Come! Laugh at an SG!

[Xin Yu]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex
Also, when I tried to get new supplies of goods by sending food caravans to my own cities nothing happened (even though I minimised trade in both cities). Xin Yu, is it random when it works?

Only the least valued route will be replaced by a more profitable route. If more than one routes have a tie, the first will be replaced. Hence, you need to send a food caravan from a distant city, and the commodity to be replaced needs to be one of the supply commodities of the city.

[La Fayette]

research in the late game

carolus
edward gives good advice about the choice of techs, but your main problem is elsewhere IMO.
Your main problem is that your rate of research in the endgame is much lower than 'ours' (arii's or smash's or mine).
2 main reasons for that:
1) medium range foreign trade.
Your savegames show that you are mostly trading with Killdeer and a few other Sioux cities close by. The distance between Killdeer and Panormus is about 21 (and your shipchain is somewhat in disorder). With 2 or 3 more transports and a well organized shipchain, you might be able to trade with a big city twice as far as that and get almost double delivery bonuses.
2) Contact with other civs
Close to the endgame, you have no embassies at all and only a few maps. Therefore you miss long distance foreign trade (see above) and 'management of foreign research'.
Have you read the threads named 'science' in the GL?
There was a fierce competition between early landers in the beginning of 2001, especially between solo and samson. Very happily for us, samson was recovering from an illness and had plenty of time available to do research.
That gave us 'beaker counts' and 'target civs': the 2 strong legs of what I name 'management of foreign research'. Thank you samson!
In short, if you count beakers and wisely give techs to the AI, you can boost your research. Read it, try it and let us know!


(La Fayette, listening to sound advice given by solo and samson)

[Carolus Rex]

Thanks for your extensive and valuable replies, guys!

Seems that I have some catching up to do (still, I launched "only" 11 turns after Smash and La Fayette, so watch out... ).

Yes, the ship chain was not properly organised. In fact, for trading with the Sioux I had too many ships. That's why I didn't bother to optimise it. Still, that's no reason why I shouldn't trade with the other civs.

About the food caravans. I don't think I understand. This is how I see it, please correct the wrongs.

i) After a while a city produces nothing but food caravans (no supply of new goods)

ii) This is a nuisance for your foreign trade, so how to get the cities to supply new commodities?

iii) Minimise trade in both the sending and receiving city to make the value of the food caravan as low as possible, so that it will not replace any of your trade routes

iv) Move the food caravan into the targeted city

v) No trade route is replaced, and the sending city is able to produce new commodities

What is wrong in the chain of events in i) to v)?

Carolus (going to the Great Library to borrow some threads )

[Carolus Rex]

Addendum.

A lot of my commodities were not in demand. Is there a way to control which the new commodities will be?

Carolus

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex
(still, I launched "only" 11 turns after Smash and La Fayette, so watch out... ).

Some people on these forums are that kind of 'eager to win' people who have some tricks available and try to keep them secret, with the secret hope that they are going to win their games with help of those secret tricks.

Smash is like me, I think: no secret, try to play his best and explain why and how, happy if someone gets a better result than his own, this provides better competition next time.

(BTW carolus, I launched 2 turns sooner at 3rd try )

[Smash]

my 2 cents

1 Leo's....I think it is well worth it for just settlers>engineers and boats.But I might have delivered those camels and bought it.This is what I do for most of the later wonders.Generally I only build up a few cities with infastructure so I spend mainly on cargo,engineers,boats and wonders..later SS parts.

2.Magnetism is crucial for me but no good without Leo's as I build my boats early and get them into position..or try to at least.I don't do much trading overseas until magentism unless i can support boats out of the Shake's city or JSB.So I want Invention before Magnet in most cases.

3.15-1-1-1-1-1 with fusion is 36 years

4.I also don't build libraries until very late if at all(cept a few obvious cities).Its better to generate science with trade arrows..so most f my my cities get markets,banks,exchanges and superhighways long before they see a library.

Since you are usually capable of 1 tech per turn there is not much that can be done with tech choices.You will get rooked eventually unless you like the ais to have most of your advanced techs.I would try to keep the ai with at least 1 tech tech I don't have for such a situation.Once I start ship chaining I usually ignore the ais completely as far techs go.Manipulating must be done early.Their rates just die out after while.I've never had too much success with a pet civ researching.They always seem to wander off in useless tech directions ie amphibious warfare or communism at some point.And gifting can be a pain as I often have to give a bunch I don't want to just to get the one I want to gift as an option.

[Carolus Rex]

Thanks!

Carolus

[Edward]

Carolus Rex,

The full discussion of Xin Yu's strategy can be found in this thread:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001778.html?11

To elaborate on Xin Yu's response, there are a number of conditions to be met.

1. The delivered food caravan only replaces an existing route if it's perceived to be worth equal to or more than your current best route.

Say Las Vegas has all its supplied commodities tied up. You want to deliver a Las Vegas food caravan somewhere in an effort to free up some Las Vegas supply. As you already noted, you should minimize arrows worked in all cities with which Las Vegas has permanent trade routes. You want to maximize arrows worked in the city you send the food caravan to. The city you send the food caravan to should be equal to or greater in size than the cities Las Vegas is currently trading with. By doing all of these things, the computer will think the new food route looks better than your existing Las Vegas routes, and will replace one of them with the food route. (In some cases, all three of your Las Vegas routes will be to the same city. If you deliver a food caravan to this same city, it's guaranteed to be equal in value to your existing routes and will thereby replace one without you needing to fidget with worked squares.)

2. The food route replaces the worst permanent route in Las Vegas. By looking at the city screen in Las Vegas, you can predict which route will be replaced (the one with the smallest +whatever$ next to it). If there's a tie for worst route, the food route replaces the first route (the one listed first, not necessarily the oldest one).

Now that you know which route will be replaced, look at the commodity for that route. Is that commodity one of the three in parentheses as a supply in Las Vegas? If not, you're out of luck. If you replace this non-supplied commodity, none of your tied up supplies will be replaced.

Is this correct, Xin Yu?

Thank heavens they're getting rid of caravans in Civ3!

[arii]

Just finished my third attempt for alpha, and it's a good one.
Launched my spaceship in 1180 (15-2-2-1-1-1 28.2 years 87% no fusion power), EA 1208. This was without rehoming.
My strategy for this one was to build marco 1st and ASAP (similar to conquest game). This allowed me to have the maps of the AI plus a lot of techs that I did not have to research. I was also able to monitor the AI science progress. Thus giving almost everything to mongol, and giving techs to the other AIs until they would research something usefull. I build the lighthouse and HG next. Compare to the previous game I built a lot less caravans but was able to deliver them at further locations thanks to marco+lighthouse and thus getting better returns. I also focus very early on the SSC (built cope and isaac a lot earlier) and spent ressources on only 2 other cities.
Enjoy the saves.

[La Fayette]

WoW

arii

The Hall of Fame is much simpler now:

Conquest: arii (800)
AC: arii (ETA 1208)

IMO the gap is now so huge with previous attempts by other players that this Hall of Fame probably never will be modified.

Let us sing the glory of arii, President of the Carthaginians for the centuries to come.


(La Fayette, ready to study arii's savegames, eager to learn lessons from the MAAAAASTER)

[Carolus Rex]

Excellent!

I bow my head in respect.

Dare I say this? Yes I do. I don't think the conquest game is safe, far from it. My bet is that DaveV will overcome it if he puts his mind to it.

Carolus

[DaveV]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex
Dare I say this? Yes I do. I don't think the conquest game is safe, far from it. My bet is that DaveV will overcome it if he puts his mind to it.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, CR. Inspired by your faith, and bored to tears with shuttling freight units, I decided to try a conquest game.

Final result: AD 260. I built lots of triremes and elephants, and played a straight attacking game.

[Carolus Rex]

I knew you would break it, Dave!



Carolus

[La Fayette]

LOL@ Carolus
You guessed right.

Therefore new tiny Hall of Fame
Landing: arii (ETA: 1208 AD)
Conquest: DaveV (260 AD)


(La Fayette, looking at an elephant across the road and quite sure that Dave isn't far away)

[La Fayette]

Dave
I think that arii, smash and I could offer you a caravel of honour with 3 camels onboard