Looking for No-Wonders-Startegy

[Hinnerk]

Hi!

I've been playing MP games of ToT with the additional restriciton of no world wonders being allowed for any human player, so the only way to get one is to conquer one. However, the AI seems very lazy about building WW, thus usually you don't have any...

It makes for very difficult games on king level. I would greatly apprecite any input from CIv wizards - which I certainly am not, as to how to go on about it. Any ideas?

Thx,
hinnerk

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'm still pretty new, but I play ToT at King alot and have a couple of ideas.

1) It seems to me that there are certain wonders the AI just loves: Pyramids, the Observatory, Sun Tsu's, King Richard's, Magellen's, Mike's, Adam Smith, the SoL, the ET, and Women's Sufferage all come to mind. One thing you could do is make sure, as soon as you get a technology appropriate for one of these wonders, that you give it to each and every AI; they should start building it and, if it's a gift, you might even get some tribute out of it.

2) Someone once suggested here that the AI is more likely to go for a wonder if a human player is trying to build it. So you could start on a wonder, wait for the ai to start, too, and then abandon it; you'd lose shields, but it might get the wonder built.

Just some thoughts.

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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

[Hawkman]

I've played a number of Wonderless games, and they are great, especially if you wipe out the goody huts, too. In my games, the AI can't build wonders, either.

Your cities have to build just about every building, which takes much longer than when the Wonders allow you to skip a lot of them.

As for the unhappiness, well, life is tough.

[Edward]

Hinnerk,

(Warning, I play Civ2, single player, deity; not TOT, multiplayer, king; so take these comments with a grain of salt.)

I'd like to try your no wonders challenge. My peaceful AC games seem to boil down to one wonder race after another.

I have two suggestions for a game without wonders:

1) Try an ICS approach. Wonders don't seem to be as vital when you go for early conquest.

2) It seems that happiness would be my biggest problem in a no wonder game. When multiplayers on this board lose races to happiness wonders, their solution is often Communism (a generally overlooked government in single player games). Communism is an advanced government that allows decent science research and also makes military units in cities twice as good at enforcing martial law.

Now that I reread your post, I see that my answer has no information on how to get wonders from the AI. Hopefully it's of some use anyway.

[Hinnerk]

Hi
thx for the ideas.

i agree, that the ai seems more likely to build ww if you do too - but would you really want to waste the resources in a multiplayer game?!

edward: my question was not only about acquiring wws, so you answer perfectly addressed - what is an ics approach though? i've read that abbreviaition here several times already, but don't know what it is. Is there an earlier thread where it is explained?

how high would i want to set the luxury rate to get people to celebrate? or do you think it is not worrth trying without any wonders?

ok, thx again!

[Crustacian]

No need to call out wizards over this matter Let them sleep.
Sure it is worth celibrating without any happy wonders!! Trade routes become more important this way, as well as markets, banks, stock markets. Your luxuries do not need to be up too high usually, but can be up to about 60% at worst. There is a limit to the effect of luxuries on happyness, but you will find it.
[This message has been edited by Crustacian (edited January 10, 2001).]

[La Fayette]

Hinnerk,
My advice:
Before starting playing your next game, switch to the first thread on this forum: "Apolyton's Great Library", started by SG. Page 2 in the middle there is a post sent by Father Beast, with a number of links (deep blue colour).
The first link in the list is Dave V's ICS Strategy.
Read it!
Then read ALL the others!
I bet you never play the same afterwards.

------------------
aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

[Edward]

Hinnerk,

As La Fayette mentioned, a wonderful description of ICS is given by DaveV. You can see his thread at:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001350.html

DaveV's first message on the above thread gives you everything you need to know. If you follow it faithfully you'll soon find yourself with more military units than you can shake a stick at.

Warning 1: If you're naturally a perfectionistic scientist you'll have to unlearn everything you know and do many things that turn your stomach. Trust the ICS system and it will work for you.

Warning 2: While there's little city micromanagement, shuffling all those units around each turn can get to be a pain (one reason I don't use ICS too often in my single player games. It's perhaps too effective.)

Warning 3: On a large map, you'll probably start conquering before you've settled all the available land. A little practice with ICS will tell you when to start your global assault.

Warning 4: As has been noted recently, once you get Hanging Gardens you should only put one defender in each city. Putting more in will (counterintuitively) make the cities more unhappy. The ever-marching hordes of attackers flowing from your cities will be your "defense".

Warning 5: Now that I think of it, in your game you won't have the Hanging Gardens since you'll have no wonders. Anyone here tried ICS without any happiness wonders? You're going to have a lot of small cities filled with very unhappy people. I'm not sure what the "no wonder" solution to this is before communism and fundamentalism. I guess I lied when I said that ICS didn't rely as much on wonders.

[DaveV]

No wonders ICS - been there, did that, bought the T shirt. The easiest way to handle it is to use elvis instead of HG to keep your cities happy. Cities on two-food squares will never grow, so I'll only build them in one of three places: on wine, for the trade, on buffalo for the shields, or if there's a whale I can't reach from a grass square. In the latter case, I will use a second settler to build the city to size 2 so it can use the whale. Most cities must be built on grass, where they will slowly grow to size 2 and produce a settler. Cities on wheat/oasis are the real settler factories, since they have a reasonable growth rate.

Your long-range goal is communism or fundamentalism, and then your happiness problems evaporate. Research is pretty slow; it can help a lot to create some of Xin Yu's 5-einstein cities. Other good sources of tech are goody huts and the AIs (your cities can produce a lot of diplomats when they're waiting to grow).

Using this scheme, you can play a normal ICS strategy. It's pretty slow going, but still better than the AI .