Civdos Version 3+ tactics

Hello guys,

finally got round to playing Civdos. Had the game laying around on a budget CD many years but somehow never got to play it until now. Played a lot of other games instead.

I did post in the MOO section of the forum some time ago (still playing MOO1 every now and then). But first post in the Civ area now.

The one thing I notice is that Civfanatics have deleted wagon loads of old threads. In the MOO1 section this was not so much of a problem since there were still enough newer threads about tactics and strategies. But in the Civdos section I suspect that most of the tactics and strategy discussions were in the old threads that got deleted. There isn't really that much on tactics and strategy in the threads that are still alive.

My Civdos budget CD is an odd one. It has a german manual on it but without the copy protection pix. Well I got an english manual on the net - so that made up for it. The copy protection quiz isn't hard anyways once you learn about the tech tree. But now get this: the budget CD has a batch file for installing the german version of the game but it does NOT have the german version of the game on it! It has the english and the french versions. It also has batch-installer files for those versions - but it only has the german manual (without pix). It says version 3.5VE when saving the game. I chose to play the english version for that is best for forum compatibilty (also my English is better than my French). It must be version 3 or higher cause I cannot make entertainers into tax collectors before I have at least 5 pop in a city.

I found some basic strategy guides on the web - one from spoiler.com, one from Apolyton (his beginners walkthrough for a chieftain in North America) and also found a strategy FAQ. Read all of those and doing decently on chieftain level so far. I like the random map generator - playing mostly randomly generated maps now.

The one thing that is causing me problems is that everything takes a lot of time - while the game has a time limit at 2100 AD. Sometimes I do manage to become the dominant power but still do not make it to win until the time limit hits.

This kind of delay usually affects me in two situations: First is when I start on an island with very little space and a lot of mountain squares. Then my cities just take too much time to grow and I get to expand beyond the island rather late.

The other situation is when meeting strong AI nations early - such as Zulus or Russians. While I do win those early wars on chieftain level they cost me just too much time in development and then I end up hitting the time limit before I can win. When I do not get to build railroads before - let's say 2000 AD - then I know it's too late. On the other hand I have had games where I started building railroads at 1200 AD. Easy to win when that happens...

Also in versions 3+ of Civdos it's hard to keep a big army going. With despotism units do not cost that much in upkeep but research is too slow. With other goverment forms units cost too much and big war campaigns become hardly feasable. I do not find the change of goverment costs that much (even without the Pyramid wonder) - so changing government several times is not a problem. But often I have a mixed bag situation with some wars going on and still need a lot of research and those are the situations that delay my development a lot. And no goverment form is really ideal for that setup.

I'm trying to improve on micromanagement of cities - since I got a feeling that might be the key to faster development. Trying to shift around workers in the city screen to see which squares give more trade or more wheat or more shields. But haven't got the real grip of that yet. No matter what I do some cities just won't grow before I get to railroads or build the factory improvement. Quite often I just buy city walls and other stuff if a city otherwise needs 120 turns to build them. 120 turns of 20 years each is 2400 years!! And then you have just ONE single city improvement built! Next you get a fire sweeping through and the building that took 2400 years to build is gone. This is an unrealistic part of the game. I do try to build cities in more suitable spots but on small islands it's often not possible.

One thing that I hate is when I do have quite a bit of a tech lead and then the AI capture just one single city and take away the best tech such as gunpowder or automobile and that cancels the whole tech lead and every effort that has gone into it. So I do tend to be heavily based on defense to avoid that kind of thing happening - but that reduces the number of offensive army units that I can keep.

What I really love are the fake smiles of the enemy leaders. Stalin looks so funny when he tries to "smile". Same thing with Frederick. Also I have to laugh when Elizabeth is introduced as "HE" who makes mortals tremble - well she was kinda a tough GUY in real history....

I think I need to read some more resources about tactics and strategies. But they are hard to find since most of the stuff is about the later versions of Civ. It's hard to do isolated searches for Civ I. Google just spits out stuff for later versions. If any of you have got links where to find more on Civdos tactics and strategies I would much appreciate it.

You aren't going to do better then purchasing a copy of Rome on 640k a Day, which can be had for under $10 US. It still lacks the connect-the-dots type of strategy you're probably looking for, but it gives you enough tools to get you started. It'll also save you a year or two of empirically deriving the game's behavior.

Here are some basics, which others may argue:

• Chariots are the most imbalanced military unit in the game when factoring acquisition costs and availability.
• Buildings are far less useful than more units: either military or Settlers.
• Science is invaluable early on, and, without buildings taxes become useless, which further fuels your technological progress.

It's time to wake up from hibernation.

Your biggest problem is that you aren't growing fast enough. I can't blame you, since the manual, the advisers, the AIs... they don't teach you how to grow correctly.

Here are four main keys to growing faster:

1. Claim territory early. Early in the game, you need to build settlers, chariots, and some minimal defensive units. Don't grow cities to size 3 yet, and don't build granaries. Your first technological priority should be Wheel, so your chariots can wipe out enemies, steal their people and money, and take their land. Remove your neighbors early, before they have a chance to build City Walls. This game is a lot easier without close neighbors, so either dominate your continent, or keep them out by defending an isthmus.
   
2. After you've got all the territory you want, use celebrations to grow your cities beyond size 3. Not much to say here. It's just SO much faster.
   
3. Don't waste resources. You talked about City Walls, and that's almost always a waste. Granary and Barracks are two other highly wasteful improvements. If you take a city and the AI built wasteful improvements there, sell them.
   
4. Don't waste science. For example, since Cavalry are useless, don't research Horseback Riding, and since Granaries are useless, don't research Pottery. Keep your priorities in mind: Wheel for Chariots, Republic for We Love the President Day, MapMaking/Navigation if you want to conquer the world early, etc.

Get these right, and you should have no problem winning on Emperor, let alone Chieftain.

I agree with Whelkman, "Rome on 640K a day" is invaluable. I recently aquired it on Amazon (used) for less than a dollar. As for stratagy, well, I find there are many possibilities, based on experience, posts on this forum, Rome on... etc. Enjoy!

Inca said:

One thing that I hate is when I do have quite a bit of a tech lead and then the AI capture just one single city and take away the best tech such as gunpowder or automobile and that cancels the whole tech lead and every effort that has gone into it. So I do tend to be heavily based on defense to avoid that kind of thing happening - but that reduces the number of offensive army units that I can keep.

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Ah, this sounds like you need advice fighting.

To defend its cities, the AI makes City Walls and fortifies Phalanxes behind them; we are challenged to emulate this play in defending our own cities. Well... screw that. For the cost of Walls you could build 3 Chariots, and use them as a more versatile defense/counterattack squad. Don't let an AI player bring a catapult's 6 attack points to bear on your city! Instead, sally out of the city with a Chariot and cream the catapult on open ground. Note well that the game is skewed in favor of attack strength at every tech stage. Always be the attacker, even when "defending" your city. Also, the AI is fond of fortifying units in the open terrain. Just let them do this and don't bother them. That unit could be doing something more dangerous, like defending a city or attacking your forces. As long as you have a unit adjacent to it, it will remain fortified, and useless, so you can use this to get your army beyond the unit, one-by-one, without taking a risk. Don't throw units at a fortified Phalanx in the woods; there is no point unless it is blocking the only route.


In practice, when playing for a conquest victory, you only need to play for the technologies that build your army, right? The Wheel for your chariots, and Navigation for your Chariot Carriers. The wheel is available immediately, but Navigation has seven prerequisite techs (alph, mason, math, map, burial, myst, astro). You're lucky if you start on a continent with lots of neighbors, since they will kindly research many of these for you and yield them under duress. Meet with them and exchange intimidate tech out of them, before you commence your attacks. Yeah... let them make lightbulbs, while you go heavier on coins to buy more chariots.

It's been ages since I read such an interesting thread!

Based on the previous posts, these are my views on the subject:

1. The random map generator is in fact amazing! It's great to see how geography can affect a predetermined strategy.

2. What do you consider to be very little space for developing? Most games can be won (and a sound empire built) with as few as 4 or 5 cities, sometimes even less.

3. Also, a strong empire does not need big cities. It's better to have three size 3 cities than one size 9 city.

4. Try to build cities in well balanced areas - besides grassland and rivers, look for one or two hills nearby. Preferably build cities in the coastal areas.

5. Don't build City Walls except in very specific cases. They are just too expensive to maintain and take many turns (or cost a lot of money) to build. If you really need them, think of it as a temporary building and sell the improvement once you don't need it anymore.

6. Build as few buildings as you can. During most time of the game, a Temple in each city and a pair or Barracks are all the city improvements you need. Even when you are facing some problems, building improvements is rarely the best option.

7. Avoid multi-wars. Go for one war at a time. Only start a war if you are well prepared. When you start to hit, hit hard - go for their capital or biggest city; don't waste time attacking isolated units.

8. During the war, if the enemy got weaker (e.g. lost an important city, some techs and money), decide wether you want to get rid of them or you prefer to focus on your development since they are no longer a threat. In this case, accept peace but consider demanding tribute. Sometimes it is not vital to eliminate a rival civ. Just by weakening them you get the lead.

9. Don't build too many military units when they are not needed. When you don't know what to build, go for a Diplomat or a Caravan. These two units are very useful for many purposes and don't require the usual maintenance shield.

10. As Tristan C said, «Always be the attacker, even when "defending" your city». Early as you can, prepare the defensive system of your empire. I use to build one or two barracks (for producing veteran units) depending on the number and connectivity of my cities. You don't need barracks in every city, because you can move veteran units from their original city to another one and then turn this new city into their home city. 2 Phalanxes and 1 Catapult should be enough for defending each city for many many centuries. When a powerful enemy unit approaches (like a Catapult), attack first with your Catapult.

11. As Utica Dioica puts it, «This game is a lot easier without close neighbours». Until you get more experienced, your best strategy is to eliminate neighbouring civs early on, then concentrating on development and finally conquering the world. This means: War - Peace - War.

12. Railroads are very important indeed, both for peaceful and military reasons. Choose the shortest path for developing Railroads.

13. If you want to continue to grow scientifically, you must turn your government into Republic or Democracy before 1 AD. If you stick to Despotism or Monarchy, you get a big penalty at your science research speed.

14. Unless you want to conquer the world early on, The Wheel can wait. Focus your research on achieving Mathematics (for Catapults), Bronze Working (for Phalanxes), Writing (for Diplomats) and Trade (for Caravans). Decide if you prefer to build The Pyramids or if you prefer to develop the scientific advances that allow changes of government. Then, concentrate on Railroads.

15. Look for other civs and don't wait for them to knock on your door. Establish embassies and trade routes with other civs.

16. Avoid trading technologies with other civs, especially if you have important military techs like The Wheel or Mathematics.

Hi guys,

back after a pause. Quite a lot of things to think about that you mentioned.

First of all - I found something!! I finally tricked Google into giving me more Civdos stuff and I found Mark Lilback's pages for Civ I. These are amazing. They date back to the time before Civ II came out and they are still alive. There is a LOT of stuff on his Civ I pages. That helped a great deal.

Also I figured out that some of the Civ II tactics actually do work in Civ I. For instance buying improvements in rates (by switching to cheaper buildings first) does work.

I find that there are actually two problems related to city growth - growing too fast and growing too slow. I often deny very fast growth since building cathedrals and later on mass transit and recycling centers is so costly - and the cleanup stuff is not available early anyways. My ministers always tell me "Mecca needs an aqueduct for further growth" but I deny it until I have the cleanup tech.

Growing too slow is a problem when a city does not even support a single settler.

I still haven't figured out why some cities just refuse to support settlers. Typical example is a size 1 city that produces 5 units of wheat, 3 shields and no trade. I often have the case that such a city cannot even support a single settler and I don't know why. Quite frequently such cities won't even finish building a settler. The shields just keep piling up beyond the white production box and the unit never gets built. Also these odd cities do not grow until well into the AD-years.

@Oswaldo Manso: What I actually meant when saying "too little space to develop" is the situation where most of the squares on the starting island are either mountain squares or tundra squares. But even if cities in such a situation have a few plain squares or a few grassland squares they still do not support settlers in many cases and they still do refuse to grow beyond size one. I often allocate workers to the plain squares and grass squares and yet no growth - and no support for settlers. Somehow the surrounding ground seems to have an influence even on the plain squares.

I have found a use for such odd cities now though. I use them for the build-and-sell strategy. So I let them build barracks and then sell them again - thus keeping tax rates much lower for a longer time. That way I actually managed to discover railroads at 240 BC in a recent game on chieftain level. So this trick really helps a lot. Still I would like to know in advance if a city in a certain spot will become the odd type or not. So far I have only been able to determine this after the cities were already built.

The other thing I discovered is that building wonders often causes famine in several cities (not just the city that builds it). But if I use one of those odd cities that cannot even support a single settler to first build - lets say a bank - and then have it continue on the bank after it's finished - so it just keeps saving up shields - then the wonder does not cause famine. I just switch over to the wonder once enough shields are in the "savings account" to build it (maybe helping with a few caravans if I have them). (the second bank never gets built since there already is one fully built)

From what I gather from your posts I may have been building too many cities so far.
The attack-first-tactics are hard to put into practice when you have a vast empire. Especially in Version 3 or higher of Civdos you cannot support that many military units - so having Chariots everywhere is just not feasable and they would take too long to travel from one end to the other if you have just a few.

This is also why I called the thread "Version 3+ tactics" - because I often have the problem supporting units. Settlers are the hardest to support because they also consume wheat and thus compete with city population - which sometimes leads to settlers being disbanded if food gets short. But also military units are harder to support in Versions 3+ than in Version 1 or 2 of Civdos. For that reason I like Frigates - because they can transport up to 4 units (saving the extra transport unit until much later in the game). Also when the AI are still building triremes and sails vet frigates just rule the sea!

One thing about triremes: I just had one that survived three turns away from the coast after I discovered magnetism. Not sure whether that is intended behaviour or just potluck. But if it works safely then building sails and frigates can be delayed once magnetism is discovered. The trireme finally sank at the end of the third turn away from coast. But three turns would make for 9 squares movement - and that means it can cross a sizeable ocean (12 squares with Magellan's Voyage). I only build triremes when my scouts on land can see nearby isles - so I know I can get there with a trireme. That happens often enough on randomly generated maps. I had that one trireme going for ages. It kept finding new continents and isles just by bridging narrow seas. Also had a frigate going when I finally happened to not to pay attention when moving the trireme - then finding out it did not sink at the end of the turn... So I just tried out how far it would go without sinking.

Several of you mention that granaries are useless. But they do stabilize population, don't they? I don't tend to build them before I really need to let the cities grow. But later - around 500 BC - I find that it's easier to keep population stable when having a granary. Doing without city walls sounds a bit like advanced-player-stuff to me right now. I'm not so confident yet.

But I'm already building railroads on ocean squares (a bit of an exploit - since the AI doesn't do it). I think I am beyond the total noob state now but I'm not an advanced player yet.

I do tend to reallocate squares between cities that overlap. If I find city A needs some shield building squares that are occupied by city B - then I free them up in the city screen of city B and give them to city A. I also tried out small spacing of cities (ICS tactics) but it does not work too well with version 3+ of Civdos. I ended up with too many cities having trouble to get even 2 shields per turn. Yet I do allow for more overlap than I did before I read Mark Lilback's pages.

I still need some more practice in choosing where to build the very first city though. I'm trying to calculate what the city will get in terms of wheat, shields and trade when looking at the map - but I'm not good at that yet. One thing I noticed is that river squares sometimes give a single shield and sometimes don't. Have not found out why yet.

Let's take the example of an oasis on the map. Build the city directly on the square of the oasis or build it on another square nearby and then have the workers in the city screen work the oasis square?

When I have a promising spot with a river plus 2 plains squares plus a forest with game in it, a grassland square and another forest square I often do better when I build the city either on the grassland square or on the normal forest square and then decide which other squares to work from within the city screen. I would like to hear your experiences about this.

Early on I try to get two trade arrows and set tax rate to zero. Combined with the build-and-sell strategy in the odd cities that gets me quite far already.

Another thing I did wrong first was stacking units. Fortunately I read now that only one unit defends a stack and all are lost if that unit loses the fight. Only exception being fortresses and cities.

Already got the info that goody huts do not give barbarians when within reach of a city. Read about bribing barbarians far from home to get NONE units - or to get ships early... (or NONE settlers if AI)

In the late game (when not going on an early conquest) I find that air raids are fairly ineffective in this game. Ground units and ships seem to have more bang for the buck. I just tried out bombers for the fun of it but found them to be disappointing.

I read one thing about a bomber cheat though - where you use a bomber in a stack with another unit - thus making the other unit invulnerable to ground attacks. That same text mentioned placing a bomber next to a city to gain time if defense is weak. But I did not quite understand how that works since I thought bombers had to be *inside* the city (or on a carrier) at the end of the turn - or they would be lost.

I do get the copy protection quiz right most of the time without having to look it up. Some of the historical infos in the game are wrong though - but still quite interesting to see the connections between the various civilization advances.

One more thing I would like to know is about the diplomatic dialogue screens. The number of advisors shown in the picture with the enemy leader seems to hold some indirect info about that civ's status. Sometimes there is only one advisor in that screen next to the AI leader, sometimes there are two, sometimes there are three. This might hold some information about that civ - but I haven't figured it out so far. The way the advisors are dressed either reflects their present form of government or their tech research state. But the number of advisors also must hold some info.

So I'm making progress but there's a lot still to be learned... (like with all 4x games usually... ).

I can tell you're doing some stuff wrong, but it's hard to figure out exactly what in some cases. I'll try to help.

If your size 1 city is really producing five food, there's no reason it couldn't support a settler (actually 3 settlers in Despotism and Anarchy, 1 otherwise). However, a size 1 city can't build a settler. On Chieftain it just won't let you, and on higher difficulty, the city will disappear and be replaced by a settler (and the settler will belong to the nearest city if you own it, or it will be NONE if the nearest city belongs to an AI).

The fact that you claim your size 1 city is making 5 food must mean you're not using Despotism. If you're not ready for Republic, you should stay in Despotism. Monarchy and Communism are lousy governments in Civ 1. (This was fixed in Civ 2.) Then again, you talked about building a city on a forest square as if it might be a good idea, so your high food production is more of a mystery. Also, a size 1 city with 5 food should grow into size 2 eight turns after being founded, unless it's already supporting settlers.

If you're waiting to build a Recycling Center before you build an aqueduct, you could be waiting for a while. Good luck with that.

I often allocate workers to the plain squares... and yet no growth.

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Plain squares produce food as badly as forest, hill, ocean, jungle, swamp, or tundra, unless they're irrigated.

Somehow the surrounding ground seems to have an influence even on the plain squares.

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No. It's easy to check in any case. When you switch a worker to that square, how many wheat icons show up on it?

The other thing I discovered is that building wonders often causes famine in several cities.

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No again. Have you been switching your workers around and neglecting food, perhaps?

Especially in Version 3 or higher of Civdos you cannot support that many military units.

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On Chieftain I can't imagine that making a difference. Patch 3 did introduce a reduction in auto-content citizens with large empires, but even on Emperor that's not such a big deal.

About your triremes: when they end a turn not touching a coast, there's a 50% chance they'll be lost. If you went two straight turns without losing yours, you got on the good end of a 25% chance. Just luck.

But they (granaries) do stabilize population, don't they?

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There are two ways they might do that. If you've been moving workers around and neglecting food, a granary would help slow down the population loss. Solution: don't do that. There are also random natural disasters in Civ 1. The famine disaster can be prevented with a granary. Still, this is so rare it's not worth the cost of a granary.

Doing without city walls sounds a bit like advanced-player-stuff to me.

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"Advanced" would be thinking of some way City Walls are actually useful. Usually, enemy attackers shouldn't be getting next to your city. The rare occasion when they do attack isn't enough to justify building walls.

One thing I noticed is that river squares sometimes give a single shield and sometimes don't.

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Solution.

Build the city directly on the square of the oasis.

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I might do that if I was trying for a quick world conquest, but in a long game that's a bad idea. The reason is that you can't build a railroad on top of a city. A railroad on top of an irrigated oasis improves food production from 4 to 6, a bigger jump than other squares.

The number of advisers a ruler shows reflects that civ's population, relative to the others. The biggest civ in the world will have 4 advisers, for example.

"Advanced" would be thinking of some way City Walls are actually useful. Usually, enemy attackers shouldn't be getting next to your city. The rare occasion when they do attack isn't enough to justify building walls.

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If you're really into camping strategies, you're better off finding choke points, building fortresses, and fortifying units there. Even though somewhat less effective, fortresses are far cheaper and have the advantage of providing effectively the same thing far away from your last line of defense. Like others have said, Civ is imbalanced toward aggression, so I don't ever recommend defending, but, if you must, this is a better way to do it.

buying improvements in rates (by switching to cheaper buildings first) does work.

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Still a waste of money. Unless you're already an experienced Civ player, buildings will only slow you down, and I mean all common buildings. Some wonders are exceptions, e.g. Colossus.

building cathedrals and later on mass transit and recycling centers is so costly

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Cathedrals and other "third act" infrastructure stuff shouldn't seem expensive by the time it comes around to building them. By that time your cities should have attitude cushioning wonders along with Mfg. Plants and Nuclear Power/Hoover Dam. Hydro Plants and Power Plants are useless. In Civilization, you're far better off with more cities of smaller size than few cities of larger size. In my opinion, unless you intend to become a micromanager or are going for a single city challenge, cities should not grow beyond level 5-6. I'm pretty sure the "aqueduct limit" is in there for a reason: cities above level 10 require a line of planning that runs contrary to the goals of most players. When you have as many small cities as you can handle, mine everywhere you can and shunt everything toward resources (and science, if necessary), leaving food production at subsistence levels. Pump out the Chariots or, later, Armors.

Several of you mention that granaries are useless.

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Granaries are useless for two reasons:

• Early in the game, cities already grow too fast for your infrastructure to support large sizes. Granaries only accelerate an already too fast process.
• By the time your infrastructure can support massive growth, you'll be able to trigger at will We Love the President Day, which will allow you to max out your population in literally 15-40 turns, which completely obviates the granary's utility.

I still need some more practice in choosing where to build the very first city though.

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You'll find differentiating opinions on this, but I recommend to build wherever you are. Unless you have advanced knowledge of the terrain, you are unlikely to offset the loss in production time with a perceived more favorable starting location. The overall production of your first city is unimportant; the capitals of my civilizations are rarely impressive. What is important is how quickly you can build a second city. By then you'll have scouted the region, and city #2 can become your new most important location.

Inca said:

Several of you mention that granaries are useless. But they do stabilize population, don't they? I don't tend to build them before I really need to let the cities grow. But later - around 500 BC - I find that it's easier to keep population stable when having a granary. Doing without city walls sounds a bit like advanced-player-stuff to me right now. I'm not so confident yet.

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I hope that having lots of people trying, simultaneously, to disabuse you of Walls can help to change your mind. You came seeking help, and that's what we can offer. Play the game's strengths and attack your attackers rather than shore up its weaknesses with a very elaborate defense. Attack, attack, attack. Let's address this: "The attack-first-tactics are hard to put into practice when you have a vast empire. Especially in Version 3 or higher of Civdos you cannot support that many military units - so having Chariots everywhere is just not feasable and they would take too long to travel from one end to the other if you have just a few." I will say this: unless you are at the hardcoded 128-unit limit, a civ that is too vast to support chariots around its borders could never hope to build City Walls around its borders. City improvements cost more to build than military units, and if you are a despot, each population supports 1 of a city's military units for free. Chariots serve the three-fold purpose of defending your cities and the surroundings, being an attack force, and dissuading enemy civs from picking a fight with you. The AI calculates your total attack and defense strength on a landmass when it is deciding whether to crush you or plead for mercy. Personally, I prefer them pleading for mercy and offering me technology for a treaty. So maybe that makes yet another purpose of having a huge army: convincing your neighbors to do your research for you.

As to granaries, I'm more tolerant than the skilled players who have responded to you. Granaries work alright with Monarchy, and small boom-style civs--those that are isolated on a landmass and have a few, large, cities. Granaries are a mark of balanced, cautious play; they will serve you very well all the way through prince difficulty. But you will not see them much among players who play king and emperor, since these difficulties demand you play a game's strengths to the utmost: build or conquer numerous small cities, keep expansion thin and rapid, focus on building chariots, and run either despotism or democracy.


Another thing that bears mentioning is "We Love the King," or WLTK on these forums. This feature of the game cannot be over-emphasized. It appears constantly on the civ 1 forum as a playing-style all of its own. I don't know how much you know about it. Yearly WLTK celebrations occur when 50% or more of your citizens are happy. In despotism, monarchy, and communism WLTK makes it so that your squares produce as if they were once level of government higher, which is nice but not generally worth the luxury rate. Republic or democracy, however, the bonus is utterly profound, with cities gaining one population every successive turn of WLTK. If the King or Emperor-level player needs to grow his cities beyond 5 or so, he will make every effort at teching to Rep/Dem, and then make a full-court press with his luxury rate and entertainers to get lots of cities gaining a new citizen each turn. Granaries pale in comparison to the potential of this strategy. When you feel ready, Chieftain is as good a difficulty as any to try testing it out.

Hello guys,

most of the problems I had were actually solved when I found Mark Lilback's pages on Civdos but I'm keeping the discussion alive for a bit longer just out of curiosity. I have already changed my play style dramatically and have moved up to warlord. Does not seem that much harder than chieftain now I know more about the game.

On my first warlord map I started on a HUGE continent. As soon as I realized how big the place was I was sure I would meet other civs there. Well, there were 4 more civs on that landmass but I just destroyed them all by building lots of chariots. At around 1000 BC there was no other civ on the main continent. Partly took so long because the continent was so large - had to get my units to the other end of the world.... But it did not keep me from discovering railroads at 100 BC (almost as good as on that other game on chieftain level where I discovered railroads at 240 BC). So the whole way of playing is very different now. On that huge continent I actually did not need city walls. But I still like granaries once I'm out of the initial colonization phase.

I have tried the We-Love-The-Leader strategy twice already. First time I did it wrong (picked the wrong time for it when I was not actually ready yet). Second time it worked but I already was in a position where I could have done without it when I started it. Still have to figure out the right time to start it.

One new question that I have is about respawning Civs. Do Civs just respawn once after they are destroyed? So for instance the Romans respawn as Russians and after the Russians are destroyed too that's it for the white color Civs?

On behalf of the odd cities: That phenomon DOES exist. But it's more out of curiosity now that I'm discussing it. As I said before - if it happens I have other uses for those odd cities. Did not happen on that huge map on warlord level I played now. But it happened a lot on those archipelago-small-island-scenarios that I got when playing the Egyptians on random maps on Chieftain level. Also I'm still trying to figure out why some river squares give shields and others don't.

The additional Famine-thing when building Wonders (and sometimes with Cathredrals too) also exists. Those are just game mechanisms that I noticed - but I already have workarounds - so it's just out of interest I mentioned this.

One thing that seems to show up in discussion now is that the different difficulty levels of the game also demand for different strategies. Tristan, if you could give me a kind of overview rundown on the different difficulty levels that would be just great.

I do seem to have a bit of a Simcity mentality - I admit. If there is land to colonize I kinda have to farm it and work it - might be a bit of a neurosis. That probably led to building cities in spots where other players wouldn't even bother. But that also led to discovering curiosities in the game engine. Sometimes walking along an unusual path lets you discover things others don't see. That happened to me with other games too. I did discover quite a few secret game mechanisms in Age of Wonders I - none of them mentioned in the manual nor known by many other players. And again most players would play AoW differently than I do - i.e. not bother to colonize all of the land. With the "odd-city-phenomenon" *somebody* must have experienced that too - but maybe I have to find out myself why some cities behave that way.

The info about the triremes having a certain chance of surviving away from cost might actually be useful in a small island situation. So if I'm on a tundra island with lotsa mountains too I might just try to build triremes until a few of them make it to other islands and then start for good in a different place. Might be faster than waiting for navigation to be discovered - thus not bothering to try to colonize the barren land the way I did. Still it would be interesting to know if the discovery of magnetism somehow increases the chance of a trireme not sinking when away from coast. Might be one of those hidden game facts you don't find in the manual. Have to try this out more often when on archipelago scenarios....

Coming back to the tech-steal-problem I mentioned earlier. When thinking back this happened in two situations. First situation is when I land troops on the island of the strongest enemy. Then it did happen that a city that I conquered was taken back - and they picked my best tech as a boon - which made the game much harder. I usually bring defense units too when going on a landing invasion but in this case they were not good enough. I read elsewhere that in such a case it might be better to look out for enemy units and trying to destroy them first before taking a city. Of course when you go for them much earlier (as most of you do) there aren't that many techs to steal. If I do not have gunpowder yet they cannot steal it. So I admit you do have a point for going on conquests earlier...

The other occasion when that happened was my fault. The AI tends to ignore small islands - so they are free for the human player to colonize - which I do when starting on a barren island in the first place. But once you have a city there the AI suddenly starts to be interested in the land they ignored before. My fault was just bringing a settler when the game was already quite advanced. Now if I do colonize those "lost islands" I also bring a muskateer or a rifleman along with the settler - and lo and behold - they don't even try to conquer the new cities... So the only problem with such tech steals is when landing on the main enemy's continent and losing cities right after conquering them.

First off, the shielded river question: I answered that in my last post. Here's the link again.

About your "odd" cities: to convince me those exist, you'll have to post a save game. I'd assume since this problem was chronic, you had these cities for large parts of the game. Maybe you have an auto-save?

But, like I mentioned, there's nothing unusual about a size 1 city not being able to make a settler on Chieftain. What is unusual is your claim that this city, making a surplus of food, won't grow to size 2. Did your wheat icons show a surplus? Was the food box growing?

About wonders causing famines: assuming it was the random type of famine you were experiencing, it would take a lot of data to prove the famines were because of the wonder you were building. To test it, you would need a save at the beginning of construction. Playing through the save several times, building a wonder AND building something else in the same city, if famines occurred significantly more often with the wonder, I could be convinced.

I'll try to answer about strategies on different difficulty levels too. This chart shows what changes between difficulty levels (though the "Civilization Score Multiplier" row is totally wrong). Also, with patch 3+, you lose born-content citizens faster at higher difficulty.

The main effect of these changes on play is just a matter of precision. For example, granaries are never good at any difficulty level, but on Emperor, making a mistake that big will put you further behind. You'll notice that on King, the AI has growth stats similar to the player, so to win on King and better, you can't just copy the AI's bad strategies.

The only rows that directly affect the player (aside from making the AI tougher) are born-contents and light bulbs per advance. What that means is that on Emperor you can't be as careless about getting useless techs, and you have to worry about happiness earlier. That makes temples more valuable early on, and it makes Religion an especially important early tech.

Inca,

It's unlikely you're going to discover anything previously unknown through purely empirical means at this point short of performing the exhaustive testing advocated by Urtica dioica. The vast bulk of legwork was accomplished in the early 90s and published in Rome on 640k, and several here moved on to examining the game at the binary level years ago. There really isn't much mystery left.

Urtica dioica said:

The only rows that directly affect the player (aside from making the AI tougher) are born-contents and light bulbs per advance.

Click to expand...

It's also worth mentioning as your technology becomes more expensive moving up the ranks, the CPU's becomes cheaper, but that's shown on the linked chart.

Hello guys,

back after another pause. First of all, great thanks to Urtica Dioica for the two links you gave. The shield-on-grassland-pattern-thread really explains a lot. The link for the difficulty chart also helps. For instance I did not know that the time limit of the game changes with difficulty levels. And Whelkman's note about the AI's research cost becoming cheaper when the human player advances is also an interesting point.

Now, when we talk about the odd effects that I observed you have to keep in mind that my version of Civdos is version 3.5VE. I haven't got the faintest idea what the "VE" stands for - so it may or may not be of any importance - but that just happens to be the version that I have.

Furthermore, please note that I do not want to insult or offend anybody with the odd phenomena that I mentioned. This is a board for exchanging information. So I thought I might give "something in return" for the valuable information I'm getting here. This is not to doubt your experience as a player. I had much the same problem on the heavengames page (the most popular strategy page for Age of Wonders I - short AoW). I found quite a few secret game mechanisms in AoW - and when I started mentioning them in my threads at aowheaven some of the more experienced players got p***ed off - for they had not noticed theses things in years of playing. They just couldn't take it that a "noob" would come up with stuff they had overlooked. But I did.

There is a difference though. My discoveries on AoW do have an impact on tactics. On the other hand as yet my observations on Civdos do not have such an impact - at least not for experienced players. This will not change your life - or even the style of your gameplay. These are merely curiosities I observed and I shared them for the fun of it. Nothing more.

Coming back to the Trireme theme. I have done a bit of testing but not extensively. So my points will just be assumptions for now. I'm getting more and more confident though that the mere potluck thing does not exist with Triremes. Their range depends on your research status. If the only nautical tech you know is mapmaking the chance of a Trireme surviving away from coast is probably zero (again I only tested with the version of Civdos that I have - not with other versions). Once you have magnetism the Trireme will sink at the end of the third term away from coast (no potluck - just timeout). There might be an intermediate stage when you have navigation but not magnetism (I have not tested that). Unfortunately these findings are of very small strategical value. The only way that it benefits you is that you can delay building a sail. But building a sail is not such a big thing once you got the tech. So the actual effect of this is minute. Also my previous thought about trying potluck with Triremes if you haven't got navigation yet is obsolete because of these new observations - it doesn't work. If you happen to start in a goddamn rotten hole of a small island with 90 percent mountains and tundra squares you have to research navigation. There is no way around it.

The Famine phenomenon: Firstly please note that this historically correct. Archeologists say that building the Pyramids must have cost many people's lives. Same thing with the Great Chinese Wall. Even the larger Cathedrals in Europe cost some people's lives when they wer erected. So the idea of having some adverse effects when building Wonders is not totally out of this world. It is not improbable that the game programmers had the idea to put some partly randomized extra famine effect in when building Wonders.

The reason why most of you don't see this is that you are advanced players. Advanced players do not tend to build Wonders conventionally. You either use a tested number of prebuild caravans or you start building some other structure and then switch over to the Wonder very lately and maybe even rush-buy the rest of it (or a combination of the three). You only get the extra famine if you let a city start on a Wonder from scrap and do not use many caravans. So the effect only happens if a city has been working on a Wonder for quite some time and there was no change in the item being produced. If you have a change in production (carrying over the shields already accumulated - which is not realistic for real life buildings). The extra famine effect tends to happen when you are about two-thirds or three quaters through with the Wonder - building it conventionally over many turns. If you use any tricks to speed up the Wonder or switch production the extra famine does not happen.

With cathedrals the effect is much milder and happens less frequently - so is harder to observe. But once I got the jist of the effect when building Wonders I was sensitized for this kind of thing - so I sometimes noticed it when building cathedrals as well - again doing it the conventional way - not using any tricks to build them. I have changed my gameplay a lot though. I do not tend to build neither Wonders nor cathedrals conventionally any more - so I won't do much more testing on this.

One might argue that, since building Wonders conventionally is so much more expensive than doing it with some speedups/discounts, there is not much point in thoroughly testing the bad side effects of building Wonders conventionally. There are enough reasons for not building them conventionally. It's just one more reason to use other tricks to build them. The phenomon is a curiosity of the game - it won't affect the strategy of an experienced player. It only affects beginners.

Much the same can be said about the "odd-city-phenomenon" that I mentioned. At the beginning I tried some strategies that I used in other 4x games. There are some 4x games where making use of the available space is very important. Settlers II is such a game. But in Civdos it's different. You don't need to colonize the whole land area. Also the role mountains play in Civdos is very different from the role they play in Settlers II. In Settlers II mountains are the only places that can hold certain valuable resources such as iron, coal and gold. And in Settlers II you need these. In Civdos mountain squares are poor squares (with the only exception when they have gold). Even a simple forest square is better than a mountain square. So, coming from other games I was keen on working all the mountain squares - which was a mistake. I built cities in mountain niches extra to be able to reach all the mountain squares. With hindsight that was nonsense. I did not realize then how long it takes to mine a mountain square. Also I did not realize that I would never have enough people to work the mines that way. Some of these cities were almost entirely surrounded by mountain squares and I was relying an non-adjacent squares for food production - all this happening when I was still on chieftain level also. Theoretically the non-adjacent squares should have produced enough food but because of that "odd-city-effect" it still did not work out. Some of these cities started to grow around 500 AD and eventually reached size 4 or size 5 late in the AD-years. But the problem always existed in the BC-years. I also remember having one such city that did grow to size 2 at around 2000 BC but still was not able to build a single settler on chieftain level. Even though the city was size 2 by then the shields just kept piling up beyond the white production box and the settler never got built.

I don't build cities in such odd spots any more since it does not pay off. But when a city does have some difficulty growing beyond size one or does not keep population at a stable level I have several other things for that city to do. It can build and sell barracks or it can build Wonders - or it can build caravans. So that city is not wasted. I just have to build settlers elsewhere. Yet the "odd-city-phenomenon" does exist. I did not keep any saved games from chieftain level though.

So much for the curiosity effects. Hope that cleared up some of the issues. I'll put something else into another post to avoid making the post even longer.

Since apparently you don't have saves, you won't be able to back up your claims about cities that can't make settlers, or wonders causing famines. Without a save, or a very detailed description of the required conditions, it would be hard to make an experiment from scratch.

I can easily test some of your claims about triremes though. I set up an experiment (in all of 2 minutes), where i built a trireme and then saved the game. Using my saved game, I sent the trireme out on the same voyage, 8 times. My results: 4 times, it died after the first turn; 2 times, it died after the second turn; 2 times, it died after the third turn. This is a very good match for the accepted idea of a 50% chance of surviving each turn not next to a coast.

This was with only MapMaking, and without Navigation or Magnetism. Those are slightly harder to test, though not very much harder if you use CIV$.

You never said how many trials you did in each case with the triremes. I really hope you realize that when testing random events, you have to test several times to have any idea what's going on.

Second post with something else now.

Since I am playing on warlord level now I do have a question concerning the non-chieftain game levels.

On warlord (and above) you start with zero shields in the treasury. This first lead to a problem that I did not have on chieftain level. I started my usual build-and-sell barracks thingy and then noticed that I could not sell the barracks once they were finished because I immediately got this message: "Coatepec cannot support Barracks". And the barracks just vanished before I could even sell them. So I realized that you need a minimum of cash in the treasury before the game even lets you have a single building on warlord level or higher. The consequence was that I set an early tax rate of ten percent to get a tiny amount of money into the treasury shortly after starting a new game on warlord. Then I found out that when you are just at the start of a game 10 percent tax rate seems to give you nothing. I assume that any tax amount that yields less than a full shield per turn will be rounded downwards? So you have to have a minimum tax rate for at least one turn early (if you don't get money from a goody hut) in order to avoid the empty-treasury-problem. I now tend to set the tax rate to 50 % for one turn only - shortly before completing the first barracks. Then I do have some money in the treasury and can sell the barracks for 40 shields. This seems to solve the problem but if you know more about this I would like to hear it.

The next question concerns banks and marketplaces. There must be a kind of break-even point for banks and marketplaces. Marketplaces only cost one shield per turn. However banks cost a big 3 shields per turn - so their break-even point is a lot harder to reach. Does any of you have the exact calculation for those break-even points - i.e. how many trade arrows do I need in a city to reach the break-even points for either marketplace or bank?

More on tactics now. In my recent game on warlord level I met some decent resistance for the first time. I started on a fairly sizeable continent playing the Aztecs. It took quite a while until I met somebody and it was Alexander's Greeks. They turned out to be rather tough (he had a lot of space to expand in the North) - and I had to build wave after wave of chariots until I finally destroyed the Greeks in 1580 BC.

Now this gave the other civs time to develop. As it turned out they all had good continents. Next up on my supper menu were the Germans. They were the most advanced of the other civs. The Russians had a bigger continent but they weren't as advanced as the Germans. I had a respawn of the English in a corner of my own continent but that was quickly done with (only London to be destroyed). There were two more civs on big continents - the Americans (level with the Russians tech-wise) and the Indians (hopelessly behind tech-wise).

So I went for the Germans first to prevent them from becoming too strong (they were also bugging me already by that time). But I did my ship-invasions with low tech (frigates, chariots, catapults, phalanxes). That way it took me a long time to subdue the Germans. By the time the last german city fell the Russians and the Americans had caught up in tech with the Germans - my own tech lead shrinking. I went for the Russians next. Took me a long time again - they developed gunpowder during the course of my invasions. The Americans also did develop it. By the time half of the russian cities were mine I was finally strong enough to also land an invasion on the american continent (random map - so "America" looked very different than on Earth - but still a good continent in that particular game).

I only managed to win against both Russians and Americans once I got Automobile which came in rather late in that game. Since I was constantly fighting wars my research proceeded much more slowly. Also I could not avoid being at war with three other nations at the same time in the middle of the game. Their continents were good ones - and they had time to develop. So they would not keep peace for long. I did not even try to keep peace for long since it was clear they would not stick to it.

I left the Indians for last. They never got anywhere in that game. The Russians had two good cities on the Indian continent and could have easily wiped out the Indians but just didn't. They made peace with the Indians as soon as they came under attack from me. I still won that game but it revealed a certain tactical weakness of mine when doing invasions by ship while still running on low-tech stuff. It just takes an awful lot of time to conquer a large number of cities on four good overseas continents when you are running on chariots and catapults (later on cannons) and when it first takes a while to beat another civ on your own continent.

Since I realized that I'm not good at organizing big landing invasions yet I tried to draw some conclusions from that game. Here is what I think I should have done differently:

1) Send in a sacrificial first invasion wave first. This woud be a force of two chariots and two catapults - all veterans. Their task is not attacking cities but they should try to attack any units outside of cities - and at the same time scout the parts of the land that are not scouted yet. I'm taking into account that these units will all be lost but they will give the enemy a first blow that weakens him. If they survive they can fortify in some strategic places and wait until further progress is achieved. I did use that against the Russians but failed to use it against the Germans and the Americans.

2) Musketeer plus Settler. I did use the tactics of first dropping off a Musketeer and letting it fortify (preferably on hills or mountains) adjacent to enemy cities. Then I dropped off a settler to build a fortress. But I realized I could have organized that better. I should have dropped off three of four Musketeers in different spots and have three settlers build fortresses simultaneously to save time. I did it one by one - thus losing time.

3) Building Diplomats and main invasion force to arrive at the same time. I was kind of unlucky when taking down city walls with dips. In some cases it did take up to 8 dips to take down city walls. But I have read that it's best to attack on the same turn that the city walls fall - to avoid the AI just buying new city walls. The Germans, the Russians and the Americans were all using city walls by the time I started the invasions. I first moved the dips into the fortress-squares with the musketeers in them - after that I moved the actual attack units into those squares and attacked from there. I did not have the money to bribe many cities. So I would have to take most of them by force and there were such a lot of enemy cities to be taken in that game - all continents being of considerable size. I had to build wagon loads of diplomats in that game. At first I did not bring enough of them. Later I brought larger numbers of dips.

I think that invading early was still the better way to go. If I had left the Germans alone for too long they would have become very advanced technically. All the others were quite a bit behind when I tackled the Germans. I could have taken the Russians much faster if I would have left the Germans for later but that would have been a big risk to take. I'm not sure whether that would have been wise to do. Yet doing it with low tech was doing it the hard way. At least I did not have the tech-steal problem in that game. Nobody managed to take a city back. The sacrificial first wave (see above) seems to reduce the chance of the AI taking cities back. And I do bring defensive units along as well - seem to get the right ratio of musketeers versus chariots now.

Near the end I had a good laugh. I had not established official contact with the Indians yet. It was just all too clear how far they were behind. I just let them be. When I finally contacted them they were totally out-powered. But Mahatma Gandhi still threatened me. And guess what he asked for? Automobile! They had barely managed to discover the wheel and he had the cheek to ask for automobile. I think the AI is programmed to always ask for the best tech even when they are so far behind.

Gotta work on better organizing those overseas invasions though..... would be nice to get some feedback on that behalf.

It's a case of not willing to engage in the previously unknown, it's that you're describing easily encountered situations that nobody but you has ever heard of. To me, this "budget CD" sounds like some abandonware collection downloaded off the Internet and sold through some Scandinavian distributor. Civilization in particular saw numerous hacks that intended to change one behavioral aspect but carried subtle side effects.

Inca said:

I immediately got this message: "Coatepec cannot support Barracks". And the barracks just vanished before I could even sell them. So I realized that you need a minimum of cash in the treasury before the game even lets you have a single building on warlord level or higher.

Click to expand...

Now I'm really starting to doubt you since Civilization converts the "forced sell" into market value minus maintenance costs. In other words, you should have cost of barracks minus maintenance costs deposited into your treasury. Furthermore, the maintenance cost of Barracks is $0 before the advancement of Gunpowder, so it shouldn't matter if you have $0 in your treasury with 0% tax--the Barracks will still stand. Finally, to confirm this, I started a new game on Warlord, dropped taxes to 0%, immediately constructed some Barracks, and marked time for 20 or so turns. As expected, the Barracks stood.

If you engaged the AOE crowd like you do with this one, I really don't blame their skepticism.

Hello Whelkman,

I started pondering about this "VE" version of Civdos that I have as well. I do admit it is odd. I just happened to buy it - remembering it was dead cheap in a supermarket in Germany many many years ago. At that time I never knew there were different versions of Civdos. I had heard of the game of course - so I decided to pick up the CD. It cost about one German Mark or so - it was before the introduction of the Euro currency. I did not have internet then. Only went online shortly after that.

It is odd that the german manual does not have any copy protection pix in it. The CD does have the Microprose label on it and the single sheet with the sleeve design also has it but that does not guarantee it was really issued by Microprose themselves. There is another company label on the CD - "HASBRO Interactive". I know that when it comes to old games the original publishers often work together with other companies who are mere marketing firms or distributors. And the final layout of such budget CD's is often carried out by those distributors. So Microprose may even have granted a licencse (since the game was so old even when I bought it the licence may have been granted for pennies worth) - but probably Microprose won't even know about the exact contents of this budget CD.

When I finally decided to give Civdos a go the easiest way was to fire up the CD that I already had - not really knowing that it was that odd. I only realized that once I started looking for the german version of the game on it and could not find it - just the german manual and even a german installer batch file - but no german version of the game. I found both english and french versions of the game on the CD. Having online access nowadays it did not take much to find an english version of the manual (the german translation is poorly done anyways - the original english manual is much better).

I was reluctant doing a lot of testing on certain things because I already suspected my version of the game might be an exotic one. So any test results would not be reliable for people with a different version of the game.

I might have to get another version for forum compatibility maybe. Also might be a different game experience then..... Sometimes those problems supporting settlers (and even supporting buildings) can be a nuisance.

I know some sites have Civdos for download as "abandonware" but I do not know whether the game is really considered to be such. At least I payed for the version I'm using now.

But what you said in your latest post further nourished my suspicion something might not be okay with the version of the game I have.

As for my AoW CD that one at least is an official one - not an odd one like my Civdos CD - and the secret mechanisms I discovered in AoW are there in all CDs of AoW with version 1.36 of Age of Wonders I. So that was compatible. And those mechanisms were not beginners stuff. Still when I posted at aowheaven (years ago now) I was a new forum member there and those who had been posting for years had trouble accepting somebody new to the forum as an experienced player. I probably would have beaten the crap out of most of them in MP-games - but I didn't feel like it. Wanna relax when playing. That was a different situation. I'm not an experienced player of Civdos.

It might be that the version of the game that I have is somewhat harder than other 3+ versions though. I kinda have that feeling. Some of those oddities require extra planning and delay a player's advancement. But that way the tactical weaknesses I still have do become more conspicuous. In a present game on warlord level I got the same problem of organizing overseas invasions again. I thought I had made a little progress but the present game showed the weakness still exists. So feedback on organizing overseas invasions is still welcome.

Whelkman, what you refer to as a "hack" might actually be considered a "mod". So I might have bought a modded version without knowing it. Btw I didn't know Scandinavia was famous for unofficial game mods of Civilization. The game has the normal copy protection - so it's not a "hack". If I answer the quiz wrongly twice in a row the units go home. Though I would never have known that it might be a mod without this forum thread! I would have continued to believe this is how the game is supposed to be - while it's actually not.

You mentioned that barracks should not cost upkeep before gunpowder. I did not even know that! In my version of the game they cost one shield per turn right from the start! Are there any other buildings that shoud not cost any upkeep before certain techs are researched? In the version that I have everything costs upkeep - always - even on chieftain level. And I got that "City so-and-so cannot support this building" message quite often - even when there was enough money in the treasury. I don't know about the tax effect I noticed either. If I set a low tax rate many cities are not providing anything that goes into the treasury. Only when I raise tax up to a certain level they do start to fund the treasury. So that might be another thing that has been modded. The "odd-city-effect" that I observed might actually be directly related to this - and so might be the extra famine effect when building wonders. They may have changed some basic thing about the calculation of all city outputs. Of course I do not have any comparison because I did not play a different version of Civdos before this one.

Changing topic: I just saw that somebody has dug up an old thread from 2003. I thought those were all dead and deleted. But if someone managed to dig up an old thread they might still exist. The earliest stuff I can access regularly is from 2005 onwards. That was the main reason why I started this thread (not finding the old threads). I assume that most of the strategy discussions were pre-2005. It would be interesting to know how it is actually possible to access the old threads - just to read them - not to post in them.

Inca said:

Are there any other buildings that shoud not cost any upkeep before certain techs are researched?

Click to expand...

Just the Palace, which has unique rules of its own. Furthermore, Barracks are obsoleted (destroyed without compensation) upon reaching the two maintenance thresholds: $1 at Gunpower and $2 at Combustion.

Inca said:

If I set a low tax rate many cities are not providing anything that goes into the treasury. Only when I raise tax up to a certain level they do start to fund the treasury.

Click to expand...

This is normal. If a city has 3 trade, you won't see a coin until setting the tax rate to 40%. Civilization is big on truncated integer math.

Inca said:

It would be interesting to know how it is actually possible to access the old threads - just to read them - not to post in them.

Click to expand...

It allows me to go 23 pages back, to Oct 26, 2000. I'm not doing anything special.

Hello Whelkman,

that's odd with the forum pages! The engine only gives me 3 pages on the
main menu for Civ I. Could it be that members who registered after a certain date are excluded from older threads? Or do you need a certain number of posts to be allowed to access them?

Btw. thanks for clearing up the tax thing. I'm doing this different now. Instead of having a set tax rate over a longer period I temporarily set the tax to 90 % - then after a few turns set it back to zero and let the treasury run down for a while before setting it back to 90 %. Buying and selling barracks helps to keep the zero percent tax longer.

The Civ Version I have has some more nasty changes in it:

- The WLTK celebration does not increase population - not a bit. Also I read on Mark
Lilback's page that there should be a trade bonus - but I'm not getting that
either. I can get my citizens to celebrate but I get none of the benefits I should
get.

- Caravans refuse to establish trade routes between cities on the same continent
early in the game. With cities on different continents it works - but on the
same continent they will only do it much later in the game.

- The behaviour of Triremes has been changed. Not a single of my Triremes ever
survived away from coast when I only had mapmaking. They only have a certain
chance of survival with extra techs researched.

- Triremes are not the only unit that has been messed up. They have done something
nasty to bombers and fighters so that they can be easily defeated by weak
AI ground units. None of the fighters and bombers I built were able to win against
even the weakest ground units. Also bombers were not able to destroy units
in cities - not a single unit actually.

I have misread something on the screen though when looking for version info.

The version that I have is actually 475.01 - (fourhundredseventyFIVE - not 474.0X as most people seem to have here). And it looks like it might be hard still finding 474-Versions of the game. I tried my luck at Abandonia but they also have version 475.01 - same version as on that odd CD that I have. When buying a used version on ebay you often don't know which one you get. Would be nice to actually see the WLTK celebrations doing something to my cities - but for the time being I'm stuck with that nasty version of the game.

Another notable thing in my version were the hall of fame entries. When I won my first game there was an entry from a player with a negative score! Something like minus 222 %. Also the scores were not listed in the right order. The highest score (some utopic 586 %) was listed at the fouth place. I thought this was game humour - but might actually be hacker humour. There were a lot non-standard ASCII signs in those odd score listings too. My first score wasn't very high - only 26 % - but still the game put me into first place. So you might actually be right that this was hacked. This version sure will be very tough on higher difficulty levels.

One thing I'm still trying to figure out is where the break-even points for marketplaces and banks are. How many arrows do you need in a city in order to get more out of bank than it costs in maintenance? Since I found out that banks cost 3 shields per turn I have become reluctant to build them.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the SSC (Super Science City). Copernicus only enhances the Science output of one city - so it is best to choose a city with a lot
of arrows. But why build the Colossus in the same city? Does it make any difference in which city you build the Colossus? Wouldn't it be the same effect if you had the Colossus in another city? That way you could build them both at the same time....