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**Maquiladora** · November 16, 2002, 10:06

1) You cant change specific tiles you work around your cities radii (because you work them all), but that doesnt devalue tile imps. As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time.

2) Im certain pollution overflow levels have been altered in most mods, and CtP2 is not about pumping out production and gold at least, although commerce is most important. But doesnt it make complete sense that the handicap you make by moving your sliders should effect all your cities? At least theres no out right specilist cities anymore.

3) You can raze cities in most CtP2 mods now.

4) Hmm i never saw any obvious cheating by the AI, other than the numbers in diffDB.txt which define the human handicap for each difficulty level, there really isnt anything radical to help the AI. For example, seeing the whole map.

5) That hasnt been added/fixed in the diplomacy system AFAIK.

Theres actually a thread topped in this forum for CtP2 Mod n00bers but its quite new so i dont know if it covered some of the stuff you mentioned. As always though if you see something you want in a mod (no matter how complex) im sure someone will help.

**nbarclay** · November 16, 2002, 11:03

Originally posted by Maquiladora
1) You cant change specific tiles you work around your cities radii (because you work them all), but that doesnt devalue tile imps. As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time.

What does, "As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time" mean?

2) Im certain pollution overflow levels have been altered in most mods, and CtP2 is not about pumping out production and gold at least, although commerce is most important. But doesnt it make complete sense that the handicap you make by moving your sliders should effect all your cities? At least theres no out right specilist cities anymore.

Every 4X game I've ever played (not that it's been a huge number) has ultimately been about investment, and production and the growth to support production tend to be the most important forms of investment. Get those right and you can build everythng else you need.

What gets me is that the game created a problem that's real-world solution should be obvious to anyone with half a brain but refused to offer the options necessary to implement that solution. When the limiting factor on production in a particular city is pollution, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it makes sense to operate the city's factories fewer hours a day and pay the employees correspondingly less. (That, or cut back the number of factories, but Civ-style games don't deal in numbers of factories.) But there's no even remotely rational reason why cities in less polluted areas couldn't run longer hours and pay their employees more in return.

In the original CTP, I didn't mind that the sliders operated on a national basis because it was almost unheard of for a setting that's good for growing new cities to be truly stupid for the older, more established cities. But when I tried to carry my production-centric strategy over to CTP2, I ran into a brick ceiling. I don't mind the basic idea of keeping production in check, since it did seem to get a bit out of hand in the original CTP. But doing it in such a clumsy and heavy-handed way really undermined my enjoyment.

Nathan

**Maquiladora** · November 16, 2002, 11:48

Originally posted by nbarclay

What does, "As long as you place them at the right time and of course commit to generating PW at the right time" mean?

Most CtP'ers either play with 100% PW or 0% PW, it makes little sense to have it constantly on 20% for example, well at least thats how i play. So you have to choose when to max out PW for a turn or two, so if you needed a few cannons on those border towns it probably wouldnt be a good idea to do it yet.

Originally posted by nbarclay

Every 4X game I've ever played (not that it's been a huge number) has ultimately been about investment, and production and the growth to support production tend to be the most important forms of investment. Get those right and you can build everythng else you need.

...and basically to place farms early to up the population and then just place commerce imps [b]everywhere[b] because the early population alone can hold the production at a decent level for a while.

Originally posted by nbarclay

What gets me is that the game created a problem that's real-world solution should be obvious to anyone with half a brain but refused to offer the options necessary to implement that solution. When the limiting factor on production in a particular city is pollution, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it makes sense to operate the city's factories fewer hours a day and pay the employees correspondingly less. (That, or cut back the number of factories, but Civ-style games don't deal in numbers of factories.) But there's no even remotely rational reason why cities in less polluted areas couldn't run longer hours and pay their employees more in return.

In the original CTP, I didn't mind that the sliders operated on a national basis because it was almost unheard of for a setting that's good for growing new cities to be truly stupid for the older, more established cities. But when I tried to carry my production-centric strategy over to CTP2, I ran into a brick ceiling. I don't mind the basic idea of keeping production in check, since it did seem to get a bit out of hand in the original CTP. But doing it in such a clumsy and heavy-handed way really undermined my enjoyment.

Nathan

But you just add more labourers (production specialists) in cities where production is more important or less polluting, thus reducing science/gold/food. Or conversely add more scientists/farmers/merchants in the high polluting cities. I think thats a pretty simple solution, unless i misunderstood you.

**hexagonian** · November 16, 2002, 12:02

Re: On why I abandoned CTP2, and whether mods make it worth another look

Originally posted by nbarclay
(1) The loss of ability to change what tiles I worked took away one of my key management tools. Worse, I got the distinct impression that it can seriously devalue tile improvements depending on population levels, because the improved tile is only one of several being worked instead of being fully utilized. (I'm not positive I'm right about that, but it's the impression I got.)

I miss the worker system too, but the way it is set up in CTP2 has its advantages too. Less micromanagement in the later stages of the game when you have a lot of cities, and specialists actually work on the same principle as civ3/CTP1. Since there is a specialist for all of the main needs (gold/food/science/production) using specialists in one area will reduce effectiveness in another - same as moving workers.

The thing to remember about tile improvements is to build then in groups. So a player should improve all of the tiles in a city radius ASAP. And the challenge/choice is to figure out which city to improve first???

Originally posted by nbarclay
(2) My strategies in the original CTP were heavily overloaded toward production (and the growth needed to support that production, of course). But CTP2 uses pollution to put an effective ceiling on how much a city can produce. So if I keep the production slider high so new (or recently captured) cities will be highly productive, I end up with gargantuan numbers of specialists in my core cities to keep their production down enough I don't have pollution problems. The basic concept of the sliders seems like something good, but that kind of limitation transforms them from something fun into a major annoyance - especially since they have to be set on the empire-wide level when the optimal settings for a huge metropolis and a struggling town are completely different.

In my mod (Cradle), pollution is used more as a happiness modifier. And I have also reduced the power of specialists in the current update (they come later, for example), so they do not have such an overpowering effect.

Sliders have also been downplayed in my Mod - I always considered the use of them overpowering in the default game and it was one of the first things I worked on. You can use them, but at a heavy cost to unhappiness. Again, the challenge is to get to the point where you can use them effectively.

Originally posted by nbarclay
(3) At the time, I almost always played huge maps. CTP2 cut the number of cities allowable in half from the original CTP in compensation for how much bigger the cities get. But no one told the AI to change its city build patterns to make sure cities can grow to full radius. As a result, when I captured AI cities, I ended up with a significantly higher than optimal city density relative to the land available, and that played havoc with how much territory I could control. I've seen CTP2 fans (among others) complain about the alleged "need" to raze in Civ 3 (I play it on Monarch and Emperor, and you could probably count the number of cities I've razed in my entire year-long career on one hand), but I'll take that over the pain involved in weeding out excess cities in CTP2 any day.

Razing is an option in Modded CTP2 (at least in Cradle) to give players the option to quickly weed out those cities. Personally, I do not use it though, preferring the challenge of making those cities work for me.

The thing I do not care about in civ3 is that for the most part, razing captured cities is what a player has to do, because those cities are too much of a burden to the player - high corruption, and very prone to culture flip in a war. Again, this is not necessarily bad, and does create a challenge, but I find it to be what I end up doing, especially in a protracted war.

Originally posted by nbarclay
(4) I got the distinct impression that there was some sort of cheating going on (or some kind of very odd rule being followed) for one of the AIs to essentially keep up with me in tech. That might have just been me not knowing the tech system very well, but in a couple games, it looked almost as if there was something deliberately rigged to keep the human from running away with a tech lead.

Cheats happen in every game, and CTP2 has its share.

I can say this, the cheats in the default CTP2 game were less than in civ3 - in fact when the AI had a certain lead, it game itself an handicap to allow the human player to catch up. Be warned - this has been altered in the Mods.

But I would venture to say that the diplomacy model in civ3 does the same thing with tech. The AI trades tech heavily, and it is this trading that forces a player into the strategy of trading tech rather than building up his own science. Again, it provides a challenge, but it seems to me counter-intuitive, and the main thing is that players are funneled down a particular strategic path, at the expense of others.

Originally posted by nbarclay
(5) The straw that finally broke the camel's back came with the new, "improved" diplomacy system...
Since then, Civ 3 came out, and I fell in love with it. The only really major annoyance I've found (from my pserspective) is that peace treaties don't obligate the loser in a war to respect the current borders until the end of the treaty (i.e. obligate them not to accept culture flips), and that's no more ridiculous than the CTP series' inability to outlaw slavers' operating in your territory. Yes, mutual protection pacts can force me into unwanted wars, but they're easily avoided and of finite duration if I do want one in some unusual case.

I would agree that the civ3 model is superior to CTP2, (that and a more focused military AI in civ3, especially in regard to diplomacy AI/AI and AI/human alliances) but at the same time, there are a whole lotta things that I prefer in CTP2 - stacked combat, multiple government choices/tile improvements, PW, no infinte Railroad sleaze, a deeper tech tree and on and on...

Originally posted by nbarclay
But I'm still thinking that with how mature the CTP mods are by now, the game might be worth another look if most of what annoyed me about the game originally has been dealt with adequately. The question is, has it?

Well, you have the game already, so giving a Mod a try isn't such a committment. The nice thing is that if you need help, there is always someone here to walk you through any problem, and we contunually try to upgrade our Mods (see Creation thread - This Packs military AI sucks thread for an example)

Hex

Nathan

**nbarclay** · November 16, 2002, 19:40

Originally posted by Maquiladora
But you just add more labourers (production specialists) in cities where production is more important or less polluting, thus reducing science/gold/food. Or conversely add more scientists/farmers/merchants in the high polluting cities. I think thats a pretty simple solution, unless i misunderstood you.

Which brings us (at high production slider settings) to the ludicrous situation of cities with huge radii that don't dare actually use all those tiles, and of having multiple types of mines available but not daring build any of them lest pollution strike. That kind of bad balance of the features against each other is just plain ugly. I wouldn't have a problem with not being able to build the most advanced mines available on every tile on high production slider settings, but not daring to build any?

Also, how does using tons of specialists affect the advantage obtained from tile improvements? If people have to work improved tiles to get the advantage of them, design decisions that make it impractical to work all a city's tiles have the side effect of undercutting all forms of tile improvements, not just mines.

Nathan

**nbarclay** · November 16, 2002, 20:47

Re: Re: On why I abandoned CTP2, and whether mods make it worth another look

Originally posted by hexagonian

I miss the worker system too, but the way it is set up in CTP2 has its advantages too. Less micromanagement in the later stages of the game when you have a lot of cities, and specialists actually work on the same principle as civ3/CTP1. Since there is a specialist for all of the main needs (gold/food/science/production) using specialists in one area will reduce effectiveness in another - same as moving workers.

Which brings back the micromanagement that getting rid of workers was supposed to eliminate. Oops.

The thing to remember about tile improvements is to build then in groups. So a player should improve all of the tiles in a city radius ASAP. And the challenge/choice is to figure out which city to improve first???

What's the advantage of building lots of tile improvements in one city compared with spreading them out? Is it just connected with the idea of once you have the tile improvements in place, you stop using specialists much in that city in order to get maximum use of the tile improvements, or is there something else involved?

In my mod (Cradle), pollution is used more as a happiness modifier. And I have also reduced the power of specialists in the current update (they come later, for example), so they do not have such an overpowering effect.

Sliders have also been downplayed in my Mod - I always considered the use of them overpowering in the default game and it was one of the first things I worked on. You can use them, but at a heavy cost to unhappiness. Again, the challenge is to get to the point where you can use them effectively.

The down side to penalizing players just for using sliders is that it takes away a lot of the variability in governments. In the original CTP, for example, I used Theocracy but pushed the food consumption down to minimum and salaries up to maximum. My changes balanced, so the net effect on happiness was zero, although I was still subject to random riots for some (to the best of my knowledge) completely undocumented reason. The point is that to a considerable degree, the sliders let you create your own government instead of being stuck with the tradeoffs the designers picked.

On the other hand, what you can do with sliders in standard CTP2 struck me as significantly more extreme (especially with regard to production) than what could be done with the original CTP. It's almost as if the designers caught a bad case of, "If some is good, more must be better." Indeed, what could be done with production was so extreme that high production slider settings (great for building up new or newly captured cities) didn't get along with other techniques for boosting production.

Razing is an option in Modded CTP2 (at least in Cradle) to give players the option to quickly weed out those cities. Personally, I do not use it though, preferring the challenge of making those cities work for me.

The only reason I would even consider wanting to get rid of cities is that there's a limit on how many you can have. But when the number of cities you can have is vastly smaller than the number in the world, you have to either get rid of some of them or stop conquering.

The thing I do not care about in civ3 is that for the most part, razing captured cities is what a player has to do, because those cities are too much of a burden to the player - high corruption, and very prone to culture flip in a war. Again, this is not necessarily bad, and does create a challenge, but I find it to be what I end up doing, especially in a protracted war.

Corruption has been toned down a lot in the Civ 3 patches, and keeping totally corrupt cities around doesn't really hurt; basically, they're just useless. And as I said in my orignal post, I play Monarch and Emperor (lately more Emperor than Monarch) and almost never raze. The one residual nuisance for me is the need to take out a civ completely when practical to eliminate all risk of culture flips, but I've gotten so used to that that I don't care so much about it anymore. By the way, with the Play the World expansion pack, you can turn culture flips off if they bother you too much.

Cheats happen in every game, and CTP2 has its share.

I can say this, the cheats in the default CTP2 game were less than in civ3 - in fact when the AI had a certain lead, it game itself an handicap to allow the human player to catch up. Be warned - this has been altered in the Mods.

Were the cheats in the default CTP2 really less, or just more subtle? In my view, having the AI's bonuses/penalties vary depending on how it is doing compared with the player takes away a lot of the idea that the AI is bound by rules at all. How do you measure your success when the AI's competitiveness depends on how well you play? In Civ 3, the AIs play by rules that give them some advantages, and some of those advantages are pretty blatant, but at least they do always play by the same rules.

But I would venture to say that the diplomacy model in civ3 does the same thing with tech. The AI trades tech heavily, and it is this trading that forces a player into the strategy of trading tech rather than building up his own science. Again, it provides a challenge, but it seems to me counter-intuitive, and the main thing is that players are funneled down a particular strategic path, at the expense of others.

You're talking to someone who, on a good map, routinely goes toe to toe with the AIs in research even on Emperor in the ancient era. Granted, I don't play Deity because there, the problems are much as you describe, but pick the right level and you have a wide range of options open.

Further, the benefits of pulling away with a tech lead in Civ 3 are enormous. I can do tech-for-luxury trades to keep my people very happy, and get some gold in the process to help fuel further research. And if I can beat the AI to key military techs, it gives me a major military advantage as well.

Granted, the tech tree is smaller, with not as many choices of what to research. But there are still choices to make. Do you "waste" time on optional techs to try to get wonders or change governments (Democracy and Communism), or do you move straight through toward the next era? How do you prioritize Sanitation (hospitals to let cities grow past size 12), Industrialization (factories), Replaceable Parts (workers build tile improvements twice as fast), and Scientific Method (Theory of Evolution for two free techs, providing a clear shot at Electronics and Hoover Dam). And Play the World adds Corporation to the list of things you might or might not prioritize by providing a wealth city improvement with it. Granted, a given player is likely to have his preferences and follow those preferences over and over, but is that really so different in the CTP series?

I would agree that the civ3 [diplomacy] model is superior to CTP2, (that and a more focused military AI in civ3, especially in regard to diplomacy AI/AI and AI/human alliances) but at the same time, there are a whole lotta things that I prefer in CTP2 - stacked combat, multiple government choices/tile improvements, PW, no infinte Railroad sleaze, a deeper tech tree and on and on...

Stacked combat has its advantages, but the CTP games have an annoying tendency of letting a well-designed attack annihilate the enemy with essentially no losses of its own. Just pound the defenders to a pulp first. That's a lot harder in Civ 3, especially under Democracy or Republic. Bombardment isn't lethal, so you can't kill units outright with it; someone has to go in and finish the job and may get killed in the process. War weariness becomes a huge problem if you take the time to bring up a lot of artillery for every city you want to capture. And if you don't bombard, first, the first units in have a very significant possibility of being killed even if your units are both technologically and numerically superior.

In my view, each combat system has its advantages and its disadvantages. CTP2's system is more sophisticated, while Civ 3's has what I view as an elegant simplicity.

Well, you have the game already, so giving a Mod a try isn't such a committment. The nice thing is that if you need help, there is always someone here to walk you through any problem, and we contunually try to upgrade our Mods (see Creation thread - This Packs military AI sucks thread for an example)

I make a good enough income and keep my financial "needs" simple enough that the time involved in learning a game as complex as Civ 3 or CTP2 is a significantly bigger investment than the money to buy it. I'm a micromanager by nature, so if I get back into CTP2, I'll spend a lot of time reading the rules (including mod rules) and trying to figure out the best way to make use of them. And I don't really want to do that if I'll just end up abandoning the game in frustration again.

Nathan

**nbarclay** · November 16, 2002, 21:32

Oh, a couple other things:

Public works - Until I got into Civ 3, I viewed Public Works as a clearly superior system, partly because that's what I started on. But there are things I like about the fact that once a worker is built, he's built and he keeps working, so I don't have to keep fiddling with the choice between building infrastructure and other things. Further, while workers require some management, that management makes it impossible not to know when an improvement is finished and ready for use. In contrast, the original CTP had its own micromanagement nightmare trying to keep track of which improvements in which parts of my empire would be finished in a given turn. (And I've already said what I think about CTP2's decision to "solve" the problem by taking the choice of what tiles to work out of the player's hands.)

"Infinite railroad sleaze" - Railroads are Civ 3's answer to more advanced forms of mines and irrigation. You don't replace the old ones; you add railroads to make them work better. Similar effect, different way of getting it. And when you consider just how big a tile is in terms of square miles, how would it make sense to have tiles that don't get served by the road and rail system? (The Call to Power games have the opposite problem: without a commercial benefit, there tends to be little reason to prioritize building roads and railraods at all, especially beyond a few central arteries for moving military forces.)

Numbers of techs and governments - Those make CTP2 a bigger game, but not necessarily a better one. It's the old trade-off between high levels of size and sophistication and elegant simplicity. Firaxis had good reasons for not getting into an "arms race" with Activision over who could provide the most techs, governments, etc. My own view is that which approach is better is a matter of personal taste, and personally, I don't care a great deal one way or the other.

Nathan

**hexagonian** · November 16, 2002, 21:38

Originally posted by nbarclay
That kind of bad balance of the features against each other is just plain ugly. I wouldn't have a problem with not being able to build the most advanced mines available on every tile on high production slider settings, but not daring to build any?

See my post above...I should of clarified that pollution (in Cradle and I am 90% sure, in MedMod) has been reworked so that it affects happiness more and destroys fewer tiles. (at least I have not heard from any players that pollution is causing rampant tile destruction in Cradle in the late game.) I have only played Cradle through through Medieval times (about 750 turns) though with no tiles lost to pollution.

BTW, Cradle was originally designed to play about 800-1000 turns but I have left the modern age in so that players could play as long as they want (about 1350 turns).

Originally posted by nbarclay
Also, how does using tons of specialists affect the advantage obtained from tile improvements? If people have to work improved tiles to get the advantage of them, design decisions that make it impractical to work all a city's tiles have the side effect of undercutting all forms of tile improvements, not just mines.

Using Cradle 1.34 as the example, here's how it will work. Realize that specialists are not all available in Cradle at the begining of the game either. Farmers come into play at turn 0-60, laborers come in from turn 200-300, merchants come in at turn 500-600, and scientists come in at turn 600-700. So if you are planning on using all of them to negate the need of tile improvements, you will not be able to because you will not be able to cover the full spectrum of your needs. And by the time you get them all, improved tile improvements will lessen their strength.

If anything, tile improvements are more important now, because you get a benefit from them even if only a few tile are worked. It pays to have all of your tiles in a ring improved. In civ3/CTP1, you have to work the tile to get the benefit.

You will have a benefit of tile improvements even if you use some specialists, because the improvement will add to the total that a ring will produce. It works on the principle that each ring has a total number of gold/production/food that is produced. This figure is then divided by the number of workers that are working the ring, and also figuring in the government bonus and crime rate. So if a ring has a total of 80 production, and it is worked by 4 workers, then the total production collected will be 40 (this is assuming that you have a government coefficient of 1.0 and no crime, and not counting the tile under the city or buildings either - I'm not going to use those numbers because they are unneeded for this example).

Now the labor specialist is worth 25 production, so at this stage of the game, it will pay to use them in many situations, but you will not have access to merchants and scientists, so using them willy-nilly in all cities will hurt your science and commerce. (Generally, I have specialist cities, focusing on certain aspects of my needs.) And by the time you get Merchants, you are also close to getting Advanced Mines that will nullify the need of laborers. Nullify is too strong a word - they will have certain uses, but mainly in cities that cannot gain too much from those types of tile improvements.

Again, there are times that using specialists can be counter-productive - but look at it this way. If you have a production-poor city, using laborers can pay off (even with Mines on swamps, your production per tile is not as high as with a laborer, but using laborers could still cause you to lose food growth and gold.

In a city with high production tiles like mines, you could be better off keeping them in the fields. It makes sense, because you have a production apparatus already in place (Mines on mountains). Specialist are more along the lines of getting a bonus in situations where you have very few options, or to accent a city with a boost up to a point.

**hexagonian** · November 16, 2002, 21:55

Originally posted by nbarclay
"Infinite railroad sleaze" - Railroads are Civ 3's answer to more advanced forms of mines and irrigation. You don't replace the old ones; you add railroads to make them work better. Similar effect, different way of getting it. And when you consider just how big a tile is in terms of square miles, how would it make sense to have tiles that don't get served by the road and rail system? (The Call to Power games have the opposite problem: without a commercial benefit, there tends to be little reason to prioritize building roads and railraods at all, especially beyond a few central arteries for moving military forces.)

The main problem with IRS is that it completely nullifies the need to think defensively and it negates the need to commit a force to a front. If I conquer a city, I can instantaneously move a foce into it to maintain a garrison, if the enemy had rails in place around that city. If attacked, all I need to do is keep a huge force in the heart of my empire and instantaneously move it to where it is needed.

CTP2 has this to some extent, because you get a nice movement bonus with rails, but it is not infinite...

And it is butt-ugly - better that they introduce upgraded tile improvements to build along with rails forcing a player to choose either movement or better production/food.

**hexagonian** · November 16, 2002, 22:41

Re: Re: Re: On why I abandoned CTP2, and whether mods make it worth another look

Originally posted by nbarclay
Which brings back the micromanagement that getting rid of workers was supposed to eliminate. Oops.

Its still less because I'm not clicking and dragging workers onto separate tiles to get the number I want. Simply pushing a button and seeing the numbers...much quicker and efficient.

Originally posted by nbarclay
The down side to penalizing players just for using sliders is that it takes away a lot of the variability in governments. In the original CTP, for example, I used Theocracy but pushed the food consumption down to minimum and salaries up to maximum. My changes balanced, so the net effect on happiness was zero, although I was still subject to random riots for some (to the best of my knowledge) completely undocumented reason. The point is that to a considerable degree, the sliders let you create your own government instead of being stuck with the tradeoffs the designers picked.

The point is that you have to work a little harder at at to use the sliders, but the option is still there to do so. They were too extreme though...and the beauty of it is that it's an incredibly easy thing to modify to your tastes if you want to change the txt file that controls the sliders.

Originally posted by nbarclay
Corruption has been toned down a lot in the Civ 3 patches, and keeping totally corrupt cities around doesn't really hurt; basically, they're just useless.

Then why would I want to keep a worthless city - its just more terrain to defend. Yeah, I know, to deny the land to the AI. But I guess that's the whole reason...

Originally posted by nbarclay
Were the cheats in the default CTP2 really less, or just more subtle?

From the DiffDb.txt file (Impossible)

# % amount to multiply advance cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_TECHNOLOGY_COST 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_TECHNOLOGY_COST 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.5

# % amount to multiply production cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

# multiplier for gold collected for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.1

# % amount to multiply advance cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_AHEAD_TECHNOLOGY_COST 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_TECHNOLOGY_COST 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.2 1.1

# % amount to multiply production cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_AHEAD_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.1

# multiplier for gold collected fo ai
AI_MIN_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0

MAX_HUMAN_ADVANCES 3
MAX_AI_ADVANCES 8
HUMAN_SCIENCE_BONUS 0.8 # % amount to add to advance cost for the player
HUMAN_FOOD_BONUS -0.4 # % amount to add to food collected for the player

The largest one was a (+80%) Advance cost to the human player for advances, and the beginning stuff that goes to the AI, and the bonuses if the AI is hopelessly behind.

But look at the handicaps if the AI is ahead of the human...In civ3, I've heard the bonus for the AI is a cost10 (human)/cost6(AI) across the board for Deity. Does the AI benefit by a tech trade system that gives more favorable rates for AI/AI trading over Human/AI trading? That could fall into the realm of a cheat, since it boils down to human against the AI

Originally posted by nbarclay
In my view, having the AI's bonuses/penalties vary depending on how it is doing compared with the player takes away a lot of the idea that the AI is bound by rules at all.

I'm not going to deny that in the Mods, there are some cheats built in, (and I'm currently tracking down Cradle's incredible science rate and am trying to lessen it) but bottom line for me is that I am looking for a good game... Cheats are needed, and I favor added bonuses for civs that are very far back, because once the human gets a good advantage in any game, the game becomes easier and those small civs are picked off easily.

Originally posted by nbarclay
How do you measure your success when the AI's competitiveness depends on how well you play? In Civ 3, the AIs play by rules that give them some advantages, and some of those advantages are pretty blatant, but at least they do always play by the same rules.

Is there any truth that the AI in civ3 sees the entire map, knows where all the good are before they appear and beelines to undefended cities?...and that the civ3 tech tree is set up to cost more for whoever is the first to research a tech and less for those wh bring up the rear???

Originally posted by nbarclay
Granted, the tech tree is smaller, with not as many choices of what to research. But there are still choices to make. Do you "waste" time on optional techs to try to get wonders or change governments (Democracy and Communism), or do you move straight through toward the next era? How do you prioritize Sanitation (hospitals to let cities grow past size 12), Industrialization (factories), Replaceable Parts (workers build tile improvements twice as fast), and Scientific Method (Theory of Evolution for two free techs, providing a clear shot at Electronics and Hoover Dam). And Play the World adds Corporation to the list of things you might or might not prioritize by providing a wealth city improvement with it. Granted, a given player is likely to have his preferences and follow those preferences over and over, but is that really so different in the CTP series?

No, but I like the wider diversity of choice in the Modded game (yeah I'm biased toward my mod), especially with the government choices. In CTP2, I feel more of a progression in government choices.

Originally posted by nbarclay
Stacked combat has its advantages, but the CTP games have an annoying tendency of letting a well-designed attack annihilate the enemy with essentially no losses of its own. Just pound the defenders to a pulp first.

...which is why I activated the counterbombard flag in my Mod. Hit a city with a bombard unit inside and you will lose your units - though I generally just march in with my units and slug it out. (and early bombards come later in my game - turn 300-400)

Does the civ3 AI effectively use artillery?

The civ3 battles are easier to program because there is no limit on how powerful a stack can be - it can hold infinite units. CTPs limits are harder for the AI to effectively use - so I give civ3 the edge. But I'm more of a builder-style player rather than a warmongor - but I know that the AI in Modded CTP2 can be a real pain.

Both AIs do stupid things...

My experience with civ3 is not extensive - a few games on the mid-level just to see if I liked it - my last game I was comfortably ahead, and went back to CTP2. Don't get me wrong, I do like civ3, and there are features that are excellent, but its a matter of preference...

**Pedrunn** · November 16, 2002, 23:08

There is no way i can keep up with this thread anymore!!!

You guys surely like to write

**Maquiladora** · November 16, 2002, 23:29

Yeah i know

Lets not make it into another comparison thread though! I would just urge you to read about all the added stuff in the mods and decide to try out one or two.

**nbarclay** · November 16, 2002, 23:43

Regarding specialists in stock CTP2, my big complaint is that pollution kept pushing me into using specialists instead of working and improving tiles. It sounds like Cradle does a pretty good job taking care of that, from what you say.

If I understand you correctly, a tile improvement does not provide 100% of its potential benefit unless you're working every tile in the ring. That's something of a drawback compared with the old way of being able to choose which tiles to work so you can work the improved tiles first. Am I understanding correctly?

Nathan

**nbarclay** · November 17, 2002, 00:00

Originally posted by hexagonian

The main problem with IRS is that it completely nullifies the need to think defensively and it negates the need to commit a force to a front. If I conquer a city, I can instantaneously move a foce into it to maintain a garrison, if the enemy had rails in place around that city. If attacked, all I need to do is keep a huge force in the heart of my empire and instantaneously move it to where it is needed.

CTP2 has this to some extent, because you get a nice movement bonus with rails, but it is not infinite...

And it is butt-ugly - better that they introduce upgraded tile improvements to build along with rails forcing a player to choose either movement or better production/food.

I'm not going to get into an argument over aesthetics; that is entirely a matter of personal taste. In regard to gameplay, I'll definitely agree that having infinite movement on railroads significantly reduces the level of strategy required in military operations. But that would be true even if railroads were only used to connect cities and other key locations together. Keep a unit on a railroad hub and it can hit any square within three road tiles of the railroad even with just one movement point.

On the other hand, Civ 3's culture system keeps you from using enemy roads and railroads until after you've captured their city. If I recall correctly, CTP2 has no such restriction on the ability to take advantage of enemy roads and railroads, so you can use roads to move even slow units in and attack an enemy city the first turn of a war. That's an area where Civ 3 requires a bit more strategy; units with one movement point have a much harder time getting to the target.

Nathan

Announcement

On why I abandoned CTP2, and whether mods make it worth another look

On why I abandoned CTP2, and whether mods make it worth another look

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