First Impressions....

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Locutus
A lot more traffic We don't have enough strategy talk and certainly not enough stories (none, apart from the Succession Games) to warant a seperate forum The only way to get more forums is if the post-rate goes up further - but MP would be a more likely candidate for a new forum than Strategy (of course, if the MP discussion goes, there will be more room for strategy threads on the first page)...

That's true, otherwise Markos wouldn't have mergerd the CTP2 forums. Of course not without causing a lot of damage to the single threads. Now you can find threads with post in that just contains a single number, you don't know were these threads start. You find gust poster in it named MarkG. Actual I believe Marcos did these posts.

-Martin

[Pedrunn]

That's true, otherwise Markos wouldn't have mergerd the CTP2 forums.

But thing arent as calm as thry were last year. The amount of people posting has gone to the highs. new threads are getting lost really quicly.

[Wittlich]

I have to agree with Pedrunn - a year ago the CTP2 Forum was dead. Now the forum has been getting a good flow of posts....

[Martin Gühmann]

That might be right that we have more traffic now but compare it to the Civ3 forums, although the traffic there goes down, but in 100 days the Civ3 general forum has more then 1000 active threads in comparision to 123 active threads of the CTP2 general forum. The Civ3 creation forum has something over 400 active threads in 100 days in comparision to 153 right now. Then you have to consider you have nine Civ3 forums with enough traffic, like the Civ3 democratic games forum also one with more then 1000 active threads in the last hundret days. So this is the number of traffic you need, maybe 600 threads per 100 days would be enough to justify a split of forums, but this number is far away. Maybe if you have 150 multiplayer threads per 100 days could be enough, but this is a low number. It is still possible to read everything here in the CTP2 forums.

-Martin

[Tamerlin]

It's great to hear from you again Velociryx and even greater to read you really appreciate this wonderful game that is CtP2.

Wait to play a mod, like the Apolyton Pack, and you will be enthralled. The AI is really far more challenging.

I like the idea of being able to upgrade units, if you modders can do this CtP2 will be greatly improved (please, make this mod compatible with the Apolyton Pack ).

And I agree with Centrifuge, a unit should be in a city in order to be upgraded.

[centrifuge]

I think if at all possible, a unit should not only be in a city, but in a city with a barracks...

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by centrifuge
I think if at all possible, a unit should not only be in a city, but in a city with a barracks...

That might be a bit tricky, since (in Cradle) one of the advancemnts (the 3rd one actually) that triggers the unit updater is the advance Barracks...but I guess like everything else, this too could be changed...

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by centrifuge
I think if at all possible, a unit should not only be in a city, but in a city with a barracks...

Once again I agree with you Centrifuge but there are no such things as Barracks in the Original game or in the SAP.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by Tamerlin


Once again I agree with you Centrifuge but there are no such things as Barracks in the Original game or in the SAP.

I know, but I bet that that can be changed

[monolith94]

I'd play it if they had a demo for it for macintosh…

[Velociryx]

Started my second game (this time, playing as the Egyptians). Got to 420BC before having to call it a night, and what can I say but WHAT A DIFFERENCE!

Got off to a smashingly good start (accepted the world defaults, hard difficulty level, Marauding (max) barbs).

Found the Indonesians just east of me, with two cities (I still had one at the time), and took them out of the game with two warriors and an archer that I got from a hut. Shortly thereafter, I founded my second city AND got another from a hut. Five cities, minimal work, and I was chuckling to myself at that point, thinking I would have an easy game ahead of me....boy what a shock I was in for!

I had started at the extreme southern end of what proved to be a *massive* continent, and commenced to settle in a generally northerly direction....the land was good, fertile, and blessed with an abundance of trade goods. I duly beelined for Trade to take advantage of the windfall, and continued on my merry way.

The southern portion of the continent was all tundra wasteland, and so I ignored it....my first mistake.

There was also a *beautiful* natural chokepoint that opened up into a "central section" of the continent, before closing down onto a secondary choke point further north, with THAT opening into yet another wide swath of continental territory (at least from what I could see.....I still have not explored that far north!). I envisioned myself settling the southerly choke point, and use that to springboard colonization of central plain.

At that point, my entire army consisted of two groups....two warriors and two archers each. Bad move.

Two things happend in the same breath that caught my empire unprepared.

First, was the barbs. Only a couple, so I worked around them, anxious to continue my explorations northward. Then more came....and more still. Worse, they started to congregate into groups of 3-4.

As a countermeasure, I bundled by two strike groups into a single group of 8, pulled them off of their exploration duties, and brought them south to hunt for barbs.

Problem solved....or so I thought.

I'm happy to report that my barbarian hunting expeditions were a smashing success. The roads re-opened, clearing the way for new settlers, and life was good. I snagged most of the early wonders (Ramyana, Great Wall, Appian Way, and had just begun on the Forbidden Palace....feeling quite good about myself. So good, in fact, that I didn't feel the need to augment my military any.

Then the Arabians showed up with an army of 8.

My guys had taken some damage fighting barbs, and were down to six, but I figured that was close enough, so I hauled them northward again, toward my three newest cities (one in the Egyptian heartland, one at the southern chokepoint, and the third up in the central plain).

What I *didn't* count on was the *second* army of Arabians....12 units in that one.

Nor the 12 unit army of Italians.

Worse, both nations seemed quite intent on kicking my arse OUT of the central plain, and quite possibly, out of the homeland too!

Very quickly I realized my mistake, and set half my cities producing a mix of hoplite and archer, withdrawing my main (only) battlegroup to the capitol to await developments.

The developments were that, quite simply, all three of my frontier cities fell, and Arabia had an army of 8 trolling around right outside my capitol while I was troop building and preparing the counter offensive.

At no time did I ever feel immensely threatened.....it wasn't as though I feared being sweapt from the map....my empire was large and well put together, so I knew I could take them....but it was very....EXQUISITELY tense!

Finally, with two strike groups of twelve at the ready, I felt confident enough to switch my production away from cheapies and on to mounted archers (thanks to a newly gotten tech), these went into mass production, and my two armies duly trapped the Arabian 8 that had been lurking near the capitol, and destroyed them, then moved north to liberate our captured territories. All three were retaken with minimal fuss and acceptable losses, tho in the case of the third, I waited till I had my first army of 12 fast movers in position.

From there, the Greek, Mongolians, AND the Celts(?) decided they'd get in on the fun, and suddenly I found myself sqaured off against FIVE of my seven rivals.

Three on one, I could handle, but I figured five on one was a bit harsh, so I made plans to get at least one of my opponents out of the fight ASAP.

Arabia was closest (having all their cities in the central plain....further intellegences revealed that Italy and Celts(?) had evenly split the northern reaches of our shared continent, and so my growing force pool converged, then poured into the central plain, attacking anything that came near us, but showing particular fondness for blitzing Arabian armies.

Had a rude surprise when I lost an army of nine knights when I captured (destroyed) an enemy size one city with no losses, and then watched my entire army die for no reason I could discern. GULP!

Also, one of my footslogger armies got trapped between the armies of three of my enemies and ground into dust, but we continued onward relentlessly, and soon, had captured three cities (two arabian) and destroyed three more in the central plain.

Arabia sued for peace, and I cleared the central plain of enemy forces, planting an army of twelve on the northern choke point.

My new territories are not yet connected to the empire proper, but one city plunked down in between them and the rest of the empire will do it, and I'll have contiguous borders.

I'm three turns from being able to switch to Republic, but am kinna leery of that, given that I'm still at war with four of my rivals, tho in the near term, I have stopped building troops in my core cities--still building troops in all newly acquired cities tho--and have sufficient troops milling about the central plain to form up three strike groups of 10-12 units each.

So...how bad is war weariness in Republic, and would it matter if I kept the fight inside my borders? I'd love 70% science, because the Germans and Greek are blowing my doors off on the stat chart, but if it means half my cities rebelling on account of war weariness, no thanks....I'll use Monarchy and take all these rat-b@stards out!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Nother question: Is there a fan-created file someplace that shows all the playable civs and the techs they start with?

-=Vel=-

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Nother question: Is there a fan-created file someplace that shows all the playable civs and the techs they start with?

Vel, I don't think the starting techs are civ-specific. These civs are all generic, one weakness compared to Civ3. There are govt-specific units in Cradle...assuming you plan to spend a good long while in that particular government.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Had a rude surprise when I lost an army of nine knights when I captured (destroyed) an enemy size one city with no losses, and then watched my entire army die for no reason I could discern. GULP!

OOPs , I'll bet dollars to donuts, that the city was on top of a mountain Mounted units can't travel or "live" on top of mountains...

As far as republic goes, if you plan on being in war for a while, stick to monarchy until you get fascism....

[hexagonian]

The only gov. specific units in the default game are the Fascist/Fascism, EcoTerrorist, EcoRanger/Ecotopia. No civ-specific techs, bonuses either

But on the bright side, there are a host of gov.specific units that can be put in...and has been done so. Plus there are leader units created via Wonder construction, unit update ability, really bloodthirsty barbs and civs.

''...hex licks his lips waiting for Vel to try any one of the Mods to realize the depth the Modders have been able to implement into CTP2...''