[TOT] Lalande 21185 - Civ2 Test of Time Sci-fi Scenario Help

IMBC2 said:

I don't know if this is the luck of the draw or not, but in my current game, there seem to be "islands" of Dust Bowl in a large "sea" of land. It seems like it should be the other way around. Is this normal for Naumachia?

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Yes, it's quite normal for Naumachia. Think of the Dust Bowls as lakes, and the dust runs/rills as rivers (You can build there and irrigate, too).

IMBC2 said:

Looking through the Civilopedia, I noticed some terrain types that do not appear in my current world:

(1) Ancient Room
Other than the fact that it is impassable terrain, there does not seem to be anything too special about these rooms from what I read in the Civilopedia. Was it just the "luck of the draw" that I did not get any Ancient Room squares in my Lalande universe?

(2) Eilodon
As the Civilopedia states, the city of Eilodon is a wonderful myth, but if it were true (i.e. found as a workable square on Nona), wow! Imagine getting 9 food, 9 material, and 9 data from just one square or even building a city on such a square (especially with a Harvester building and a GEnIE park)! Is there any chance whatsoever that an Eilodon square could appear in any randomly-generated map?

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I have never actually heard of these!

Mind you, there are weird and wonderful things that happen with Lalande and the Fantasy game. Just start terraforming the squares that are considered impassible, and some really bizarre stuff happens.

But I've never been able to put a city on a Red Storm spot and have it survive...

Valka D'Ur said:

I have never actually heard of these!

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Ancient Rooms would look just like Ancient Halls except with a green outline, and Eilodon would look exactly like an Ammonia square, but you would be able to walk on it with ground units.

If you load up your Lalande 21185 game, then look up "Terrain Types" under Civilopedia:

1) Ancient Room

Movement Cost: 6 (impassable)
Defense Bonus: +200%
Food: 0
Material: 1
Data: 5
Result of Cultivation: N/A
Turns to Build: N/A
Result of Refining: N/A
Turns to Build: N/A
Result of Transformation: N/A

Like the "hallways" they resemble, these regions have been labeled "rooms" simply for lack of a better description; we have no more evidence for these areas' intended use than we do for the halls. As with the structure of nearly every platform in the atmosphere of Nona, the Ha'Gibborim rooms were formed out of solidified, nonmetallic hydrogen. There are theories as to how they accomplished this, but at the time of this writing, even a proof of principle experiment is somewhat beyond our capabilities. Though everything in each room is visible (and therefore accumulating data on these areas is easy and rewarding), few units are able to enter, much less traverse, these regions. Using unpowered equipment (fishing line, mostly), scavenging parties have some success pulling out salvage materials, but none of our machinery functions inside the boundaries of these areas--including life support suits. Obviously, these areas are of no use for food production.

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2) Eidolon

Movement Cost: 1
Defense Bonus: +200%
Food: 9
Material: 9
Data: 9
Result of Cultivation: +3 Food
Turns to Build: 5
Result of Refining: +3 Material
Turns to Build: 5
Result of Transformation: N/A

The Eidolists are an odd bunch. Though many of its members are respected researchers in their own fields, none of them are recognized authorities in any of the xenologic sciences. This group claims to have discovered the key to the Ha'Gibborim pictoglyphic language, and to have deciphered many of the ancient texts. The followers of this cultish "science" tell the legend of the Ha'Gibborim home city, Eidolon. When the fall of the Ha'Gibborim empire was upon them, so the story goes, the leaders of this most powerful city in the system recognized that their fate was unavoidable and set in motion a plan to preserve the city, though without its population. The city of Eidolon was evacuated, sealed in a time-static bubble, and intentionally sunk deep into the clouds of Nona. It rests there to this day, with all its ultra-high Ha'Gibborim technology intact, waiting to be uncovered and exploited. Responsible experts conclude that this is simply a myth born of wishful thinking.

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Valka D'Ur said:

Mind you, there are weird and wonderful things that happen with Lalande and the Fantasy game. Just start terraforming the squares that are considered impassible, and some really bizarre stuff happens.

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Bizarre... like...
Do new enemies appear?
Do your units start acting erratic?
Does the game start to crash?

BTW, a Spikes or Impalers terrain square on Naumachia CAN be terraformed into a Craters square although that would take 60 (!) Environeer turns to do so.

Valka D'Ur said:

But I've never been able to put a city on a Red Storm spot and have it survive...

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What happens when you build a city on a Red Storm spot?

When I built my first "Red Storm" city, appropriately named "Stormwind", I IRBed a SpacePort and recruited a Singulon (only 50 shields... nice! ) in one of my Naumachian colonies producing 60 shields/turn. On the next turn, I teleported that Singulon into Stormwind, and from that point onward, no enemy can take that city (particularly when I have the All Field)! After that, I IRBed an Algae Farm, then a Garrison, and then teleported some Environeers into Stormwind to "build" it to size 3 to begin WLTPD celebrations.

Red Storms themselves are not really worthless... they do give 2 Material and 2 Data. On the other hand, the Red Storm "specials", called Stable Cyclones, are TOTALLY worthless (0 Food, 0 Material, 0 Data).

I tested out the report of "bizarre happenings" when terraforming unpassable terrain in the Sci-Fi world, and here's what I've got:

Experimental Setup

200+ total Environeers of which 72 would be used for "Charging"
2 turns

Before undergoing any experiments, all progress was saved twice -- one main file and one experimental file.



Experiment 1:

Turn 1:
The 72 Environeers started terraforming 8 nearby terrain squares chosen arbitrarily in "stacks" of 9. This creates a "super-charged" Environeer at the bottom of each stack, each of whom will be ready to do 10 turns of work in Turn 2.

Turn 2:
Used 6 super-charged Environeers to terraform a Storm square (60 turns or work).

Result: The Storm square was turned into an Ancient Room "special" (the Enigmatic Device) with a Current (equivalent of river from Original ). This square gives 1 Material and 8 Data. The output of this square is consistent with the Civilopedia, but it looks NOTHING like its Civilopedia picture. It actually looks like a Solid Hydrogen square with a current running over it!



Experiment 2:
The same, except that the test subject was a Solid Hydrogen square.

Same result -- a current over an Enigmatic Device.

However, this only took one super-charged Environeer (10 turns of work in one turn) to accomplish, leaving 7 from Turn 1.

Thus, I sent out more super-charged Environeers to transform that new bizarre square.

It only took 2 super-charged Environeers (20 turns of work) to transform an Enigmatic Device square with a Current to a Metallic Hydrogen square with a Current.

I still had 5 super-charged Environeers left so I kept experimenting on the same square.

1 super-charged Environeer turned the Metallic Hydrogen - Current square back into an Enigmatic Device - Current square.

2 super-charged Environeers turned it back into a Metallic Hydrogen - Current square.

1 super-charged Environeer turned the Metallic Hydrogen - Current square back into an Enigmatic Device - Current square.

It seems as if this cycle would keep on repeating: Metallic Hydrogen-Current, Enigmatic Device-Current, Metallic Hydrogen-Current, Enigmatic Device-Current...



Experiment 3:
Turn 1 was done exactly the same.
This time, I sent the super-charged Environeers to Naumachia to transform a Crystal Forest square.

This is what happened:

3 super-charged Environeers: Crystal Forest -> Craters-Dust Run
2 super-charged Environeers: Craters-Dust Run -> Bare Rock-Dust Run



Experiment 4:
Turn 1 was done exactly the same.
This time, I sent the super-charged Environeers to Funestis to transform an Acid Shallow.

6 Super-charged Environeers turned the Acid Shallows into a river running over a lost city square.



Notice that all these experiments involve the transformation of terrain that should NOT be transformable according to the Civilopedia. I wonder: If a GOTM for Lalande 21185 were set up, would terraforming these terrains (including ANY terrain on Nona) be considered a disqualification?

Okay, here's a verbal preview of the "effects of too much Bio-chaos (pollution)" (Global Warming) in the Lalande universe:

Planet-wide BIO-CRASH! All life forms in mutational chaos!
Widespread spontaneous generation! Farmers killed by crops!

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Oh yeah, and...

I DID IT!!!

I have discovered the mythical city(ies) of Eidolon!

First of all, I made an experimental "branched save" of my progress, then decided to test the effects of excessive Bio-chaos on the planets Naumachia and Nona.



Early on, I had noticed that each world (Funestis, Orbit, Naumachia, and Nona) has its own BIO-CRASH (Global warming) warning icon.



1) Naumachia
Over the span of 2 turns, I sold all Producioficators (?) and Gravitic Generators from my Naumachian cities only.

From the time that I had decided to sell my biochaos-preventing (pollution-preventing) buildings on Naumachia, it took 18 turns for the planet to BIO-CRASH. IIRC, some Ices became Permafrost, some Permafrost became Craters, and some Crystal Forests became Permafrost. Spikes and Impalers, however, did not change.



2) Nona
As with Naumachia, I sold all Producioficators (?) and Gravitic Generators on Nona.

Again, the BIO-CRASH happened after 18 turns.

Almost all of the Ancient Halls had become Leviathana (reduction of Materials and severe reduction of Data, but great for food production and costs less movement points).

The Storm squares remained unchanged.

And now for the surprising find... (drum roll, please)

Some of the Metallic Hydrogen (and maybe some Solid Hydrogen and Leviathana squares IIRC) had turned into Eidolon squares!



I'd never thought I'd say this, but...

HOORAY FOR THE BIO-CRASH! (except for the 1500 point Bio-chaos penalty!)



But in all fairness, this raises the question:

Was Eidolon meant to be found in this fashion or was this an oversight by the Civ2 designers?



BTW, for my next experiment, I shall find out if the landscape change is this extreme if I were to maintain only 10 Bio-chaos squares on Nona. The implications could be enormous if the answer is yes.

Crap, I've been playing Lalande for years and years, and never figured out how to get eidolon squares! My ingrained aversion to allowing a global-warming event prevented me from such experimenting. Good for you mate, and many thanks!

As a technology trade I will pass on a nice trick I did learn: you can actually get control of Adamastor's and Urdar's...
It's really hard and doesn't happen in every game, but occasionally an Ad or an Urd will actually take over a small empty city, turning it into a barbarian city. The original Ad will then usually move on to other conquests, but that barbarian city will start churning out other barbarians of the same type that conquered it (Ads or Urds), they only cost them 20 shields each! But anyway, if you can get a spy to that city at a precise time when it doesn't have any defenders then you can bribe the city, and take control of both the originally conquering barbarian unit, as well as any others it has churned out since then! I've had three of my own Adamastors roaming around wiping out everyone with impunity, much fun!

To note: the conquering barbarian sometimes decides to defend the city it has taken over, in which case the city is un-bribable, a status it gains from the fact that the Ad itself is unbribable.

Also I've occasionally tried to build a (size 2) city in the presumed path I think the barbarian will take, in the hopes that it will just stroll into the undefended city, but this hardly ever works.

Anyone else ever gotten this?

Greetings, fellow Lalande Civ2TOTer!

Thanks for the tip about making your own Adamastors and Urdars. It's too bad that I have already disintegrated all Adamastors, Urdars, and Dondasches out of existence with NE Plus Ultras. It would have been so much fun to terrorize the other Civs with Dondasches ! Oh well...

All the experiments from Post #44 were done using experimental branched saves (too lazy to start a brand new game just to test out the effects of Gaia reactions/BIO-CRASH (Global warming) ). In each of the branched saves, all cities were set to Gene Census (Capitalization) production, and Ctrl-N was hit at the start of every turn until a Gaia Reaction occurred.

I am currently trying to get a Gaia reaction to occur in my actual game. So far, I have had no luck in getting a good Gaia reaction started (see this post). Apparently, cleaning up Bio-Chaos and loading a saved game tend to throw the game's Bio-Chaos counter out of whack so that any danger to the planet is "averted" due to the game's inability to properly tally up Bio-Chaos squares.

So StJude1, what do you think about transforming supposedly non-transformable terrain (as per the terrain Civilopedia)? This includes Acid Shallows, Willies, Beacons, Conduits, Crystal Forests, and ANY terrain on Nona. Do you do it if you have the sufficient Environeer/Melior power? Or do you consider it cheating?

In my current game, I have transformed quite a few Storm squares on Nona into Metallic Hydrogen-Current squares (at 80 Environeer turns per square!). I might start transforming the Acid Shallows on Funestis next...

IMBC2 said:

I tested out the report of "bizarre happenings" when terraforming unpassable terrain in the Sci-Fi world, and here's what I've got:

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Interesting. I've never attempted to transform non-transformable terrain before, but I can see what's happening. There are 11 terrain slots in Civ2. The data for each map tile is stored in 6 bytes (see here). The first 4 bits of the first of these 6 bytes determines the terrain slot; normally values 0 to 10 (or 0x00 to 0x0A in hexadecimal). If a transformation is attempted on a terrain type with no listed transformed terrain, the game can't handle a 'no' value and maxes out the value of the byte, ie, 0xFF (or 255 in decimal). This has the effect of turning on the river flag (the 8th bit) and setting the terrain number to 15 (the 16th slot). Of course there is no 16th terrain slot, so the game reads down the list of terrain types under @TERRAIN in rules.txt. The 16th entry happens to be the 1st resource for the 5th terrain slot. The tile is given those stats. There is no graphic for this terrain slot, either, so you get weird effects which change as you move around the screen. If you transform one of these terrain oddities, the first 4 bits are zeroed, giving you the first terrain slot (terrain number 0) and leaving the last 4 bits (and the river) intact.

So for the Sci-Fi game you should get the following results:
Funestis (Map 0): Non-transformable Terrain → Ruins + River → Salt Flats + River
Orbit (Map 1): Non-transformable Terrain → Discharge + Rift → Rust + Rift
Naumachia (Map 2): Non-transformable Terrain → Delerium (116) + Dust Run → Craters + Dust Run
Nona (Map 3): Non-transformable Terrain → Enigmatic Device + Current → Metallic Hydrogen + Current

IMBC2 said:

3 super-charged Environeers: Crystal Forest -> Craters-Dust Run

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Looks like the result of 2 transformations in succession.

This quirk has implications for scenario design. If you're not into scenario design, you can ignore this paragraph. Many Civ2 scenario designers have wished to control the placement of resources, see here for instance. Normally, one would have to reserve terrain slots for specially placed resources. This can be problematic if all terrain slots are in use. With this bug you could place these resources where you liked. In fact, armed with a hex-editor, you could place resources (the first type) for the first 5 terrain slots. The only drawback that I see is that you'd need to cover the tile with some other type of graphic, since it doesn't actually have one. You could suppress the presence of unwanted resources using Mercator's Map Edit utility, as per the link. I've attached a screenshot as an example. I slightly modified the Original game to make the 1st resource of the 5th terrain slot (hills) a factory with 10 shields and 10 trade arrows. I made jungle terrain temporarily non-transformable and placed 3 jungle tiles within Washington's city radius. I then stacked these with Engineers and transformed them to slot 16. They then acquired the stats of the factory resource. Because this tile has no graphic, I used the airbase icon slots. There are a number of options there. You can still see the rivers beneath the factory icons and if it were my scenario, I'd hex-edit those out. In fact I would've hex-edited the terrain slots to begin with, thus avoiding engineers and rivers - but it can be done without hex-editing. So there it is: placeable resources without using up a terrain slot.

IMBC2 said:

Notice that all these experiments involve the transformation of terrain that should NOT be transformable according to the Civilopedia. I wonder: If a GOTM for Lalande 21185 were set up, would terraforming these terrains (including ANY terrain on Nona) be considered a disqualification?

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You could eliminate this bug by making non-transformable terrain types transformable (rules.txt) - but into the same terrain type, ie, no effect. It might look a bit odd in the Civilopedia, but it would remove a possible exploit.

IMBC2 said:

Was Eidolon meant to be found in this fashion or was this an oversight by the Civ2 designers?

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Hard to say, but it does occupy the terrain slot normally held by swamp in the standard game. There are that many anomalies in the game you begin to wonder how much is intentional.

Looks like this thread of yours is turning into quite a strategy guide for ToT's Sci-Fi game.

IMBC2 said:

Thanks for the tip about making your own Adamastors and Urdars. It's too bad that I have already disintegrated all Adamastors, Urdars, and Dondasches out of existence with NE Plus Ultras. It would have been so much fun to terrorize the other Civs with Dondasches ! Oh well...

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Hmm, pity you've wiped them out, they add an interesting element to the game, even if you aren't trying to control them. I also find that if you kill them with ne plus ultras, they don't give you the tech reward, at least until you've killed one with conventional weapons (my choice being griffes and kineticores)

IMBC2 said:

So StJude1, what do you think about transforming supposedly non-transformable terrain (as per the terrain Civilopedia)? This includes Acid Shallows, Willies, Beacons, Conduits, Crystal Forests, and ANY terrain on Nona. Do you do it if you have the sufficient Environeer/Melior power? Or do you consider it cheating?

In my current game, I have transformed quite a few Storm squares on Nona into Metallic Hydrogen-Current squares (at 80 Environeer turns per square!). I might start transforming the Acid Shallows on Funestis next...

Click to expand...

I don't really consider it cheating, just undocumented. I feel that having tiles that are totally unproductive and untraversable is not in the spirit of a sci-fi setting. So I transform them once I get environeers, but I leave them for later after having improved all the other tiles in my territory. I usually don't colonize the orbital plane as it seems to have a lot more of these types of tiles. But Acid Shallows, Willies, Spikes on Naumachia and Ancient Hallways on Nona all get transformed once I have the spare environeer capacity.

My favourite place to colonize is definitely Naumachia's polar regions. Put a mine on a snowball, or farm the permafrost, and just look at the sheer amount of food and shields it pumps out!

StJude1 said:

I don't really consider it cheating, just undocumented. I feel that having tiles that are totally unproductive and untraversable is not in the spirit of a sci-fi setting. So I transform them once I get environeers, but I leave them for later after having improved all the other tiles in my territory. I usually don't colonize the orbital plane as it seems to have a lot more of these types of tiles. But Acid Shallows, Willies, Spikes on Naumachia and Ancient Hallways on Nona all get transformed once I have the spare environeer capacity.

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Right on, mate!

StJude1 said:

I usually don't colonize the orbital plane as it seems to have a lot more of these types of tiles.

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Right on! Orbital space is downright horrible for building colonies -- especially owing to the fact that Deep Space squares can only give up to one food if you have an Algae Farm.

StJude1 said:

But Acid Shallows, Willies, Spikes on Naumachia and Ancient Hallways on Nona all get transformed once I have the spare environeer capacity.

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Did you forget to mention the Red Storms on Nona?

Ancient Hallways are not all bad, though. While they are totally worthless in the area of food production, they do give you 2 Material (shields) and 4 Data (trade).

StJude1 said:

My favourite place to colonize is definitely Naumachia's polar regions. Put a mine on a snowball, or farm the permafrost, and just look at the sheer amount of food and shields it pumps out!

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No kidding!

One Permafrost square can net you 6 units of food if you've doubly-cultivated it and built a Harvester in your city.

You are definitely right about mining Ices squares (your 'snowballs'). Ices give 2 Food and 5 Material. A mined Ices square nets you 6 Material. A mined Ices square with a slideway (Lalande universe equivalent of railroads) nets 9 Material! I have a city named Isabella with around 70% Ices squares, all of which are now mined with slideways. With a Workshop, Transmogrifier, and Gravitic Generator, Isabella easily produces over 300 Material per turn!

StJude1 said:

But anyway, if you can get a spy to that city at a precise time when it doesn't have any defenders then you can bribe the city, and take control of both the originally conquering barbarian unit...

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That's odd. I would think that the originally conquering barbarian unit would still be a NONE unit as far as the game is concerned, so I am quite surprised that you were able to obtain control of it.

StJude1 said:

...as well as any others it has churned out since then!

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That is quite interesting. I had always thought that in order to gain control of an enemy's units by taking the enemy city, the enemy unit(s) would have to be in one of the 8 squares directly adjacent to the city center or inside the city center itself. If an enemy unit that belonged to the conquered city is 2 or more squares away from the city center, then I would have thought that it would automatically disband (disappear forever) instead of defaulting to your side.

...or were you patient enough for the Adamastor/Urdar to park itself right next to (but not inside) the vacant city center before deciding to send in your Salmagundy to bribe the town?

StJude1 said:

Also I've occasionally tried to build a (size 2) city in the presumed path I think the barbarian will take, in the hopes that it will just stroll into the undefended city, but this hardly ever works.

Anyone else ever gotten this?

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The land barbarians seem to show no hesitation in seizing such deserted cities that are so ripe for the picking. However, those flying Adamastors and Urdars seem to love teleporting and perhaps behave quite differently.

As Catfish had pointed out in an earlier post in this thread, once a barbarian unit with native teleportation enters a different map, it automatically fortifies (i.e. does nothing else for the rest of its turn) and then tries to attack on the next turn. So, if you had been trying to place a city in the flying Barbarian unit's path based on its location on another map, then this might be the problem.

I always liked orbital space colonies for the commerce.

IMBC2 said:

That's odd. I would think that the originally conquering barbarian unit would still be a NONE unit as far as the game is concerned, so I am quite surprised that you were able to obtain control of it.

That is quite interesting. I had always thought that in order to gain control of an enemy's units by taking the enemy city, the enemy unit(s) would have to be in one of the 8 squares directly adjacent to the city center or inside the city center itself. If an enemy unit that belonged to the conquered city is 2 or more squares away from the city center, then I would have thought that it would automatically disband (disappear forever) instead of defaulting to your side.

...or were you patient enough for the Adamastor/Urdar to park itself right next to (but not inside) the vacant city center before deciding to send in your Salmagundy to bribe the town?

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It could be that I am miscounting the Ads/Urds. When I gain control of one through bribing a barbarian city, it could very well be one that was cranked out by the city in the previous turn (only costs them 20 shields like I said). Hard to keep track between the conquering unit and the newly produced unit considering they can move so far and change planes in a single turn. But I am certain the newly acquired unit was not always in the surrounding 8 tiles (or even in the city's big plus). Dunno why this didn't follow the normal rule for a bribed cities' units disbanding.

Also wasn't aware you could transform red spots on nona. Always just ignored them. Will have to give that a try

Aaaahhhh..... The many hours my friends and I wasted playing the Sci-Fi mod in Civ II... I actually liked this one scenario enough that I've begun (sporadic) work on converting most of the resources and terrain to Civ III.... (got the "Willies", my favorite terrain done already and am planning to start on the Burning forests as soon as the semester is over).

....Although my Civ III version will have a good dose of Master of Orion thrown in for good measure.

And to answer one of the OP's questions, the most effective way to deal with the Nona barbarians is with Ne Plus Ultra (nukes)... I once had some take over a city I built on Nona, and I couldn't rush reinforcements there fast enough (despite controling large, productive territories on all three other locations) to kill them before they spawned another plague... Unfortunately there IS a bug that makes it so that ONLY the faction that built the Pennance can build Nukes, and unfortunately I didn't have it......

Of course, by the time the barbs were starting to get out of hand, I managed to build the FTL spaceship and send a crew back to Earth anyways (I was playing a customized faction that I called the FBI and my customized leader was Agent Fox Mulder... My cities were all spoofs/references to government conspiracy theories, starting with my capitol, Area 51.....)

IMBC2 said:

But in all fairness, this raises the question:

Was Eidolon meant to be found in this fashion or was this an oversight by the Civ2 designers?

Click to expand...

I just played a game using the gigantic map of the world. I am not sure if it was downloaded or comes with the original game. I do not care much for the same map on each planet, but I went for it any way. When I reached Nona there were handfuls of Eidolon on all the continents (except Greenland) already there ready to be harvested. The thing that I did notice though is the data did not seem to match the proper count, but the "food" and "shield" count went through the roof.

Hello again, everybody! I am currently doing more experiments with the Lalande universe including investigation of the possibility of a fatal flaw in the game (more details will be provided if proof is substantiated.)

@ timtofly :

timtofly said:

I just played a game using the gigantic map of the world. I am not sure if it was downloaded or comes with the original game. I do not care much for the same map on each planet, but I went for it any way. When I reached Nona there were handfuls of Eidolon on all the continents (except Greenland) already there ready to be harvested. The thing that I did notice though is the data did not seem to match the proper count, but the "food" and "shield" count went through the roof.

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IMBC2 said:

(2) Eilodon
As the Civilopedia states, the city of Eilodon is a wonderful myth, but if it were true (i.e. found as a workable square on Nona), wow! Imagine getting 9 food, 9 material, and 9 data from just one square or even building a city on such a square (especially with a Harvester building and a GEnIE park)! Is there any chance whatsoever that an Eilodon square could appear in any randomly-generated map?

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I believe that Catfish had stated that Eidolon corresponds to Swamps on the regular map. If that's true, then you may have seen Eidolon in the areas corresponding to Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida on the World Map. However, my original question pertained to the possibility of Eidolon being generated randomly when starting a new Sci-fi game. (Perhaps Catfish may know if it happens never, once in a blue moon, or only in obscure areas and "I'd have to look for it really hard." ) While playing with 4 of the same map does provoke thoughts of parallel universes and alternate dimensions (truly Sci-fi at that), it is not a randomly generated map.

@ Spoonwood

Spoonwood said:

I always liked orbital space colonies for the commerce.

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I've looked over my maps again and found that the commerce is indeed better in orbit than on Funestis. Because of my tendency to build cities close to "Ocean Squares," I was quickly turned away from Orbital Space due to most of my towns starving too early in their development. Once I'd discovered how to walk on Naumachia and saw how rapidly my first colony there grew (in food, materials, and commerce), it was like a breath of fresh air and I'd vowed to never build another town in Orbital Space again...

@ Hikaro Takayama

Hikaro Takayama said:

And to answer one of the OP's questions, the most effective way to deal with the Nona barbarians is with Ne Plus Ultra (nukes)... I once had some take over a city I built on Nona, and I couldn't rush reinforcements there fast enough (despite controling large, productive territories on all three other locations) to kill them before they spawned another plague... Unfortunately there IS a bug that makes it so that ONLY the faction that built the Pennance can build Nukes, and unfortunately I didn't have it......

Click to expand...

Hmmm, are you sure that you were not missing any other prerequisite techs for building the NE Plus Ultra? I cannot test this scenario out as I was able to build Penance in my game. IIRC, you would have had to defeat an Adamastor in battle to obtain the Singularity Physics tech. I'm not entirely sure, but the Singularity Physics tech might also be required to be able to build a nuke/NE Plus Ultra.

@ StJude1

StJude1 said:

It could be that I am miscounting the Ads/Urds. When I gain control of one through bribing a barbarian city, it could very well be one that was cranked out by the city in the previous turn (only costs them 20 shields like I said). Hard to keep track between the conquering unit and the newly produced unit considering they can move so far and change planes in a single turn. But I am certain the newly acquired unit was not always in the surrounding 8 tiles (or even in the city's big plus). Dunno why this didn't follow the normal rule for a bribed cities' units disbanding.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, perhaps the rules of "disband or join the conqueror when my home city is captured" applies differently to flying units than ground units? I might pull up an old saved game (if I can find one) to check it out.

StJude1 said:

Also wasn't aware you could transform red spots on nona. Always just ignored them. Will have to give that a try

Click to expand...

Let me know how that works out for you
Keep in mind that it takes A LOT of Environeers to transform one Red Storm square in one turn! (That's 60 just to transform it once or 80 to transform it into a Metallic Hydrogen-Current square that may have a chance to become an Eidolon square through Global Warming/Gaia Reactions.)

Hi gents,

I just got a new computer, and discovered that only one of my Civ 4 CDs can be found... not to despair, I dusted off my old TOT game to see how it still played....

Gave Sci-FI a stab at Emperor on a small world (probably should/could've gone larger.... I was distracted because I'd played a fantasy game where the worldmap is really functional for expansion at about 3.2X the base mapsize, b/c underworld and seaworld can build some good stuff).....

1st) Its still a blast to play ToT.

(Game was played as a human race, on Emperor with eco-defense barbs, and 7 civs. I play the game without civ restarts as a custom option)
2nd) I feel like I should be taking over the world everytime I play the sci-fi game. Were I a better/more organized expander, and not such a wimp trying to get more tech when I already have a small lead, I'd probably be posting impressively early game wins. I tend to get a nice base built up and then I'm used to doing: like getting to republic/democracy and building out the base and infrastructure. Unfortunately this latter event seems to occur right around the time I crush the villains to the all-important VTOL ride to orbit...

Has anyone out there experimented with rapid mid-ReX in this game on emperor/deity levels? I mean my first interceptor, paired with the wimpy 2/3/2 Repellers, cut through the villains like a hot knife through butter. How far can you get, staying in Hierarchy and REXing it out with interceptors/settlers/Repellers-->Bolters

Instead of building the big, juicy, democracy/repub pop rushed cities, should I be building the high density 5-8 size cities and just pumping out the units instead? Has anyone tried hybrid strategies (spread out larger core cities, then a high-density as far as you can go as soon as you crush the poor AI tech dev and get to VTOL light years before they do?)

Out of curiosity, if you take out the bad-guy races early, will the advanced start up civ-engine put their replacements on non-Funestis worlds (tech dependent?)

I get caught up in the fear that I will get outraced in tech (and, as is VERY obvious in Sci-Fi, each 'level' of units is lightyears better then the ones before it).... Once you get a distinct tech/prod edge, should you just push it to its furthest possible extent right then and there, figuring that future science/upgrades will take care of themselves if you're rampaging across the globe?

GLad to see people still play this Amazing game. One of the most addictive ever for over a decade.

I usually try to get all the wonders and explore and expand. After I get the Wonder that pays the 1 cost Building Maintenance, I start building all of those buildings. Doing it this way helps to get a lot of coins built up. I then start to buy none units from the AI to reduce my unit overhead. Trade is very important also. You need to have at least two of the non-human AI still getting technology advances, or you cannot get to the last technology tree.

IMBC2 said:

@ StJude1


Hmmm, perhaps the rules of "disband or join the conqueror when my home city is captured" applies differently to flying units than ground units? I might pull up an old saved game (if I can find one) to check it out.

Click to expand...

I have also noticed when bribing an AI city. If there is a unit supported by that city and it is on another planet, that unit is not destroyed. You will then be supporting a unit for that AI unless you you choose to disband it. Therefore it is possible that if the Adamastor/ Urdar have teleported to another planet, then they would not be detroyed and if that was the only Barbarian city, then they would be converted.

Seems like a necro... but nevermind

I'm surprised people still play Test of Time. It is really addictive, I need to win at least ONE game but its so difficult

I have a question - I'm an alien civ (Ka Rhee) and I set the game to 2 other AI players. I have killed one of the other AI players, but I cannot find the other one! On the Foreign Minister menu, it says that the other civ has a city size of 0 and only 2 cities, occasionally the menu will show that the city is in revolt. And only today, it made a HUUUUGE leap in tech and got from learning about Merchant Marine straight to Artificial Gravity

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I have the tech to go to Orbit and Naumachia, the AI dosen't even have VTOL or Forward Vectoring. I have also explored all of Funestis, almost all of Naumachia, and almost all of Orbit. No AI cities!

Some help would be VERY appreciated!

Hi, and welcome. (actually, I've got a ToT game going on in another window as I type...)

Who were the other civs you had in the game? Which one did you kill? You won't get the higher techs if you kill all the humans before a certain point in the game (and the reverse if you're playing a human - you've got to keep at least one alien civ alive and producing tech so it eventually gets to the ones you need).

I've learned there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the techs possessed by the other species. Sometimes I might give them a tech or two (after getting the Marconi Tower so I can talk to them, of course!), so they'll quit piddling around with elementary stuff when it's the higher techs I need them to get so I can steal it.