Posidonius
Civherder
I've gotten over being mad about the Pollution Bug and started to figure out how to deal with it. Just like deduced by Darkpanda, getting to a certain number of Future Tech's is the trigger, in my case at Prince level, that's 188 FT's.
I ran several tests, some of them for multiple iterations. Here are some notes kept during the several tests i ran, in case you wish to understand the methodology or want to see what events solved which problems. Also, there are some odd musings sprinkled throughout these notes, some "what-if" ideas suggested by various phenomena, and those might be useful to general Civ1 play. One is a possible plan to allow you to charge-up Settlers while they are being carried on a boat, and i think it should work, and could be pretty useful in a scenario with far-flung islands.
In the last post of this thread, i've put together all the lessons learned and compiled a list of strategies for managing and manipulating the Pollution Bug. I believe that with Darkpanda's wizardry and my practical experiments, we can consider the Pollution Bug finally and truly "nailed".
As promised, here's a SAV from 2017 AD in my previous (soiled) game, just before the wave of sludge starts. Give it a play if you care to, it's a Civ1 file of the CivWIN species, thus a SAV file and not SVE.
President Titus of the Romans:
Starting at 2017 with 186 FT's. At this point, have Railroaded the entire world, and 4 Settlers are nearly done irrigating the last Forests. All hills irrigated (including coal hills), and all forests irrigated, except deer forests. Just realized that converting horse plains into deer forests yields more food, so that's what the Settlers are starting on next.
The world is set to maximize scientific learning, with 3 landlocked enemy civs kept in three little zoos, solely for the purpose of trading with them. I give them decent leeway to build a big city, but keep them low on shields. To make sure they don't build nukes, i always hold off on the Manhattan Project until the very end of a game. And to maintain my grip, a steady stream of diplomats checks out the enemy every few turns.
Last time i played this game, didn't know about the Pollution Bug, and when things went rancid in 2020 i tried a restart to 2000, then went on a spree bu(y)ilding a full slate of Recyc's and Massies. That didn't work. So i did the same restart but also sold off all of my Factories, Mfg Plants, and all Power-Nuke-Hydro improvements to lower the shieldcounts. That didn't work either. Finally i gave up and decided to salvage the game as best i could. Restarted to 2017, had a revolution, and took out the three remaining enemies by 2020.
That military win ended with 3,383 civscore. And it bugged the hell out of me. The top of my HOF was a game i did from April 2011 to June 2012, a long-form game i was pretty proud of, ending at 3,384 civscore. Yes, this one missed First Place by one point. 1 frickin' civscore point. One. Grrrrrrowwwl.
Oooo that really stuck in my craw. Didn't even know i had a craw until then. Got determined to blast both those 3,38x games down (and off) the HOF list.
For years now, all my games end with maxxed Peace, Wonders and SpaceShip, a baseline of 720 civscore. Only two other factors remain to manipulate: citz and techs. Decided to try a game where i ruined the records for both of them. That's my current game, started last November. Put it on hold this Spring when i learned about the Pollution Bug, in the nick of time too. Now, i'm almost ready to pick it up again, armed with a ton of info from Civfanatics.com.
When i found this website, it was a real eye-opener on a game i've been playing about 8 hours a week for many years. So i re-read the manual i'd printed out in 2003, and then read the FAQ here. It's like one sentence in the manual is three paragraphs in the FAQ. Now i know that happy citz are +2! Now i know how to manipulate parades to pop a city whenever i want to. Now i know how to railroad a fish. Wow, that one could make my main game really explode. I recall that at one point in the scenario, i had 107 Settlers and in a mature civilization it should only take five turns to throw out 40 Transports, so we're looking at about 15 turns to RR most of the edible fish, then another nine turns for a handful of Settlers to finish the job.
I never knew that sentrying a unit in a city gets a whole 'nother move when awoken. I routinely moved units who had landed in a city on a ship by re-awakening them, but i figured that was an undocumented feature, not a cheat. If you're running a whole empire, surely you can arrange to have a limo meet your Diplomat when he steams into port, right? The point is that a whole bunch of things became clearer while running these tests, some tweaks to my usual range of tricks, and new tricks that i'm not sure i'd use, and other, completely new, tricks became apparent once you know that Tab A fits into Slot B.
So... in 2017 here, there's 111 cities and i'm building a bunch of Aqueducts which i sold a while ago, to save coins to support more science. It was an experiment, and yes, now i know that you have to keep your Aqueducts standing. Having a city not go from 19 to 20 because you sold their Aqueduct is not a happy feeling. On my own, i had just started to make the connection between parades and pops, and had known for a while that you can prevent unexpected pops by selling the city's Aqueduct. If you pick up this SAV, you might want to plow cash into Aqueducts right away. I did.
On with the experiments!
I ran several tests, some of them for multiple iterations. Here are some notes kept during the several tests i ran, in case you wish to understand the methodology or want to see what events solved which problems. Also, there are some odd musings sprinkled throughout these notes, some "what-if" ideas suggested by various phenomena, and those might be useful to general Civ1 play. One is a possible plan to allow you to charge-up Settlers while they are being carried on a boat, and i think it should work, and could be pretty useful in a scenario with far-flung islands.
In the last post of this thread, i've put together all the lessons learned and compiled a list of strategies for managing and manipulating the Pollution Bug. I believe that with Darkpanda's wizardry and my practical experiments, we can consider the Pollution Bug finally and truly "nailed".
As promised, here's a SAV from 2017 AD in my previous (soiled) game, just before the wave of sludge starts. Give it a play if you care to, it's a Civ1 file of the CivWIN species, thus a SAV file and not SVE.
President Titus of the Romans:
Starting at 2017 with 186 FT's. At this point, have Railroaded the entire world, and 4 Settlers are nearly done irrigating the last Forests. All hills irrigated (including coal hills), and all forests irrigated, except deer forests. Just realized that converting horse plains into deer forests yields more food, so that's what the Settlers are starting on next.
The world is set to maximize scientific learning, with 3 landlocked enemy civs kept in three little zoos, solely for the purpose of trading with them. I give them decent leeway to build a big city, but keep them low on shields. To make sure they don't build nukes, i always hold off on the Manhattan Project until the very end of a game. And to maintain my grip, a steady stream of diplomats checks out the enemy every few turns.
Last time i played this game, didn't know about the Pollution Bug, and when things went rancid in 2020 i tried a restart to 2000, then went on a spree bu(y)ilding a full slate of Recyc's and Massies. That didn't work. So i did the same restart but also sold off all of my Factories, Mfg Plants, and all Power-Nuke-Hydro improvements to lower the shieldcounts. That didn't work either. Finally i gave up and decided to salvage the game as best i could. Restarted to 2017, had a revolution, and took out the three remaining enemies by 2020.
That military win ended with 3,383 civscore. And it bugged the hell out of me. The top of my HOF was a game i did from April 2011 to June 2012, a long-form game i was pretty proud of, ending at 3,384 civscore. Yes, this one missed First Place by one point. 1 frickin' civscore point. One. Grrrrrrowwwl.
Oooo that really stuck in my craw. Didn't even know i had a craw until then. Got determined to blast both those 3,38x games down (and off) the HOF list.
For years now, all my games end with maxxed Peace, Wonders and SpaceShip, a baseline of 720 civscore. Only two other factors remain to manipulate: citz and techs. Decided to try a game where i ruined the records for both of them. That's my current game, started last November. Put it on hold this Spring when i learned about the Pollution Bug, in the nick of time too. Now, i'm almost ready to pick it up again, armed with a ton of info from Civfanatics.com.
When i found this website, it was a real eye-opener on a game i've been playing about 8 hours a week for many years. So i re-read the manual i'd printed out in 2003, and then read the FAQ here. It's like one sentence in the manual is three paragraphs in the FAQ. Now i know that happy citz are +2! Now i know how to manipulate parades to pop a city whenever i want to. Now i know how to railroad a fish. Wow, that one could make my main game really explode. I recall that at one point in the scenario, i had 107 Settlers and in a mature civilization it should only take five turns to throw out 40 Transports, so we're looking at about 15 turns to RR most of the edible fish, then another nine turns for a handful of Settlers to finish the job.
I never knew that sentrying a unit in a city gets a whole 'nother move when awoken. I routinely moved units who had landed in a city on a ship by re-awakening them, but i figured that was an undocumented feature, not a cheat. If you're running a whole empire, surely you can arrange to have a limo meet your Diplomat when he steams into port, right? The point is that a whole bunch of things became clearer while running these tests, some tweaks to my usual range of tricks, and new tricks that i'm not sure i'd use, and other, completely new, tricks became apparent once you know that Tab A fits into Slot B.
So... in 2017 here, there's 111 cities and i'm building a bunch of Aqueducts which i sold a while ago, to save coins to support more science. It was an experiment, and yes, now i know that you have to keep your Aqueducts standing. Having a city not go from 19 to 20 because you sold their Aqueduct is not a happy feeling. On my own, i had just started to make the connection between parades and pops, and had known for a while that you can prevent unexpected pops by selling the city's Aqueduct. If you pick up this SAV, you might want to plow cash into Aqueducts right away. I did.
On with the experiments!