City building in MY land

[Pizarro]

rah: Perhaps your startegy isnt that bad after all. It certainly cost less and you´ve got the stronger offensive units behind in some kind of deep-terrain defence i guess. I have used my border-strategy since Civ II when facing other civs on the same continent as myself. Guess i do it on routine by know. Perhaps i´ll try your strategy on my next game.

[rah]

Everything is a tradeoff. My biggest problem with civ III is the cost of my army. The leaving a few muskets in each city strat from II doesn't work. My army is my investment. So if it's just sitting around, it's not paying for itself due to lost opportunity. So I have to stretch out my expense so I can keep as much as possible towards research. My army must be out conquering to pay for itself. So guarding borders must be done as cheaply as possible. But I really do take advantage of having my neighbors in fear of me. After you pummel them, they will respect your borders. (especially if you have roads on them) I love to leave them as vassel states until they can provide no more use to me. Or it's just time to clean the continent to make defense easier in the mid-game.

Once you've cleaned off your continent and have railroads, the AI will never coordinate enough of an landing force to be any problems. Unlike what we can do to them

[MarshalN]

Vmxa: I don't know if you read my whole post/thread, but in my scenario my borders were clearly violated. They put a city really in my heartland where my core cities were, without regard to my warnings. I suppose my army wasn't big enough at that point to really scare them, which is a problem, but I still think it's problematic that they can just really walk in after repeated warnings and just put a city down.

rah: interesting idea with the workers. I think though for someone who routinely plays large or huge maps (me), this is really not very practical since borders tend to be long. I'd need literally dozens of workers if not hundreds to line up on the borders, which can be a problem.

Oh well, I hope they can do something so that the AI will have to either respect my border or war me.

[rah]

Dozens or hundreds I have around 300 captured at this point, on a medium sized world no less. Not a problem, I usually have that many to spare. Especially before 70 are allocated to Pollution cleanup patrol. (I WISH THEY WOULD PROVIDE AN AUTOMATE CLEANUP COMMAND for workers)

But since it's early in the game when this is usually a problem, it is more limited.

I don't really have a problem with it when you're not strong enough. Just like the real world, If you're weak, they'll walk all over you. I would just shadow the settler with two offensive units and take the city the turn it is built. Yes, it's a declaration of war, but the AI has to learn you're not to be trifled yet.

Personally I don't think this is broken and doesn't need to be fixed. If they fear you, they will not cross the border, unless they're looking for an excuse to fight. And If that's the case, war is iminent anyway.

RAH

[Kc7mxo]

I WISH THEY WOULD PROVIDE AN AUTOMATE CLEANUP COMMAND for workers

uh. you do know about shift P right? it automates them to just clean up pollution? of course it turns off when they run out of pollution, which is damn annoying.


and shift A which only automates them to upgrade land you haven't touched yet, so they won't be replacing your mines.

you did READ the README file, didn't you?

[JMan]

rah,

There is an automate cleanup command. I think it is CTRL+SHIFT+P. The worker will automatically move to pollution and clean it. The only trouble is that the worker will 'de-automate' if all pollution in your territory is cleaned up. If more appears on a later turn, you will have to issue the command again.

[MarshalN]

I'm quite sure I can fight a successful war with the Indians in that game, especially since most of their good cities are not on my continent.

I just didn't want to deal with another war while I want to deal with the other two guys (Germans and Russians). Oh well, whatever

[star mouse]

Originally posted by xane
A colony is exactly that, you hope to establish something there later ...

Not always. I saw the AI's use colonies as a fairly permanent resource solution in my first game.

I was playing Egyptians on a 3 billion year old world. 3 billion year old worlds often have large mountain ranges, and I saw a doozy in this game. On the big continent which some AI's shared, there was a humungous mountain range. It was so large, there were some mountain tiles that would take a very long time to be included in the cultural radius of a civ because no viable city could be built nearby. (The mountain range also had desert on 2 sides.) There were several Iron and Gems resources in that mountain range, and the Iroquois, Indians and Japanese all built colonies to secure these resources.

[vmxa1]

Colonies are long term as long as no one distrubes them. If you capture (war) or build a city next to it, that is the end of it. If no one can get at it then it is long term. When I am clearing the map of the AI civs I sometimes will create one with recently captured workers just to know where the stuff is. I do not know if there are any cost to this (maint wise).

[bdog]

It may be just a simplistic and basic strategy but you can block any units with just 3 units (preferably horsemen). I held off a settler and spearman, who were trying to put a city inside my borders, for about 25 turns. They would have had to declare war/attack me on not be able to move through my blocking wall. It was just a pain to move them each turn to block.

Just an idea

[rah]

Thanks, Kc7mxo, Jman, I didn't know that. I read and did't read quite a bit of stuff. My experiences in previous versions of civ with automating settlers haven't been successful so I may have glossed over it. But after having to move 100's of workers I tried it and was very unsatisfied. They built the railroads like I wanted but did mine quit a bit so the improve unimproved spaces will be very useful. And while the deactivating after polution cleaned will be anoying, at least you can just give them the command again and not have to move them. I love these boards because people are always willing to help.

Back to topic.
Yeah bdog, I have used that, and if the AI gets frustrated and just plops a city down, you can take it real easy. It was much easier to block in II with ZOC blocking. While I miss ZOC blocking it makes the AI look smarter without it.

RAH

[padillah]

Couple quick things...

Colonies are for outside your borders. Once your borders reach the colony it will disolve (and the worker will disappear too).

Second: If you declare war because of the AI invading your space you don't loose reputation and "war weariness" is not as bad. (This is from a support call, I'm not just making that up)

Last: If you don't declare war... than you don't declare war. You can't get mad at the game for not taking control of your civ.

If you want to declare war, go ahead. If not the bluff is all you
got.

Hank P.
P.S. I've gotten the " -- your units will move automatically --" choice a few times when the AI gets pissed at me. I've also been subject to them moving as soon as I say "boo!".

[MarshalN]

Oh, no reputation damage? I did not know that.

I have yet to see the same thing repeat itself in any of my games. Mostly they just build in free tiles maybe next to my land, but never in my land. It seems like the fact that I was warring two other civs encouraged that sort of move as well. I've seen AI with settlers crossing my land only turning back when I declare peace with someone.