Kenobi** · February 17, 2003, 17:09

STYOM-

I was wondering how you know the base beaker rate. On my own games, I find myself cheating to find the total number of beakers required for the next tech.

With your method, and then fiddling with the science rate and setting a few einsteins, you could fix the beakers required without ever touching the cheat menu!

**SCG** · February 17, 2003, 17:22

Originally posted by obiwan18
STYOM-

I was wondering how you know the base beaker rate. On my own games, I find myself cheating to find the total number of beakers required for the next tech.

With your method, and then fiddling with the science rate and setting a few einsteins, you could fix the beakers required without ever touching the cheat menu!

maybe I don't want to know this, but it seems to me that using the cheat menu would be a whole lot more complicated than just setting total # of beakers produced to 0?

Just don't forget to scan F5 to make sure there aren't any cities with 'phantom' science... For some reason (probably dealing with floating point arithmatic), sometimes cities will produce extra beakers dispite 0% science and no einsteins - and they aren't always the large ones either

**Six Thousand Year Old Man** · February 17, 2003, 17:39

Originally posted by SCG

Just don't forget to scan F5 to make sure there aren't any cities with 'phantom' science... For some reason (probably dealing with floating point arithmatic), sometimes cities will produce extra beakers dispite 0% science and no einsteins - and they aren't always the large ones either

I think if there was a phantom science thing happening, the beakers per tech number would look so radically different from what I was expecting that I'd notice

I mean, 1 extra beaker would cut the turns/tech in half if we were running at 0 science/0 einsteins...

**rjmatsleepers** · February 18, 2003, 04:48

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
turn science to 0, and fire any einsteins... that gives the base number of beakers per next tech.

Good tip!

(OK I know it's obvious when you think about it, but I didn't spot it.)

Is there a way of telling exactly how many beakers you already have?

RJM at Sleepers

**Six Thousand Year Old Man** · February 18, 2003, 11:17

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers

Good tip!

(OK I know it's obvious when you think about it, but I didn't spot it.)

Is there a way of telling exactly how many beakers you already have?

I don't think so, unfortunately.

When your first city is also the SSC, there is one advantage - that city will often be the one that provides the beakers to get you to a new tech. Since any excess beakers don't carry over to the next tech, the next turn will start with 0 beakers in the box. From there, you can calculate how many you need, and keep tabs on Freight delivery, etc... so you can get to the next tech without any wastage.

The downside to your first city being the SSC is that often a lot of beakers can be wasted that way - because they don't carry over to the next tech. Having your 5th city as the SSC, say, means that if the SSC gives you a new tech, the first 4 cities will add their beaker production to the next tech... giving you a bit of a head start.

In terms of calculating how many beakers you have in the box... various people have tried to figure out a way to do that, and I don't recall any real successes. Estimation, or utilties like cool ruler, seem the only solution.

**rjmatsleepers** · February 19, 2003, 03:52

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man

The downside to your first city being the SSC is that often a lot of beakers can be wasted that way - because they don't carry over to the next tech.

That was why I was hoping there was some way of working out the number of beakers already accumulated.

In the early landing comparison game, I was micromanaging to get extra corn or shields rather than wasted beakers. That was fine while I could count the number of beakers on the science advisors screen. But pretty quickly they all blur together.

BTW I presume that all cities are processed before normal game play starts. So if you have one or more big freight deliveries available and the beaker box is nearly complete, it's worth waiting a turn for delivery in order not to waste them. Is that right ?

RJM at Sleepers

**Ben Kenobi** · February 19, 2003, 16:22

rjmatsleepers:

Yep, that is the right way to go, assuming no changes in the demanded commodities.

As for accumulated beakers, all you really need is the beakers to the next tech.

Your trade advisor will give you the beakers per turn produced by your empire.

Fiddle with the tax rates until you get 1 tech per turn.

Drop the science rate 10% to get the marginal 2 techs per turn.

Hire some einsteins until you cross the threshold to one tech per turn.

Check your trade advisor, and this should give you the number of beakers needed for the size of the box, within a few beakers.

You'll then be able to ballpark the number of beakers accumulated by looking at the length, and estimating. Granted, this is not precise, but it's an educated guess.

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