Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three

[Arrian]

That's odd, I find WLTKD very useful. I target luxuries, and build marketplaces ASAP, and find that I get a definite boost in my far off big cities (not the really fringe towns, but the ones that normally would lose say 1/2 of their production... that will drop a bunch).

On Monarch, you can keep a size 17 city happy (WLTKD) with:

All 8 luxuries + marketplace
Temple, Cathedral, Colleseum
Sistine Chapel
Bach
No entertainers or luxury spending

The 18th citizen is unhappy. Now, as I've mentioned before, my cities don't hit that size until really, really late in the game, so at that point, jacking luxury spending up to 10-20% is no biggy. In the game I finished last night, my empire-wide corruption was 11%. That's with approx. 42 cities on a the normal world map, stretching from Central Africa to Scandinavia, to Far eastern Siberia to Malaysia. WLTKD helps, believe me.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Velociryx's idea about upgrading Warriors to Swordsmen got me thinking.

The Japanese start with the wheel, meaning that Horses are often available within the first couple of cities. Building Chariots to use as expensive Jag Warriors or garrison units until Horseback riding, and then upgrading to Horsemen could work quite well. The drawbacks are that like Swordsmen, Japanese Horsemen aren't upgradable thanks to their UU. Also, on some maps Horses might not be available early enough for it to work well. Might be something to keep in mind when starting with the Japanese and seeing a horse nearby.

For any game in which Horsemen are going to be the main Ancient era unit you use, this could give a 2 tech headstart in getting the army built as well. That could mean 40+ turns of production that would otherwise not be available for military buildup.

[Arrian]

Yeah, I think the Japanese are the one civ that would work for. However, the one advantage to Vel's idea is that warriors are so cheap (10 shields, right?). Wow. What are chariots? Then again IIRC, the upgrade from chariot to horsemen is 20gold each, as opposed to the 40 gold required for warrior -> swordsmen.

-Arrian

[David Weldon]

Vassals, Settlers, and War, oh my!

The reason I started whacking settlers instead of declaring peace is that they would-be vassal had nothing to offer me. If you leave the civ large enough to be a useful vassal, then it's probably better to renew the peace every 20 years and milk them for money.

Another fine point about oscillating war that I'm sure has been posted by others (you know, probably about 23 pages and two threads ago ) is the idea of going with zero science. If I know I'm going to war, then as soon as I can produce my soldiers (whatever they may be) I go to 0% science. The reason for this is that the AI out-researches me anyway, especially with all their trading. If I know I'm going to make a vassal then I'll totally stop all science and force them to give me everything. If I'm going to take a second vassal, then I still don't do any learning until after I get all of _their_ tech, too. When I'm done with Ancient Age warfare, then I'll crank up the science machine and buy any techs that I don't have. Since buying is always cheaper than researching, I nearly always end up tied for the tech lead with a vassal or two and a war-bloated empire. Good times.

Basically I use warfare and peace negotiations as my Great Library, and all the extra gold I save really gives me an advantage in production and upgrades when I turn the science back on.

[Aeson]

Yes, this would only be for those who were pre-determined to use horse units to get an earlier jump on their military buildup. The shortcoming of this is you cant start "pre-building" your army until horses are actually found and hooked up. The Swordsman version needs Iron, but only at the upgrade point, which would make the buildup faster in many cases.

I think the Iroquois (not going to work at all), Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and to a lesser extent, the Russians, would be the Civs not to use this. It would still be more effective than building horsemen from scratch, but because of their UU's the horsemen wouldn't be (fully) upgradable. Kind of sad that Civs with horse UU's, other than the Egyptians, actually lose out on a lot of the lines efficiency.

[Aeson]

Map Brokering and Defensive War and Why the Zulu's are my new favorite Civ

I was playing a Deity game on Marla's wonderful world map today as the Zulu's. This map is different from randomly generated ones in that there is a lot more food sources in historically highly populated areas. I switched it back to the default rules though. My first intention was to overrun the world with Horsemen and Impies, but when the wheel rolled around, there were no Horses to be found. The nearest source was by the red sea, 30+ spaces away from my small empire. If any of you have played on this map, you know its HUGE, and the only other Civ in Africa is the Egyptians. I sent out several Impies after my first scout, and slowly uncovered most of Africa. I had made contact with the Egyptians pretty early, and by trading them my map, had received some gold and contact with another Civ. I could see that all the other Civ's on Eurasia had made contact with each other, and kept trading my map for another contact, some gold, and occassionally a Tech. By the time I got to the last Civ, I had caught up in Tech, made about 500 gold, and gotten most of the Civ's Territory Maps.

Still a lot of Africa remained shrouded in mystery, and each turn as I uncovered another few tiles, I would sell my new maps to everyone. If someone traded me any updated map information for my map, I would go back through and resell my map to those who were interested in the updated map. I was getting anywhere from 0 to 75 gold each turn from 12 different Civs. I was able to put science at 100% and was still pulling in well over 100 gold per turn by 1500BC. I sold some of the techs (whenever an AI was "gaining" on the map deficit), but mostly waited to trade them for other advances. I was already getting almost all of the AI's gold each turn by just selling maps anyways. I'm now 2 advances away from Calvary, poised to take the nearest Horse away from the Egyptians if I cant trade for it (waiting for the AI to build some harbors), and its not even 1000BC yet, all from trading Maps. Certainly the extra food (and quicker expansion because of it) has lead to the degree of success, but it still should be possible to hamstring the AI this way on most large maps. Expansionist is the key.

On the game before the World Map one, I was also the Zulu's. It was another Deity game, everything standard. I quickly was hemmed in on all sides during the expansion, but managed 5 cities, and claimed 2 horses. My Impi army was quite large, and I headed directly to Horseback Riding. Before I could make it, every Civ on my continent had declared war on me. There were 5 Civs altogether (Aztecs, Persians, Babylonians, Iroquois, Egyptians), each with about 10 - 15 cities. I had about 15 Impies at the time, and posted all the ones I had to spare in enemy territory, tearing up improvements, fortifying on mountains, and cutting off all the Horse/Iron resources. No one had traded me any world maps, or even territory ones yet, but my first few scouts had covered that before the war began.

After the first wave of Swordsmen/Horsemen it got quite easy, as I kept the AI without Horses and Iron. I lost several Impies, but my cities were producing them faster than they could be taken out. Halfway through the war, my horsemen were available, but with the sheer number of AI units, they were kept on defensive duty. Eventually enough of the spare units that the AI had were defeated (it was a constant stream of them for quite some time), and for peace treaties I recieved several techs and quite a lot of gold, all without ever having attacked once. My Impies returned home to meet up with the newly formed horseman army that was waiting for them... At that point I switched games, or the AI would have really been in trouble. I wanted to see how this would work out on a more expansive map.

[Skeletal Dragon]

Originally posted by Arrian
All 8 luxuries + marketplace
Temple, Cathedral, Colleseum
Sistine Chapel
Bach
No entertainers or luxury spending

That's if YOU have both Sistine and Bach. I'm talking about normal conditions, which is w/o wonders. I rarely find myself monopolising on wonders throughout the game, although I do dominate in Industrial/Modern Age wonders...

[Arrian]

The "all eight luxuries" aside, those are normal conditions for me. Failure to build the Sistine is a hell-worthy trespass in my book, and I shoot straight for it. If I lose Sun Tzu because of that, so be it. Bach isn't quite as key, but I still go out of my way to get it.

Happiness & Science wonders are where it's at. Sun Tzu and Leo's are nice (Sun Tzu reduces tedium nicely) but just aren't that important to me. You can build barracks. Money for upgrading is not something I generally lack by mid-game. You cannot, however, double the effect of your cathedrals, or double the science in a city (three times with Cop's, Newton, and SETI) without the right Wonders.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Hello world!

First of all, my thanks goes out to all who've been participating in this superb thread, a lot of quality discussion going on! I feel like I'm battling to get even on the tech score, Civ III came out about a month later in Belgium than in the US, so you're clearly in the advantage here
It's nice to get some sound advice on strats, although the biggest use of Vel's threads is not hearing of totally new tactics, but more of understanding, and voicing strats I allready implicitely used. Great work!

Some suggestions though:
Vel, maybe you could include in your next summary a glossary of Civ (or Vel ) specific words, e.g. everybody is talking about REX, but the opening posts did not explain exactly what is meant by that. Of course, the meaning becomes clear once you've read all, but it would be a help to fledging newbies like myself. Same thing goes for ICS, IFE,...

Further, I noticed people were talking about the difficulties on keeping newly acquired enemy cities, I tested a little on that, and noticed some strange things. Of course, if you keep as much garrison units fortified in a city as there are people, there's no problem whatsoever, but most of the times you simply do not have the forces to do that. After some experiments, I now use about half the city size # on garrison units (fortified! non-fortified units are less effective IMHO), and try to build up a temple asap.

I don't know whether this was a coincidence, but many times I noticed that a city with lots of artillery/bombers in it is much more susceptable to reverting back. This happened a few times when I just ended a war, and wanted to keep my artillery units close to the front, and a few times when they were simply passing on a road to the front. So a testing example: I capture a city size 3, and fortify 2 rifleman inside. I save, and go to the next turn, nothing happens. So I reload, add 10 cannons to the same city, and go to the next turn again. All of a sudden the city reverts! Could it be that artillery is an extra reason to be malcontent? Some thoughts on this would be appreciated.

I also saw one example where I just rebased 8 bombers to a city (size 6, with 4 garrison) only to lose it. Extremely irritating as losing most of my bombers was, I went back to a save game, and removed all of my garrison from the city, but as the bombers already moved that turn, I couldn't move them out. But, at the start of next turn, nothing happened! So I moved my garrisons back in, and used the bombers to soften up the AI's capital Probably this had to do with a different seed, though, I can't imagine that staffing a city with only bombers would keep it from reverting...

Some final suggestions for you modders, or for Soren: if possible, you might want to change the military power to not just count the number of units, but use #of units + total # of offensive stats + total # of defensive stats ( + total # of hitpoints), possibly with some weighting factors for each term. This way, you take the quality of an army into account, while still counting how much workers are walking around. After all, they do have some military value, I use them quite frequently to lure enemy cavalry into the open, where I can savely attack them (and retake my worker, of course)

And I agree that late game entertainers and taxmen aren't as usefull as in the previous incarnations of this game, but I have a solution for this: Why not using a system like the luxuries with or without a martketplace? Without a bank, all taxmen produce one gold, but with a bank the 4th-6th taxman will produce 2 golds, 7th-9th 3 golds, 10th-12th 4 golds etc. Entertainers the same when temple, cathedral and colluseum are present, scientists the same when a research lab is present. Doing so it would be an incentive to grow the largest possible cities, while specialising specific cities into science, or commercial centers. After all, you get the downside of massive pollution, you might as well gain something from it as well.

Keep up the good work!
DeepO

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
Why borders are broken

(1) I have a city with culture 1000+. The AI sends a settler to a square just outside my borders. He founds a city, and my borders are pushed back because the city has to have 1 square culture in each direction. While doing that, he takes my only supply of horses. Thats total crap. Borders should not move.
(2) I build a colony on some iron while I'm waiting for a settler to come along. Instead, the AI sends a settler next to my iron and he takes it. That should either not happen if you are at peace or be an act of war.

The borders don't move much, this can't be abused by placing a city and then another in the new border to keep pushing them back. Even when the new cities culture reachs 10 it doesn't push the borders of the 1000+ city back(again). And anyway, if you want it to be an act of war to do that, make it one! Nothing stopping you there(well maybe an MPP). Buy a few allies to make sure they don't buy any allies to gang up on you and make them PAY.

Nothing wrong with colonies. Just don't let any opposing borders near it. If they had a 1 square cultural border like some have said, you would have a serious abuse loophole. I've noticed that when calvary wars start breaking out on large continents with several civs, the destruction and capturing of cities produces a lot of no-mans land where colonies could be placed. These colonies can't revolt and don't increase your corruption, and aren't too hard to defend if on defensive terrain(plant forest if its not already defensive). And, uh, don't forget to protect your roads.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Time to split?

Wonderful work, folks. To quote Nick Danger: "Thanks, half-pint, you just saved me a lot of investigative work!" Or rather, you have saved me hundreds of hours of blundering around playing badly. Mind you, I spent dozens of hours blundering around learning the ropes before coming back here to the fount of all knowledge.

However, maybe it's time to split this topic, as per the Civ2 Great Library. This great thread--as a printable document--is now up to 171 pages, a respectable book.

-- Hermann

[gnomos]

How to Kill an Army

Once in a while I see an AI civ with an army, and these buggers can be hard to kill. The answer is simple really - bombardment. Pound it down to 1 HP and then kill it like any other 1 HP unit.

[gnomos]

Tech Stealing Bug/Exploit

If you steal the tech you are currently researching, you then need a new tech to research. The tech tree gets immediately called to choose a new tech, but the status variables are set to steal mode, so you can instantly steal a second tech if there is one to steal. Beware, if there isn't another tech you can steal, you will get stuck in the tech screen, unable to steal another tech and unable to exit the screen without CTRL-ALT-DEL.

[gnomos]

Random Number Generator Exploit

The random number sequence is fixed, by storing the seeds and modulus in the save file. There is only one sequence however, so anything that uses a random number can be used to alter the success of events. It is possible to save/reload a lot, and use things like bombard attacks to pass over bad numbers for critical attacks, like trying to take a city with your last unit, or stealing a tech or a civ's battle plans. If you run into one of those sequences where a warrior kills your tank without taking a point of damage, you can pass over the 4 bad rolls with 2 artillery attacks (rof of 2 each) or 4 cannon attacks, or any combination. Ship bombards work also. You can also use this to generate more frequent Great Leaders.

[gnomos]

Originally posted by eMarkM


I thought at first we'd see 40 turns only on, say, 10-40% science in first several turns w/ 32 turns for 50-100%. This as opposed to before w/ everything taking 32 turns and everyone setting science to 10% to get $ to buy tech. I figured this was changed to discourage setting science too low and give you a choice.

But basically it's the same situation as before, just takes 40 turns no matter what your science is at. So you're still encouraged to set science to 10%, rake in cash, and buy techs. It slowly improves from there of course, but basically it takes even longer to research--at least early. Putting science high on upper levels is still completely pointless. Just bring in the cash and buy them.

e

Actually, if you create a single scientist in one of your cities you can set science to 0.