GOTM 136 Spoiler

[ZanzibarZim]

I haven't played CivII in years, but I saw this on CNN.com and knew I had to try it for myself. Amazingly, my old laptop (20 minutes to boot up) still has CivII on it and I still have the disk.

I'm three evenings into it now, about 25-30 turns.

Pollution: I've had 2 rounds of global warming and coming up on a third. The Americans have remained allied, giving me the opportunity to clean up a lot of pollution in the areas where our cities are intermingled. I’ve left the Viking engineers unmolested so they can clean up their own mess. Global pollution is now down from about 170 polluted squares to about 70. Global warming will stop once I get it down under 10 squares.

Nuclear stand-off: One thing I learned long ago is that Sid Meir believed in the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. If you build a few nukes and then save them and don’t use them, the AI civs will almost never use theirs. In all my years of playing, it only happened to me once. So I built three ICBM’s and put them in three front-line cities. I know the Vikings have nukes, but they haven’t tried to use them.

Industry: My industrial production is now about 150% higher, thanks to investment in harbors and platforms. The downside to this is that the remote island cities tend to have the best production, complicating logistics.

Fundamentalism’s fatal flaw: Fundamentalism’s fatal flaw is that although units are almost impossible to bribe, cities are easy to bribe. “So, 900 gold for your entire fully-built-up city with 2 Wonders and 5 units? I’ll take it.” Heck, you can sell the unnecessary improvements to get all your cash back and even turn a nice profit.

Population: Down about 5%, in spite of captured and new-built cities. This is probably due to the production of numerous engineer units.

The War: I've got the Vikings on the ropes, having taken about 10 cities, including most of their cities with wonders. My artillery stack is about 20 units now, so next turn I’ll start a wack-a-mole campaign versus the Viking capital. This will cost them their best remaining cities and deplete their treasury, making bribery cheaper and therefore more effective.

I can’t possibly stretch this out for 500 turns. Maybe 20-30 more turns to finish world conquest. The fact that everything is swamp and jungle makes offensive operations far more difficult, since it inhibits movement and provides defensive bonuses to the city defenders. So this might be optimistic. I will probably need to use a lot more artillery per city than I normally would.

Things I won’t do, just because I’m stubborn:
1 - I won’t switch governments to fundamentalism. I’ve never used it.
2 – I won’t leave a speck of pollution anywhere.
3 – I won’t take advantage of the fact that the “too-many-cities-built, too-many-cities-destroyed” glitch means that I can “home city” units to certain cities and get NON units. Yes, I could make my entire army (and esp. engineers) completely free of support requirements.

[ZanzibarZim]

I see my post was moved. Did I break a rule? Should I not discuss my game until the competition is over?

[Ali Ardavan]

ZanzibarZim,
We typically have 2 threads for each game. The first one is where the game is announced and all the game related discussions prior to playing, or not directly related to playing, go. Questions about the game, strategy discussions, Map analysis, extensions requests, and result announcements go here. The second one, called spoiler, is where the actual discussion of the game as it is being played goes. That is why your post was moved. It is OK to discuss your game while you and others are playing it. So keep your comments coming.

[ZanzibarZim]

Oh good. I'm new here so I was afeared I had broken a rule.

The game is going well, I haven't had this much fun gaming in a long time. I'm up to 4025 AD now. Finished off the Vikings last night and am redeploying to the east.

One wierd thing happened, though, when I went to the diplomacy screen to check intelligence. I wanted to count cities to make sure I wasn't missing any. The French had appeared - capital Paris, 1 city, 0 units, 0 gold. I panicked and sent helicopters, ships and mountain troops in all directions looking for the thing. I hate it when you've finished the game and there's that one last hidden city somewhere. Fortunately I had units pre-positioned for just that possibility and we found it quickly.

[mackerel]

Restarts are probably impossible at this point in the original save, but saving it as a scenario means restarts will treat 3991 as -4000 and probably happen very often. I'll confess, I did a doubletake when the germans and indians declared war on each other in my game.

[ZanzibarZim]

Originally Posted by mackerel

Restarts are probably impossible at this point in the original save, but saving it as a scenario means restarts will treat 3991 as -4000 and probably happen very often. I'll confess, I did a doubletake when the germans and indians declared war on each other in my game.

I've played super-long games from time to time and I've seen enough late-game restarts to justify having a half dozen or so units pre-positioned to scout for them. It was fortunate I did, because it only took a couple of turns for one of my scouts to locate the French.

It did startle me, though.

I think the amount of free land is the determinant factor in re-starts, rather than the game year. I had one game where I made a huge map, almost entirely land, and decided to play a 3-city game, with raging hordes. It proved to be almost impossible for the poor AI civs to keep up. The raging hordes kept exterminating them and new civs kept popping back up.

At one point there were even a handful of barbarian cities, which kept manufacturing barbarians. I sent a diplomat to one in order to see what would happen and had a meeting with Attila the Hun.

[ZanzibarZim]

Bizarre. Wrapped up the game last night, killing the Americans and French (who had respawned from the dark blue slot) simultaneously.

Immediately, the light blue and dark blue slots respawned, this time as the Persians and Germans. It happened in the same uninhabited wasteland where the French had spawned. Since I had a helicopter on location, I killed both settlers. Immediately again, both slots respawned. Before I could find them this time, the very next turn, I got a message that they had both been destroyed by barbarians.

It was fun.

[mackerel]

All my respawns happened in that same place as well, once right next to the troop that had taken out the last respawn. I would expect at least one alternate spawning ground to work, but didn't get my theory validated in practice.

[Sir_Lancelot]

Originally Posted by ZanzibarZim

Global warming will stop once I get it down under 10 squares.

So 10 is the limit? Thanks, it's good to know. I knew the limit was less than 20. And if you are just a little over the limit, global warming happens very very slow. I think I've had around 15-20 polluted tiles and it took almost forever before the yellow sun icon showed up. I have also concluded that the city pollution does not count towards global warming, only polluted tiles does.

Fundamentalism’s fatal flaw: Fundamentalism’s fatal flaw is that although units are almost impossible to bribe, cities are easy to bribe. “So, 900 gold for your entire fully-built-up city with 2 Wonders and 5 units? I’ll take it.” Heck, you can sell the unnecessary improvements to get all your cash back and even turn a nice profit.

Lol that's odd. I wasn't aware of this, I don't bribe a lot.

3 – I won’t take advantage of the fact that the “too-many-cities-built, too-many-cities-destroyed” glitch means that I can “home city” units to certain cities and get NON units. Yes, I could make my entire army (and esp. engineers) completely free of support requirements.

I don't understand how this works, could you perhaps point me to a place where it is discussed, or perhaps explain it yourself? Thanks.

[ZanzibarZim]

Originally Posted by Sir_Lancelot

So 10 is the limit? Thanks, it's good to know. I knew the limit was less than 20. And if you are just a little over the limit, global warming happens very very slow. I think I've had around 15-20 polluted tiles and it took almost forever before the yellow sun icon showed up. I have also concluded that the city pollution does not count towards global warming, only polluted tiles does.

Yeah, it's actual polluted squares. I believe it's 10 polluted squares for 10 turns. Even with massive city pollution, if you clean up right away, you should be all right. I've intentionally triggered global warming in the past, and each time it was by leaving polluted squares alone.

Originally Posted by Sir_Lancelot

Lol that's odd. I wasn't aware of this, I don't bribe a lot.

Yup. For example, to bribe a marine it was 24,000 gold. For bribing Westness with 5 units and 3 Wonders, 1,500 gold. I picked up Izumo from the Americans with 18 units in it, plus 4 adjacent units for about 2,400 gold, even though they had over 20K gold in their treasury. It does less damage to the city, too.

Originally Posted by Sir_Lancelot

I don't understand how this works, could you perhaps point me to a place where it is discussed, or perhaps explain it yourself? Thanks.

It may be a function of the extreme longetivity of the game. What happens is that when max cities are built, and some are destroyed and you're re-using names, faults develop in the city database. I've only seen it a couple of times in very long games with huge numbers of cities and huge numbers of units. In this case, I was moving units around and re-homing them to new cities. I noticed that when I re-homed units to certain cities, I always got NON units.

This happened early in the scenario (in 3997 AD) when there were hundreds of units. Now that I've destroyed a bunch of cities and removed about 900 units from the game, it's not happening any more.

[Sir_Lancelot]

Originally Posted by ZanzibarZim

Yup. For example, to bribe a marine it was 24,000 gold. For bribing Westness with 5 units and 3 Wonders, 1,500 gold. I picked up Izumo from the Americans with 18 units in it, plus 4 adjacent units for about 2,400 gold, even though they had over 20K gold in their treasury. It does less damage to the city, too.

24000 for one unit, and only 1500-2400 for a whole city? Holy Moses!

Fundamentalism is overpowered so maybe they intentionally made cities easy to bribe. But it's funny that their units is so extremely expensive.

I have seen units cost around 3000-4000, not more than that. And they belonged to a wealthy AI. Units from a poor AI cost me just 450 gold.

[ZanzibarZim]

Originally Posted by Sir_Lancelot

24000 for one unit, and only 1500-2400 for a whole city? Holy Moses!

Fundamentalism is overpowered so maybe they intentionally made cities easy to bribe. But it's funny that their units is so extremely expensive.

I have seen units cost around 3000-4000, not more than that. And they belonged to a wealthy AI. Units from a poor AI cost me just 450 gold.

I know, right? Personally, I've never even tried to use Fundamentalism as a government. The advantages just never seemed worth it to bother with the cost of switching governments. As long as you've got the UN, you can stay Democracy right through the end of the game with no problems. Democracy is a lot more profitable, and I believe the engineers work faster, too.

By the way, I decided to go ahead and clean up the entire world after I conquered it. I've disbanded the vast majority of my military units, and I think I'm up to 150 Engineers by now. The NON unit problem is back. I even have a city that churns out NON Engineers every 3 turns. Nothing I can do about that.

[mackerel]

Originally Posted by ZanzibarZim

By the way, I decided to go ahead and clean up the entire world after I conquered it. I've disbanded the vast majority of my military units, and I think I'm up to 150 Engineers by now. The NON unit problem is back. I even have a city that churns out NON Engineers every 3 turns. Nothing I can do about that.

You've eliminated all rivals and the game didn't end, too? Maybe it's an issue with a scenario being created from a game in which the space race has already been won, and not just my game being broken.

You have a city naturally producing NON units. When you home units to certain cities, they become NON. Is the same city exhibiting both behaviors?

[laoafei]

I just downloaded the sav file several hours ago and played a little bit. 'Now' is 4011 and Vikings have been wiped out. The government type was left in Communism. Just used spies to buy cities.
All I can say is that guy (Lycerius) is really not that good in playing civ2...

[mackerel]

3991 - A year of change

When Supreme Comrade Lycerius appointed me to command the great nation of Celtania in 3991, I surveyed the land and wept. I watched as our valiant young soldiers plowed their tanks through the radioactive marshes of Vikingland, only to be repelled at the walls of their impregnable fortresses. We have all cheered the rare tales of victory as we fortified a captured position, and mourned when the implacable foe triggered nuclear countermeasures, destroying their own people along with ours. We are not innocent of this atrocity. But let us not dwell on the unchangeable past. Rather, let us plan for a future free of atomic weaponry. I have ordered the construction of all nuclear weapons to cease immediately, and instruct that the last remaining nuclear missile be disassembled for spare parts. Never again will the Celts release such forces upon the Earth.

We note that the roads leading to the Viking front are impassable. We can not mount a coordinated offensive without a path to their doorstep, but neither of us can field engineers to repair the rails. Let us pursue an alternative approach; we attack from the sea. Where columns of armor fail, we will send one man. Where bullets can not prevail, we will use diplomacy.

Our people at home starve. To put it bluntly, this is a tragedy that need not be. We will tear down the empty colosseums and build harbors, so our younglings will never need learn the taste of cockroach stew. Let them feast upon the bounty of the ocean. Offshore platforms will provide resources to build our new strike force. We will close down the granaries that have not seen use since the construction of the Pyramids, and demolish the ineffective police stations.

Rapid travel is required for an agile army. Our engineers have been commanded to repair the railroads connecting the heartland to the outlying districts. The few cities connected only by roads will remain so, until it is possible to field a larger corps of engineers. We have established a port city where the northern rail formerly dumped troops directly into the sea. Our boys will arrive at the front sooner and ready for action. We will not pour out a stream of lives ineffectually battering an unimportant fortress. Instead, we will buy time while we marshal an unstoppable force. We certainly have enough gold for that.

I have just received word from the front. This morning I directed two of our skilled diplomats to spend whatever was necessary to sway the loyalty of the Viking citizens in Melbourne and Lindholm. They are to be welcomed into the Celtic Empire as equals, though naturally confined to their homeland while the sincerity of their conversion remains in question. They have surrendered their weapons, which we will use to maintain a defense in those cities. Their accursed cruise missiles have been shipped to our forward cities, where they are being scavenged for Howitzer parts. We can not expect to hold Lindholm long. The Vikings will throw their full force against us there, and fortify against further incursions. Even so, this diplomatic assault has captured two cities and all their armies for less than the price of one tank.

Now go, make this plan happen, and take care not to antagonize the Americans. We must let the illusion of peace persist a while yet.

[laoafei]

Time is 4035, world is in peace again. Democracy will come once those now useless military units are all converted to engineers.

[ZanzibarZim]

Originally Posted by mackerel

You have a city naturally producing NON units. When you home units to certain cities, they become NON. Is the same city exhibiting both behaviors?

Yeah. Some cities only cause a NON unit when you try to re-home units to it. But units that the city actually manufactures are correctly supported.

Other cities actually manufacture NON units.

It's kind of annoying, because in a normal game I'll move units around and re-home them after a major combat operation. But I don't feel I can do that without inadvertantly abusing this glitch.

[ZanzibarZim]

Originally Posted by laoafei

Time is 4035, world is in peace again. Democracy will come once those now useless military units are all converted to engineers.

It always makes me sad to disband my loyal artillery stack. We've been through a lot together.

Fortunately, they can all get high-paying jobs draining swamps!

[Sir_Lancelot]

Originally Posted by ZanzibarZim

Global warming will stop once I get it down under 10 squares.

Originally Posted by Sir_Lancelot

So 10 is the limit? Thanks, it's good to know. I knew the limit was less than 20. And if you are just a little over the limit, global warming happens very very slow. I think I've had around 15-20 polluted tiles and it took almost forever before the yellow sun icon showed up. I have also concluded that the city pollution does not count towards global warming, only polluted tiles does.

Originally Posted by ZanzibarZim

Yeah, it's actual polluted squares. I believe it's 10 polluted squares for 10 turns.

I was wrong when I said 15-20 tiles, I have now counted the polluted tiles and they are 38. This pollution have been untouched for around 100 turns or more. And the sun icon became less and less bright, until it disappeared completely a long time ago.

I have 38 polluted tiles (very old pollution) and global warming decreases.

The difficulty is Prince.

EDIT: Just for clarification, this is not the GOTM it's my own game.

[Matrix]

[]
In all those years I have never played a Civ2 game better than this one. Back in the days that I was active Civ2Fanatic, if you know what I mean, I saw the results of world champions in Civ2 pass by once I received the savegames for GOTM 1 onwards, until I passed on the responsibilities (to ainwood?). But I was conservatively stuck in old habbits: building cities far away from each other, defending all cities the same way...just ignoring all the tricks CivFanatics offered me. I remember one time I played online against Woke23 - he once came for dinner at my place - and I was smashed to smithereenies. That really made me realise that my old habbits were pathetic, yet to drop them felt like ruining the game. But then Civ3 came out, the game for which I initially actually became a member of CivFanatics, to talk about it, in anticipation...

That was ten years ago. Now the old habbits are made obsolete by Civ3 and Civ4, as Civ2 is an just old thing with mechanics that can be read like Neo can read the matrix. I can now play as effectively as my intelligence allows.
[/]

Since replays are allowed, I test-played it first and thought about what would result in the highest GOTM score. I created an OpenOffice Calc (MS Excel) file to track my score (with -6 per polluted tile) and see how my GOTM score progressed per turn. See attachment.

- Have as many engineers necessary to have cleaned up all pollution just before you conquer the last city. Trying clear swamp, fertilize the cities and gain points by population growth goes to slow and does not result in a higher score. Even worse: there's not point in clearing swamp until all the pollution is cleared (because of re-melting ice caps) and you can't do that until you have conquered the main land of the Vikings. Once you've done that, you might as well march on.

So better not to waste city sizes to engineers, but rather produce buildings and military units. Of course add all engineers to cities just before the end. Essentially you need to conquer the world as fast as possible.

Other things to bare in mind:
- Avoid large stacks of units in cities without an SDI defence. The enemy will nuke you, despite having nukes in your arsenal yourself.
- Government to fundamentalism. Tax 80%, science 20% to catch those few points to future techs.
- Harbours and oil platforms are vital! All coastal cities should have them a.s.a.p..
- All front cities need to be equiped with SDI defences, SAM missiles and city walls; sometimes coastal defence as well.
- Backland cities build units first to start the attack against the Vikings. Temples and colosseums, marketplaces, banks and stock exchanges afterwards to increase money flow.
- Buy as much as possible. Preferably buildings, because units are twice as expensive and can rather be produced, but sometimes buying units on vital locations can increase conquest speed.
- Eventually as many cities as possible should have a marketplace, a bank and a stock exchange to have maximum benefit of the luxury rate.

Conquering the Vikings was the hardest part. My trick was to build a few spies, save some money and have a huge stack of units (mainly howitzers) ready. Then with six transports I moved from Hieraconpolis to Trondheim over the inland sea, bought Trondheim and unleashed hell from there. I quickly got Capute's last cities on the eastern island from, then sent the units back to the mainland to prepare for an attack on the Americans. In the meantime build SDI defences, SAM missiles and city walls in the cities around them. I conquered the other island (half American, half Celtic) with units built/bought on the island itself.

At some point I had enough units for the duration of the game and enough temples, colosseums, Michelangelo's Chapel, marketplaces, banks and stock exchanges to gain money at even 0% tax rate. I then switched to 80% luxury rate for one turn to have cities 'love the high priest'. Coastal cities with marketplaces, banks and stock exchanges then remained in this state with only 10% luxury, but from then on I had 80% science and 20% luxury. I also built libraries in the end, which are free with Smith's Trading Company. I did stick to fundamentalism though.

The world was all Celtic at 4030 AD (turn 39).