The First Cheat-Strategies For Civ III: PtW

[vulture]

LUXURY SHARING

Not sure if this would work or not. If the duration of deals is negotiable, rather than fixed at 20 turns, then it might.
Civ A has a luxury (but only one source of it) that civ B wants. On Civ A's turn, he offers it to B. At the start of B's turn, the book-keeping is done, and B gets the happiness benefits. During B's turn he trades the luxury back to A. So on A's book-keeping phase, he has the luxury again. Rinse and repeat.

Obviously, takes a bit or micro-management, but if it works the net result is that at the start of each player's turn they have access to the luxury and get the happiness benefits. So 2 civs get the benefits from a single luxury resource.

This would only work in turn-based multiplayer, and might not even then (the book-keeping of happiness may happen in a different way to what I am imagining here).

[Adm.Naismith]

Can't you only trade resources that you have in excess, i.e. more than one?

May be I'm so down today my memory is totally flat and off...

[vulture]

If you only have 1 dyes, you will see Dyes (0) listed under your luxuries on the trade negotiations screen. You can click on this to offer it in trade. You can also ask for the AI's resources that it has no surplus of, although it really isn't going to give them to you.

[Solver]

To Jeff: when dealing with those issues, please don't try to make them all impossible... we *will* have to rely on players' fairness, too. However, I think MP modes must include a lock teams options, having pre-set teams that allies can't declare war on each other.

I think it's obvious that allies will share all of the resources and luxuries, but it's worrying, to me. Imagine a game with 3 allies on one side. All three try to perform a good land-grab right until the middle of the Middle Ages, so that they have many luxuries. Considering there are only 8 luxury resources, those 3 civs will probably have control of all, thus trading, and 20 happy faces for EACH city - very little unhappiness problems and lots of WLT*D, no?

Hell, I've played an SP game on a O shaped continent with just one middle size island being away from it - and there I controlled six luxuries in the Middle Ages, just due to lots of place to colonize. And had lots of celebrations, obviously.

[DrFell]

Here is what I put in my (similar) thread:

1 - Abandoning cities
Ok, everyone wants our cities to be manageable when it's not our turn, to speed the game up in turn based mode. But, what if the 'abandon city' option were available at all times? Imagine you're being attacked in the early game by a large army. You have more cities, but he has lots of units and lots to gain by capturing your cities. What would I do in that situation? I'd wait until the last unit in every city fell, and abandon them one by one. This way he is gaining nothing (but free land) and in a 4-way that could mean he's behind all game, especially if he's on an island and can't transport those units anywhere else. Conquering would be worthless and the game would boil down to a few empires racing for wonders and down the tech tree.

To fix it? Just make it so that cities cannot be abandoned until the turn after you order them so.

2 - Drafting/Pop rushing
Very similar to abandon city, basically when the city gets attacked keep drafting(if it's allowed when it's not your turn) or pop rushing units. If you know you're going to lose the city, you might as well screw your opponent. The attacker inherits a size 1 city with huge unhappiness which will never be gotten rid of.

To fix it, prevent drafting except on your turn, and remove pop rushing inherited unhappiness.

[XarXo]

Re: Re: The First Cheat-Strategies For Civ III: PtW

Originally posted by Cesa
One has to be really good friends with someone to pull this of. What if your opponent simply refuses to give the city back to you?? I wouldn't risk it. I've never played MP (in Civ2 or SMAC that is), do people really dare to use this kind of advanced diplomacy?

In Civ2 MGE I used this a couple of times. The idea is build each wonder in a different city, but the best possibility (the one that I used) is to group them in specific cities, so "militar" ones here, "money" ones in this one, etc...

[DrFell]

Re: Re: The First Cheat-Strategies For Civ III: PtW

Originally posted by Cesa


One has to be really good friends with someone to pull this of. What if your opponent simply refuses to give the city back to you?? I wouldn't risk it. I've never played MP (in Civ2 or SMAC that is), do people really dare to use this kind of advanced diplomacy?

Well, unless the city was for some reason a long way from your core cities, it would be really easy for you to take it back. Most wonder cities will be located in your productive core. And when you swap cities round it becomes undefended. So I wouldn't be afraid of that kind of betrayal. Unless the city was coastal and he had a couple ships full of pikemen or whatever just off your coastline.

In civ2, I never used to do the city/wonder swap and most people considered it a cheat, although officially there was nothing stopping you from doing it.

[Immortal Wombat]

I don't know if this will work quite like this in Civ3, but I like it when I want to kick start a war on a far away continent that's hard to reach.

- Move units out of a fairly decent, well defended, city to the next square.
- Give a city to the AI in return for another city. This gives you a beachhead in their territories. (or if the AI is harsh, and you're desperate, some gold, or their map)
- Retake the city.

[XarXo]

The idea of the thread is how will change the game with Humans in place of AI, what new cheat/strategies can be made and how to improve the AI to avoid them.

In the case of the past post (Immortal Wombat one) we can see a dangerous strategy for attack newbies. The advisor MUST advise to the player that this kind of things are dangerous, not only say if this will be acceptable for the AI or not.

[Dinner]

After a game or two even a newbie will begin to figure these things out. The truly good part about playing MP is that a human can figure out that two other civs are working togeather and rally the other civs against the plotters.

This diplomacy is the main reason I play MP games; if Firaxis tries to block or curtail a player's ability to carry out diplomacy then it will be like driving a steak through the heart of MP games. Why play MP if it is exactly like SP?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by PhoenixPhlame73
The backstabbers will likely be one of teh biggest annoyances.

Your acting like backstabbing would be a bad thing. On the contrary it keeps the game fluid and interesting. It leaves you always wondering if you can trust your ally or not and leads people to do things that they would other wise not do. I've played many a game of CTP2 where I was losing against an enemy alliance but ended up winning after one of the allies attacked the other. If the game had alliances locked then I would have been dead... period.

Trying to figure out who is working with whom and how loyal they are is the heart of any good MP game. If you don't believe me try playing the old board game "Diplomacy" for a while.

[Cesa]

Re: Re: Re: The First Cheat-Strategies For Civ III: PtW

Originally posted by DrFell


Well, unless the city was for some reason a long way from your core cities, it would be really easy for you to take it back. Most wonder cities will be located in your productive core. And when you swap cities round it becomes undefended. So I wouldn't be afraid of that kind of betrayal. Unless the city was coastal and he had a couple ships full of pikemen or whatever just off your coastline.

In civ2, I never used to do the city/wonder swap and most people considered it a cheat, although officially there was nothing stopping you from doing it.

He/she (your former ally) could simply abandon the city just so you can't get the wonder back.

[DrFell]

Hehe, I forgot about that. But I'd exact a campaign of revenge against such a backstabbing ally anyway. Normally though, the only allies I would give cities to would be my parter in a team game - where alliances are set from the beginning. This BTW is the only state of the game where 'alliance locking' would be beneficial. Anyone who pulls a stunt like that in a team/tribe game would end up getting a worse reputation in the game as a whole anyway (I've never heard of it happening when civ2 tribes were still being played, although one guy quit halfway through a tribe game, he got booted out the tribe etc.), so I wouldn't be too worried.

[civman2000]

backstabbing

[XarXo]

backstabbing