The whole caravan thing

[DaveV]

Matthew,

If two cups changed a very unhappy citizen to a content, I'd be willing to accept it as a planned assist to large civilizations. But the fact that it changes to a happy means that happiness *increases* when you build lots of cities. The riot factor shows that this is exactly the opposite of what the programmers intended. In my book, a feature that works the opposite of the way it was intended is a bug.

[VetLegion]

DaveV

Thanks, I think that it should be it. The fact that I had to move some troops out of my cities didn't bother me much, hehe...I got the game done pretty early and I was satisfied. However, if it is a bug reckognized by the players as a cheat, I will avoid it.

Matthew

I play TOT:Original game, so I posted a question about this in the TOT forum. I got no replay yet.
And as for "strange things"...
I noticed that my rioting cities under republic had no production but science as normal! (I had gunpowder 1.A.D) I posted about it and got official replay that this was NOT a bug, but a "matter of gameplay balance" or something...

Try it out, maybe it is just TOT...?

[valmont]

Try this:

Max Cities = [Riot Factor - (difficulty levelx2)] x [((government divided by 2)+2)/2]

Deity Republic:

[14 - (5x2)] x [((5/2)+2)/2]
[14 - 10] x [(2.5 + 2)/2]
[4] x [(4.5)/2]
[4] x [2.25]
9

Deity Monarchy:

[14 - (5x2)] x [((2/2)+2)/2]
[14 - 10] x [(1+2)/2]
4 x [3/2]
4 x 1.5
6

King Monarchy:

[14 - (3x2)] x [((2/2)+2)/2]
[14 - 6] x [(1+2)/2]
[8] x [3/2]
8 x 1.5
12

[DaveV]

valmont,

I think you've got it, except I still think the (goverment divided by 2) term is truncated to an integer. So I would perform the Deity Republic calculation as follows:

Deity Republic:

{[14 - (5x2)] x (INT(5/2)+2)}/2
{[14 - 10] x (2 + 2)}/2
{[4] x (4)}/2
{16}/2
8

[geofelt]

The strategy guide is clearly wrong, there are unbalanced parentheses. The number of cities you can have without extra rioting decreases with difficulty level. At higher levels of government you get less unrest. In my experience, despotism hurts at 4 or 5 cities. I pause in founding more until I get monarchy. In monarchy, the number is about 12. With hanging gardens, the first citizen is always happy, so it really helps expansion and founding new cities. Once you get democracy, there is no limit.

[DaveV]

Geofelt,

There *is* a riot factor in Democracy, although most people probably don't notice it. If you have at least two cups per city, extra cities will actually increase your happiness (see above discussion of very unhappy to happy conversion).

My early expansion limits are 8 cities for Despotism, 12 for Monarchy. At this size, you can keep a size 2 city content with two troops. Very rarely, you can build an extra city, but I haven't been able to figure out any pattern to this bonus.

[Mama Mia]

Back to the original subject.....

I have not played CIV2 for about a year now (I'm playing SMAC now - if you love CIV2 you will love this game too), but from what I can remember, I did not realise the importance of caravans until late in my CIV2 'career'.

I normally build one caravan at a time for each city (after having built a defending unit) and do not normally build another for that city until the preceding caravan has reached its destination, allowing me to concentrate the city on building other useful stuff (and also not reducing shield output too much from support costs).

If there is a race to build a wonder, then of course I will make surrounding cities near the city building the wonder churn out caravans to rush-build the wonder. By doing this (and by having a city 'build' a wonder which has already been built and simply switching production to a new wonder as soon as another one can be built), there is rarely a game in which a rival civilisation can build a wonder before me.

The usefullness of caravans has already been pretty much covered in this post, but a later game trick with caravans (freight) and airports is to find a high population city which supplies a really valuable commodity such as oil or uranium. Make sure this city has an airport and find another city as far away as possible which also has an airport. If this city demands the commodity, then so much the better. Each turn you can produce a freight unit (by this time in the game, the city should only take 1 turn to build this unit), and fly it instantly to the target city for a huge instant trade boon. Even if the target city does not demand the commodity, you will make a fortune in instant cash. You can keep making the freight and reset the trade route each turn just for the cash windfall. In one game, I was making 2000 (gold?) each turn just from the single freight unit alone. This method also works if two cities are linked by rail.

Caravans also serve as decent scouts when travelling to foreign lands. Rival leaders do not seem to mind much when your caravans are traipsing across their territory, although nothing is more annoying then having had to wait about 50 turns for a caravan to travel across the world and having a rival destroy it in a sneak attack.

[Xin Yu]

Gee, I also found that moving a unit out of a city can cease riot. So I was wrong before. Now I figured out why.

HG can make a content citizen or a double-unhappy to happy, but can only make a unhappy to content.

Suppose a size 2 city has two double-unhappy citizens, and there are two units in the city. Each unit makes a double-unhappy into unhappy, then the HG makes one of them content. The city will be in disorder (1 content and 1 unhappy). Move one unit out of the city then you have one unhappy and one double-unhappy. HG makes the double-unhappy happy, so the city is ok (1 happy and 1 unhappy).

In civ1 there's no double unhappy, so when double-unhappy was added in civ2.... Wierd.

[VetLegion]

they made the program calculate first units, then wonders. I think it should have been the other way around. This way it could get tough to defend a city, and have it producing something...but then, does anyone still defend their cities?

[Aurelius]

Hey VetLegion,

I defend them towns with Raging Hordes around. Especially when the coffer's are full of capitalistic money. Those tolls get steep! Not to mention the destructive nature of the barbarians.

Aurelius

[VetLegion]

You probably send a ship to AC, too. Or you conquer the world in the 90's. HG = rapid expansion = kill then before they get to musketeers. Or go nuts of micromanagment...

Still, diplomats dont count as military units, if you have cash, it is ok to defend with them.

[SandMonkey]

i have a dumb question and did not want to start a new topic.....

If you bribed an enemy caravan and it turned out to be a food caravan, and it became a NON, and you brought it to your city... would you get free food? Or does bribing a caravan always set it to like Hides or something?

[Dino the Dinosore]

If you can not think of a really good reason why you should build something other than a caravan, build a caravan. - jpk

Is it possible to build too many? Yes, but only temporarily. I was building oil freights that had no demand, so I put them to sleep. Accumulated about 10 of them. About a dozen turns later, some cities finally started to demand oil and I then started waking them up and cashing in. Of course, in the meanwhile I had doubled or tripled most of my cities size with a big WLTPD - helps the payoff.

Somewhere (in one of these forums, I think) I read a supposed quote from one of the CIV1 designers that the easiest way to win was to build the Lighthouse, go for trade, and ship out the caravans. There's a strategy I haven't tried yet.

[Sieve Too]

To add to Xin Yu's post: CFC acts the same way as HG. It will turn a content or double unhappy into a happy but can only turn an unhappy citizen into a content one. Weird indeed.

And on the thread topic ... Everytime I've bribed an AI aravan, I always get a Hides Caravan.

[higdon]

I've noticed a bug in the caravans. After I've been building freight and flying them all over the world with trade revenues of $500-$2,000, for some reason the revenues suddenly drop down to the $200-210 range, no matter what goods are being transported (uranium v. hides) or over what distance (three squares away or halfway around the map).

This has happened to me on several occasions. When it does, I just stop building freight.

Bob Higdon