Using 'Zoom to Home City' to adjust production

[samson]

I don't know if this trick is well known or not, but having recently discovered it, I thought I'd share.

In the City Display, if you click on a unit supported from another city you are given the option to Zoom to its home city in the display. This feature also works during the city processing phase at the beginning of a new turn. If you Zoom into the display of a city which has just built something, you can zoom from there to another city (via a supported unit) which has not yet been processed that turn and alter its production orders.

Why is this useful? To take advantage of newly discovered technology. In a recent game, I completed research on Automobile by delivering a couple of freights, ensuring this tech would be acquired after my first city contributed its science. I sent a supported unit from my SSC into my second most recently established city and rushbuilt something there. On the next turn, I zoomed into the second city, followed the link to my SSC, changed its production orders to Superhighways, then rushed it. This allowed me to build the SH in my SSC on the same turn I discovered Automobile. The extra science in the SSC from highways gave me a second tech that same turn. I did this again with Computers and Research Lab.

By using defense units supported by other cities, it's possible to set up a chain of links running through all cities and upgrade production orders in any city. I'd be interested in knowing if others have used this technique and for what purpose.

[debeest]

Ooooooooohh. Neat trick. A subtle detail, in the overall scale of the game, but just the sort of detail that makes a champion player a champion player. Nice catch, Samson.

[Scouse Gits]

VERY nice catch!

SG[1]

[JCP]

Nice ... and subtle !
But the link of defense units sytematicly from another city hurts my logic : It's a late influence of Civ I, where each unit out of his home city (even in another city) produces unhappiness !

[solo]

Very nice ploy, samson!

I heard that there was a similar tactic that only worked in MGE. It allowed a city to build an extra copy of the unit it was currently ready to produce.

With new things to find out about it even now, Civ II continues to impress me as the deepest and the best, and I've been looking into a lot of other games that are out there.

[samson]

Hey, solo! good to see you again. I agree with you about Civ2, it has real legs.

You might be interested to hear that I used this technique in an early-landing game I'm just finishing up, to crack the 20AD launch barrier. As you know, you can't build spaceship parts until 1 AD even if Apollo is already built, which made 20AD the earliest you could complete them. But in this game I used a chain of dilpomats linked through 25 cities to switch 24 of them from Wonders to SS parts and launched a 15-3-3-1-1-1 ship in 1 AD, now due to arrive at AC in 16 AD. Yeehaa!

SG, debeest, thanks. I agree it's not a trick to be used often, couple times a game perhaps, but it is cute.

JCP, the units can be anything, diplos, freights, whatever, they don't need to be military.

[solo]

samson,

Congrats on 16 AD! Very good to see you again, too!

Too bad that spaceship parts are not available during BC years, since the early landing games were among the most challenging and enjoyable. We need another stimulating challenge like that.

After becoming a bit discouraged with Civ III, I've been trying many other games. What about yourself? Tried anything else, or are you just sticking with Civ II?

[Scouse Gits]

Hi samson! ... smart thinking A nice wrinkle. Please post the save of your 16AD landing.

Hi solo! Good to have you back in (real) civilization!

With you two in town we might try a for an early landing succession game

---------------------

SG(2)

[Marquis de Sodaq]

16 ad

We are in awe!

Fantastic trick, tho I imagine a full conquest game would lead to a blistered mouse clicking finger...

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

A similar trick was advocated by Julius Brenzaida in one of the succession games to alleviate the 'too many units' limit problem. Put all the obsolete units in a city near the bottom of the city list and arrange to rushbuy a useless improvement in that city. When the next turn comes up, the city window opens after the improvement is built, and you disband the obsolete units - your other cities can then fill the unit slots with modern units without the AI civs having the chance to bring the total number of units up to the 'too many units' point again. Result is the same number of units.. but better ones.

Pretty esoteric I know, but a similar concept. I hadn't thought about the 'zoom to home city approach' - that could work even better, albeit it would be a lot of work with multiple build orders! Good thinking to come up with that one, samson.

[Scouse Gits]

16 A.D.

Wow! We are not worthy!

SG[1]

[samson]

Solo - I bought Civ3 too, and was disappointed also. I like some of the concepts, but ...

Yeah, those early-landing games were fun. It was all the learning and discoveries that made it so for me. Right now, I'm trying to figure out what triggers the appearance of new supply commodities in cities, which is crucial to a strategy based on continuous trade without relying on rehoming freights. In my 16 AD game, I was able to keep my SSC in a state where it always had at least one supply commodity available to build thoughtout the game and managed things without rehoming. I think one of the triggers for commodity refreshment is the number of techs you have. It seems that for every 10th acquired tech you can get a new commodity after delivering a freight. So by timing freight deliveries to coincide with those discoveries you can refresh your supply.

SG(2) - thanks. Did you want a save from the end-game or the start?

SG(1), Marquis, -- thanks.

STYOM - Another way to exploit the Zoom thing... You could have your bottom-list city built a temple or something cheap and then continue to build it. This gets you into that city every turn when the illegal build message pops up. You can then Zoom to any city needing attention on any given turn. For example, someplace where barbs have appeared or another civ threatens, you zoom in and build the latest military unit and attack them on the same turn.

[Ming]

samson... great find! I hadn't heard that one yet. I will have to add it to my list.

And a real brilliant use for it. 16 AD... good job!

[solo]

Samson,

I think the number of techs acquired is one likely trigger for refreshing commodities, but there were also some anomalies, such as situations where a city would keep producing certain commodities repeatedly, the best example being hides. In one OCC game I had this happen, and was able to zoom through the tech tree by making so many SSC deliveries of hides (maybe 30 or so!).

I remember that Xin Yu did some research about the subject of refrshing commodities, too. If I recall correctly, (which I am afraid is doubtful), if the SSC built a food caravan and delivered it to another city, commodities were refreshed. It may also be that it had to receive the food instead of delivering it. In any event, he did a lot of testing of this phenomena, so it might be worth trying to find the relevant thread.

One thing to consider is that rather than the number of techs being a trigger, it may just be the aquisition of particluar ones that shut off commodity supplies, much in the way that the pair of Invention and Navigation cut payoff amounts.

If my memory serves me correctly, I recall significant differences in the number and variety of commodities initially available from a city before the only choice left was food. One city (and usually it was my SSC!) would only yield the initial 3 or 4 commodities while others were good for many more, during the same time span of the same game. I also believe that the order in which commodity caravans are built may be another factor in the equation.

As for Civ III, there were some nifty new features, but most of what was done seemed to be aimed against the many exploits we had so much fun with in Civ II, with ICS and OCC being a prime examples. Lack of detail and depth was discouraging, too.

SG,

Thanks for the welcome back! I am still involved learning the in and outs of Europa Universalis II, which so far is much to my liking.

Prior to that I spent quite a bit of time on SimGolf, even though I am not a golfer and not much of a fan of the real game. I tried it on a whim, and ended up really enjoying the process of designing highly rated courses. Since they named the hardest difficulty level "Impossible", I'm afraid I used up too much of my spare time proving them wrong!

Other than that I'm looking forward to Rise of Nations, which should come out next Spring.

solo

[La Fayette]

samson is back, with 16AD in his pocket and solo on his heels. Halleluyah!