i generally hate war and have totally different strategy then almost everyone here.

[ancient]

ok why is it that everyone says to practically build nothing in citys?
i always build only two units per city. But i build everybuilding possible.
i improve every tile. Build every wonder. have citys averaging 22 size. and it seems to work great. i usually get all researches first. if i get into a war all i use is spys/diplomats. the only way i ever win is by spaceship.

so im wondering why everyone say to build so little and take over the world. it works perfectly fine for me to not take over the world. wouldnt you get a higher score through peace and wonders?

[Scouse Gits]

Building every city improvement possible is playing like the AI. You must make careful judgements as to whether the investments made will provide a satisfactory return for your money. Too much early building will cripple gold income because of upkeep fees. In most cases it's far better to build a caravan, which if well placed, will help gold, science and luxuries - with no fee for support or maintenance. Sure - Science Cities do need heavy investments.

Probably most players on this site will have their "default build options" as a freight or a settler. Try it and see how your game improves.

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SG(2)

[Juggler]

Perhaps you are wright, your strategy seems good to me. I am a militaristic type and always have 7 enemyes and 0 allies, which makes playing very difficult and frustrating. You can never win with democracy or republic, fundi and communism are my 2 usuall governments.
So perhaps I will follow your steps and build science cities.

Can you tell me how does this strategy affect your civ score?

[ancient]

no i do just find in civ2 its just that all you peoples strategy seem so weird..

[Chris1111]

I take the peaceful approach too and build build build I build strategically though not mindless like the AI. Its very rare for a game of mine to end before 1800. I could overrun the enemy and win real early but thats not fun to me.

[Scouse Gits]

Just a quick question - what difficulty level are you playing on?

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library has been built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[ancient]

depending on what mood im in deity or emperror

[Rufus T. Firefly]

quote: Originally posted by ancient on 05-06-2001 09:43 AM ok why is it that everyone says to practically build nothing in citys? i always build only two units per city. But i build everybuilding possible. i improve every tile. Build every wonder. have citys averaging 22 size. and it seems to work great. i usually get all researches first. if i get into a war all i use is spys/diplomats. the only way i ever win is by spaceship.

I generally play this way too, though I do bear in mind what Scoue Gits said about building only when there's an adequate return on the investment. I can't say I build "every" wonder -- that would be a very diffrent challenge! -- but I do build the 12-14 I want. I also have trouble improving every tile -- settlers gobble so much food in republic/democracy that I never seem to have enough of them -- but I do what I can, starting with the larger, older cities.

quote: so im wondering why everyone say to build so little and take over the world. it works perfectly fine for me to not take over the world. wouldnt you get a higher score through peace and wonders?

I think you'll find several of us here who like building rather than conquest. As for score, I think it depend on how many wonders you can get and how big a ship you build. I generally send off only 10,000 colonists, which means my ship bonus is 100; conquering the world would give me significantly more points, both because I'd have more cities and because I'd get all the wonders. But if you really can build all the wonders -- and I'd love to hear how you beat the AI to the pyramids, hanging gardens, and colossus! -- and you can get a 40,000 colonist ship off, then you would certainly rival a world conquest score.

One other thing (he said, avoiding work on a Monday morning): Recently I've started to play world conquest, just for a different challenge, and I find I haven't varied my style all that much. I do expand a lot more in order to keep the AI small, but my first dozen cities look pretty much like they would if they were my only dozen cities in an AC game. In fact, I don't really start to build a war machine until I have factories and the Hoover Dam, and I have tactics, espionage, and steel; thus, most of my game is still spent building a civ rather than making war. I'm sure I'd get creamed in multiplayer, but this seems to work find in SP even with ToT's hyper-aggressive AI.

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Dig trenches, with our men being killed off like flies? There isn't time to dig trenches. We'll have to buy them ready made. Here, run out and get some trenches.
-- Rufus T. Firefly, the original rush-builder
[This message has been edited by Rufus T. Firefly (edited May 07, 2001).]

[ancient]

well using caravans drastically improves the speed of wonders and if they build some be4 me i diplo the city then beg for mercy... but fprtified units usually wont be destroyed when behind walls..

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Ancient, I too tend to make each city a fine place to live, with all the amenities and improvements the contemporary technology allows. I expand strategically - building only in multi-special locations, key military posts, and whatnot. I used to go AC, but rarely finish games anymore.

Military conquest is very possible, but slow, with this strategy. In the end, tho, you have a much more asthetically appealing empire. I even go so far as to pillage the AI's excess fortresses while I conquer them, so the farms look better.

I have found that world conquest can double your score, when compared to retiring the turn before conquest. Does AC double the pre-landing-turn score, as well? My guess is that conquest reaps more points - my top 5 scores were all new after five world conquests, despite some respectable AC finishes before that.

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"There is no fortress impregnable to an ass laden with gold."
-Philip of Macedon

[ancient]

that could be it i have 2.42. i think.. thats the newest version i can get with out buying gold..

[kcbob]

quote: Originally posted by Scouse Gits on 05-06-2001 06:53 PM Just a quick question - what difficulty level are you playing on?

One other quick question... which version do you play? If it's MGE, I find it difficult to believe that you don't get clobbered now and again and aren't forced into a 'conquest' approach.

*edit*

I lied. Two questions, the other being what setting of barbarians do you use?

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Frodo lives!
[This message has been edited by kcbob (edited May 07, 2001).]

[Gatekeeper]

quote: Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq on 05-07-2001 09:18 AM Military conquest is very possible, but slow, with this strategy. In the end, tho, you have a much more asthetically appealing empire. I even go so far as to pillage the AI's excess fortresses while I conquer them, so the farms look better.

**ROTFL** Thank goodness I'm not the only one around who has that habit. I've been known to clear entire conquered continents of useless fortresses in order to improve the aesthetics (although I leave a few as museum pieces for the conquered serfs to look at and/or as a border with a soon-to-be-extinct rival).

CYBERAmazon

[Alexander's Horse]

*patiently waits for finbar to find this thread*


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Founder, Dear Leader and Great Helmsman of PROT -the People's Republic Off Topic www.delphi.com/prot1/

[East Street Trader]

Well, your methods clearly work well for you and, indeed, they sound reasonably familiar as the first strategy I ever worked up was based on steady expansion with border cities always building one settler to keep the expansion going while cities within the empire were steadily developed.

So why try anything else? Well, you might want to win quicker, or you might wonder what bloodlust is like, or you might fancy the idea of MP and suspect that a slow, incremental approach will hit problems against an aggressive human opponent (lets face it defending against the A1's idea of how to conduct an assault is not the game's biggest challege).

Anyway, to find the answer to why the received wisdom is to subjugate development to making your expansion as fast as you possibly can you have to try it.

Essentially the reason is the same reason that makes ICS so powerful (infinite city strategy - you crank out settlers, caravans and units and keep cities to size 2). Once you use a settler to found a city the population point given up by the city which built the settler gets back to work but you also get the resources generated by the city square as a free bonus on top. So you've doubled your money. (And to sweeten the deal the first citizen may well be able to work a better square in the new city than he was working in the old one.)

If you assess the opportunity cost of, say, building a library (80 shields) you have, therefore, if there is still land within a reasonable distance on which cities could be founded, to reckon that the extra beakers you will get is worth at least as much as the tax, beakers and shields which two new cities (2 settlers @ 40 shields each) would generate. And you have to make allowance for the 1g per turn maintenance cost of the library once built. Plus, if the new cities will have a food surplus (as they almost always will) the two new cities give you the potential to use their shields to make yet more settlers and to found yet more cities.

Now, OK, the calculation is not completely straightforward. Building the library can lead on to building a University and then a research centre plus there are the research enhancing Wonders. And there are strategic considerations - maybe you're at a stage in the game where you judge extra beakers to be vital.

But the fact is, if you stop to ask yourself whether you are sure that a particular buiulding, or the time taken up in improving land, is worth it measured against the resources from two squares coming in every turn, well the settler turns out to win the argument time after time.

Try it and I suspect you'll soon see what I mean..