the ctp'er formerly known as the civ2'er :)

[bchorney]

hi all

i've played civ2 for quite a number of years now, and only recently got my hands on ctp (2 days ago). well, needless to say (and as i've read in a few posts), strategies in civ2 don't work so well in ctp (for the most part). i guess what i want to know is, what strategies do you suggest that the book (or bible ) that the game comes with does not suggest? i'm very interested in early strategies - i mean very early. for example, balance of pw to production, stuff like that. i know this is a broad subject, but hopefully it will spring up other conversations...who knows

thanks in advance

[Gregurabi]

Early game: expand! And punish the AI's stupidity ruthlessly by enslaving his lone wandering units. (Two samurai + two mounted archers + one slaver = many many slaves for you.)

Don't bother with PW at all until you have a sustainable empire (say, 5-7 cities). Then set it to 10 or 20%. I usually go with 20% for the whole game from that point on.

Ask specific questions to get the answers you need....

[bchorney]

ok, specific it is

now, i know everyone is going to yell at me for asking this question...(trust me i've read through a bunch of posts), but i really can't get the slavers to be useful. period. and frankly, it's quite depressing considering how much talk there is about those pesky bastards. how important are they to early warfare?

also, what's a good initial advance chain to start with? i found in a recent game that getting theocracy early seemed to work well, but that simply be my naive self...

oh, and thanks for the initial stuff greg. like i said, i was/am a former civ2 player - expansion was pretty much never a doubt in my mind

[joseph1944]

Try to build a slaver in all of your border citys for sure. Every time a barbarian attack your city, he will become a slave. I don't this, but if you put a slaver with your explorer and you run into a settler and attack him, he will become a slave of your nearest city. The explorer is a solder of course, for protection of the slaver. You can send the slaver on his own, but if a enemy see him, he will kill him. Non enemy will boot him back to your nearest city.

I use Theocracy most of the game. When Corp. Rep. become available I change gov. Check gov. box and you will see these two are O.K. to used.

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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited September 20, 2000).]

[Gregurabi]

Slavers can be used at least four ways:

1) They can use a special power to enslave enemy Settlers that are discovered to be alone. This does not fail, but it's not a common situation.

2) They can use that same special power to enslave enemy population from a city. The city must be unwalled and at least size 2; and it must not be "on alert" (eyeball icon from previous special power use). Even so, there's a chance of failure.

3) As part of an army that wins a fight, they will create a slave (out of thin air).

4) They can see enemy stealth units (like enemy Slavers and Abolitionists).

It's #3 that's the real killer. Make a stack with 2 Samurai, 2 Mounted Archers and 1 Slaver in it. Have it wander around in enemy territory, preferably on open terrain (grasslands/plains). Attack any lone enemy unit you see -- you'll win the fight and get a free slave in your nearest city that's capable of holding another slave. (You need military units in the city to keep slaves.)

[bchorney]

ahhhh ok
ya know, all i needed was an explanation (greg's that is)

what i didn't realize (and again, please don't yell ) was that you gain a pop point for doing so...for some reason, all i remember reading in the manual was that slaves were taken. and well, that didn't really mean anything to me...

what's an appropriate ratio for military units to slaves in a city to keep it out of revolt?

[Joseph]

BC

I belive you only need one solder per city to keep slaves from revolting.

The unhappiness in your city is a different matter. CTP is a lot tougher than Civ 2 on happiness. You have to build temples, courthouses, aqueducts etc. early on, or the city will start to show unhappiness after the city reaches 5 or 6 pop. points. Click on a city and you will see the top line with production, city, units. Click on city and it will bring another menu with crime, trade, happiness, etc. click on happiness, and it will show you how many wonder and building you have that create happiness. It will also tell you why the city is unhappy. I don't know how many unhappiness points you must have before a city start to revolt. Try to build one or more of the happiness Wonders if you can, it will help. Also you must watch gold production very close. If you run out of gold, your worker will not be paid, and they will revolt right away. When selecting a gov., check it gold production. Also build trade as soon as posible, and then start trade with your cities. It produces gold. Also as soon as possible, build Market Place and the Bank. When your pop. is 21 or more go to the top bar and click on the item just left of production (worker), and change one or more of your entertainer to gold production. Remmber when you change a worker to gold, science, or building production, the worker is remove from field production, so you have to replace him from the entertainer line. Also check your happiness, so you don't go neg. on happiness.

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[This message has been edited by Joseph (edited September 22, 2000).]

[Gregurabi]

In standard CTP you need 1 military unit for every 3 slaves, to prevent slave revolts. That means you can have a maximum of 27 slaves in one city (for which you would need 9 military units, which is the most you can have). If you're playing Celestial Dawn's mod, or anything based on it, then the ratio may be different (CD's mod uses 2:1 instead of 3:1).

Each city has a happiness number. The "normal" happiness (no +/- modifiers) is 75. If the happiness drops to 72 or less, there's a chance of rioting (the lower the number, the greater the chance). If the happiness drops to around 60 (I forget the number), then there's a chance the city will revolt (secede from your empire and join a new empire). If happiness is higher than 85 (or so) then your city will "celebrate" -- which has no effect at all except to spam you with messages. (Unless you're on Chieftain level, in which case cities that celebrate gain 1 population point per turn. But if you're playing on Chieftain level, you don't need any strategy advice -- just go win already. )

In my experience, CTP isn't any harder than Civ2 when it comes to unhappiness, with one exception -- the empire size limit. If you start getting messages about the number of cities in your empire, you're heading for trouble. (And CD's mod makes this worse....)

[samurai]

I think its much harder to keep the people happy in ctp than civ2.In civ2 you had to build temples when the city reached 3 or 4 at deighty level. (remind me how to spell that word)In CTP you dont have to do anyting until 5-6.Only one unit for martial law.

I dont know what level people around here play on, but if gregurabi usually gets 27 slaves in his cities, he cant possibly play the deigthy game.
bchorney:If you have any plans buying CTP2, I wouldn`t get used to only getting slaves early in the game. They will not be as funcsional in CTP2. Personly, I like to have peace in my expanding time. It`s not that funny to see all your settlers being destroyd by knights.But there is no question about it. Expand! How to do so depends on how the tiles look around you, if you like to trade and so on.(the trading is just exelent in CTP)If you like trading, you should definatly build the labyrinth, but be aware. When it cansells you must have built the caravans you need.
My suggestion is to find tiles with the same special resources and build the cities.If you have many of the same resorces, you gain more on trading.
If you are one of those aggressive players, I dont have that much advice. All I can say is that I dont have a lot of good experinces trying to fight my way through before you get tanks and artillery. It works in the early beginning, but when your opponents get city walls (something they usually do real fast), a warrior in defense is better than a knight in attack.The best way to fight the computer is at sea. They suck big time. Bombard the cities to stoneage, and then just throw in a marine.
But the best advice of them all:Find out yourself. If you have been playing civ 2, it wont take long. And you develop your own style. And thats what civilization is all about, isnt it?

[JPF_civplayer]

One thing I've noticed RE slaves is that say I have a city with 4-6 slaves in it. This should require 2 military units to 'keep order'. I frequently find that even if I stick 4-5 units fortified in the city that the city will still revolt damn near every 3rd-5th turn or so. My military units have no problem defending in the ensuing battle, but of course you lose population for every revolt. Seems weird to have extra military units in there and still have it revolt. (Happiness was fine, not the problem).

Anyone else see this?

[JPF_civplayer]

Hey great tip on where the slaves go..didn't realize the system behaved that way.

No, I didn't have any non-military units in there. And there weren't any abolitionist 'attacks' either..that's what is so strange. I can't explain why these cities would revolt every couple of turns. It's usually just one city per game, and it only happens every couple of games that a city will start 'acting up' like this

[Gregurabi]

I've never had 27 slaves in one city -- that's a theoretical upper limit. (I've had about 21 slaves in a city once... but that was in a single-city challenge game, on Emperor level.)

I generally try to spread my slaves as evenly as possible across the empire. That way I don't get too much of a hit in any single city when the Emancipation comes. (Everyone knows how to make the slaves go where you want them... right? Hrm, no, probably not... better explain it....)

When you acquire a slave, it usually shows up in the nearest city. However, if that city does not have enough military units in it to keep the new slave in check, the slave will go to the next-closest city, etc. So, if your border city already has 3 slaves and only 1 military unit, the new slave will go to the next-closest city.

So, if you're about to take a new slave, but you don't want it to go to the border city, then just do this: move the military units out of the border city (along a road); then take the slave; then move the military units back into the border city.

Of course, this doesn't work if you get attacked, since you won't be able to move units around. It only works on your turn.

JPF: I have no idea why you're getting slave revolts with 6 slaves in a city that has 4 military units. Even with CD's mod (or the Apolyton Pack which includes CD's mod) you only need 3 military units to hold 6 slaves. Could it be that you're the target of an abolitionist attack, or that you've got non-military units in the city? (Settlers, Diplomats, Slavers and other non-military units can't keep slaves in servitude....)

[Joseph]

Check your gold. Remmber if you don't have enought gold, your cities will revolt.

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[JPF_civplayer]

That wasn't it either..plenty of gold.

Same thing happened to me last night. Had one city that had two 'chains' garrisoned with two military units. (phalanx and a musketeer). I think the happiness had dipped to 72 or something and the city revolted. I lost the phalanx but held onto the city with the musketeer..had to move another one the next turn. Maybe when you're at two 'chains' and above if you get into a riot situation instead you get a revolt??? Could be it.