Finding those peasky little cities....

[Kitana]

I'm becoming a better and better Civ player but there is one thing that I have a problem with. Finding those last remaining enemy cities. Once I find them they are toast but finding them is a bit of a problem. They are never stupid enough to share their maps with me. Does anybody have a good search pattern that works?



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Shogun of the Japanese
Kitana

[shamrock]

Why, the Apollo Program, of course!

[Aurelius]

Well, if your not at war with the AI and can afford to give away science, then gift the AI with science until you have a worshipful relationship and then ask to share maps--always works (enthusiastic relations sometimes work I think.) You might find some pesky cities this way.

[Smash]

You can use the find city thingy.Works for any city with a wonder in it.

On the left side of the city screen there is "supported units" box.By clicking on units in the field it will say: location-near xxxxxx.

other than that it is needle in haystack thing.

[Black Bart]

helicopters and fighters (depending on your year). But I'm usually up to flight when I conquer the last civ. I usually have so many ones from my wars I'll send them on suicide scouting missions. Helicopters can cover some good ground if you don't expect them to live.

[Empress]

No joke! especially if you are playing multiplayer with a player who doesn't share maps!

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Apolyton Empress
My first Web Page

[Scouse Gits]

I recently had a similar problem. I had a game with re-starting civs. The French were killed, but then the Germans appeared. As I had Marco Polo I thought it would be easy to cultivate them and share maps. Not so! They gobbled up all my gifts to become "Worshipful" but still wouldn't swap geography.

Depending upon the era of the game, the answer is a painstaking search of territory to find that last city. A boat with a few Explorers/Partisans/Alpine Troops is useful. If you have espionage, spies are very handy. If they are in a ship just activate one. They "see" an extra square of land. This way you can check out the smaller islands without any units wasting time on land visits.

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SG (2)

[DaveV]

I don't think the AI can exchange maps unless they have the Map Making tech. This can be a particular problem on restarts. If you have Marco Polo, you can determine whether they have Map Making; if not, keep giving them techs until that tech is one of your options.

[Hasdrubal]

Some tips:
-If Apollo hasn't been build yet, do check the map of your opponent with a spy before you take his second last city. ('Investigate city', click on 'map'). At least you'll know to which part of the world you can limit your search to.
-Give him plenty of units, and see where they pop up. He'll easily give away his position this way.
-Use paratroopers: don't actually drop them anywhere, but just check the places where you CAN'T drop them. Those places are either sea, or they are occupied by an enemy unit or city. A single paratrooper can in this way scout twenty x twenty squares instantly.
-Expanding on the last tip: build bogus cities in outerlying regions, just to serve as a base from where your paratrooper can do his job.
-If all else fails: nuke the entire planet!

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Ceterum censeo Romanem esse delendam.
[This message has been edited by Hasdrubal (edited May 31, 2000).]

[tobyr]

This is actually a deep philosophical question. What's at stake is whether you want to play the game fair to the hilt, or whether you want to get a life (or start another game.) Here's a good way to find those pesky cities:

Move the save file to another machine (preferably a laptop). Set that machine down right next to the one you are playing the game on. Load the file, cheat, reveal the whole map, and use the second machine as a reference while you move your troops to those other cities and mash them.

-toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Scouse Gits]

Dave V - yes, it makes sense that if they can't make maps - they cannot exchange them!
That thought never occurred to me. (Berlin was not coastal.)

In the game I mentioned above, I was eliminating the French as they were researching Metallurgy - I had the Wall. When the Germans re-started in their place, their first research goal was Metallurgy! Is it usual that the new civ takes on the exact research pattern of the old one?

Two more questions whilst on the subject:

1) What formula is used to give re-starting civs their allocation of techs?

2) Civs don't re-start after a specific date. Is it 1500?

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SG (2)

[War4ever]

i believe the answer to your first question is that the new civ starts with the same techs as its predecessor which is annoying in your case as the walls will come down. However more often than not, when the new civ reappears , its is destroyed quickly by myself or another rival, thus the spread of techs is not usually, rampant. Although we both know that once it has been stated at apolyton, that the exact opposite seems to happen

as for question two, my understanding was that it is 1500AD but it also needs to put the civ down in a spot where IMO it has a chance to make more than one city.... more often than not, i find the wandering nomads of restarted civs if it is later in the game whereas if one civ dies right away, the odds of me finding them on a large map remain slim

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Improvements and wonders are just big bullseyes for the conqueror.... and i like to think of myself as Robin Hood

[Carolus Rex]

I think Adam Smith mentioned in another thread that restarting civs keep half the techs the extinct civ had.

If so, maybe it is possible (but not likely) that Map Making isn't one of them? In that case maybe you could exchange techs with the French, but not the Germans?

Carolus

[Oldman]

I normally have to give up until Apollo, cause the damn AI never shares it's maps with me!?!? it keeps on mumbling about my Machiavellian ways!!!! i mean, so what if i just broke 2 alliances to side with the stronger Civs?!?!

You could always try pissing off the Ai soooooo much that he starts sending troups out to try and destroy you, and follow the trail back to their front door like a trail of bread crumbs!!!!!

[DaveV]

On the topic of techs for restarting civs: as I understand it, a restarting civ has a 50% chance of having any tech discovered by any civ (including you). So it's not a great idea to kill off civs if you have some nifty techs you don't want to share.