CtP2 vs. Civ 3 - a guide

[Protra3211]

I looked at the list changes you have made and looks like it adds to the epic feel that CTP2 gives.
Civ3 never reached this level even with mods. I think it was because the games many features didnt seems to come together as a whole.
Every CtP2 game has its own story and min history that give the game a life all its own. Only games like EU2 or maybe Galciv came close to this. True empire building.
To sum it up many new games are jamed with too many features . CtP2 lets you see the whole picture without chasing down every option before clicking next turn

[stankarp]

The Ages Of Man

AOM is based on the CTP2 fomat of civ-games, but it can be said that AOM is much more than CTP2...AOM can be considered a evolution of not only CTP2, but an evolution of the civ gaming experience. It merges
concepts that are present in other games like civ3, RTW, and EU2, as well as CTP2.

Approach AOM with an open mind, and you will be rewarded with great gameplay. Put aside prejudice about the tiresome comparisons between civ3 and CTP2. It is a merging of the best elements of both setups. For those civ3 loyalists, it will fill the time until civ4 hits the shelves.

C civ3 enthusiasts will recognize such elements as
- Civ-specific traits and bonuses
- The inclusion of luxury goods as happiness enhancers
- Strategic goods
- Dark Ages barbarian spawning events
- Leaders, generals and heroes that are either spawned after the construction of a Wonder, or spawned in the heat of battle
- Unit upgrades
- Creation of elite units in battle
- Kings which must be protected, as well as the need
of players to ensure the line of succession

There are actual historical events that affect your civ, similar to the event-driven games RTW and EU2. A prime example is the Dark Ages, which will greatly affect your civ. (In fact, you are forewarned to take a very long-term planning approach to this event, which occurs on t300.)

AOM greatly improves not only on CTP2, but it addresses and fixes many of the problems that were part of CTP2 'Cradle', which is the philosophical and gameplay foundation of AOM...
- A more focused AI in terms of attacks
- An AI that now expands and more importantly expands
via warfare. (Frenzy has been polished)
- AI multi-attacks you on a single turn
- Captured AI cities do not fall into revolt because
of unmanned militias, and cities are well-garrisoned
- Ingame graphics have been polished
- Wondermovies for all wonders
- New governments/units/techs
- More balancing of ingame elements

I want to say that I am flattered that Stan Karpinski saw the value of CTP2 'Cradle' and was inspired to build upon those files to create AOM. It is the ultimate validation of what I, as well as all the others involved in 'Cradle', tried to do with my Mod.

The process of creating AOM with Stan has been enjoyable. I might disagree with some of the gameplay elements that Stan implemented, but these are minor and do not detract from the overall picture of what AOM is.

In short, AOM is probably easier than 'Cradle' in the early game, but AOM becomes harder than 'Cradle' as the game goes on. 'Cradle' had a very hard beginning, but once you got established, you could usually
thrive.

Long-term thriving is much harder in AOM...

http://www.theagesofman.net/index.html

David Sobotka.

[Solver]

An idea for this might be changing AI personalities for different situations and game settings. Small map the AI plays aggressively all the time, gigantic map the AI starts out scientists until it finds out how close the enemy is and decides from there, also based on diplomatic situations etc etc

Yes, personalty changes are nice. Some AIs should be pre-disposed to agression, some to building. They should also build up their militaries according to the threat - and they should evaluate me as a threat based on my actions, relations with them and what they know about my military size.

At the same time, AIs that are predisposed to war should be aggressive. If I'm playing a peaceful strat, that should not mean that some AI wouldn't decide to conquer me as a good target.

Builder strategy was very good in CtP1, there are 2 reasons for this (I believe), one is that buildings had much higher benefits, and two it was easier to defend than to attack. I think its definitely a good thing in a civ game when its easier to defend than attack, I tried to improve this in the MP mod.

Yes, we had that discussion in the Tile and City Improvement Bonuses thread or something similarly named in the Source forum. In CtP2, building benefits are lower, which makes it more effective to capture new cities for yourself or at least takethem from the enemy. I don't know whether that is good. But a definite fact is that it's hard to defend in CtP2, exactly because of the aforementioned inability to defend cities against large stacks with small stacks.

[Maquiladora]

I would prefer not to make AI more like MP humans. MP games are different, and are typically played aggresively. As in, conflict starts early and the focus is on military action. In fact, everyone plays warmonger style there.

Not true in all MP games, but I see your point that MP games are played differently.

In SP games, I want to be able to play them how I like it, warmongering or not (I know that warmongering seems to be the most powerful strategy). And consequently, I'd like the AI to be able to put up a challenge in the tech race if I'm peaceful and in combat if I'm fighting.

What if then, the AI's are all peaceful scientists and you are an aggressive player? This would be very hard to balance to make sure the AI's didn't get crushed in the first 100 turns, considering peaceful players need a lot of time to establish their infrastructure and a considerable science lead.

An idea for this might be changing AI personalities for different situations and game settings. Small map the AI plays aggressively all the time, gigantic map the AI starts out scientists until it finds out how close the enemy is and decides from there, also based on diplomatic situations etc etc

Mind you, one of the changes I think needs to be made is more benefits for builder strats.

Builder strategy was very good in CtP1, there are 2 reasons for this (I believe), one is that buildings had much higher benefits, and two it was easier to defend than to attack. I think its definitely a good thing in a civ game when its easier to defend than attack, I tried to improve this in the MP mod.

[Solver]

I would prefer not to make AI more like MP humans. MP games are different, and are typically played aggresively. As in, conflict starts early and the focus is on military action. In fact, everyone plays warmonger style there.

In SP games, I want to be able to play them how I like it, warmongering or not (I know that warmongering seems to be the most powerful strategy). And consequently, I'd like the AI to be able to put up a challenge in the tech race if I'm peaceful and in combat if I'm fighting.

Mind you, one of the changes I think needs to be made is more benefits for builder strats.

[Maquiladora]

It's not just about MP tactics and SP tactics here though. The AI needs improving we all know that, would you say an improvement would be to make the AI more like a human in MP? Or do you prefer the AI to play in a more standard way and increase bonuses (for example) to compensate?

[Solver]

[..]
So it's two opinions looking from different sides I suppose, although I'm forced to say that MP is a melting pot that eventually brings out the most effective strategy in any game.

Right you are, I guess. I am used to SP by far, and am speaking exactly from that perspective, believing that SP is the most popular aspect of the game.

As for balance of units, we basically can say that this problem we are talking about is related to how it's impossible to defend cities with small stacks against large stacks. Which can possibly be fixed by changing defensive combat.

[Maquiladora]

Good point. I find the city limit to be absolutely the worst feauture of CtP2, and I always play with it increased. That's mainly because the default limits from vanilla/mods are awful when playing on bigger maps, and my preference lies with big maps and some 12 civilizations. I have the limits set so that they allow for good expansion, and will not be a problem every time.

Yeah city limit should definitely be made scalable to map size at least. But generally they don't really make sense realistically and they don't prevent ICS, the only positive I can think of is that they reduce micromanagement once you reach the city limit you don't have to concern yourself with that anymore, but thats a lame positive.

Still requires reinforcements or correct planning. Every time you attack, you lose some units in your stack. So your one 12-stack won't take and destroy all that you want. You need to either resupply that stack correctly or to send enough units initially.

My opinion on this comes totally from multiplayer experience so it's bound to be foreign to someone mostly used to single player, no offence. In a MP game most humans defend each city with the cheapest units (to keep support costs down - very important long term) only needed for martial law but always have a few stacks of modern quick units for mobile defence. If you can surprise them and get inside their borders all you have left to do is kill 1 or 2 weak units in each city and once they counter with the mobile stacks so you move in more (in the same attack not as reinforcements), all the while starving and disbanding the cities you easily took while they scramble in defence.

In SP it's different. The AI plays for the short term, it defends every city heavily and with modern units (taking huge support costs), so the best way to bring down the AI with minimal losses on your side is a seige of each city and pillaging (if you don't intend to keep it), this kind of tactic defintely requires some reinforcements against a strong AI in say Cradle mod.

So it's two opinions looking from different sides I suppose, although I'm forced to say that MP is a melting pot that eventually brings out the most effective strategy in any game.

Yeah, the Tanks are frigging damn powerful in CtP2. Historically, the early tanks weren't that superor to cavalry, while CtP2 Tanks are in fact more like modern Tanks. The power of Tanks in CtP2 comes from the fact they're great all-around, which means that you need to pay less attention to stack composition. Stacks of 12-Tanks work fine, whereas stacks of 12-Cavalry are suboptimal.

I think 12 Cavalry is just a lethal in its own age mainly because of flanking. It's not just that the Tank and Cavalry can deal in attack, defence and ranged, but each time a front line unit dies another comes from the back and the front row keeps flanking, which is the most lethal part. It's so easily fixed though by either lowering Cavalry/Tanks ranged/defence ability or taking away flanking(which i wouldn't like though), although Tanks should remain powerful, just not in the sense thats the only unit you need in the modern age. Cavalry should definitely be made more of a luxury unit though, it would make it so much more interesting fighting a kind of slow trench war with Fascists/M.Gunners and Artillery.

But my point stands that any military operation in CtP2 requires far more planning and is more complex than in Civ3.

It still stands because of having to form stacks (one of the reasons CtP2 AI is much harder to get right) and public works planning as you said. But not for the reasons you mention - that a slight technological lead doesn't win you the game in CtP2 because it really does, or that one unit doesn't rule the roost in CtP2 because some definitely do.

[Solver]

Because of the city limit its not very disirable to take and keep cities for yourself, because you're ideally at the city limit for your government before you attack someone (at peak resources), that means each city you take causes you more unhappiness.

Good point. I find the city limit to be absolutely the worst feauture of CtP2, and I always play with it increased. That's mainly because the default limits from vanilla/mods are awful when playing on bigger maps, and my preference lies with big maps and some 12 civilizations. I have the limits set so that they allow for good expansion, and will not be a problem every time.

This kind of hit and run conquest doesnt require any reinforcements either, because your goal is not to take and capture, its to take and destroy in one big attack.

Still requires reinforcements or correct planning. Every time you attack, you lose some units in your stack. So your one 12-stack won't take and destroy all that you want. You need to either resupply that stack correctly or to send enough units initially.

In the example of Cavalry vs Fascists, I would still take Cavalry for defence or offence than Fascists because of their speed, as you mentioned in your example of Cavalry in civ3, speed always wins when units are similarly balanced.

Civ3 Cavalry aren't unbalanced because of speed alone, it's because of the unit stats and the way combat works. You get Cavalry, attack of 6. Other civs will defend with either Musketmen, defense of 4, or Pikemen, defense of 3. Cavalry will also retreat instead of dying much of the time. Due to their superior stats, you can take almost any city, except for big cities in hills, easily. Another imbalance is that roads give no movement bonus in enemy territory. So if you take an enemy city, a number of tiles around becomes your territory, and the enemy can't move units in there quickly.

A better example is researching Tank Warfare first. In this case Tanks are 2 moves faster than Cavalry (4 more than Fascist, M.Gunner, Artillery) which means you have more options and require less important decisions about movement, they also have more armour than any previous unit.

Yeah, the Tanks are frigging damn powerful in CtP2. Historically, the early tanks weren't that superor to cavalry, while CtP2 Tanks are in fact more like modern Tanks. The power of Tanks in CtP2 comes from the fact they're great all-around, which means that you need to pay less attention to stack composition. Stacks of 12-Tanks work fine, whereas stacks of 12-Cavalry are suboptimal.

But my point stands that any military operation in CtP2 requires far more planning and is more complex than in Civ3.

[Maquiladora]

Conquest is harder in CtP2, I believe, because of the whole reinforcement thing and PW. You need to get reinforcements, as if you win a battle with your 12 stack, and lose 9 units, the remaining 3 stack isn't much useful. In a Civ3 system, 3 units have as much ability to take cities as 12 units. PW is limited, so you also don't have roads in each tile as in Civ3, so you got to think about how to get them where you need to.

Yeah I agree for conquest aiming to occupy and keep cities logistics is more important in CtP2 no doubt, because of the difficulty of city defence you need a constant stream of backup.

But the kind of conquest I was referring to, and the kind of conquest thats most effective in CtP2 IMO, is pillaging and disbanding.

Because of the city limit its not very disirable to take and keep cities for yourself, because you're ideally at the city limit for your government before you attack someone (at peak resources), that means each city you take causes you more unhappiness.

This kind of hit and run conquest doesnt require any reinforcements either, because your goal is not to take and capture, its to take and destroy in one big attack.

The tech thing is even more so true in Civ3. In CtP2, if you get Cavalry Tactics first, yes, you have an advantage. You'll still need to think about how to properly use it, as the enemy can steal beat you without Cavalry, but with better planning. In Civ3, though, you get Military Tradition and then it's a no-brainer. You start pumping out only cavalry, exclusively. Since they attack cities one by one and have superior stats (and there are no complex factors to consider), you can just blitz through enemy land. Almost every time I played Civ3, I won the game exactly then, by just producing dozens of cavalry at my maximal capacity and blitzing.

This may be true for both games then, I didn't play civ3 that far.

In the example of Cavalry vs Fascists, I would still take Cavalry for defence or offence than Fascists because of their speed, as you mentioned in your example of Cavalry in civ3, speed always wins when units are similarly balanced.

But thats just one example in CtP2.

A better example is researching Tank Warfare first. In this case Tanks are 2 moves faster than Cavalry (4 more than Fascist, M.Gunner, Artillery) which means you have more options and require less important decisions about movement, they also have more armour than any previous unit.

Theres also examples with Knights or Stealth Fighters or Fusion Tanks.

Not that I want to defend civ3 in any way, but I think CtP2 has the same faults in this case.

[Solver]

You don't need any specific buildings in cities to use specialists in CtP2, just the advance.

Righto, that was CtP1 then that required a building too .

Conquest is harder in CtP2, I believe, because of the whole reinforcement thing and PW. You need to get reinforcements, as if you win a battle with your 12 stack, and lose 9 units, the remaining 3 stack isn't much useful. In a Civ3 system, 3 units have as much ability to take cities as 12 units. PW is limited, so you also don't have roads in each tile as in Civ3, so you got to think about how to get them where you need to.

The tech thing is even more so true in Civ3. In CtP2, if you get Cavalry Tactics first, yes, you have an advantage. You'll still need to think about how to properly use it, as the enemy can steal beat you without Cavalry, but with better planning. In Civ3, though, you get Military Tradition and then it's a no-brainer. You start pumping out only cavalry, exclusively. Since they attack cities one by one and have superior stats (and there are no complex factors to consider), you can just blitz through enemy land. Almost every time I played Civ3, I won the game exactly then, by just producing dozens of cavalry at my maximal capacity and blitzing.

[Maquiladora]

Just to pick up a couple of points.

Specialists such as Laborers or Mercants also have prerequisites - Factories and Banks respectively, while Scientists need Universities.

You don't need any specific buildings in cities to use specialists in CtP2, just the advance.

In CtP2, technology doesn’t define whether you can go to war or not. It’s numbers and tactics that do. Technology helps a lot, but you can’t win a war purely on technological edge if you’re outnumbered by one to ten.

...

In CtP2, conquest is harder because of stacked combat, the need to place tile improvements strategically, using the unconventional units, etc.

I would say in comparison to civ3 combat, the opposite is true. In CtP2 if you reach an important military advance, say Cavalry Tactics, before a close enemy it gives you a huge advantage because of the speed and all round ability of some units, in this case Cavalry, your enemy will have say Fascists, which have slightly better stats, but they only have 2 movement to Cavalry 4. You can move all over their civ twice as fast, using their roads and you know they wont have every city defended heavily, if any, even if you dont take and hold any cities, youve done significant damage selling buildings, disbanding small cities and pillaging.

Movement in CtP2 combat is incredibly important, because you can only defend each city with 12 units maximum and its far too costly to defend every city with 12 units all the time (not to mention keep those units up to date), it becomes more important to keep a mobile defence, and obviously thats where the fastest units win in both offence and defence. With technology comes not only more powerful units, but faster units.

This would be fine if defensive/slow units were balanced much stronger than fast units, but it happens that in CtP2 the strongest units are fast, all-rounders and flankers.

[Big Dave]

Originally posted by hexagonian
I think we can all safely say that multiplayer is an entirely different animal than SP. My comments were geared toward the AI as it is in SP...

DoH! Of course it is. Sorry for making you state the obvious.

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by Big Dave
There has been some discussion here as if a pincer movement actually has some effect in either Civ3 or CTP2. In reality it has no effect in either. The purpose of a pincer movement (in addition to the already mentioned effect on the morale of the defender) is to force the enemy to split his firepower in two directions while each half of the pincer is concentrating it's firepower on a single target.

I've rarely seen a pincer movement as a doctrinal term but and envelopement is like you describe. And whats frustrating in both is that simple tactical/operational concepts are hard to replicate. For example in an a single envelopement one force "holds" or pins down units while a flanking unit attacks the side where the enemy has least amount of fire power or defenses. A double envelopement, or pincer as you called it, not only splits firepower, but also can lead to an encirclement where the enemy is basically undersiege.
These and many other options would be great to add and also is what makes small armies win over larger one by maneuver and/or supporting firepower. Unfrtunately in both gives more units tends to be the winner...

[nbarclay]

While I agree that railroads in Civ 3 dramatically reduce the amount of strategy involved, I rarely end up relying on uberstack defenses. When practical, I'd rather damage the invaders with artillery and then finish them off with whatever my best offensive units available are before they can reach my city (or possibly take a notion to pillage).

Nor do I usually pack my entire offensive military into a single large force when I attack. Ideally, I want enough forces that I can pursue multiple targets at once. Yes, with the Conquests expansion pack, I often have mega-stacks of artillery with a few escorts. But my goal is to split my forces in a way that will let me take multiple targets whenever I can do so without more losses than I'm inclined to accept.