Played Demo - Have Some Questions

[albiedamned]

I played the demo and I have a few questions. Overall I really like it but I think it's going to take a while to learn. To be able to plan ahead, you really need to know all the technologies, both in terms of their effects and their resource costs. You also need to know the resource costs of all the different unit types. But once all this is second nature, the game should be very very good. Of course you can play and have fun without knowing all this. But as a TBS player who usually plays builder style, I can't stand playing inefficiently. Anyway, here are my questions, for anyone who happens to know the answers:

1) It seems that resource gathering buildings can be built anywhere in your territory, not just in your city radius (except farms). But I think economic buildings like Saw Mills or Smelters only enhance the resource gathering buildings in that city's radius. So am I correct in assuming that there is an advantage to building your resource gathering buildings in your city radius whenever possible?

2) To capture a city, do you need to knock the city building health down to zero? Or is it enough to just move in a bunch of infantry and clear out the enemy troops? I was doing both, but I'm not sure if killing the city building was necessary or not.

3) Related to the previous question, after I captured a city and assimilated it, my next task was to repair it since I had knocked its health down to zero (perhaps unnecessarily). I could move in citizens from a neighboring city to do the repair, but it's easier to just pop out a few citizens from the newly assimilated city. However the city does not have an option to tell new citizens to do repairs - it has options for all the different gathering types, but not for building or repairing. So my new citizens would either go off gathering something, or stand idle if there were no nearby resource gathering buildings. When they stood idle, they never seemed to do the repairs on their own. My idle villager AI is set to "Build and Gather". So my question is, is there any way for idle villagers to automatically take up repairs, or do you have to micromanage this? Maybe I just wasn't waiting long enough, and eventually they would have taken up the repairs. Would setting the city's rally point on the city itself cause the new villagers to do repairs?

[jcoleman]

albie,

1) Correct. You can build mines, woodcutters, and oil wells anywhere but you're better off having them in your city radius in the long run. Of course, you can always build them where you plan on later founding a city.

2) You must indeed reduce the city's health to zero and have more force than the defender at the city. Keep in mind that towers and forts will count towards the defense of the city.

3) Units set to "Build" will first look for something to finish building, then something to repair. But in the case of auto-citizens being set to "Build and Gather", the precedence is Gather, Build, then Repair. Setting the rally point on the city itself will cause the citizens to garrison in the city as they are built.

Hope this helps,
J

[albiedamned]

Thanks for the reply! Following up question on 2: I think I remember reading somewhere that when you capture a city you gain use of its economic buildings but not its military buildings. However I think I captured cities that still had a nearby stable or barracks or tower. I don't remember what became of those buildings (it was all happening so fast for a poor TBS guy). Are they there and just not usable? Or can you use them? Or was it just a figment of my imagination and they weren't really still there?

And a follow up on 3: I'm pretty sure that for this one city I captured and assimilated, there was nothing nearby to gather and the cilivilans just stood there idle, even though their city was in disrepair. Would they have eventually repaired the city and it was just a matter of me not waiting long enough? The idle villager AI is definitely on "Build and Gather".

[jcoleman]

After assimilation, you gain control of the economic buildings but not the military. The enemy's military production buildings (barracks, stables, etc.) will "power-down" assuming they are no longer in his territory. However, towers and forts are still active and still belong to the opposing player.

Sounds like it's either a bug () or, hopefully, you just didn't wait long enough. You've probably seen that you can adjust how long a citizen waits before looking for a new assignment.

[albiedamned]

What does "power down" mean? Does that mean that the buildings are physically there but you just can't use them? Do they go away over time?

I have seen the idle villager wait time option. I'll try setting it to zero and see if I can recreate the same situation. Gotta conquer a city again first though!

[albiedamned]

I thought of one other question I wanted to ask. I'm pretty sure that I was able to exceed the commerce cap in knowldge in my game last night. Is there some exemption to the commerce cap for knowledge? I was playing as the British, who I know have higher commerce caps in general. But my knowledge rate was over even the higher limit. I did run into the commerce cap in other resources, so the commerce cap did work in general.

By the way, I only have one game of experience under my belt, but it seemed clear to me that knowledge is by far the most important resource in the later ages. The library advances were costing in the neighborhood of 1000-1200 knowledge each. And all 4 library research lines and the age advances needed knowledge, so to do all 5 you needed thousands of knowledge! A university full of 7 scholars produces 45 knowledge without research upgrades, so you need a bunch of them and you need to do the university research to get a respectable knowledge gather rate going. I think I was able to get mine into the 300-400 range by the end.

[jcoleman]

Yes, "power down" means the buildings aren't usable. If the building's owner regains the territory, the building will become active again. The same can happen to you. They don't dissappear unless you destory them.

There is in fact no knowledge "cap". Without knowledge, your technology advancement will definitely bog down. You'll find it's usually not too difficult to stay ahead of the knowledge curve if you plan for it, but it's certainly a strategic trade-off to let it slide.

[One_Dead_Villy]

power down i would assume means the person who lost that city can no longer use that military building even though he still owns it.

however assuming u dont destroy it after uve taken the city, and they take it back, they once again regain the use of that military building. So what I do usually is kill off any military buildings I see since if they revert back to the enemy control then I wouldnt like that much

[albiedamned]

Excellent. Thanks for all the answers. I didn't know that the commerce cap didn't apply to knowledge, but I could tell there was something going on!

Next question - how do you teach a TBS guy like me to stop playing on Very Slow and pausing all the time!

[One_Dead_Villy]

hehe two way...slowly remove the crutches...or just jump in the water !

[jcoleman]

If that's what you enjoy, you don't.

[albiedamned]

It took me about 4 hours of real time to play the game all the way through to the end (I won by 70% Territory in the Information Age). However the game clock was only around 40 minutes. I actually played until 3am last night without finishing. But since the demo doesn't let you save, and since I really wanted to get to the last couple ages and it took me so long to get as far as I did, I wound up leaving my computer on all night and finishing this morning! But now I'm struggling to keep my eyes open at work. I used to be a lot better at staying up all night playing games 11 years ago when the original Civilization was out! Of course back then I was in college and I would just sleep through my morning classes. Now I have to go to work.

[Leaper]

Hey albie -

I agree with j..... if you enjoy playing slowly... why do you have to change. I am seriously hoping there will be players online who WANT to play this game slow... like me!

As far as the timer goes... I think it times the same as the speed rate. In other words.. if you are plaing at 1/3 speed... triple your time spent playing???? Not sure on that though.

~ Leaper

[albiedamned]

Actually I think the game clock shows "game time" no matter what speed you play at. When I slowed the game down or sped it up, the game clock slowed down or sped up as well. So my 40 minutes of game time is the same as anyone else's 40 minutes of game time, but it just took me 4 hours to play them! I didn't test to see which speed setting is equal to real time, but my guess is that the default speed is real time and if you go faster than the default you can play in less real time than game time.