Oh that's just great

I built an unbelievable engine for future-tech advances, figuring that those things are worth five bucks each on Judgement Day, and nobody can take them away from you. I mean, floods and famines and pirates can whack your +1 townsfolk, but the game can never take away your +5 per future techs, right?

I have a very special and rare situation, which i have carefully played out over months. There are no other civs, the entire world is mine, yet the game has not ended. When i killed Gandhi, the Mongols spawned. With a Legion from "NONE" i checkmated the Mongol settler onto a mountain peninsula. Then, i killed off the remaining civs.

Every 20 years Genghis rings me up, and i try to shake him down for tribute, but he never has anything. He does not have a city. I pinned him on top of a mountain where his frigid evenings are spent in a yurt arguing with his hordette over whether they should just cook a mountain goat or "know" it first. The rest of the planet is mine.

It would probably be best to lay out how i play Civ, so my dilemma can be understood in context. Always play Prince level, 7 civs, and only customization is making the land mass "Large". Tried playing at Emperor a few times, but that's absurd. How the f'k are the French whacking me with chariots in 3400 BC?!? So i'm always one Prince among seven, on a wide, wide world.

And, i don't use any "cheats". I do save the game often, and will do a restart in these three situations:

1. A settler moves onto a Minor Tribe and unleashes Barbarians, or a Settler is whacked by an opposing army. I just can't suffer a Settler to die.

2. A rival civ builds a Wonder that i've been working on. So unfair, because i know it's random what they build.

3. A single enemy Militia wipes out my stack of 1 Phalanx, 2 Chariots, 1 Legion and a Diplomat in a single attack. I understand the influence of luck in a chaotic real-life battlefield, but the AI can not justifiably rout 5 of my units with a Militia. I consider that a bug.

The game i'm working on now, is a very special circumstance. In 15 years, i never had a game like this. I forego a lot of trade with no foreigners, but OTOH i don't need to spend for City Walls. The Barbarians only spawn on the North Pole now. I am guaranteed +100 for Peace on Judgement Day, and most importantly, the savings in resources, because i am garrisoning an entire planet with only four Mech Inf's.

In the current game, i built a world to hit the books like a fratboy on antihistamines. By 2010, getting 2 or 3 future techs per turn, and as Prince i have fifty turns left in the game. The Plan was to amass about 300 future techs by 2060 at +5 civscore points each, and let my peeps drift up to 140 or 150 million. With Space and Peace and all the Wonders, that would be a hefty civscore.

Luxes and gold set to bare minimums: Tax Rate set to lose 300 gold per turn, but pumping out 6 or 7 caravans per turn who can immediately trade for 50 gp each. The treasury is treading water. I cut down all the forests. I put railroads everywhere, no literally, on every single land square, whether i can eat it or not. All specialists are Scientists. In this game, it's all about the techs.

But now i visit this website here, poke around in the forums, and discover the reason why my last game had to be abandoned: crazy pollution out of nowhere. In that game last year, it got to the point of newly polluted squares doubling in number every turn. I had 10 or 15 Settlers on hand in 2025, but couldn't keep up with the KP. Assumed that it was because i cut down all the forests for food.

In a game years ago, i got a warning about Global Warming, but i never even got that warning in my last game. It just started polluting all over the place and none of my cities reported any smokestacks at all. Determined to avoid that, in my current game i have not built a single Factory or power plant in any of my 117 cities. All cities have Recyc's but only a couple Mass Transits. So far, no pollution. I should have plenty of industrial capacity to build a spaceship from 2020 to 2040, without any Mfg Plants or Factories.

Now i'm at 172 future techs.

In the thread here, where darkpanda nails the Pollution Bug, it is purported that my Prince-level game will go haywire at 188 future techs. That's only about six turns away, at my current rate of technological advancement.

Here's my dilemma: is this true? After i was so f'ing careful to not build a single frigging Factory this whole damned game, am i still going to be destroyed by pollution?

And if so, is there anything i can do about it now? Have only a couple Mass Transits among the 117 cities, but would building 115 Mass Transits help me now? That's what i did in the last year's game: i sold off as many Factories and Mfg Plants as i could and made sure that all cities had both Recycling and Transit. Still, the torrent of pollution. But in this game, i have no industrial improvements.

Am i still doomed? Can i avoid my fate by dropping all cities below 60 shields? I built this whole civilization from 4000 BC with one goal in mind: technological advances as the path to a wild civscore. I can jack up the taxes and luxuries, but would hate to think i've spent the past several months building up a civ with one main purpose, only to find that the game itself goes sour if i do it.

It would bug the hell outta me, to know that i could have had factories pumping out money this whole time, building Mfg Plants i could have been selling for 320 gold a pop. I could have completed all 117 cities with improvements in 1500 instead of 2000 AD. It would really suck, to find out that prime idea behind this current game is fundamentally flawed.

So i guess that's my real dilemma: if i have to drop Science to zero at 187 future techs, what's the best path left to maximize my civscore by 2060?

And more to the point, if driving toward maximum future techs is a dead-end strategy, then what should i be going for in my next game? It seems like the only other way to bulk up the civscore is by population. If i'd known that, i would have started chopping down the forests and irrigating the hills in 500 AD.

Hell, trapping that last Mongol settler on the stony point is a unique enough thing, that i might want to restart this game from the point when i pushed Genghis up there. If i do that, does anyone have any tips on how to get maximum civscore with no rival civs?

Posidonius said:

In the thread here, where darkpanda nails the Pollution Bug, it is purported that my Prince-level game will go haywire at 188 future techs. That's only about six turns away, at my current rate of technological advancement.

Here's my dilemma: is this true? After i was so f'ing careful to not build a single frigging Factory this whole damned game, am i still going to be destroyed by pollution?

Click to expand...

Not sure how long 1 turn takes in your engine, but your game seems to be in the best possible configuration to prooftest this hypothesis...

Let us know what happens when you breach the 188 ceiling, if you care to - or would rather share your save files?

Posidonius said:

So i guess that's my real dilemma: if i have to drop Science to zero at 187 future techs, what's the best path left to maximize my civscore by 2060?

Click to expand...

If you still have time to do so, building a 40,000-colonist spaceship with 100% success probability will probably get you the best possible score that you can get, at this late stage. But that's not the same as the maximum possible score...

Hell, trapping that last Mongol settler on the stony point is a unique enough thing, that i might want to restart this game from the point when i pushed Genghis up there. If i do that, does anyone have any tips on how to get maximum civscore with no rival civs?

Click to expand...

Finishing date is a major contributor to your civscore (the earlier the better), so as a general rule, building a successful max-size spaceship at the earliest possible date counts for more points than amassing multiple Future-Techs.

Because the ship itself has a 'fixed' point-value (colonists*success prob., IIRC), which is then depreciated according to the lateness of its arrival-date, there may well be a calculable 'break-point' year, at which a later, larger spaceship plus all possible Future-techs (up to the pollution-bug trigger) would become more valuable than an earlier, smaller spaceship without Future-techs. Without knowing exactly when you trapped the Mongols, and how many Future-techs you'd already amassed at that point, it's impossible for anyone to say for sure which side of that break-point your game would fall, but I suspect you'd still be better off going for max. ship and techs.

That said, while a later space-win is worth more than a conquest-win at a comparable date, early space-wins are almost always worth less than early conquest-wins, simply because conquest is possible using only Chariots/Knights, whereas space-wins require you to go pretty much all the way through the tech-tree. So the best way to get the maximum possible score is actually by wiping out all the other civs as early as possible, preferably in the BCs, i.e. according to the game's reward-system, committing outright genocide is much more 'civilized' than becoming capable of offworld colonisation. Not sure what Sid and the Boyz were trying to suggest there...

In my experience, pollution starts a little later than darkpanda's theoretical numbers, but not by much. Emperor started polluting at future tech 64 and King started polluting at future tech 107.
You are still going to get inundated when you discover the trigger technology. More tech seems to make the pollution worse.
You can use a combination of fast settlers and the reload bug to play through the pollution. It get tedious though. You could eventually find yourself cleaning ~60 polluted squares per turn. Pollution peaks at about half your city count on average.
If your objective is max score, keep pushing tech and try to land your space ship in 2060.

darkpanda said:

Not sure how long 1 turn takes in your engine, but your game seems to be in the best possible configuration to prooftest this hypothesis...

Click to expand...

Can you really build a railroad on an ocean square?!? That would be unbelievable. I'm currently running the whole planet with only 5 Transports, one Legion, one Barracks, and 4 Mech Infs. Am at the point where i suspect that Barbies will never bother me again. If i could bridge a few ocean squares, i could run the whole world with one Legion, to keep the Last Settler locked on a mountaintop. When i get into a game, i like breaking it to achieve something unique, and ruling a whole Civ world with only one military unit sounds like an astounding thing to achieve. I would like that feather in my cap, so is it really possible to build a railroad over the ocean?

Since i started poking around this forum, i've discovered some eye-popping things, and a slew of "Aha!" moments when i learn why the game does something which i never understood. Now i know that an unexpected pop in a city is due to those crazy parades where the citizens dress up and play Beethoven's Ninth.

Oops, i call it a "pop" when a city grows by one person. Been playing longtime, but my own slang is likely unintelligible to you, as it developed in isolation, in the digital wilderness as it were. Not sure what you mean by "how long 1 turn takes in your engine." Currently at 2015 in this game (coincidentally) so 1 turn = 1 year.

I check all 117 cities every five years, so that takes a lot of real-human time. Make a list of all the cities who will pop within five years, so i only have to visit those ones the next year, and give them an extra elvis if they're going to pop. When they do, i adjust the workers and maximize the Scientists, and scratch the burg off the list. So 4/5 of my turns are faster, and faster, with fewer cities to check in on.

But i have 100 cities working on Caravans so every turn about 10 of them have to be ferried around the world, to re-home in one big city, then cash in at another distant big city. That takes time too. The last session i did was about 7 hours in real-human time and i moved the game forward about 6 years, 2010-2015. But i haven't played it since reading about the pollution bug here a few weeks ago. That ruined my last game, so i want to know what i should do before resuming.

Let us know what happens when you breach the 188 ceiling, if you care to - or would rather share your save files?

Click to expand...

Not sure if that's feasible, at this point the current game has a bit over 500 AQUxxxx.SAV files (i am Aquilinius of the Etruscans, i always play as the customized Romans so i never have to deal with Stalin, that bastard). The SAV files weigh about 12 MB. And even if i did post SAVs, is that OK here in this forum?

My game version is CIVWIN, since Win95, but never got around to looking into webforums on it before last month, when the WinXP machine died and found to my horror that i couldn't play my weekly Civ session on the new Windows! Searched and found the workaround, and stumbled onto this forum. Playable with a VM, but the sound is screwy and the whole game is very sluggish.

Could you even open and play someone else's SAV? Seems like most people here play CivDOS. Never thought about it, but can CivDOS and CIVWIN use one another's SAV files? If so, i might wish to switch to CivDOS and use DOSBox if it plays more smoothly, but there's no way i can part with the thousands of SAVs made in CIVWIN. Honestly, have considered scrapping this new PC and buying a used one with WinXP. Once a week, i get a session from 8 to 20 hours in Civ, and that's really the most treasured and pleasurable thing that i use a computer for.

At any rate, i'd be glad to share files or test results. Trouble is that the game is locked inside the VM, and i can't access newer SAV files from the main OS filesystem, nor can i save them to a place in the main OS where the VM can get at them. I had a devil of a time figgering out how to get my CIVWIN directory into the VM, not sure how i would get a SAV file out of the VM and into a directory where i could post it using this browser, which is in the main OS. The most recent SAV i could post is from 2008 (game year), and a lot happened in the ensuing 7 years.

Anyway, that's a technical problem, not a Civ problem. The Civ problem is this wildfire pollution which destroyed my last game, which i put 12 months into and was on track to be a Hall Of Famer. Now listen: if i can post a SAV file here and you are able to open it, i can post the SAV file from just before the pollution went haywire in my last game. With about 7 more hours of human-time Civving, i can get the current game up to 187 future techs and maybe post that SAV too, if i can figure out how to get a SAV from the VM into the OS. Would those be useful, or would it be more useful to post SAVs from several turns before it gets to 188 future techs?

If one can play someone else's game then it might be instructive to see it develop over 10 turns rather than over 2. But it also could be time consuming, since we're talking about advanced-game turns. Don't know which would be more interesting for your uses.

tjs282 said:

If you still have time to do so, building a 40,000-colonist spaceship with 100% success probability will probably get you the best possible score that you can get, at this late stage. But that's not the same as the maximum possible score...
Finishing date is a major contributor to your civscore (the earlier the better), so as a general rule, building a successful max-size spaceship at the earliest possible date counts for more points than amassing multiple Future-Techs.

Click to expand...

Really? I had never considered that. Always build the tricked-out Spaceship with maximum everything before it launches, but have always put off launching until the last possible moment. It takes a full SS 19 years to reach Alpha Centauri, so as Prince i always waited until 2041 to launch.

Always knew there was a bonus for earlier launching, but in all my Civving, i have assumed that this bonus was dwarfed by maturing your civ as much as possible: future advances at +5 and adding citz at +1. Then in 2058 you switch to full Luxury, and half of those additional citz go happy and become +2.

Can the bonus for early SS launching be worth more than all those +1's, +2's and +5's? There's a helluva lot of them +1's in 2058. Even if you land on Alpha Centauri at 20 BC, is the bonus higher than another 21 centuries of growth would gain you?

tjs282 said:

Because the ship itself has a 'fixed' point-value (colonists*success prob., IIRC), which is then depreciated according to the lateness of its arrival-date, there may well be a calculable 'break-point' year, at which a later, larger spaceship plus all possible Future-techs (up to the pollution-bug trigger) would become more valuable than an earlier, smaller spaceship without Future-techs. Without knowing exactly when you trapped the Mongols, and how many Future-techs you'd already amassed at that point, it's impossible for anyone to say for sure which side of that break-point your game would fall, but I suspect you'd still be better off going for max. ship and techs.

Click to expand...

I checkmated the Lost Settler in 20 AD, killed off the last enemy civ in 1440 AD, was offered Future Tech 1 in 1824, and by 1912 i had 107 Settler units. By 2000 AD, i had Luxuries set to 10%, for a civscore of 3672: Citz +2362, Wond +400, Peace +100, Tech +810. Citz portion of the score will blossom greatly in 2058, according to The Plan, as 1/2 of the world goes from content to happy. Isn't it worth it to spend another 50 turns breeding more subjects? Or should i roll back to a 1980 SAV and get a spaceship landed in 1999? Which is more valuable?

tjs282 said:

That said, while a later space-win is worth more than a conquest-win at a comparable date, early space-wins are almost always worth less than early conquest-wins, simply because conquest is possible using only Chariots/Knights, whereas space-wins require you to go pretty much all the way through the tech-tree. So the best way to get the maximum possible score is actually by wiping out all the other civs as early as possible, preferably in the BCs, i.e. according to the game's reward-system, committing outright genocide is much more 'civilized' than becoming capable of offworld colonisation. Not sure what Sid and the Boyz were trying to suggest there...

Click to expand...

Well that's another eye-opener. I had always assumed that building a massive global conglom of large cities would outweigh any jack-rabbit bonus, in the long run. Truly, i still have a hard time believing that a quicker game can be worth more points than manicuring your population up to 150 million citizens.

What is the bonus (at Prince level) for landing on Alpha Centauri in 1999 versus 2059? If there's no difference, then at this point i'd be better off waiting. If there's a big difference then would i be better off restarting in 1960, and building a SS by 1980? Even with no Factories or Mfg Plants, i can build a full 40,000-person SS in 20 turns. But from 1999 to 2060, i might breed 300 more citz worth 450 civscore points.

Maybe even more, since i may have to switch from 70% Science to 80% Luxuries very soon. That means parades with Beethoven's 9th and more population crawling out of the woodwork. Can that be less valuable than an early victory of any kind?

Valen said:

In my experience, pollution starts a little later than darkpanda's theoretical numbers, but not by much. Emperor started polluting at future tech 64 and King started polluting at future tech 107.
You are still going to get inundated when you discover the trigger technology. More tech seems to make the pollution worse.
You can use a combination of fast settlers and the reload bug to play through the pollution. It get tedious though. You could eventually find yourself cleaning ~60 polluted squares per turn. Pollution peaks at about half your city count on average.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the warning, and valuable insight. In the game that went haywire, the pollution wave started out small, then roughly doubled every turn. Makes me wonder: if i were to halt scientific progress at 188 future techs, would i only have to KP one polluted square per turn? If i zeroed the Science at 189 future techs, would the rate of pollution stabilize at 2 squares per turn? I wonder if there's a balance point, where 10 Settlers can control pollution and still allow my civ to advance?

Valen said:

If your objective is max score, keep pushing tech and try to land your space ship in 2060.

Click to expand...

Yes, that is exactly the Idea behind my current game. I always try to land in 2059, but this time i tried to maximize population and future techs. But i didn't build any Factories or Plants of any kind this time (Mfg, Power, Hydro or Nuclear). Seems silly that pollution should do me in, since my autocratic Presidency has prohibited any Industrial Revolution.

Posidonius said:

Can you really build a railroad on an ocean square?!?

Click to expand...

Yes you can BUT (big but) land units cannot traverse them: they are still ocean squares. The only advantage is to boost trade for coastal cities.
So long for your 1-unit world domination.

Posidonius said:

Now i know that an unexpected pop in a city is due to those crazy parades where the citizens dress up and play Beethoven's Ninth.

Click to expand...

Must say I discovered that relatively recently too...

Posidonius said:

Not sure what you mean by "how long 1 turn takes in your engine."

Click to expand...

I meant "in real human time", so...

Posidonius said:

The last session i did was about 7 hours in real-human time and i moved the game forward about 6 years, 2010-2015.

Click to expand...

... this somehow answers my question: about 1 hour and 10 minutes per turn.

Posidonius said:

Not sure if that's feasible, at this point the current game has a bit over 500 AQUxxxx.SAV files (i am Aquilinius of the Etruscans, i always play as the customized Romans so i never have to deal with Stalin, that bastard). The SAV files weigh about 12 MB. And even if i did post SAVs, is that OK here in this forum?

Click to expand...

Yes it is ok to post SAV files.

Posidonius said:

Could you even open and play someone else's SAV?

Click to expand...

Not really a WinCiv guy myself, but I am pretty you can.

Posidonius said:

Seems like most people here play CivDOS.

Click to expand...

Indeed, although the odd CivNet or WinCiv player exists, here and there, if you look for them.

Posidonius said:

Never thought about it, but can CivDOS and CIVWIN use one another's SAV files?

Click to expand...

No they cannot... That said, some time ago, when I was mapping out CivDOS .SVE/.MAP contents, I entertained the idea of writing a tool to convert savegames between CivDOS and WinCiv formats... Seemed pointless at the time, but it could be fun, and you seem just like the right Civ-addict to enable in that way I just need to find time for that...

Posidonius said:

At any rate, i'd be glad to share files or test results. Trouble is that the game is locked inside the VM [...] Anyway, that's a technical problem, not a Civ problem.

Click to expand...

I could help, if you give more details about the VM software you are using: QEMU ? VirtualBox ? VMWare ?

Posidonius said:

The Civ problem is this wildfire pollution which destroyed my last game, which i put 12 months into and was on track to be a Hall Of Famer. Now listen: if i can post a SAV file here and you are able to open it, i can post the SAV file from just before the pollution went haywire in my last game. With about 7 more hours of human-time Civving, i can get the current game up to 187 future techs and maybe post that SAV too, if i can figure out how to get a SAV from the VM into the OS. Would those be useful, or would it be more useful to post SAVs from several turns before it gets to 188 future techs?

If one can play someone else's game then it might be instructive to see it develop over 10 turns rather than over 2. But it also could be time consuming, since we're talking about advanced-game turns. Don't know which would be more interesting for your uses.

Click to expand...

The way I see it, just post as much as you like (check out for forum limitations though, I think it's 200 Mb total per account, but I may be wrong), and people who want to investigate various cases can just pick up which SAV they need...

Which makes me think: it is entirely possible that the pollution bug does not occur in WinCiv - it could have disappeared when the CivDOS codebase moved from DOS to early versions of Windows. Not to push your hopes too high, but that's plausible...For instance I think the Fast Settler bug disappeared...

darkpanda said:

Yes you can BUT (big but) land units cannot traverse them: they are still ocean squares. The only advantage is to boost trade for coastal cities. So long for your 1-unit world domination.

Click to expand...

Oh that's a pity. Still, a lattice-work of RRs offshore could dramatically increase income in the high-trade cities. Something to think about, the next time i find myself operating a civ with 107 Settler units.

darkpanda said:

<Now i know that an unexpected pop in a city is due to those crazy parades where the citizens dress up and play Beethoven's Ninth.>

Must say I discovered that relatively recently too...

Click to expand...

Actually, read that in the Manual last week. I had read it years ago, but much of what i read didn't sink in since i was a n00b. Don't still have the manual on the PC, must have lost it along the way while migrating my CIVWIN folder from old PC to new PC a few times from 95 to 98 to 2000 to XP. But luckily last week, found a printout of the manual i must have done circa 2000.

Not much new information, but a few nuggets stand out as possible signposts for my current game. For instance, i did not remember that Happy citz are worth +2 on Judgement Day. Add the fact that happy shiny people join parades and parades mean sudden baby-booms. If the Pollution Bug means i have to go to 0% Science soon, i might just be able to make up the shortfall in future techs, by switching my current 70% lightbulbs to a mix of 20% tax and 80% diamonds.

About 100 cities would hold parades, and i might jump by 30 million population in 2 turns. Decisions, decisions...

darkpanda said:

<Never thought about it, but can CivDOS and CIVWIN use one another's SAV files?>

No they cannot...

Click to expand...

That, right there, is a butt-puckering shame. As i get more acquainted with the arch of comptech from 8-bit to 16- 32- and 64-bit, it seems the 8-bit world has more hardcore geeks defending its legacy. At this point, it seems as if CivDOS is far more likely to be supportable in the next decade than CIV-1 for Windows.

I chose wrong, when choosing which Civ to invest my time into. Crap, i should have been a Luddite in 1995. Who knew?

darkpanda said:

That said, some time ago, when I was mapping out CivDOS .SVE/.MAP contents, I entertained the idea of writing a tool to convert savegames between CivDOS and WinCiv formats... Seemed pointless at the time, but it could be fun, and you seem just like the right Civ-addict to enable in that way I just need to find time for that...

Click to expand...

On the other hand, i have only a flickering memory that my original Civ installation disc might possibly have contained both WINCIV and CivDOS. If so, an incredible quest ahead of me, trying to remember where i might have squirelled away that disc two decades ago, because in every other PC migration since, i simply copied the CIVWIN directory into ProgFiles of the new PC and it worked just fine.

If that quest is naught, then i'd need to find an old copy of CivDOS for sale, and that seems about as likely as a unicorn breaking into my house and eating my four-leaf clover. I have one, you know. A four-leafed clover, not a unicorn. Picked it myself, so i know it's not fake.

If i can find CivDOS and you can translate CivWIN saves into CivDOS saves, then that sounds like a long-term fix to my problem, and possibly the problem of many other players. In seeking a fix to play Civ on post-XP Windows, there were dozens of complainants. DOSBox seems like a more stable and solidly supported option than any VM, and more likely to remain consistent as the Win environment changes yet again with Win10. So a back-compat of CivWIN into CivDOS might turn out to be a crucial tool for future retro-Civvers.

darkpanda said:

<At any rate, i'd be glad to share files or test results. Trouble is that the game is locked inside the VM ... Anyway, that's a technical problem, not a Civ problem.>

I could help, if you give more details about the VM software you are using: QEMU ? VirtualBox ? VMWare ?

Click to expand...

Actually, if i can post SAV files here, that could solve the problem of moving them between my OS and the VM. If i can post with the browser in one and D/L in the other, then that's that. Do attachments show up as downloads in the posts here? Have scoped a number of threads here, but have not seen any files offered for download.

On the other hand, wouldn't the admins here look askance at someone using their forum as a waypoint for file transfers? Just smacks of a forbidden thing to do. I don't want to piss anyone off.

darkpanda said:

The way I see it, just post as much as you like (check out for forum limitations though, I think it's 200 Mb total per account, but I may be wrong), and people who want to investigate various cases can just pick up which SAV they need...

Click to expand...

That sounds encouraging, but i'd wish to wait, to hear from a forum moderator for guidelines about uploading files. But i do have a text file i maintain through every game, notes about the progress and notes to self. Certain that posting this would not violate any TOS, so will do so forthwith.

darkpanda said:

Which makes me think: it is entirely possible that the pollution bug does not occur in WinCiv - it could have disappeared when the CivDOS codebase moved from DOS to early versions of Windows. Not to push your hopes too high, but that's plausible...For instance I think the Fast Settler bug disappeared...

Click to expand...

Oh, the pollution scourge is certainly inside CivWIN. I have only ever played this one version of Civ-1, and my last game got polluted like mad about 2020. I sold off all the Mfg Plants and Factories but nothing helped.

Also, i think the "fast settler" bug is in my version of CivWIN. I've tested Settlers in various ways, for instance setting 4 of them to build mines on a mountain at once. That didn't work, but i have seen times where i took a Settler off one job and reassigned them, and the new job was finished in a trice.

Had thought there was a per-square development counter, or a per-settler development counter, but the "fast settler bug" explains most of what i've seen happen. One test i have yet to try, is to have a Settler spend 5 turns irrigating a swamp, then move that guy off, and put another settler on the same swamp. Will it take the second Settler 10 turns or 5?

Every game, i keep a running log of what happens and pertinent lessons i should learn. Here is the log of the current (apparently doomed) game, up to 2000 AD [correction, it's the Zulus i have trapped up a mountain, not the Mongols]

[By the way, building a "blank wonder" means one city is about to build a Wonder, so you set other cities to build the same thing, then when you discover new advances, you can immediately change the dummy builds over to useful newly-unlocked Wonders]:

"Customize: large-temperate-normal-old. Prince level, 7 civs.

Start in middle of large continent, stretches away to west and south. Nobody is to west, to south is a nice lobe, mostly plains. Fairly swampy in starting lobe, but very many villages scattered thoughout the whole continent. South is the French, further south is Aztecs, and reports that Aztecs destroyed the Germans. Very defensible isthmus just north of Aztecs.

By 1740 BC, no attacks by barbarians, but then again there is only one city, by discovery, far to west. Possible strategy:: walk original settler around to villages until one turns into 1st city! That would leave a NONE settler free to help enormously.

Babylonians --> Zulus --> bottled up!
French --> Germans --> eliminated
Aztecs --> Egyptians --> eliminated
Americans --> Chinese --> eliminated
English --> eliminated
Indians --> Mongols --> eliminated

2100 BC - Destroyed French, learned 2 advances from them beforehand. Replacement is Germans.

2020 BC - Destroyed Germans, Blue is off Intelligence List.

1900 BC - started war with both Aztecs and Babylonians. Indians destroyed by English, white respawns on Intel list. Mongols.

1780 BC - Aztecs destroyed, LtBlue respawns, Egyptians.

1460 BC - meet Mongols

1360 BC - destroy Mongols.

700 BC - Americans destroyed by English -- pink respawns

360 BC - Egyptians destroyed by English - lightBlue eliminated

20 AD - I destroyed the Chinese, the pink does not respawn! Now have only
the English and a Zulu settler who is bottled up on a mountain... with my
legion of NONE guarding him!

This opens up wild possibilities. If i whack the English completely, then the game can continue indefinitely with no cities but mine. That means no trade, but it means total
development.

1440 AD - starting assault on Philadelphia, might be last English city. Advances at 31 turns, gold -23 per turn and treasury is at 97 gp. SO, need to declare revolution very soon! Many cathedrals built, working on Magnetism, 5 cities are building blank wonders.

Saved game, assaulted Philadelphia. Won, and English are wiped out in 1440 AD. Green does not respawn! Only other nation in Intelligence screen is the Zulus, and they are only a Settler cornered on a mountain.

The whole world is mine, but won't end by conquest unless i whack the Zulus settlers. Try this: bribing the Zulu to switch, does game then end? I predict either it does, or the Zulu settler may be unbribe-able. Can i trade with the Zulu settler?

Guaranteed there will be no enemy boats to watch for, but no trade either. No need to have barracks, no trade means i would only need a few boats, and only 11 military units could watch over the whole world! With such low unit costs, production would be astronomical, so a whole spaceship could be built in 10 years. That means i could operate an army of settlers to develop this world at a blistering pace.

No need for gold at all? With Democracy in 1450 AD, might i be able to go to 10Tax-80Sci-10Lux?

1490 AD - bought Philadelphia's temple, went to 10-80-10, declaring revolution, since warp-point 1500 is next turn.

1500 AD - looks good so far, got Democracy in 1500, gold even, advances in 3 turns. Lone Zulu settler is bribeable. Assume that means he is not tradeable, but caravan on the way to test.

1520: can't trade with a Zulu settler.

1824 AD - offered Future Tech 1

1871 AD - started irrigating the last swamp, got Future Tech 20

1884 AD - last swamp irrigated

1912 AD - have 107 Settlers, 1 in production! Need only 13 MechInf and 2 Armor, since there is no other empire to fight. Have 1 Transport, not really much need at this point since there is no Trade. 2923 GP, income at -148, advances at 1 turn. Population 35.560 million, 110 cities. Tax40-Sci50-Lux10. BUT, building SDIdefenses to flip for cash, 200 GP each, have 28 of them under construction. Only have one Barracks, no Factories and no Mfg Plants.

Believe this game runs to 2060, with the warning at 2040. So still have over a century before i have to think about cobbling together a spaceship. In a few turns, should be able to start the experiment: turn all forests into arable land.

NO, instead, have been irrigating the mined hills around cities which are already built up.

1914 AD - put four Settlers on Mining on the same mountain, 2N1E of Seattle. Watch swamp 1S1E of Cyrenica: irrigating it. Now produces 1F and 6P with RR under Democracy. After irrigation, turns into a regular empty grassland, 3F and 2T, irrigating it now, should be 4F + 2T.

Yes it is so. By 1921, still no mines in quad-settler mountain, after 7 turns with four settlers pounding on it. So drew off three Settlers.

1924 AD - Down to 86 Settlers, have been using them to add to cities at 9, making a Settler that cost 30 to 40 thousand people into a boost of 100,000 people. This also leaves room to build Caravans like mad, as before i was up against the unit limit.

1927-1936 AD - Grew by 1.29 million, then 310,000, then 630,000 in 1930. 320k in 1931. 680k in 1932. 970k in 1933. 670k in 1934. 1.03m in 1935. 1936: +760 million citz.

1930 AD - 116 cities, no more sites? Pop 46.580 million, Treas 4730. Tax40-Sci50-Lux10. Income -143, advances 1 turn. 80 Settlers, 27 Caravans in production. 13 SDI Defenses in production for cash, some slow-build. App -13%, Pop 46.580m, GNP 2089m, Mfg 1133 mton, Land 1030 ksqmi, Lit 100%, Dis -4, Poll 0, Life 93y, Fam 4.3, Mil 0y, Inc 268 percap, Prod -15. Civscore 2185: Citz 1335, Wond 400, Peace 100, Tech 330.

1950 AD - Pop 62.230 million, Treas 4367. Tax40-Sci50-Lux10. Income -47, advances 1 turn. 66 Settlers, 41 Caravans in production. 5 SDI Defenses in production for cash. App -2%, Pop 62.23m, GNP 2670m, Mfg 1112 mton, Land 1033 ksqmi, Lit 100%, Dis -2, Poll 0, Life 83y, Fam 4.0, Mil 0y, Inc 300 percap, Prod -5. Civscore 2553: Citz 1623, Wond 400, Peace 100, Tech 430.

1955 AD - Gold and expenses even at 1911 per turn. Started trading with largest cities: great idea, should have started this program much earlier.

1965 AD - Have dipped to Tax30-Sci60-Lux10 a couple times, gold -480 but better advances.

1970 AD - 117 cities, final tally. Pop 81.180 million, Treas 5892. Tax30-Sci60-Lux10. Income -394, advances 0 turns on paper, in practice getting 1.5. 38 Settlers, 81 Caravans in production. Have dropped 70 settlers since peak, in process of creating vast trade, which is really helping: should have started that program much earlier. Correct thing to do is bump a city at 9 up to 10 ASAP, that creates more food and production faster. App 6%, Pop 81.18m, GNP 2950m, Mfg 1088 mton, Land 1034 ksqmi, Lit 100%, Dis 0, Poll 0, Life 75y, Fam 3.7, Mil 0y, Inc 356 percap, Prod 2. Civscore 2963: Citz 1913, Wond +400, Peace +100, Tech +550. Added 410 in civscore in 20 years!

1980 AD - Pop 90.080m, Treas 5391, gold -129 gp, advances 0 turns. 30-60-10. 30 settlers, 23 Caravans, 83 Carv in production. App 9%, Pop 90.08m, GNP 3493m, Mfg 1022 mton, Land 1034 ksqmi, Lit 100%, Dis 0, Poll 0, Life 75y, Fam 3.5, Mil 0y, Inc 388 percap, Prod 7. Civscore 3192: Citz 2062, Wond +400, Peace +100, Tech +630. Score +229 in a decade.

1990 AD - Pop 99.590m, Treas 4267, gold +123 gp, advances 0 turns. 30-60-10. 24 settlers, 12 Caravans, 90 in production. App 13%, Pop 99.59m, GNP 4146m, Mfg 938 mton, Land 1034 ksqmi, Lit 100%, Dis 0, Poll 0, Life 75y, Fam 3.5, Mil 0y, Inc 422 percap, Prod 11. Civscore 3424: Citz 2209, Wond +400, Peace +100, Tech +715. Score +232 in a decade.

Lesson: should have concentrated on building the trade network some centuries before i did.

Didn't think that non-foreign trade would be worth a damn, but it makes a big difference. Gold is 50% more valuable than gems. Focus on getting all gold-bearing cities up to 3 routes first, then gem bearing cities, then all future cities trade with only gold/gem cities. Trading with gold/gem cities is more valuable than exact edge-of-map distance.

Am converting forests into fields, so far no runaway pollution, perhaps because i have zero factories?

1996 AD - went to 20Tax-70Sci-10Lux, am getting about 2.5 advances per turn, income -584 but by 1998, income is -534. In 1998, earned 293 by trading alone. No more upgrading routes until everyone has 3, except for the long-term project getting Hawaiians up to snuff. By 2000, income at -486.

2000 AD - Pop 110.470m, Treas 1420, gold -486 gp, advances 0 turns (2.5 per) 20Tax-70Sci-10Lux. 18 settlers, 19 Caravans, 98 in production. App 16%, Pop 110.47m, GNP 3904m, Mfg 909 mton, Land 1034 ksqmi, Lit 100%, Dis 1%, Poll 0, Life 71y, Fam 3.3, Mil 0y, Inc 460 percap, Prod 15. Civscore 3672: Citz 2362, Wond +400, Peace +100, Tech +810. Score +248 in a decade.

If anyone is interested, there is a program that can edit the amount of bulbs needed for your next tech advance... Completely forgot about it, but it Works! It's called civ ed 1.5.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=2801

1) Select saved game
2) Select Civilization Stats (etc.)
3) Arrow down to your civ
4) Change Tech Needed

I just used it, and got 8 techs in one turn (on Emperor)! All you have to do is put in a negative number.

Darkpanda, does jCivED have this functionality? I couldn't find it...

kirkham7 said:

If anyone is interested, there is a program that can edit the amount of bulbs needed for your next tech advance... I just used it, and got 8 techs in one turn (on Emperor)! All you have to do is put in a negative number.

Click to expand...

Haha, getting them is not my probbie, having too many is the trubbie!

OK, i let this mull around in my mind for a few days, and decided what to do. I have a previous game where Pollution goes bonkers, so will do some checking in those saves and figure out which SAV is Just Before the pollution bug happens. When i find that, will post it here in case anyone wants to see it happen.

Then, will continue playing my current game, up until i get to 188 Future Techs and see if Pollution again goes nutso. If so, will post the SAV immediately prior to that.

Still wondering about a couple things: i was gaining +250 civscore per decade. What are the bonuses for early Alpha Centauri? If i amassed 4,000 civscore points from 1900 to 2060, is there any early-bird bonus which can compete with that?

I normally wait until the last minute to even build the SS, since every piece applies to your max-unit quota. In a thread here, i just learned that you've got a 127 max-city limit. Never knew that, never packed cities in so tight to get there! I recall that there is a max-treasury limit, 20K coins, IIRC.

Is there a max-population limit? If there is, and i'm close, then i might as well chuck in the towel and just build/launch.

As far as population goes, check out this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=521749

Posidonius said:

Always knew there was a bonus for earlier launching, but in all my Civving, i have assumed that this bonus was dwarfed by maturing your civ as much as possible: future advances at +5 and adding citz at +1. Then in 2058 you switch to full Luxury, and half of those additional citz go happy and become +2.

Click to expand...

AFAIK there is no bonus at all for early launch. In any case, it can't compare to 5 or 10 more points per turn for future tech.

I love the game notes. Makes me feel like I'm there.

Until rereading this thread, I didn't realize you were playing CivWin. I have no experience with it, so I don't know if it has the reload bug exploit. Without that, I'd have real trouble playing through the pollution. I did have one game where I had about 110 cities and 60 settlers. That was enough to play through on fast settlers alone.

Posidonius said:

If i could bridge a few ocean squares, i could run the whole world with one Legion

Click to expand...

You can still do it with the ship sentry trick. My transports always travel in pairs. That way, they can keep each other moving. If your port cities have rails around them, your legion can unload into the city and land in sentried state. Just go into the port city, wake him up and he's good to go.

[Trans1] - [Trans2] - [Port]

If your 2 transports are sitting on railed ocean squares, unload the legion from Trans1. When he steps onto Trans2, both the moving legion and the transport will disappear from the display. Don't panic, just keep moving. When the legion steps into the port, the transport will reappear. Then go into the city and you will see the legion on sentry duty inside the city.
Note that if the legion happens to be in Trans2, he can step back to Trans1 (which will disappear) and proceed to the port through Trans2. As long as he is invisible at the time he enters the port, he will land sentried. If you unload from Trans2 directly into the port even if Trans2 is on rails, the legion will not be on sentry and will have to wait a turn before moving again.

kirkham7 said:

I just used it, and got 8 techs in one turn (on Emperor)! All you have to do is put in a negative number.

Click to expand...

Hmmm... Couldn't you get 127 techs in a turn? One per city?

Posidonius said:

building SDIdefenses to flip for cash, 200 GP each, have 28 of them under construction.

Click to expand...

One more question: How much do you get from your best trade route (caravan arrival bonus)? If it's more than $50, you are better off building caravans. This has the added advantage that caravan cash also contributes to research.

Valen said:

If your 2 transports are sitting on railed ocean squares, unload the legion from Trans1. When he steps onto Trans2, both the moving legion and the transport will disappear from the display. Don't panic, just keep moving. When the legion steps into the port, the transport will reappear. Then go into the city and you will see the legion on sentry duty inside the city.
Note that if the legion happens to be in Trans2, he can step back to Trans1 (which will disappear) and proceed to the port through Trans2. As long as he is invisible at the time he enters the port, he will land sentried. If you unload from Trans2 directly into the port even if Trans2 is on rails, the legion will not be on sentry and will have to wait a turn before moving again.

Click to expand...

Thanks for stopping by Valen. You always have such fascinating comments..

You're looking at the TRUE hall of famer there, by the way, Poseidon. Look up some of Valen's other posts... 300+ gold per caravan if I recall correctly? I even downloaded the save to prove it...

Don't be discouraged Posidonius, you're probably setting some records in your own way.. let us know your high score.

...and anyway Civ is a game that's difficult to compare straight across. Everyone plays by different rules, sometimes even different .exe's..

Valen said:

One more question: How much do you get from your best trade route (caravan arrival bonus)? If it's more than $50, you are better off building caravans. This has the added advantage that caravan cash also contributes to research.

Click to expand...

With no rival cities in this game, i had written off trade. But, discovered that trade can be very substantial even within your own empire, if you choose the cities right. The good thing about discovering it, this late in the scenario, is that i made the right connections all around the globe, concentrating on Golden Mountains.

The two main continents are only separated by a strait 3 ocean squares wide, so i have 4 Transports to bridge that gap both ways for a max of 32 Caravans per turn making the crossing. Running camels to the highest-trade city and making them Homers, then ferrying them over to the other continent and cashing out at the second-highest-trade city, this can be done in the same turn.

That gets me 67 gold pieces, but in games past i've gotten over 100 gp for a single trade. While probing the pollution problem in my main scenario, i started a side game just to keep my civhungry mouse from fidgeting. In that one, there is a plains square in the middle of a big plains blotch, but on 3 corners of that city's range, sit three gold-bearing mountains. With some irrigating and a Monarchy, this city could be shaking 40 natural out-of-the-ground Trades before its Marketplace. I know where the Colossus and Copernicus are going, and by 1500 AD this one town should be running my whole empire's economy.

The 4000 BC position in this side game is not great, but i decided to run it for a few hundred years because it's a double-yolk scenario. Start with two Settlers of None. Always an interesting draw, because a double-yolk game can be played in so many ways. You can do two quick builds, or one build and a fuzz of development around it, or a quick build and quick Settler, who can build immediately because the spare Settler has been paving the way to Citysite #2 for fifteen turns.

It was a few years ago when i noticed that cashing in a Caravan also got me a small boost in Bulbs. Once i noted that intra-mural trade is nothing to sneeze at, i started thinking about using that bulb-boost to accelerate the Future Techs even more...

... but then i came here and found out about the Pollution Bug. It doesn't matter how fast you get into FTechs, there is a ceiling for how many civscore +5's you can get. 188 at Prince level.

And here's the rub: if you get to 187 FT's and jam the brakes on your Science to 0% (putting all Trade into Lux or Tax), does this mean that you also CAN NOT TRADE? Will those little bulb-boosts from cashing in a Caravan accumulate and send you tumbling over the tripwire into 188 FT's, unleashing buckets of gloppy goo onto your pastures? Or, does the bulb-boost phenomenon from trading disappear when you set your Science to 0% ?

That would be very helpful to know.

Did you really get 300 gold pieces for a single trade?

Valen said:

AFAIK there is no bonus at all for early launch. In any case, it can't compare to 5 or 10 more points per turn for future tech.

Click to expand...

OK, thanks. Finished re-reading the manual and it mentions the bonus for an early conquest-win, but not for an early spaceship-win, just talks about how many colonists and your Success Probability. I was wondering.

My overarching theory for civving now, is that the early-conquest bonus can be overwhelmed by fully developing your empire into huge cities, and launching at the last possible moment. Finished games geared toward max population, max production, max cash, and now maximized for Future Tech. Then, i hit this brick wall of pollution.

I love the game notes. Makes me feel like I'm there.

Click to expand...

I love that there's people out there who actually talk about Civ1 in 2015. Thanks for your tips about railroading oceans, i don't really understand everything you said, but i just have to give it a try and i'll figger out what you mean. Shame that you'd still need a fleet of Transports, i had a dream of ruling an entire world with only one unit: a Legion of None.

Then again, that dream might come true after all. If i have to quit trading so i don't creep over 188 FTech's, then i don't need Transports. This world is fully developed, all forests -> plains, all deserts and hills irrigated, so don't need Settlers anymore. And if the Barbies only spawn on the North Pole every 40 years, then i don't need any MechInf's anywhere. I could sell that last lone Barracks.

I love breaking games in unusual ways, and this no-rival scenario might finish with the victor possessing zero units on Judgement Day. That would be a novel achievement.