What is Xinning?

[Ben Kenobi]

Elephant:

Rhymes with "Sinning"?

Not a word that exists beyond Apolyton, in the real world.

I say it with a "z" for "zinning."

[SlowThinker]

Xinning and disorder

I am branching here from the ELG 2 thread and I see I must disagree.

Originally posted by Smash
Particularly useful in scenarios.

IMHO Xinninng (in cooperation with disorder) is an extremely strong technique in any kind of Civ2 game.

---

I will try to make a summary of things related to Xinning:

Xinning is based on the 'famine trick': if a city has at least 1 food in the food then famine will never occur, and there may be unlimited food missing. Famine comes only if there is a fully empty food box and hunger simultaneously.
So you can rotate turns with 1 food surplus and turns with 50 hunger.

OK, this was explained well by Smash. But don't forget the disorder:

City disorder is divided in two turns (see Managing cities: the order thread in GL #2 for details):
First turn of disorder (Disorder1 next) you see a red name of the city after you press F4. This turn the city lose only gold.
Second turn (Disorder2 next) the city has a green mark (BTW, what that icon means?) in place of city size. This turn the city loses only shield surplus (shield support works).

So you can synchronize Xinning and disorder:
City in Disorder1 must allocate 1 food but it needn't care about happiness, city in in Disorder2 it must keep citizens content but it needn't to produce any food.
In Disorder1 you lose gold: so you should set science to 80% in Republic or 100% in Demo, also you can try to use scientists in place of trade-producinq squares if they are not needed for food. In Disorder2 you lose shield: necessarily shield from city square (don't pre-mine hills if you want to use Xinning), but other shield-producing squares may be changed for taxmen or scientists. You have to use enough of taxmen and scientists so that your people is content: this way you can lose trade from trade routes (trade that would go from worked Ocean). From other side scientists don't suffer from corruption and a benefit from their work may be higher than from work on poor ground squares.

This way happiness improvements are needed for celebratings only, so that you keep the second half of citizens content (first half is happy). So you can live with 0% luxuries under Republic and Demo.

It is good to divide your cities in two groups: when one group is in Disorder1, another one is in Disorder2 and vice versa. This way you can have large cities although they overlap: cities in Disorder2 don't need ground squares for workers, they can use specialists only.

[atawa]

Interesting strategy

Would be imposible in MP though.

[:) Smiley]

The X Stack reminds me of the aircraft carrier surrounded by stacked bombers and aegis cruisers. Also another place the AI would throw lots of stealth fighters to die against.

[duke o' york]

On the subject of AI units throwing themselves against formidable opponents, has anyone ever done a Civ 2 variation of the Aztec Jaguar Warrior mass attack?
This wouldn't work with Leo's obviously, but going into fundy without gunpowder or feudalism and then creating massed hordes of either warriors or archers to throw themselves against the AI city walls. I know it'd take over a hundred probably and use all the allowed units in the game, but it'd be fun to see how many poor warriors it took to wear down the HP of a musketeer behind city walls.
Or will I just be wasting my time.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Elephant:



Not a word that exists beyond Apolyton, in the real world.

I say it with a "z" for "zinning."

Actually, Xinning is a fairly common Chinese female name. It's pronounced a bit like "Shinning". One of the graphic artists on our newspaper is named Xinning.

[-Jrabbit]

So how would the name Xin Yu be pronounced? (I always assumed it was "zin you"...)

[rah]

That's what I thought too. Maybe Ming will answer since he's actually met him.

[Mercator]

If it's using the "regular" (pinyin) Chinese romanization rules the x is pronounced like sh, and the q like ch... I think those are the only two unintuitive characters used for romanization.

So it would be "shin you".
The "z" pronunciation is what you would expect if it were an English word, I guess.

Not that I actually know any Chinese...

[-Jrabbit]

Interesting. Thanks.

Now -- I've heard names pronounced with a "zh" (like a voiced ""sh"). What spellings produce that sound??

(Sorry to wander further OT, but this has been bugging me. I used to do radio, and correct pronunciation is a bit of a thing with me.) Enlightenment sought. (Actually, a Web link would be better... )

Anyway, thanks, Alinestra and Mercator.

[Mercator]

Well, I think "zh" is spelled exactly like that... um... Like in Wuzhou (a Chinese city near Hong Kong) or Zhongdu (the name of Beijing during the early Mongol conquests)

As you can see, most of my "knowledge" of Chinese comes from my Atlas and history books.

... So I bet Allie can be more helpful than me and my buddy Google.

[Boco]

I work with a Zhong (sounds like 'Jong' coming from him) and a Xaio-Yu ('Shau You'), but I suspect my monolinguistic ears are missing a lot of subtlety.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Xin Yu is supposed to be pronounced like "Shin Yu".

The "Yu" sound does not rhyme with "You", either. It sounds a lot more like the French word "tu".

My British friends have a lot of difficulty pronouncing this, but my French friends have no problem.

"Zhong guo" is the Chinese name for China and the 'zh' sound you're thinking of is just that - zh. It's pronounced a bit like a guttural "j" sound.

More like "dzh" than a simple "j", actually.

[-Jrabbit]

Thanks, Alinestra. Thanks, Mercator.
Oh, and Boco, too.

[rah]

Well than I've been wrong for all these years, because I though it was pronounced as zin you.

Still waiting for MING to respond since he has met him in person.