Invasions: stage or all at once?

[Jaybe]

Planetfall,
If you fail to plant a spy, feel free to try again (funds permitting). I THINK you can try it even if you are at war. Better odds if you are communist.

Cracker's objecting to forming Panzer armies was with your SuperPanzers. Creating a few with normal Panzers may be okay for those special targets such as metropolis with entrenched Mech Infantry, or even Infantry (defends at about 25-30). I like to have the army shells available, then load them up near the front as needed for greatest flexibility (you don't have to be in a city to load). Try them in small numbers to see what works.

[cracker]

The issue with the automated workers is not game lag time, it is productivity and efficient management.

The automated workers follow a canned strategy of irrigation, mining, and roading without regards for what you may be doing in the big picture. You will often get the standard X shaped layout of mines with irrigation interspersed even if the city is grassland and should be almost 100% mined.

Some of this involves optimizing a city for what it should be doing. A city that builds Mech Infantry needs to produce a net yield of 110 shields in one turn to build a MI in one turn. 55 shields for 2 turns, 34 shields for 3 turns, 30 shields for a perfect short rush to a cavalry full production bin before swithcing to Mech and then finish in just 1 or 2 turns. If you have a city that is producing 54 shields because your automated workers are too stupid to carve out just one more mine, then you end up taking three turns to produce each Mech Infantry and they actually cost you 162 shields per unit. (Dumb AI; Bad)

Workers are a resource that should either be doing something or should be used to grow the population of your cities and drive up your score. I did not keep count, but you had close to 50 aurtomated workers just sitting in cities doing jack-**** because the automate function had them all locked up. It took me two full turns just to find them all and release them from their mindless existence.

You also modded the worker task completion rates and seemed to have forgotten about that.

The screwed up tech trading rate may have accounted for some of the extra handicaps you gave to the AI. Remember that on Warlord level (unmodded, just in case someone led you to crap that up) the AI players are already mentally retarded in every way by having their costs for everything inflated by the 12 multiplier that compares to your 10 multiplier. For example, when you need 20 food bundles to grow a person, the Warlord AI's need 24. To make a settler, you need 30 shields, but the AI players need 36. To build the pyramids you need 400 shields while the AI players need 480 shields.

Tech research is also generally slowed in the game at Warlord because the cost multiplier is also mindlessly applied to the cost of all AI techs as well. A tech that costs you 1000 gold to research will cost the AI's 1200 gold.

You also modded the tech research turns down to 3 instead of 4.

I would strongly recommend that you reset you BIC file back to the original CIV3 values and then make just a few minor tweaks and adjustments. You have some severe and terminally unbalancing things in your mod set, that really will make it impossible to develop game playing skills to go beyond Warlord or Regent.

When you add mod factors, try to test them in a short sample game to see if the AI players can pick up on the mod changes. I think the hit point bonuses and altered experience hitpoint values are something that the AI does not seem to be able to differentiate any more than it can do some sort of cost benefit analysis of (do I build this one unit, or should I build these other two units in the same amount of time for the same cost but get more bang for my buck.

I like mods and scenarios, but some whiners will lead you to mod all these factors that basically just turn your mentally challenging game of CIV3 into some mindless version of whack-a-mole. Once in a while you may want to build 200 panzers with 11 hitpoints each, just so you can experience the thrill of maiming all your helpless neighbors in just one turn, but in general every change needs to have some sort of compensating balance to it.

If you up one factor by a great amount, or make a bunch of changes to factors taht you do not fully understand the impact of, you might as well just start pulling the legs off crickets as a thrill source.

[cracker]

Oh, and Planetfall, the 10 turn game challenge for the weekend is a good idea,

but the severity of these mods in your example game makes anything that may have been learned in the game to be of very little real practical value to get you ready to move up in difficulty or to tacklt things like Game of The Month play.

On Warlord, with Panzers and Mech Infantry (upgraded for infantry) you should have been able to complete this invasion almost 30 turns or 200 years earlier in the game. You have so much excess military hardware and uncorrupted production power, that I was able to take out 17 Persian cities (+3 Aztec Cities and a minor SOD) all in one turn.

[planetfall]

Originally posted by cracker
The issue with the automated workers is not game lag time, it is productivity and efficient management.

The automated workers follow a canned strategy of irrigation, mining, and roading without regards for what you may be doing in the big picture. You will often get the standard X shaped layout of mines with irrigation interspersed even if the city is grassland and should be almost 100% mined.

Some of this involves optimizing a city for what it should be doing. A city that builds Mech Infantry needs to produce a net yield of 110 shields in one turn to build a MI in one turn. 55 shields for 2 turns, 34 shields for 3 turns, 30 shields for a perfect short rush to a cavalry full production bin before swithcing to Mech and then finish in just 1 or 2 turns. If you have a city that is producing 54 shields because your automated workers are too stupid to carve out just one more mine, then you end up taking three turns to produce each Mech Infantry and they actually cost you 162 shields per unit. (Dumb AI; Bad)

Wow, great explanation. But don't understand why go from cavs to mechs. I thought cav was a dead end with no upgrade.

You also modded the worker task completion rates and seemed to have forgotten about that.

1. How did you find all these differences? Sometimes I make differences and forget to change back from defaults?

2. Did mod worker tasks with republic to match worker tasks with democracy.

The screwed up tech trading rate may have accounted for some of the extra handicaps you gave to the AI. Remember that on Warlord level (unmodded, just in case someone led you to crap that up) the AI players are already mentally retarded in every way by having their costs for everything inflated by the 12 multiplier that compares to your 10 multiplier. For example, when you need 20 food bundles to grow a person, the Warlord AI's need 24. To make a settler, you need 30 shields, but the AI players need 36. To build the pyramids you need 400 shields while the AI players need 480 shields.

Tech research is also generally slowed in the game at Warlord because the cost multiplier is also mindlessly applied to the cost of all AI techs as well. A tech that costs you 1000 gold to research will cost the AI's 1200 gold.

Couldn't find the exact numbers for regent, so just started new game with cost multiplier between warlord and monarch. Is there a easy way to reset to default?

You also modded the tech research turns down to 3 instead of 4.

This was just an attempt to speed up game play via research instead of tech trading.

I would strongly recommend that you reset you BIC file back to the original CIV3 values and then make just a few minor tweaks and adjustments. You have some severe and terminally unbalancing things in your mod set, that really will make it impossible to develop game playing skills to go beyond Warlord or Regent.

Corrected ones identified previously

When you add mod factors, try to test them in a short sample game to see if the AI players can pick up on the mod changes. I think the hit point bonuses and altered experience hitpoint values are something that the AI does not seem to be able to differentiate any more than it can do some sort of cost benefit analysis of (do I build this one unit, or should I build these other two units in the same amount of time for the same cost but get more bang for my buck.

I like mods and scenarios, but some whiners will lead you to mod all these factors that basically just turn your mentally challenging game of CIV3 into some mindless version of whack-a-mole. Once in a while you may want to build 200 panzers with 11 hitpoints each, just so you can experience the thrill of maiming all your helpless neighbors in just one turn, but in general every change needs to have some sort of compensating balance to it.

If you up one factor by a great amount, or make a bunch of changes to factors taht you do not fully understand the impact of, you might as well just start pulling the legs off crickets as a thrill source.

Thanks for the suggestions. One disadvantage of reading the forum is posterX says "you should set preferences to XYZ for better game play". I like to see if preferences changes that make sense. I am not a member of the group that says firaxis has best set of preferences. Of my preference changes only ones I am fixed on are:
1. range of modern aircraft
2. worker rates in republic should match democracy
3. some improvement in modern navy vessels move range {but current may be too much}

Other preferences are open to review.

[planetfall]

Originally posted by cracker
Oh, and Planetfall, the 10 turn game challenge for the weekend is a good idea,

but the severity of these mods in your example game makes anything that may have been learned in the game to be of very little real practical value to get you ready to move up in difficulty or to tacklt things like Game of The Month play.

Goals were simple:

1. offer a 10 turn game scenario with fixed objective and opportunity to evaluate game advantages/disadvantages
2. not to exclude non default preferences
3. encourage others to provide their own, and hopefully better, 10 turn challenges in the future.

Assumption is our game play abilities will grow fastest if

1. play the game,
2. read the forums,
3. play mini games and compare results vs others.

The problem with the GOTM is skill level needs to be higher than that of most players.
Granted most posters could handle GOTM, but many of us enjoy the game but don't use the most effective tactics and strategies and need to learn how to play better.

[cracker]

Planetfall,

Here's how an effective short rush works.

First, remember you have to "break the ice" with at least one sheild from somewhere in order for the Shield rushing equation to shift from an 8 multiplier down to a 4 multiplier. This means you should almost never rush the total balance.

A mech Infantry costs 110 sheilds to build. Rushed for the whole amount that would be 880 gold. If you get two shields from disbanding an old warrior in the city then the remaining 108 shield cost balance would cost 432 gold (4 x multiplier).

If your city is produceing a fairly good amount of sheilds, lets say 30 for an example, the hurry part of the program just ignores all the shields and wastes them. It basically forces you to buy the full remaining balance of the cost of the unit regardless what you might be expecting to produce in the turn.

In the case of the mech infantry, what you really want to do is pay cash to rush the production bin up to a level where the actual production for the next turn will take over and finish out the unit.

In the case of rush building a mech infantry in a city that is already producing 30 shields per turn you have several options.

Option 1:
Set the city to produce a cavalry unit.
Disband an old obsolete unit as an icebreaker (example an old warrior gives 2 shields)
Then cash rush the balance of the cavalry unit by purchasing 78 shield at 4x for 312 gold.
Then switch the queue to apply the 80 shield balance from the cavalry that has not been completed yet and use it to apply to the mech infantry leaving 30 shields still to go and TADA, the city will use its 30 shields to complete the MI at the beginning of the next turn.

Option 2:
Set the city to produce a cavalry unit.
Wait one turn to produce 30 shields as an icebreaker
Then cash rush the balance of the cavalry unit by purchasing 50 shield at 4x for 200 gold.
Then switch the queue to apply the 80 shield balance from the cavalry that has not been completed yet and use it to apply to the mech infantry leaving 30 shields still to go and TADA, the city will use its 30 shields to complete the MI at the beginning of the 2nd turn.

There are many combinations were this will work well.

In the 10 turn challenge game with the hormonal panzers, there were catapults, cannons, warriors, spearmen, archers, and swordsmen laying about all over the place, so there were lots of short rush opportunities.

Don't think these old units were worthless, because in conquest scenarios with railroads in the game, a 5000 year old warrior has the same military police value as a 1 year old mech infantry unit.

But in many cases the greatest use for old units is as icebreakers to rush something of value instead of upgrading them to more advance units.

[planetfall]

Originally posted by cracker
Planetfall,

Here's how an effective short rush works.

First, remember you have to "break the ice" with at least one sheild from somewhere in order for the Shield rushing equation to shift from an 8 multiplier down to a 4 multiplier. This means you should almost never rush the total balance.

Great example but what triggers a 4x multiplier vs an 8x multiplier?

Option 1:
Set the city to produce a cavalry unit.
Disband an old obsolete unit as an icebreaker (example an old warrior gives 2 shields)
Then cash rush the balance of the cavalry unit by purchasing 78 shield at 4x for 312 gold.
Then switch the queue to apply the 80 shield balance from the cavalry that has not been completed yet and use it to apply to the mech infantry leaving 30 shields still to go and TADA, the city will use its 30 shields to complete the MI at the beginning of the next turn.

Am I doing something wrong? I used to be able to do this but with 1.21 after I hurry production I cant change production queue order. Huh, is the hurry change restriction based on improvements and not on units?

Don't think these old units were worthless, because in conquest scenarios with railroads in the game, a 5000 year old warrior has the same military police value as a 1 year old mech infantry unit.

My habit is to use warriors/swordsmen/horse/cav as visual reminder that these units are for military police or hurry action and not regular military units. Usually swords/horse/cav get built when 1 turn's city production generates that unit. Thus will create horse/cav instead of sword when both take 1 turn to produce. This allows the option of moving and sacrificing unit for pressing need.

[Panag]

hi ,

Planetfall , there are some minor problem with the order line , ...sometimes it does not go , many answer's , but no real ones , only more Q's , .....

in some games you dont have any problem at all , in other's you do , this time you have it with this civ , next day not , ....

, disband older units , to speed up the production of units , or for buildings like a factory , so that you can make the new ones faster , ...

, let one or two places make nothing else then units , only to disband them in places where production aint that fast , to build a courthouse or / and a policestation , .....

have a nice day

[Thrawn05]

I prefer an all in one D-Day.

Please note, I prefer to go on the offensive during the industral, modern ages.

It takes me about 10 - 20 turns to get my forces into position. I usualy aim for a gulf that penetrates the enemy territory. I then send my transports, Carriers, Nuke Subs with Nukes, and a few Battleships and destroyers to add support.

I land my troops with a combind arms attack. I soften things up with air attacks and battleships. I land my Infantry and Mech Infantry and tanks and modern armor.

I also try to land a few units on the opposite side, to give the AI a second front to deal with. With that second front, take a costal city and just hold it, as a safe zone and a second base of operations.