Various Questions

[aschatz]

Bear with me here, some of these are strategy questions and some help questions so I just threw it all here.

1) There doesn't seem to be a way to "population boom" with a WLTKD the way there was in Civ 1 and 2 (and SMAC). True?

2) Sometimes after defeating a population 1 city, the city disappears. Other times I am given the choice of taking it or razing it. What determines this?

3) Is there any way to decide what you are trying to bomb with your aircraft? I haven't played a game with the Americans yet so I don't know what precision bombing does, but can anyone else do this? Can the Americans?

4) How is the game scored? Is your score any different based on whether you win cultural, diplomatic, domination, or space victory?

5) Is it better for your score to be bigger (in population size) or to win sooner?

6) When your population is counted at the end of the game, do workers count as population points? If not, should you merge workers into smaller cities before winning the game to get a better score?

7) On a related note, there has been a lot of discussion about keeping large empires, which increase corrpution to an almost absurd degree. Is this still a good idea in relation to final score, even with the corruption problems?

8) What is the threshold after which new cities become completely corrupt (i.e. only 1 shield and 1 trade)? What is the threshold after which other cities see a corruption hit because your empire is so big?

9) Does it ever make sense to use comminism in larger empires, rather than democracy, because corruption is spread out, even in peacetime? Or does the extra trade in democracy make this silly?

10) Is there any point to building a railroad on a forest? If not, why does the AI always do it, and make my automated workers do it?

11) Is it usually better to raze the forst, get the 10 shields, and then just throw irrigation or mine on the grassland/plains that result?

12) Man, there are so few rivers in this game. Irrigation is really hard. If the only river on my continent is on the south side of a mountain/hill range, is there any way to irrigate the north side? Or can irrigation not cross hills, ever? What if I have a city on the one hill tile that separates the non-hill parts of the continent? It irrigates through the city, yes?

13) When you build a city on a resource, do you still get the extra resource points? If not, does it ever make sense to build a city on a resource rather than next to one? Especially if it is something like game that is neither stategic nor luxury.

14) Given that all cities get the same food/shields, doesn't it make sense to always build them on hills, deserts, and forests?

15) Is there any way to unload from an army?

Finally, 16) Despite building ridiculous amounts of culture, twice I have found that small cities will defect to smaller neighboring empires that are "in awe" of my culture. What the heck?

Thanks for help.

Aaron

[Sze]

I'll answer a few of these; the others I don't know. I haven't played in a month so I may be off. The questions about score aren't particularly important because the AI doesn't play to maximize it's score, so neither should you. It's a half-decent benchmark as you play so you can compare your progress vs. the other civs, but it's otherwise useless.

2) It came up on these forums before. I think that size 1 cities that haven't undergone their first cultural expansion are destoyed and those that have are treated like larger cities.

3) Never got that far. The space race ends before I got to precision bombing.

8) The max number of cities is the larger penalty I believe and you can see what the threshhold's are in the editor. I think it's 12(?) cities on a standard map, 16(?) on large, etc... There's a thread in here somewhere that discusses this. I've had cities 12 spaces away in a democracy with a courthouse see absolute corruption.

9) Corruption is usually worse for corruption in a large empire, because it drags down the few 'good' cities you have. People play in Comm. solely to get the pop-rush ability.

10) The AI is stupid. The AI builds railroads on mt squares that aren't within the boundaries of any of its cities.

11) I usually keep a few forest squares around. Not for any real reason, but I like to pretend I'm actually running a civiliation and not playing a game that practically forces you to do unnatural things. They're sort of useful early in the game.

12) The irrigation is one of the few changes I can get behind. Wait for electricity; lets you irrigate anywhere. It's far worse to not have access to iron or coal.

14) I was wondering that myself. If you get the defensive bonus, I can't see why you wouldn't always build on a hill, mt, or forest.

15) No. You'll find several discussions here about how useless armies are.

16) Culture, like everything else in the game, was a good idea that has major flaws. Cultural switching has a lot to do with relative distances to the capital cities of the two nations. So distant cities that are close to enemy capitals are prone to reversion. The fact that this happens in war is the deal-breaker. It's a crime that you are pretty much forced to rae every city you defeat because it will a) make your civ more corrupt and b) revert back to the nation you just took it from anyway in a few turns.
If your small city has no (or little) culture of its own, that hurts as well. I always build a temple first. Cities are much safer after they get to culture level 2.

[Prince]

Re: Various Questions

Originally posted by aschatz
1) There doesn't seem to be a way to "population boom" with a WLTKD the way there was in Civ 1 and 2 (and SMAC). True?
I dunno, but even without that cities in Civ III can grow *really* fast if you want

2) Sometimes after defeating a population 1 city, the city disappears. Other times I am given the choice of taking it or razing it. What determines this?
When a size 1 city hasn't increased it's culture much yet, it is destroyed I think.

3) Is there any way to decide what you are trying to bomb with your aircraft? I haven't played a game with the Americans yet so I don't know what precision bombing does, but can anyone else do this? Can the Americans?
Ehrm... don't know sorry

4) How is the game scored? Is your score any different based on whether you win cultural, diplomatic, domination, or space victory?
In the histograph you see how score is determined. It's the average of all turns you've played so far, so to have a high score you need to be good in the beginning and afterwards, and not just get powerful near the end of the game. I don't think the final score is any further influenced by your means of winning.

5) Is it better for your score to be bigger (in population size) or to win sooner?
This depends, because if you can be the best of the game all the game long then it's better to have a higher population because that adds to your score every turn, and since you're good all along, it's only better. But if you're not sure if you can be the best all game long you migth want to win sooner so the parts where you were best have a greater influence on your score. Kinda complicated

[b]6) When your population is counted at the end of the game, do workers count as population points? If not, should you merge workers into smaller cities before winning the game to get a better score?[b]
Ehm, I'm not sure about this, but something tells me they count.

7) On a related note, there has been a lot of discussion about keeping large empires, which increase corrpution to an almost absurd degree. Is this still a good idea in relation to final score, even with the corruption problems?
Ehm, don't know. I don't think corruption affects end game score?

8) What is the threshold after which new cities become completely corrupt (i.e. only 1 shield and 1 trade)? What is the threshold after which other cities see a corruption hit because your empire is so big?
Well see I don't know very much about this game

9) Does it ever make sense to use comminism in larger empires, rather than democracy, because corruption is spread out, even in peacetime? Or does the extra trade in democracy make this silly?
I think the spreading out of corruption can be very useful in larger empires that aren't as fast in expanding as they used to be. After a while your cities will only be producing wealth anyways if you are at peace with the others so they can take a share of the corruption the small cities certainly *don't* need

10) Is there any point to building a railroad on a forest? If not, why does the AI always do it, and make my automated workers do it?
The only point to railroading forest is the movement point that the tile won't cost you

11) Is it usually better to raze the forst, get the 10 shields, and then just throw irrigation or mine on the grassland/plains that result?
Yeah you could better do that but only if your workers have nothing better to do, of course

12) Man, there are so few rivers in this game. Irrigation is really hard. If the only river on my continent is on the south side of a mountain/hill range, is there any way to irrigate the north side? Or can irrigation not cross hills, ever? What if I have a city on the one hill tile that separates the non-hill parts of the continent? It irrigates through the city, yes?
I think it does irrigrate through the city if it's on a hill, yes. But when you research Electronics (yes, that takes a while ) you can irrigrate anywhere.

13) When you build a city on a resource, do you still get the extra resource points? If not, does it ever make sense to build a city on a resource rather than next to one? Especially if it is something like game that is neither stategic nor luxury.
I think it will still get the extra points, yes.

14) Given that all cities get the same food/shields, doesn't it make sense to always build them on hills, deserts, and forests?
Do all cities get the same food/shields, then? But there's nothing wrong with building cities on hills & forests, I think desert is less comfortable but not chanceless either.

15) Is there any way to unload from an army?
Dunno

Finally, 16) Despite building ridiculous amounts of culture, twice I have found that small cities will defect to smaller neighboring empires that are "in awe" of my culture. What the heck?
Ehm... yeah, what the heck.. that's what I would say when that happens

[Libertarian]

Have you consulted the prodigious technical documentation on the official Civ3 website?