Distilled Civ Tips and Notes

[inca911]

OK, starting with the basics. Here are the various city improvements, their maintenance costs, and their functions.

Improvement(Maintenance Cost): Function

Airport(3): Allows one Airlift per turn to and from another Airport: City produces Vet Air Units: 1 turn repair for damaged units: Increases trade route potency

Aqueduct(2): Allows city to increase beyond size 8: Can sell it when city is maxed out in size

Bank(3): Tax/Luxury Output Increased 50% (*** with MarketPlace): Don't build if city has less than 6 coin output

Barracks(1): City produces Vet Ground Units: 1 turn repair for damaged units: These are made obsolete and must be rebuilt

Capitalization(0): Converts Production into Trade

Cathedral(3): Makes 4 unhappy citizens content (3 after Communism)

City Walls(0): 3x Defense for Ground Attacks

Coastal Fortress(1): 2x Defense vs. Shore Bombardments

Colosseum(4): Makes 3 unhappy citizens content (4 after Electronics)

Courthouse(1): Corruption decreased 50%. More bribery resistance. Under democracy, makes 1 content citizen happy

Factory(4): Resource Production Increased 50%

Granary(1): Only 50% decrease in food supply after a population increase

Harbor(1): All ocean squares produce 1 more food

Hydro Plant(4): Factory Output Increased 50%, cleaner than power plant, safer than nuclear plant

Library(1): Science Output Increased 50%

Manufacturing Plant(6): Factory Output Increased 50% (*** with Factory)

MarketPlace(1): Tax/Luxury Output Increased 50% (*** with Bank): Don't build if city has less than 2 coin output

Mass Transit(4): Eliminates population based pollution

Nuclear Plant(2): Factory Output Increased 50%, cleaner than power plant, same as hydro plant, but there is meltdown risk

Offshore Platform(3): All ocean squares produce 1 shield

Palace(0): Eliminate corruption and waste, reduces it in neighboring cities: Immune to bribery

Police Station(2): Decreases unhappiness from troops away from city by 1

Port Facility(3): City produces Vet Naval Units: 1 turn repair for damaged units

Power Plant(4): Factory Output Increased 50%: Wait for Hydro or Nuclear (if you can) to avoid pollution problems

Recycling Center(2): Decreases pollution caused by factories

Research Lab(3): Science Output Increased 50%

SAM Missle Battery(2): 2x defense vs. Air units and non-nuke missle units

SDI Defense(4): Nuke protection for everything 3 spaces from city

Sewer System(2): Allows city to increase beyond 12: Can sell when city is maxed out in size

Solar Plant(4): Factory Output Increased 50%, cleanest form of power

Stock Exchange(4): Tax/Luxury Output Increased 50%: Don't build if city has less than 8 coin output

Superhighways(5): All roads produce 50% more trade

Supermarket(3): Farmland squares produce 50% more food: Don't build unless you have farmland (double irrigated squares)

Temple(1): 2 unhappy citizens made content

University(3): Science Output Increased 50%

[inca911]

Hijacked? Absolutely not! This is exactly the type of information I'm looking to compile, and I look forward to your continued input! Thanks!

[My Wife Hates CIV]

supermarkets, just building the improvement gets you +1 food for the city.

[Sieve Too]

SETI and Research Labs work even without Libraries or Universities. You can't build Research Labs unless you have a University, though.

Supermarkets only provide +1 food to the city if the city square is on a terrain type that could benefit from farmland, i.e. grass, plains and hills.

Great Library only confers an advance on the turn when some other civ gets that advance (via research, trading, plunder, diplo, etc.) and if they are not the first civ to get the advance.

Leo's Shop works similar to GL. It will upgrade units on the turn it is built, but after that it will only upgrade units on turns when the owner acquires a new tech.

Factories only increase shield output by 50%. No other resources are affected.

CFC and HG turn one unhappy citizen to content if there are no content citizens.

Darwin grants the current tech being researched and then one additional tech.

[DaveV]

One point that would fall under "etc." in Sieve Too's GL description: if an eliminated civ is restarted, it has a chance of starting with any of the techs which have already been discovered (50% for every tech in Civ1, probably the same in Civ2). When this happens, the GL holder receives any of these starting techs he doesn't already have.

Also worth noting: CFC and HG will turn a very unhappy citizen to happy (not unhappy, nor even content!). This appears to work even if the very unhappy citizen is not the leftmost icon in the city happiness window.

[inca911]

Governments and Max Number of Cities

Here is another great bit of info I found hidden in a caravan discussion thread....

Depending on the difficulty level (Emperor, Deity, etc.) you are playing there is a number of cities you can build under each government type in which the first citizen is content. When you exceed this maximum city number, in any additional cities you found the first citizen begins unhappy (note that this unhappy citizen may appear in a different city than the one you just founded).

There has been a formula proposed for this phenomenon (although my experiments suggest that it is a bit off):

Max Cities = Riot Factor - (Difficulty Factor*2) + (INT ( Government Factor/2) *2)

Where Riot Factor = 14
Difficulty Factor = 0 to 5 (0 for Chieftain, 4 for Emperor, 5 for Deity, etc.)
Government Factor = 0 to 6 (Anarchy=0, Despotism=1, Monarchy=2, Communism=3, Fundamentalism=4, Republic=5, Democracy=6)

To prove/disprove this, I started a Deity game, and toggeled on the cheat mode. I created a bunch of settlers, and founded cities one at a time, forcing all governments and checking the attitude advisor before building another city (note that the attitude advisor is not always accurately updated, so you must go into each city to verify happiness). Here is a matrix of my Deity level results, with the # of happy cities per government type based on total number of cities:

# Cities Anarchy Despotism Monarchy Communism Fundy Republic Democracy
1_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
2_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
3_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
4_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
5________4__________4___________All__________All__ _______All_______All_________All
6________4__________3___________All__________All__ _______All_______All_________All
7________2__________2____________6__________All___ ______All_______All_________All
8________0__________0____________6__________All___ ______All_______All_________All
9________0__________0____________6__________All___ ______All________8__________All
10_______0__________0____________4__________All___ ______All________8__________All
11_______0__________0____________2__________All___ ______All________8__________10
12_______0__________0____________0__________All___ ______All________8__________10
13_______0__________0____________0__________All___ ______All________8__________10
14_______0__________0____________0__________All___ ______All________8__________10


(I can't get the table to post correctly, but you should be able to decipher it!)

So the actual test results show that the formula does not predict the behavior of Communism very well, which makes sense since Communism is good for sprawling empires with large numbers of cities, but I do not have a proposed correction. Most importantly, note the non-linear unhappiness effect of additional city building! Build 7 cities in Monarchy and only one is unhappy, build 10 and now 6 are unhappy! The determination of a all-encompassing formula is not necessary, understanding the guiding force behind number of cities and happiness is! I hope this helps!

[This message has been edited by inca911 (edited January 12, 2000).]

[DaveV]

inca - try using underscores instead of spaces/tabs to separate your columns - they'll line up a lot better. Also, you can cut out all of the old "this message has been edited" strings to remove the funky HTML at the end of your post.

Nice experiment. It would be even better if you kept track of cities whose first citizen is content (blue shirt/hat), unhappy (red shirt/hat), or very unhappy (black shirt/hat), and extended it beyond 20 cities. Notice how easy it is to volunteer someone else to do the grunt work?

[inca911]

Thanks Dave! Those are good tips! At first, I did have lofty goals for my experiment, but once I realized the attitude advisor isn't always up-to-date, and also did not differentiate very unhappy from unhappy citizens, I gave up. I also did not look into what happens with size 2 cities, only size 1 cities. I was most surprised by the non-linearity even in Monarchy. Build too fast and your empire crumbles even faster!

[Genghis Al]

You are doing great work inca, keep it up!

[inca911]

Manipulation of Special Terrain Squares

You can terraform these special terrain squares into different special terrains as follows:

Buffalo: Mine to Pheasant
Coal: Transform to Buffalo
Fruit: Transform to Wheat
Furs: Transform to Oil(in Desert)
Pheasant: Irrigate to Buffalo
Musk Ox: Transform to Oasis
Gems: Mine to Pheasant, Transform to Buffalo
Gold: Transform to Coal
Iron: Transform to Wine--very useful!
Ivory: Transform to Musk Ox
Oasis: Transform to Buffalo
Oil(in Desert): Transform to Wheat
Oil(in Glacier): Transform to Furs
Peat: Mine to Pheasant, Transform to Buffalo
Silk: Irrigate to Wheat
Spice: Tranform to Wheat
Wheat: Mine to Silk--very useful!
Wine: Transform to Wheat

Note that you can also terraform a special into a non-special terrain, but the "potential" of the square remains the same, which means you can then terraform it again and create a special. There is a distribution pattern to the placement of special resources, so once you see the pattern, you can find grassland squares that will change into special terrains upon terraforming.

[poppawoppa]

Great info. You should also look at the post AI personalities started by Ghengis Al...it has a great treatment of the aggressive, perfectionist, militaristic, etc characteristics of the Civ tribes, which I think would go very well in your analysis. Good work.

[Sten Sture]

Another way to look at the specials is:

X->Plains__Forest___Hills__Mtn___Swamp_Jungle_Tundra _Glacier_Desert

A->Buffalo_Pheasant_Coal_Gold__Peat____Gems___MuskOx _Ivory_Oasis
B->Wheat_Silk_____Wine___Iron__Spice___Fruit___Oil(g )___Furs__Oil(d)

Also, in many of the cases noted above simply irrigating would suffice, transformation in not necessary. Swamp, and Jungle become grassland when irrigated which turns into Woods when mined, which becomes plains when irrigated. You cannot go back to a mountain, swamp, or jungle so if you are changing one of those specials, make sure you are not going to want it back.
[This message has been edited by Sten Sture (edited January 13, 2000).]

[Kuma no Tsume]

(Lost my orignal copy once, so I have two versions of CivII)
In one of them there is a poster with all the things to know about the tech-tree, terrain and units.
Don't you have it?

[inca911]

Yes I do have the poster, but I am posting info here so others can benefit. It's easy to just look at the tech tree at the top of the poster and miss the information about manipulation of terrain specials. Thanks for double-checking!

[Sten Sture]

Bump

Per current question, and to revive a great idea.