Stubborness DOES NOT Pay.

[Cookie Monster]

1.17f...................................A patch that has caused a lot of peacefull builders to become warmongers. And to think that Firaxis way back last year advertised that Civ3 would concentrate less on war and more on peaceful building. Culture shmulture.................


I can even remember reading in PC-Gamer (the magazine) an interview with Sid Meier himself. He talked rather jovially about how Civ3 would be a nice game that wasn't 100% about war.

1.17f......................................


Then came the day that Civ3 was released to the public. We essentially became unwitting beta testers. The game was patched several times. Each patch, instead of just fixing problems, added other "goodies" which frustrated many players even more.

1.17f..................................

Then 1.17f came along. Now no matter what you do, you end up as someone's lunch or you go on a war rampage. You give into the AI's demands. You try to build up your army so they won't pick on you. Oh but wait, neglect culture and they hate you anyway. You could be number 5 out of 8 but the AI will gang up on you and kill you kill you kill you and keep on killing you until you are dead. What the *&(^ kind of game is this. Sid said last year that one of the cool things about Civ3 will be that it concentrates less on war and more on building. What a joke. What a betrayel. Yet I keep playing this game over and over again, hopeing that with the good advice I've received from fellow Polytoners that my game would be less warlike. What another joke.

WAR IN CIV3 IS REWARDED HANDSOMELY. PEACEFULL BUILDING IN CIV3 IS REWARDED BY DEATH.

1.18 BETTER FIX THIS PROBLEM.

[PerpetualNewbie]

I have been trying really hard to come up with a way of making the builder aspect more viable. Other than ludicrous bonuses for defenders, and changing pillaging to a multi-turn action (or even make pillaging chance-based, like bombardment), you can much more effectively damage his economy than you can improve yours.

Pillaging is ludicrously powerful. It takes, what, 39 worker-turns to change a jungle tile into a mined tile with a road. It takes 1 turn with a warrior to destroy the improvements. Both units cost the same amount to build, except the worker took a pop point! If he didn't cost a pop point, it would help the builder strategy, but I doubt it would help enough. The cheapest road is still 3 turns, and can be destroyed in two, one if you use a fast unit.

OTOH, if you slow down the pillaging rate, that eliminates the lightning raids, and puts the AI at a significant disadvantage, even though he doesn't often pillage. Players will still move in a stack of units, and have a half-dozen pillage while the rest stand guard, just like players do now with artillery.

Speeding up the rate of worker improvements helps some, but will reduce both the number of workers needed as well as the time spent improving land close to the border, where they are vulnerable.

I am still batting around Zone of Control over the entire 21-tile radius, but am inclined to think that will just make for bigger stacks, and not really affect the early, more effective wars.

And we haven't yet mentioned the problems great leaders present to a builder. Cleo is building Sistene? I better go to war with Bismark so I can get a leader and finish it first...

Of course, all these and any other fixes I can think of are major changes, not patch level stuff. And even if you were to put them into effect, I don't think they would have the intended effect of decreasing the effectiveness of combat, especially early combat. Guess that's why I'm not a designer. I can't come up with a good way to devalue combat within the confines of the current game engine...

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by PerpetualNewbie
Pillaging is ludicrously powerful. It takes, what, 39 worker-turns to change a jungle tile into a mined tile with a road. It takes 1 turn with a warrior to destroy the improvements.

It is easier to destroy than to build.

[PerpetualNewbie]

Oh, you want realism? Go ahead. Destroy my irrigation ditch. I dare you. *splash* *splash* *splash*. Ya gotta get the dirt from somewhere... Or how about training that first Warrior? Seems to me it takes 5 turns with a decent start, which would be 250 years, IIRC. Lot of damage that old geezer can do. No wonder he only has a 1 move. Shouldn't be that much. And he might live for several thousand years. Anyone who has ever ridden Amtrak knows that you can't go from any point on the map to any other point on the map and arrive there fresh as a daisy. Not to mention the sheer lunacy of having to face Montezuma's Modern Armor (didn't the Aztecs get pasted centuries ago?)

Actually, I was more thinking from a gameplay standpoint. Of course it takes much longer to build a house of cards than it takes to knock it down, but if you don't skew it somehow, it doesn't make for much of a fun game. For the builder, anyway.

The play's the thing, right?

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by PerpetualNewbie
Oh, you want realism? Go ahead. Destroy my irrigation ditch. I dare you. *splash* *splash* *splash*. . .
The play's the thing, right?

Right (wiping the water from my face).

[Ethelred]

So how come I can be mostly a builder and win on Emperor?

I am not saying there are no wars. I just make sure I win them.

Get MPPs. Remember your roads are your friends. Use cannons and later use the master defender weapon Artillery. Protect you choke points.

Block the wandering settlers don't tell them to get out.

Plant settlers right next the silly cities the AI builds and get two for the price of one.

It takes 24 turns with slow workers to remove jungle and one pillageing does NOT make the jungle regrow. By the time you have railroads you are near to replaceable parts and with that even slow workers build roads in one turn under democracy. Industrious workers can max out a square in three turns.

One for road
One for the mine
Oner for railroad

On to the next tile.

Yeah it take longer for hills and mountains. So how did they get there? You should have had defensive units with cannons or artillery on those tiles blasting away at them.

If you have railroads why the heck are you allowing them to pillage anyway. Blow them away with artillery.

The key is to have friends. Get MPPs and don't waste them by attacking first.

Oh and don't forget to take some of the enemy territory later. You may need more cities to win the game. Like I said, MOSTLY builder.

Pacifists go extinct in the real world too.

It might even work in multiplayer. Two warmongers aren't going to trust each other but the builders can trust each other to some extent. Just don't be the only builder in a game full of mad dogs.

[PerpetualNewbie]

Good points, all, Ethelred. And though I only play Monarch, it sounds like our games play pretty similarly. I am more leary of MPPs though. My "allies" tend to attack about the time I need to build wonders, and I run into war weariness in a handful of turns, even though I never leave Republic...

However, remember that I was really only talking about early wars. Destroying a mine in an ancient era is going to take a fair amount of time to rebuild. You don't have the luxury of faster workers via Replaceable Parts or Democracy. You get the base rate.

Seriously, in my last game, I could only found 5 cities before I was out of space. Well, not quite, as I founded an additional 2 in the middle of a desert, mostly to keep the AI from trying to walk through me to found a city for what turned out to be the resources that appeared there. Only one of "my" cities had double digit production by the end of the ancient age. Had it not been for the early wars, and the pillaging of the enemy tiles, there is no way I could have been a contender. I just flat out did not have enough cities. But after gaining a few AI cities, on some prime real estate, I was set for life.

Yes, you can build. I am only at monarch, but by the end of the ancient age, there are very seldom any civs who are not at least impressed by my culture. But without the strategic territory wars and the hit-n-miss great leader they almost always spawn, my game would probably be over pretty quickly.

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by Ethelred
So how come I can be mostly a builder and win on Emperor?

You could probably win faster if you were in more wars... just my opinion. Something you may want to try.

Two warmongers aren't going to trust each other but the builders can trust each other to some extent.

No one knows how someone will play until they play. So if you saw me as a builder last time, how do you know I won't be 1/2 a builder this time & 1/2 a warmonger? And couldn't I be a warmonger who kept his word & you could trust OR a builder who you couldn't trust?

[Ethelred]

You could probably win faster if you were in more wars... just my opinion.

I like winning by Space Race. I don't think I manage a lot faster at that. A little. So far my second game on Emperor was my fastest. 1748. I just finished my third emperor game yesterday and that ended just before 1800.

I lost the first game on Emperor.

Now if I wanted to go mad dog warmonger I certainly would have a chance to win sooner. The one I won yesterday I might have been able to make a push with tanks to win 100 years sooner by domination.

In fact I planned to do that but I kept finding reasons to wait a bit longer. Finally I noticed the Americans had two parts of their Space Ship built and two more on the way. I decided I had better start mine and see if I could get Lincoln to declare war. I prefer not to start wars. That helps with war weariness.

The fink wouldn't start the war. I spyed and deliberatly failed and then planted another spy, multiple times. I told him to get out of my territory, multiple times. He left, he fumed, he was furious. He knew his two Modern armour, 40 infantry and 12 mechanized infantry weren't going to last against my 53 modern armour and 50 plus mechanized infantry.

Yeah and that was as a builder. I out built, and out researched America on the Space Ship despite haveing started on it second. Of course if he had attacked like I wanted I would have landed a prepositioned force of 16 modern armour and 8 artillery four tiles from Washington. The rest my of units would have punched out of city he lost to me when he still he could beat me militarily in the Industrial Age.

Tech goes fast on Emperor with 1.17f.

I didn't have any need for a early war in that game because I had a ridiculous amount of territory that I was able to block off. My second game on Emperor I managed to get half the territory on my continent and that worked out to ten cities. Thats enough to win I suppose but I did take the other half of the continent later. Greece had extorted me for iron early so they were on my LIST. When my oil depleted and new oil showed up just four tiles away in Greek territory it was time to go to war.

I will go to war early if I have to but it holds back my development so if I can get enough cities for the Forbiden Palace to be enabled I find thats enough till later.