Nice Tricks

I must say starting a mine on a hill then building a city on it
-before the mine is complete- was very cool to learn here.
[edit]automating settlers with "k" to get irrigation in landlocked squares helps a lot too Too bad they mine oasis...[/edit]
I'm having a problem with the trireme trick> does it work for real? Said to move 2 spaces, then w, then press space bar is not working
Also saw somewhere on this board about irrigating in ocean squares and that isn't working either. Any help here would be appreciated.
I don't know if this qualifies but...
When you start to encounter new civs don't sign peace treaty, if they don't offer you gold demand tribute for it, then demand tribute again. You can get lots of gold, and techs this way. You should be expanding and have force to backup your demands, but even if you don't they might still give it. maybe their already in a war with another civ and don't want another. This finances your wonder building. Just don't get carried away, most of the time it works but demanding too often will piss them off to declare war on you. Whenever they send you an emisarry, or tread on your land is enough.

I've found that the trireme trick (I assume you mean not sinking away from coastline) is unreliable. Kinda pointless, too - moving 2 squares per turn, you may as well just wait for caravels.

I've never heard of irrigating ocean, just building railroads on it.

Demanding tribute is a good way to get rich early. It does, however, make you rather unpopular.

The trireme trick works everytime. but you have to use control N to end your turn. ie, after the trireme moves 2 spaces, hit W and move your other units, when the trireme comes up to move again, then hit control N and then return or click on the end turn sign.

It always works, but Sodak is right, its pointless to move two squares per turn. The only time I use it is in SP games when you know land it 4-6 squares away and you don't want to waste several turns going along the coast to get there.

The build RR trick will not work in MPG version, does anyone know if it works on classic version? It used to be fun to do that in civ I.

Back in the ole days, when Civ III was just a dream waiting to happen... we thought it would be nice to let Firaxis know what the cheats and tricks were for Civ II, hoping they wouldn't repeat the mistakes in Civ III.

I volunteered to put together the list. Rumor has it that they found it interesting... An old version of it can still be found at

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001406.html?date=23:05

It might be interesting reading...

Ace: "The build RR trick will not work in MPG version, does anyone know if it works on classic version? It used to be fun to do that in civ I. "

I remember this in Civ1. I could also fortify ocean squares too!

I do not think these ever worked in Civ 2.

You can change the rules.txt and allow engineers to transform ocean squares in to land or land squares into oceans though.

Then you can build railroads or harbours in formerly landlocked cities.

Nahhh... even in the classic version of Civ II you couldn't railroad ocean. But it was indeed a fun trick in Civ I.

My favorite from Civ I was that you could sell your palace.
You would start your first city, sell your palace, build a city with a settler, and GET ANOTHER PALACE... which you could then sell, and repeat the process all over again. You could use the money to rush build more settlers while disbanding the cities... creating whole fields of settlers that alternated between settlers and cities... selling a palace for each and every one of them. You could have unlimited supply of money.

You know, I used to employ the following ploy rather often (in Civ 2, 2.42 Classic) -- a ploy I've never actually seen in any of these forums.

Once an opposing civilization has had adequate time to build railways throughout its civilization; and just prior to the "Total War" Blitzkrieg, I would send a spy and an engineer into their a territory and remove all unwanted/unoccupied fortifications simply by commanding the Engineer to build a city in the fortified square; and then, once the "City Name" prompt comes up, I cancel the build order. And viola! No more fortification, and the engineer is free to move on to the next fortification to repeat the process. Of course, this ploy cannot be used against fortifications immediately adjacent to cities; but since the AI almost never builds a fortification next to a city ...

To be sure, Power Democracy and my latest version of Modernization has largely rendered this ploy obsolete, I did have a chance to use it in one of the last Civ II Succession games. Still got a chuckle from doing so.

Andu Indorin...
Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks. SIMPLY BRILLIANT
Hadn't heard of that one before... so I must ask the standard question...

How did you discover that one

neat link Ming, thanks. Do you happen to know why page 2+3 give 404 error?

A good question... I don't have an answer. It could be because they have switched servers a few times since I wrote that long ago. It's too bad. Because I think my first post represents what was sent to Firaxis, and the remaining pages were stuff we figured out after that. There were some interesting discussions...

I'll look into it and see what I can dig up. For newbees, it's a great thing to read.

Originally posted by Ming
Andu Indorin...
Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks. SIMPLY BRILLIANT
Hadn't heard of that one before... so I must ask the standard question...

How did you discover that one

Click to expand...

As with most discoveries, it was quite by accident; attempting to build a new city and, at the last second, decided I wanted it one square over, and hey presto, fortification gone!

So true... So true... many of the cheats were figured out by somebody making a mistake

It's some of the other cheats that really blow me. Like Xin Yu figuring out how to use ten engineers to terraform a square in a single turn. The sequence needed to do that is unbelievable...

Anybody else have some good tricks that some of us might not have heard about yet?

What sequence?

You have to start Engineer A working, then Eng B, stop Eng A, start Eng C, stop Eng B, start Eng D, stop Eng C, start Eng E, stop Eng D, start Eng F, stop Eng E, start Eng G, stop Eng F, start Eng H, stop Eng G, start Eng I, stop Eng H, start Eng J.

The real trick is to make sure you are picking the right Eng each time, or else it messes up the cycle. It helps if all the Eng's are from different cites and just keep track of the order that each one is used in and goto the city to active that unit. I usually do it with teams of 5 Eng's and take two turns, it's a lot easier.

Yeah Duke, it works, but it is more like working an advanced math problem than playing a fun game. How do you keep it all straight when 2 or more of the engineers are from the same cities?

It's not something I think everyone would have the patience for.

(From memory, since I'm at work) You need to keep track of which Eng has already been used by checking where they are in the unit stack order, or in the city screen. Follow a pattern and stick to it once it works. That's also part of the reason I prefer the 2 turn 5 stack groups.

You mean people actually USE IT in a game!

It always seemed like too much work to me. If you have enough settlers/engineers, you just let em do their thing, and it's a lot less work...

I remember when Xin first explained it to me. While I was certainly impressed, I had to chuckle. I can't imagin actually doing it...

page-1 http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001406.html?date=23:05

page-2 http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001406-2.html?date=23:05

page-3 http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001406-3.html?date=23:05

you cant get to pages 2 and 3 using the link on the page, use the ones above.

Originally posted by Ming
Back in the ole days, when Civ III was just a dream waiting to happen... we thought it would be nice to let Firaxis know what the cheats and tricks were for Civ II, hoping they wouldn't repeat the mistakes in Civ III.

I volunteered to put together the list. Rumor has it that they found it interesting... An old version of it can still be found at

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001406.html?date=23:05

It might be interesting reading...

Click to expand...

Nice thread that great librar> too bad you have to scroll left and right all the way down to read it.
Control+N doesn't work to end my turn. Enter is the only thing that does, and only after all my units have moved, fortified, sentry, skipped, etc. Maybe I'll just build the lighthouse and forget it.

By Andu:

I would send a spy and an engineer into their a territory and remove all unwanted/unoccupied fortifications simply by commanding the Engineer to build a city in the fortified square; and then, once the "City Name" prompt comes up, I cancel the build order.

Click to expand...

A neat trick.... however, its removed from Civ 2 MGE...

About the Engineer Stacking...

Yup, that's a good thing, and I use it on occasion, in particular for essential shield production (getting shield multiples to certain amounts by mining/making RRs). I find it useful for laying RR across rivers in one turn to sustain/press an attack, or rush an essential defender to a location. Such things determine the composition of assault forces, particularly using JIT in a Power Democracy. I've also been known to transform grassland into hills to double the defense bonus at a critical spot. But I agree with Ming that routine use, esp. of Transformations, is quite tedious and error-prone.

As a note, I have seen it printed that it's good to have eng's from different cities. Civ cycles thru pieces in a particular order, and if you give top move priority to a 10-stack by setting it up ahead of time, you can simply cycle thru it in turn that Civ presents it. If you have defenders mixed in, its best to remove them beforehand or you might not be able to access them if you put the to sleep or they are fortified. If they are awake, you can access them, but will likely lose the stack pattern and blow the transformation (which is presumablely critical or you would not
go to such effort).

However, man-days will not be lost.... they will be applied in the next turn... but leftover man-days that the completing engineer may possess will be discarded and unavailable for future work.

When I first started playing Civ 3 years ago, the single biggest frustration for me was not understanding why I could have huge stack of engineers busy making a simple river RR, or irrigation (both take 3 eng man-days), yet the RR would not be built that turn. One day, after much trial and error, I came upon the pattern. Later, I tried it for mining, swamp clearing, and transformations. If I'd just known about this Civ website, much anguish could have been saved!!
Most of what I've learned I've either posted, or has been learned by others that have posted in other threads. Ship-chaining is probably the most useful "trick" I use in a long game, particularly during the era prior to Radio.

But a "trick" might be delivery of caravans and freight. If you have the option when you (or any other player) is approaching the Navigation advance, rush to deliver your Caravans before someone discovers Navigation. You'll get twice the value, assuming Invention is already discovered and you have not reached turn 200 yet.

Similarly, just before the RR advance, get caravans delivered or they will have thier value cut by a third. A further third is cut when Flight is discovered.