Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Two

[gnomos]

Pollution

My first take on pollution is that a factory automatically adds 2 pollution. Each pop above 12 adds 1. I refuse to build coal plants, so I don't know what their effect is, ie, do they add pollution themselves or do they make the factory create more pollution?

I can't find ANYTHING in the manual about global warming. Does it only occur when you have too many polluted squares? Can you hold it off indefinitely by keeping all the GG (glowing goo) cleaned up? So far I've only had one map square go from grasslands to plains, luckily it wasn't even in any of my city radiuses, seems to me it happened on a turn where there was a lot of pollution on the ground.

Oh, I'm still playing my first game, chieftain level, been working on it for about 4 days now, I'm up to 1752, half way through industrial tree, I left the comp civs way behind in science, and I'm in the process of conquering the map. I've eliminated 3 civs, I own about 40% of a huge map with 60% water, I have about 120-150 cities now, and about 400 units. I'm working my way through the years to learn the ropes before I move to a more difficult level, and I'm setting a scoring benchmark against which I can measure future games. I like the new averaged score method, civ2 was kinda silly, you built a huge pop then on the last turn you made everyone happy for a maximized score. In civ3 if you want a good score you have to keep everyone happy every turn, because each turn's score is averaged.

[padillah]

Tip on rush reducing resistors in captured city

This worked like a champ for me in my last game but you've got to have the money for it. (maybe as much as 2000 gold )

If you get a city from a battle the first thing you do is rush buy (or whatever rush you want to use) a settler. If you do this for several turns you will use up the people in the city until there is only one left (havn't figured out how to get rid of that last one yet). Then wait a turn and add them back to your city.

What I did was to "trade" settlers from a nearby city of mine but I think it should work just by waiting a turn or even joining the city right back.

The new settlers deplete the city by two (but they are resistors anyway) but it is comprized of your citizens so when you add it back you get two of YOUR citizens in the city.

Let me know how this works.
Hank P.

[madmario]

Controlling Resistance

If you are on a large or huge map fighting an extensive and consuming war of domination (and would actually like to keep control of, say, Babylon) consider shifting to comunism (if not already there) and culling some conscripts. Conscripts suck in combat, to be sure, but the work fine for maintaining control. Communism is really needed for big wars of domination, and it allows two conscripts/turn (who can also be used for domestic happiness, though they do cost some cash).

This is especially in the industrial age after medicine, when you may have really big cities thta wonst miss a few citizens playing cards in babylon. You can get really large amounts of garrison units this way for basically their upkeep cost.

-mad mario

[Thoth]

A couple of corrections/additions

Militaristic:
Starting Tech = Warrior Code
Military units gain morale faster, higher chance of generating a leader, barracks are half price.

Coastal Fortresses, Walls and SAM batteries are also half price.

(side note about Coastal Fortresses)

These don't work quite as advertised, they don't take shots at passing enemy ships. They do, however provide significant defence against sea bombardment. The radius of effect seems to be the city plus a one square radius. I made these observations while conducting extensive bombardments against AI infrastructure. It was these campaigns that sold me on Coastal Fortresses. My Frigates did an excellent job of destoying improvements and bombarded many a road until the AI started building CFs. There was a noticable drop in bombardment effectiveness both against cities and against surrounding terrain improvements. Frigates are useless against a city with a CF, ironclads nearly so, destroyers are marginal and even battleships have a much lower incidence of successful bombardments against CF protected cities.

(end side note)

Vulture Culture
(Being a good Despot)

....

In other words, in the early Middle Ages (if you are still expanding and have not yet dropped out of Despotism), it may be wiser to rush a Cathedral first—more expensive, but you get 40 shields for the first pop-sacrifice-- at a newly founded city, and then follow that up with a rush of a Library and Temple).

This is a nice idea, but I've never been able to put an advanced improvement in the queue before the basic improvement of that type is in place. (ie temple must come before Cathedral, Library before University)


This is a great thread Vel, thanks for taking the time to put it together. My games have gotten a lot sharper as a result of reading the posts here and in the previous incarnation of this thread.

[Hastus]

Tip on rush reducing resistors in captured city by padillah

In the games I play I am not able to rush anything if the city still got resisters in it.

[Aeson]

Some worthless stats

This is a table I put together on another thread.

4000BC - 2750BC 25 turns, 50 years each
2710BC - 1750BC 25 turns, 40 years each
1725BC - 750BC 40 turns, 25 years each
730BC - 250AD 50 turns, 20 years each
260BC - 1250AD 100 turns, 10 years each
1255AD - 1750AD 100 turns, 5 years each
1752AD - 1950AD 100 turns, 2 years each
1951AD - 2050AD 100 turns, 1 year each

540 turns overall, 10BC being the 126th.

Conquest scoring bonus = (2050 - Date) * Difficulty (approximation)

BC dates are considered negative

Difficulty:
1 Cheiftain
2 Warlord
3 Regent
4 Monarch
5 Emporer
6 Deity

This formula has been tested on Regent and Diety levels, the other diffuculty levels are complete guesses

Maximum Score
3950BC conquest victory on Diety 36060
(pop of 1, area was 150 IIRC)

[Jumping Choya]

Well, I'll try not to emberass myself here by saying something stupid on this fine thread.

What exactly does the AI take into consideration when declaring war on you? Is it an apparant opportunity, technological/numerical superiority, or sheer boredom?

I've played a number of games now, and of all the times an enemy AI declared war on me, they sent in a half-witted invasion force that either got marginal success or was swatted down like a silly fly. And every time after that there was hell to pay for them, believe me.

My first example - opportunity. The AI (Iroquois) noticed once that I was in anarchy. In my current game, I had all my forces at the opposite end of my empire preparing for an invasion of China - and along come the Japanese, all the way across the land, with a horseman who slays my lonely spearman and razes the city. Both of these attacks were initially frightening - "Damnit, under attack!" - but I found as I began to strike back that they did not follow up their initial attacks, and did not have very good defenses.

Fortunately, I've never found myself in a war against a technologically superior foe, and because of my tech advantage I've been able to overcome numbers.

And then the third, which can be credited to randomness, insanity, or boredom. In a game I played, I had battled the Germans early on after encircling all of their settlements with my own - hey, why leave a hole in your empire? So I battled them down and let them keep one last city, as later in the game I hoped to relocate the Germans to some other place and do some nation-building. One day, I notice that Bismarck deploys a few swordsmen into my rifleman and cavalry defended territory. I dozens of cities, he had one, and for every obsolete unit he had, I had...at least dozens of superior units. I give Bismarck a ring and say, "Hey, what're these guys doing? Sight seeing?" to which he declares war. Bismarck sealed a very quick deathnote with that.

Another time, the Aztecs - good trading friends, we had about the same status- landed a swordsman on my shores and declared war. I never ended up succesfully invading their continent - they had big numbers and good units. It baffles me as to why the sent an obsolete unit to me, and never bothered to invade me again during the rest of the war.

All of these times, the AI relied on the sneak attack - they gave no prior displays of angst towards me or my people.

I should point out, though, I've been playing only on Warlord (hey, I'm a newbie, bear with me... )

Another thing that has baffled me is the signing of the Mutual Protection Pacts. Like others have said, stay out of them - they're the causes of many world wars (in fact, the only cause it seems...I've never seen the world descend into warfare prior to MPPs). If you go to the foreign relations screen and click to display MPPs, you'll see this spaghetti-string tangle of lines, and the truth of the matter is that you don't know who your allies will be if you have multiple alliances. Sometimes the AI makes alliances with the mortal enemy of another civ they have an alliance with. So basically, when it comes to war you could find that you have to betray several of your friends in order to fight for two or three other dumb countries. And forget any ideas of building a coalition that'll last for centuries, fighting all evil - in my experience, the other civs sign around too much and eventually they're forced to declare war within your little coalition.

This slightly relates to the above, but have any of you noticed that the AI is very forgiving to eachother? The last game I played, I was dragged into war with the Aztecs again because the Brits went to war with them (but I didn't really commit any forces to it). After a while I noticed a message that they had signed a Peace Treaty with the Aztecs. A while later, while mucking around in the foreign advisor screen, I found that the British and the Aztecs had signed a mutual protection pact! Madness!

Also, I've noticed that the AI has some uncanny exploration abilities. This game, the Germans just edged me out for the Great Lighthouse. Later in the game I trade for his World Map, and I see something a little surprising. Germany had sent out a ship in a straight line that lead directly to a small island in the middle of the ocean upon which they founded to cities. No variation in course or signs of searching around whatsoever.

Anyway, I hope I'm not coming off too negative here - I dearly love this game and it's been the joyful cause of many hours of lost sleep recently. I'm merely curious about what makes the AI tick, as I'm sure most of us are. Knowing thy enemy is the best way to thwart thy enemy, right?

BTW, Vel, how has your 16 civ game been going? Last check, it seemed like the world was on the verge of some interesting developments.

[Xin Yu]

Persian Early Game

Persian Immortal (4/2/1) has the highest attacking factor in ancient era; only cost 30 shields each, suitable for rushing (1 worker for 1 immortal); a win triggers the Golden Age for a better war time economy.

Playing Persian you should think about a war in ancient era, to make the most of its special trait. Research iron working, and build a city on top of iron then link the city to your other cities via road. You are industrious so it will be fast. Then build barracks and start building immortals. After 5 immortals, go inside a civ's territory and it will ask you to leave. Declare war at this time, and occupy a big city. Raze it and send the workers back for rushing more immortals. Reduce the civ to half of its original size then accept peace, of course the civ will give you all its tech if you ask. Set science high may give you 4 turn per tech since you have more cities and also in Golden Age.

[karlmarx9001]

'Also, I've noticed that the AI has some uncanny exploration abilities. This game, the Germans just edged me out for the Great Lighthouse. Later in the game I trade for his World Map, and I see something a little surprising. Germany had sent out a ship in a straight line that lead directly to a small island in the middle of the ocean upon which they founded to cities. No variation in course or signs of searching around whatsoever.'

This isn't cheating, amazingly enough. If you look around the map, you'll notice that most landmasses are separated by, at most, a square or two of sea. You can normally see across it if you go to the pre-Great Lighthouse edge. So, the AI builds the lighthouse to get across the short sea gap and then follows along the string of shallow water, resulting in a map that looks like some serious shenanigans have occured. ;0

[Nero Would]

Minor correction to civ strengths

Militaristic civs get either Warrior Code or The Wheel as their starting tech. Japan gets The Wheel, the rest get Warror Code. The Wheel is quite handy as a starting tech because it reveals horses which is useful for planning your very early expansion.

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I need some clarification about this business of isolating a capital to cut off strategic resources.

If I have a city isolated that has horses for example, I can build horsemen in that city. It doesn't have to be connected to the capital.

Now, if I connect that city to another, but both are unconnected to the capital do I get horses in the strategic resource box for both?

I have noted that if I have a unconnected city with a resource I can build an airport there and get full use of the resource. Even without an airport anywhere else. I find this strange.

Does the forbidden palace act as a capital for the purpose of resource distribution?

Blocking the capital does not prevent distribution of local resources throughout the empire. If a city is connected to horses (or iron, or a luxury...) it can use it. However, it does prevent distribution of traded resources, and it prevents the civ from trading resources to another civ.

Airports and harbors can extend your road network, if they are connected to another airport or harbor. For harbors, your tech level determines the depth of the sea/ocean through which trade routes can pass.

The Forbidden Palace has no effect.

edit: note also that capitals are often the hubs of road networks, thus blocking them will often have the effect of cutting the local road network in half.

[gnomos]

Is the conquest bonus awarded in whatever year you gain victory? Does the bonus vary depending on map size? I'm wondering how to achieve the greatest score.

[eMarkM]

On Vassals

I wanted to bring up on this thread the subject of vassals which I touched upon in the last thread. This is the strategy elaborated in detail on the "3 step to Deity" thread. In that thread this is combined with your standard "build nothing but warriors" rush strategy. I know this kind of mindless pumping out of military in the early game is frowned upon by many--a rebuttal being eloquently stated in the last thread by Vel. I also find the idea rather unpalatable myself as I, too, want to build an empire, not just rack up points in a rush frenzy.

However, don't let the rushing aspect of "3 steps" detract from the brilliance in the idea of creating vassal states. I don't think this has been explored here sufficiently. It's certainly not just a mindless exercise in rushing. I've been playing Monarch games now where you're very often behind in tech to everyone early in the game and quickly fall out of the "tech trading loop". You're in trouble when this happens because you'll be dead last in tech and have nothing to offer in trades. Putting science up to 100% sometimes isn't enough. Buying tech is fine, but only goes so far. At some point you have to give up exorbitant amounts to buy it from the leaders. Amounts you often don't have or are unwilling to part with.

Sometimes, you just have to go out and take it from them with force.

If you outclass a neighbor militarily, say, because they don't have iron and can't match your swordsmen or UU, but they are beating you in the tech race because of their AI bonuses, you're missing out on an effective way of catching up in the tech race if you don't make them a "vassal". As randomturn states in his thread, you use the AIs strengths, judo like, against them.

This is compelling game play, not just mindless warmongering. The trick is to take their cities to the point they cry uncle and come to the bargaining table. If they're strong enough at first--which they usually are--it will take more than a couple of conquered cities to accomplish this as they initially will refuse your envoy. But when they finally do, you can get at least one, maybe all of their tech, from them.

In the "3 step" thread they recommend backstabbing on the peace treaty almost immediately to get back to extracting tech. The rushers don't care about rep as they never cease in their conquest. I don't recommend this as an empire builder. In order to maintain your rep, you can't violate the 20 turn peace once negotiated. And this is where a lot of subtlety can come in. If they're still relatively strong, you can provoke them into breaking the 20 turn peace. This is a delicate situation since if you really break their backs and dominate them militarily, they'll never declare war no matter how much you provoke. You actually would prefer they remain semi-strong to get back to war sooner and so they are still out producing you in tech. Often they are strong enough to counter attack by then, so again, there's a lot to consider when doing this. You want to have them JUST under your control enough to get the maximum out of this, but it's a fine line to walk.

If you do it right, you can really play a civ like a fiddle. Declare war, take cities, make peace, get tech, provoke them to start war, take cities, make peace, get tech, etc. You can milk it for quite awhile doing this and get right back in the thick of things if you're trailing. At some point, they'll be so weakened by your onslaughts that they can't be provoked to initiate hostilities no matter how much tribute you demand. Then you just have to wait out the 20 turns. This is fine since by that time they'll research a tech or two so you can knock them back down again and get those advances. Once the 20 turns are up, you renegotiate peace. If they don't give up tech tribute, you can go to war with them and it won't damage your rep. Conquer cities, sue for peace, get tech, rinse, repeat. This can go on a over an Age.

Now at some later point you'll weaken them sufficiently that they can no longer produce tech for you and are reduced to a very minor power. At that point, depending on your preferences, you can take them out entirely to expand your empire, leave them alone to rot in obscurity, or continue with the vassalization and just get gold from them.

In my games my strategy was to always mark at least one civ for death and just mow them down to get their territory. At lower levels, you can just brute force w/o milking for tribute since you're often ahead in tech and tech tribute is meaningless. But at higher levels, even if you've marked the civ for genocide, it behooves you to squeeze them for all their worth in tech and gold before the final annihilation. To do so requires some forethought and planning, not just mindless unit rushing.

e

[Arrian]

More on early expansion... and cap. isolation

Vel - The early land grab is so crucial to the rest of the game that I find myself pondering the best strategy often (also b/c it's probably the most exciting, nerve-racking, and frustrating part of the game - and I've been playing Regent. I'm sure it's a lot harder to compete w/the AI in expansion on Monarch and up).

Food, due to the value of despotic forced labor, is the most important thing early on. I would go so far as to say that if you do not start next to a river (no need for aqueduct for 6+ size) with some decent food-producing squares (at the very least grassland - and, in that case, you better have some other benifit, like hills w/gold or something), you should probably restart - unless you find the game too easy and want that type of disadvantage to overcome.

As with all things in this game, a good portion of your strategy must be developed based upon 1) who you are, 2) where you are (local geographical situation) and 3) who is near you. To follow up on my present game example:

My recent decision to concentrate my core cities up first rather than shoot straight for lux. sites in bad terrain was made easier by several factors. First, I was the Babs, and their crazy culture virtually guaranteed that my empire would gain border cities due to defections - thus expanding outward to cut off the other civs and backfilling later was not as important. Second, I had the benifit/curse of a LARGE jungle that started near (just to the sw of) Babylon and ran east to the sea, with a large desert above it (starting n of Babylon). To the north of the desert were the Japanese... this created a bit of a buffer. The Zulu were just south of the eastern part of the jungle, with an inland sea due west, Persia to the south and the sea to the east... they were screwed. Once I saw this, I knew I had a little bit more time to put down my outlying cities. After all, those cities you build to grab a luxury early on are often useless for anything else for 1000s of years (not to say the luxury isn't worth it, but...). Third, I had two lux. resources very close to my capitol - and a lot of them (5 or 6 spice/2 dye)... which meant that later on I could trade them all over the place.

Now, if I had not been playing the Babs, would I have been as comfortable with not aggressively cutting off the AI? Given the exact geography of this particular game... probably, but maybe not. The culture creep of the Babs is extremely comforting (I see the AI build a city in the general vicinity of one of mine and I think "thanks, guys, that will be mine soon enough" and I'm often right). Say I was playing as the Chinese (all other things being equal). I probably would have felt more vunerable, as their culture takes much longer to ramp up. I probably would have fought an ancient war.

In short, aggressive expansion to hamper the AI is less important for civs which have early culture bonuses (basically: religious, as scientific's culture power shows up w/libraries, which require literature, which takes a little while to get to). The quick expansion of your borders to influence 2 hampers the AI, in that there is that much less available terrain for their settlers. If the AI builds a city on a site that you really wanted, fine, make sure that your cities closest to that one build temples, libraries, cathedrals, and universities as soon as they are available. If the city isn't too close to their capitol, you should get it (particularly if it's a zulu city or some other civ with terrible culture early on).

A note on capitol isolation during a war: if you are fighting a limited war (your goal is to take a couple of cities and then go for peace), this is particularly valuable. Cutting the roads to the enemy's cap. will prevent them from importing resources (whether luxury or strategic) from other civs. Also, many times it will be easy to cut off the cities between his cap. and you, thus throwing them into disorder. Capitol isolation will not cut off all cities from all resources, as any city that is connected to a resource by road can use it. Still, it will hurt the AI badly.

A note on armies: Their value lies in the combined hit points of the units you put in the army. You don't gain attack or defense power, just the ability to keep at it longer. I recently built an army of knights. After usuing it twice on the attack (killing defending pikemen but going down to 1hp both times), I stopped that, and used it as a defender for my offensive units and bombard units. Just imagine the defensive potential of an army of mech inf. You could send that, along with with a bunch of artillery, deep into enemy territory and bombard the hell out of anything you want, wreaking general havoc and mayhem on your enemy. On the attack? Just mass your offensive units... no need for an army.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

You will be assimilated….
(or, The Borg come to Civ3)

So you thought corruption killed ICS?

Nahhh….the Beast lives on, as I found out last night, playing with extreme styles.

Last night, my focus was on Despotism, and I began with a simple premise.

In Despotism, corruption doesn’t matter, because your people are your production. Kill ‘em off by the thousands to further the glory of your Empire.

By extension then, Food = Shields.

By further extension then, Granaries = Factories (same essential benefit, but you get them a LOT sooner, and on the cheap!)

So that got me thinking…..What If….

1) You founded as many cities as you possibly could (ICS Style), without regards to corruption, spacing, or any of the “usual” means and measures.

2) Your ONLY consideration for your initial city placement was the presence of a bonus food tile (game, cow, wheat)

3) You build cities with the notion that each gets access to ONE AND ONLY ONE of these tiles (meaning that if there are several bonus food tiles clustered together, you simply found several cities very close together there).

4) Every city gets a granary. EVERY city. This is akin to “powering up” after all. You’re not building granaries, you’re building factories.

5) Once all the food rich city sites have been taken, start expanding like a cancer. Again, corruption doesn’t matter, just grab as much land as you can, expanding relentlessly.

6) Research Iron Working and The Wheel to get a bead on those resources…founding cities to take them into your fold.

7) When you run into another civ’s borders, all stop to take stock of your game.

If you’ve done this, you’ll probably have something close to thirty cities (I was playing on a standard map, Monarch level, 8 Civs, Babylon). Some of those cities were all of two tiles apart. Almost all were growing like weeds.

At this point, I knew I could have simply finished the job and ‘Borged my way to dominance. After all, had I put my mind to it, I could have almost instantly had 60+ swordsmen and simply swarmed my English neighbors. No defense against that….not even the “standard” rush described elsewhere in this forum could work against the Borg strat, cos I’ve got so many cities, I can simply out-produce a standard rusher and sweep him off the map, returning the favor if needs be with about ten times the troops. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, you know? (especially not after ranting AGAINST that kind of beatdown game a couple days ago!)

So, being Babylon (Velocirabi), I decided to go the cultural route, and began mass-sacrificing population to rush in Libraries and Temples.

For a long time, I was running HUGE deficits as my crap cities weren’t generating nearly the coin needed to pay for all the cultural generating buildings I was rushing (and for the most part, those cities STAYED at size one).

Six English cities defected in the face of my HUGE culture.

Three French cities did the same.

And a Zulu town for good measure.

I never built the Forbidden Palace. Never moved my Palace.

Didn’t matter.

Corruption didn’t matter.

Wound up NOT winning by culture after all, but built the Space Ship in 1782.

A word of warning for you peaceful Builders tho….in MP (when there is MP), expect to see ICS alive and well, and it’ll eat you for breakfast unless you do it too.

The best defense against ICS is ICS, as SMAC demonstrated.

::shivers::

That was a scary game….

-=Vel=-

PS: Well said eMarkM….and it’s interesting to note that ICS-ing in the early game can put you in a position to do the very type of “fiddle playin’” you mentioned in your post. My hope when I wrote my little rant about “pushing scads of units across the screen” was that I would not come off sounding like I was against warfare altogether in Civ….hardly! It’s got its place, and as you describe, it can be a vital part of diplomacy (Gunboat diplomacy perhaps, but diplomacy nonetheless!). Integral part of the game tho! What’s chilling to me about ICS in Civ3 is how uncannily powerful it really is tho….almost makes me uncomfortable USING it…..
-V.