Yin has Civ3!: Let the testing begin ...

[yang27]

thnx for the posts, yin

what ever happened to korn's thread (or promised review); can't seem to find it anywhere.

[yin26]

Yes, I freely admit I am enjoying myself!

"yang27"! LOL! Well, let's not rush Korn, the genius analyzer. He'll have one up today or very soon, I'm sure.

Started second game. This time will a little thing I call "counter spreading": Take a look a the screen. I built TOWARD my neighbor (after agressively scouting from turn 1) and now have him hemmed in! I am totally free now to expand backwards into a totally open landmass!

But who is my neighbor once again? India. Hmm, not sure I like this forced pairing (I'm China again but renamed all cities to Korean):

[cassembler]

Playing Babylonians in my second game, on regent level, and even with a crappy starting possition, the bowmen (2/2 beef) made a huge dent in my favor. ASAP I cranked em out, beat up the little AI warriors, took a couple of cities, triggered a golden age, built more. They're tough little boogers until pikemen, and by then they're still decent defenders. So now I have land.

My plan: use the religious aspect of the Babs to crank out culture over a spread of small cities. Then, utilize the scientific aspect...
He he he. Screw it, compared to other games I've played lately, I give Civ3 a 10/10



what difficulty level was it that you were playin' on Yin?

I seem to recall emperor?

[yin26]

Wow, those bowman sound like a good early game boost. Keep me posted. The previous game and the current one are both on Regent. I feel *much* better about this one, though, because I learned my lesson about slow starts and leaving land for the AI early. I'm still having occasionaly problems timing my settlers. Something the AI seems to have down perfectly.

By the way, now that I know a bit better what is going on in the early game, I'm not as convinced as I was before that the AI is cheating ... it just seems highly optimized for settler pops in the early game, which in turn give him a great econ base and unit base with which to start cranking out units. Maybe?

[Jeje2]

Yin: Why are you building your cities so close to each other??
(Notised same in previous game too)

P.S. Has your jobdescription changed to Civ3-tester or did you phone work complaining a high fever this morning?

[yin26]

There is only a little overlap between them. In this case, I had to choose a good foundation spot to maximize the first square ... otherwise I would have liked to spread out a bit more. Those 3 cities you see there are actually a 'culture wall' against India. The cities I will found in the other direction will be more spaced out. Good question, though. Maybe it's also part of my old ICS habit?

[yin26]

Actually, I *did* take this morning off! Now I'm back at the office.

[kittenOFchaos]

Yin?

Can ships defend cities a la civ1 and civ2...and if so what penalty is there for doing so?

Plus did you get precision bombing to work? Apparently there are issues with that (I think one person in civfanatics has got it working).

Thanks.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Grunthex


I won't speak for intuitive, since I had to look pretty hard for it, but if you haven't figured it out - Open diplomacy, propose a deal, click 'Active' at the bottom, and click on the deal you want to cancel... it will propose it as a new deal, and just click never mind.

Any deal with a (Number) beside it is not cancellable for that many more turns (without declaring war)

I wish there was a diplomacy summary screen (textual) showing my relations/treaties with all (up to 15) civs, and what trades I have with them.

So thats where they hid it. The manual gets a big

[yin26]

kittenOFchaos: Not sure ... on either question. I never really got far enough with naval combat because I didn't think I'd need it. Wrong! And I never tried precision bombing because I was trying simply to stay in the game for the entire last half by keeping people happy with me.

However, I look forward to testing those two things in Game 2.

[yin26]

O.K. Here is India's answer, which has some problems:

[yin26]

Some problems with this AI 'expand at all costs': When it's done against a player who is not used to it or who does not immediately pin in the AI (or if the AI has a good amount of land to his back), it sets up a great early game for the AI. However, India has a popluation of 23 while I have 34! And it gets worse for India:

By being determined to send off his settlers into my terroritory, he has sacrificed building culture along his main line of cities. Thus, I have already swallowed up one of his primaries by cultural assimilation! What's worse, is those little 1 and 2 pop cities far from his capital stand no chance against my culture creep ... or attacks should it come to that. He also built a city entirely on tundra just for the sake of expansion.

I've also noticed this time that since India is hurting relative to me, he is far too forgiving on trades! I got iron working for my territory map, for instance!

[Jeje2]

How did his settlers get past you in the first palce?
(Did you have an "right of passage" agreement or??)

[yin26]

Well, that's one of the REALLY frustrating things: "Oh, sure. Sorry. We'll remove them" -- on the FAR side of your civ, that is! I think the AI looks into your territory and if it isn't several squares deep, it feels it can cut across you.

[Akaoz]

I must admit those ‘soft borders’ are annoying the hell out of me. I’m pretty sure the movement of a Russian armored division into Western-Germany would have triggered a war...

-Alech