Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three

[Aeson]

Being able to upgrade swordsmen to Musketmen certainly would help, though it changes an offensive unit to a defensive one. Adding a unit like a Man-at-Arms with Feudalism or Invention would be nice to upgrade to. Giving ranged attackers a free shot at retreating troops, plus ZOC abilities, would give Archers, Longbowmen, and Musketmen (still haven't built either a Longbowman or a Musketman in any game) some use. Maybe even allowing them to attack as a bombard unit (against units only), and defend as regular. It would also encourage true combined arms, not just horse unit stacks or infantry/bombardment ones. Of course this is getting into a lot of change... Civ 4 maybe.

[Velociryx]

Funny you should mention that....

Aeson.....you'll be happy to know that every single idea you posted here has made the "final cut" for the Mod-With-No-Name, and is sitting in the Master Thread for it on my site!

-=Vel=-

[vmxa1]

I have not found that giving maps to a civ that I had ever had a war with made any difference to the attitude. Once they go furious (after you beat them in a war), they accept the gift, but never change attitudes. Giving a map to them when they are not furious is useful. Mostly they never get very warm to me if I have had a war, no matter how long ago it was or how often I give/trade with them. This is likely due to me being #1 in many categories.

[Aeson]

Is the mod-with-no-name still in production? Or is it finished? I started to look through that thread earlier, but was so behind in the discussion that I couldn't ever remember what had already been discussed/decided on/rejected/ect by the time I got halfway through. I'm sure though at a subconscious level I remember all the suggestions, and have re-hashed them here in a futile attempt at looking innovative

"original thought does not exist" - hey, if the quote has any merit, 'no one' said it

Originally posted by Velociryx
(Japan being the likliest exception, since they start with "The Wheel" and have a terriffic shot at getting a "Mongol Horde" up and running in about the same timeframe, esp. with a bit of goody hut luck).

Actually the Egyptians are only 1 advance away from 2/3 cost "horsemen" at the start of the game. Of course they are somewhat limited on very mountainous maps, but otherwise, make for maybe the best early rush, along with the Aztecs (no need to remind you of that!).

Multiplayer will certainly be interesting. I can see it now, 3 hours into selecting Civ's... Player 1 switches to the Zulu's, countering the early War Chariot rush of the Egyptian's Player 2 had selected. Player 2 switches to the Persian Immortal's... Player 1 takes the Egyptians... Player 2 switches to the Zulu's... Player 1 switches to the Americans, hoping to cause Player 2 to laugh too hard and accidently click on exit (which of course will mean Player 1 wins by forfeit)... Finally they both decide to switch from Pangaea to Archipelago, both take the English in a Lighthouse rush. Probably this is why the "disable civ-specific abilities" was included... It would be really cool to have a "enable all UU's for all Civ's" option though

[Arrian]

Vmxa1,

I have had similar experiences in the past, but my latest game has been the exception. For the first time ever, I have gotten a "furious" former enemy to "polite." There are a couple of reasons. 1) I am trading several luxuries to him... and I didn't haggle, I took what he offered. 2) I traded some tech to him. 3) He was, until very recently, involved in a life and death struggle with the #2 power, and it was during this time that I was trading him stuff on the cheap. 4) I gifted him a map and 50 gold (when he was broke).

Now, I'm pretty sure that #3 is the key. The Aztecs were hard pressed, and needed friends. I was surprised when the attitude changed, I must say. Then again, I was pretty surprised when he attacked me originally, too. Our war was minor, with three cities changing hands (I took 3 little siberian outposts) and no razings. That, come to think of it, is probably the the major factor. He picked the fight, but nothing much really happened. The Map took him from "annoyed" to "cautious" I think, so you may well be right about it having no effect on a "furious" civ.

He's unlikely to remain "polite" for long, given our relative power and wealth, but I will at least attempt to keep him to "cautious." I don't want to deal with an intercontinental war until I've got Tanks, at the very least, and those are 3 techs away.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Signing a MPP is usually a surefire way of getting them to Polite, at least for the duration of the Pact. Of course it is also a surefire way to get at least a couple other Civs very angry at you when you are forced to declare war on them!

[vmxa1]

MPP signing is a sure way to get into a war, not of your choosing. I only sign them to
a) protect a weak civ I do not want to have annexed to a stronger civ
b) I need to insure that I am only at war with a limited number of civs, not everyone.
c) I want in the action without my starting a war

[Aeson]

I admit to sometimes signing lots of MPP's just for the mayhem of it all. Its funny to see every Civ on the map at war with every other Civ. Not to mention the fun in taking advantage of the opportunities that arise out of all those conflicts. It sometimes takes quite a bit of planning to get the total chaos war set up right, but can be done most of the time (or at least close enough to count). Of course this is only for times where military might is enough to secure your position, and you're not looking for a Diplomatic ending.

[MightyA]

Automating workers/Governors

Is it at all useful to automate your workers? Does anyone know how their tasks are prioritized? After about 10 workers are made, I can't be bothered watching them all, but it is becoming more apparent to me (on higher levels) that perhaps micromanagment is necessary.

Similar question: does anyone allow the governor to manage citizen moods/production/etc?

[Harovan]

MightyA: Depends on the map size and the difficulty level I play. On maps larger than standard it begins after a while to SUCK badly to micromanage dozens of workers. So if I am playing monarch or less (most of my games), I simply hold a work force of about 3 workers (nicely fits into turns to complete jobs) for "my use only" and let them build a strategic road or RR net or mine around wonder building cities or something like that. The rest I let work either fully automated or automated with no changing existing improvements. They don't do it perfectly, but in 80-90% of all they do a nice job, that can be fine tuned later if necessary. But I have to admit, the chessboard like mining/irrigating grasslands looks not perfect, see early examples at all industrous tribes.

I always let the governor manage the citizen moods and emphasize production, except in mission critical wonder races, where I prefer to micromanage the city myself. Nice thing, I almost never have civil disorders (except sometimes on "luxury denials"). When the growth halts (at size 6 or 12), I forbid the governor to manage moods for that particular cities and try to manage a zero growth while maximizing either shields or commerce myself, for in these cases the governor usually continues to produce (and waste) food like crazy.

I NEVER let the governor decide WHAT to build in the cities. If I can, I set up a queue.

[David Weldon]

Re: Automating workers/Governors

Originally posted by MightyA
Is it at all useful to automate your workers? Does anyone know how their tasks are prioritized? [snip]

Similar question: does anyone allow the governor to manage citizen moods/production/etc?

No, no, and no. Not if you want to play a good game, that is.

You can certainly build 4x as many workers as normal and then automate them, but if you do that you'll still have to play probably 1 or maybe 2 levels below where you would normally play.

I've tried to have govenors manage citizens, and it's kind of nice but there's just too many cases where an entire turn of production can be saved by adding 1 or 2 extra shields to top-off the unit being produced.

Managing production is absolutely out of the question no matter what. Even at Chieftan.

My experience with worker automation (even just clearing forests or jungles) is that they spread out, which is a poor choice because you don't get incremental improvement while they work, and that they target squares that are not anywhere near useful cities. Oh, and the patch really screwed up the pollution clean up function in a half-a$$ed attempt to fix it.

I should mention my best strategy for citizen management:
I save the game at the end of every turn (instead of at the beginning like the autosave). If a city goes into revolution because I was too weary to look at each one in turn and count the icons, then I re-load the turn and fix it. This doesn't change any battle outcomes or anything like that because the seed is saved, and it allows me to avoid wasting 2 turns of production from a city because the interface sucks. I wish they would flag cities in the domestic advisor with a visible mark if they had more unhappy than happy citizens...*sigh*...

[vmxa1]

The workers are not very well managed, but it is more like scores if not hundreds of workers and I can not be bothered to manage them. I will grab all that are about to move when I get Steam and control them to get my RR connected to all cities. Other than that I may hold a few as well to put on clean up and such. I normally raze a lot of cities and you tend to capture lots of workers and razing generates them. Way to many. Late in the game I have to disband the horde that are just standing around in a city with nothing to do. I suspect that you could handle 15-20 workers if you can take the pain.

[Harovan]

About worker priorities (I forgot):

Their final goal is (most jobs in city radius only):
- cut all forests (except on tundra) and jungles
- build roads everywhere (resources!) and railroads in every city radius
- mine all hills/mountains, or at least as much as the city can afford to work without food shortage
- first mine, later plant forest at all tundra tiles
- irrigate all plains/flood plains
- mine wheat and cattle tiles
- mine deserts, except in places where is an extreme food shortage (irrigate there instead)
- chessboard-like mine and irrigate grasslands

I have no clue about priorities, they mostly begin to build up infrastructure around the place they were automated first. What sucks is, that they irrigate even during despotism, where it's mostly useless. But I usually switch to Republic or Monarchy early, so that the irrigations are just a small "investment" in later times.

[Harovan]

David Weldon:

Yea, saving/reloading would be a solution to avoid civil disorders, but on huge maps (preferred) on my old machine (350 MHz/128 MB) loading lasts up to 4 or 5 minutes especially in the late game (with many cities) which SUCKS! It just hangs at 57% and 85%, probably allocating arrays or initializing/recomputing something. The pain about some lost shields is less than reloading every 3rd turn.

I am not talking about hurrying productions of wonders or of units in a running/upcoming war. In these cases a good micromanagement can be the difference between winning and losing, that's out of question. But after the emergency is gone, it's easy to switch on mood control again "in all cities".

One big exclusion: If I am lucky to make a science city with at least 2 of Copernicus/Newton/SETI (and may be the Colossus), or if I can build the iron works, I always micromanage these cities myself.

[Skeletal Dragon]

I now find automating Workers is a waste of time. If you have several of them, they sometimes seem to all flood towards the same job while neglecting other duties. And worse yet, its something outside of the road network so they waste a turn!