Recent content by ApolloAndy

Does the Oracle interface halve shield for planets and/or for hard weapons a second time? In other words, can you quarter enemy shields using Gauss Autocannon with Oracle Interface? I should be able to do *some* damage against a planet with 26 shield using an oracle interface and particle beam...

I was playing the other day and all of a sudden one of the Babylonian's cities suddenly decided to join my empire. It said they "Admired <city name>." It was kind of annoying because the Babylonians effectively immediately took it back and got a key technology out of the deal as well. Is...

:-D I think you mean 9. With Bach's and Cure, you can get -11 unhappy, +1 happy with 0% luxuries.

So here's my conclusion. Pacifism is definitely doable. I played with the following restriction: 1) No cheats 2) No military units on a continent with an enemy city, save my home continent. It never happened, but technically if the enemy came and built a city in one of my expansion...

I think it was from government switch. It's back up again to being profitable, but now my caravans keep getting intercepted by a different enemy. Oh well. Is enemy tech random like wonders?

Does it also drop when I get railroad and flight? I had some great routes going and then all of a sudden they dropped in value by about 50% and about 10 turns later dropped another 50%. Now they're barely worth the caravan itself.

Does the payoff drop when the opponents get railroad or flight? Anyway to predict which my enemies make the best trade partners?

I never use diplomats for some reason. How feasible is it to concentrate on building up a big treasury and sending diplomats to steal tech with my caravan runs?

Oddly enough (but for some reason still not at all satisfying), I find emperor with 5 civs or so, to be an okay balance with the caveat that I can't attack enemy cities on other continents and I play pacifist. I'm pretty sure that limiting specific military units won't work (unless you limit...

Well, my thought was the not to attack enemy cities on other continents until I got a spaceship win and also not to use the fast settler or ship sentry (or reload, etc.) cheats. I'm playing 474.04. I guess what I'm hearing is this is incredibly difficult. What is a good middle level rule set...

I guess I'm really interested to see if it's possible. That is, whether Sid Meier thought you could beat Emperor w/ 7 civs by spaceship.

Does this assume ship sentry cheat? I can't imagine shuttling caravans all over the place with normal movement, especially under democracy where the ships will cause unhappiness.

How do you get lightbulbs from caravans?

I don't use the ship sentry (partly because I don't know how to and partly because I want to see if I can win without doing it). Is there a way to tell if I'm behind in science? I keep my science at 90-100% most of the game unless I'm doing a burst of president's day. I feel like I really...

I've beaten emperor with 7 civs using just chariots and triremes enough times that I decided to try to go democracy and spaceship instead. I keep getting to a point about 1AD when I have a pretty well developed home continent - 12 size 10 or so cities with temple, cathedral, bach, railroads...