Pretty much everything I've read about Civ II shows that the other players' experiences differ much from my own. So I would like to share some observations, in case anyone is interested.
First, a brief comment on the government types, specifically Communism. The authors of the game have a very naive notion that central planning eliminates corruption and waste. No one who comes from Eastern Europe and is old enough to remember the time around 1980 needs to be told what an uncontrollable orgy of corruption and waste a centrally planned economy is. In Civ II, I don't really mind, though, as it makes Communism a perfect combination of military strength and research power (before switching to another inhumane but efficient government Fundamentalism). After all, it's just a game.
It is characteristical to my games that the CPs always get roughly two times more resources out of the same territory than I do. I am used to seeing enemy cities surronded by fields in beautiful colors, and it's really amazing how their Settlers and Engineers can achieve so much.
That can be explained by my different strategy: beating quality with quantity. When I have four or six times more cities than the enemy (and I usually do), I still have more resources and can do better science and afford more troops. You see, what it all boils down to is that in order to make terrain improvements, you need Settlers/Engineers. However, instead of having a Settler/Engineer spend time and eat food improving a terrain to achieve a not-so-big gain in resources, I prefer to send him out to build a new city. That way, I'll begin to get resources from two new squares instead of just increasing the gains from one square. Even though the new city will spend some time taking care of its basic defense and development needs, it will eventually start to make profit for the empire, not to mention providing a foothold for my troops.
Considering the experience from the games I've played, there is no doubt in my mind that it's always more useful to send a Settler/Engineer out to build a new city rather than make him do anything else. When there is no room for building new cities or your world has reached the maximum number of 255 cities (how I hate that!), or the game's end is so near that it wouldn't make any sense to create more cities, it's more reasonable to build something else than an Engineer.
So I never build an irrigation. I never build a mine. I never build a road. But I do build a huge number of cities. I leave hardly any unused land between my cities. Of course I settle the most resource-rich places first, but eventually I cover the land area that's available to me completely with cities. When the better lands are taken, I even use up the polar regions which the enemy never does. My territory spreads over the whole world while each CP limits himself to a relatively small area which is thinly populated with megalopolises, and keeps building Engineers to tear down hills and double-irrigate them. Which brings me to the next subject.
Civ II has an ugly but quite helpful feature pollution. It occurs (on a smaller scale) when the production in a city exceeds a certain amount, or (on a larger scale) when a nuclear bomb or a nuclear plant explodes. (The latter I've never seen.) If pollution isn't cleaned away, it eventually causes a global warming which changes terrains randomly here and there grassland to plains, plains to desert, forest to jungle etc. What is the result of that? The huge cities of the enemy that depend on best-quality agricultural land, begin to starve. His resources are bound in a hopeless race against time, trying to restore his food production. Also he keeps sending out Engineer after Engineer to try and clean away some pollution before my Stealth Fighters find them. As to me, my cities take significantly smaller damage (because they are smaller), and the ones on the coast can live off the ocean anyway. Already in the early stages of the game, I know that the ecological disaster is bound to occur eventually. Therefore, I build my cities on the coast whenever I can. The enemy doesn't. So, by the time most of the dryland is covered with jungles and swamps, he suffocates and I thrive.
I love the ocean. The ocean is life. The ocean is a fast road to anywhere. The ocean is the way to the islands the enemy is too stupid to discover and colonize. If you have expanses of water, why build roads? If you can fish, why irrigate? For that matter (as I quickly realized), why fight pollution in the first place? Since it does no damage to the ocean (which is strange, of course, but that's how the game has been designed), it's in fact useful to an thalassocratic player like me. The enemy cities built away from the ocean suffer, as does a small minority of my cities, but those on the coast don't care and the ones built on 1-square islands really flourish. Even polar cities blossom under the ecological disaster as long as I buy them a Harbor and an Offshore Platform.
Furthermore, having many small cities instead of a few big ones gives me a decisive strategical advantage. Thanks to having cities all over the world, it's easy to send my airplanes, missiles and Paratroopers out to any region. And to make it even easier for me, the enemy covers his territory almost without fail with a cobweb of railroads, which is ugly all right, but enables me to move around in my offensive zone with no movement point cost. So, once I have set foot on a continent, the CP's task of defending all his cities at the same time becomes impossible. Using Spies, I can investigate all the enemy cities within a railroad continuum and attack the one with the weakest defenses. Now, it can take an awful lot of time to conquer one city on a continent and send a number of Howitzers into it, but once that is done, the conquest of the (almost) whole continent becomes a piece of cake. Should the enemy, on the other hand, try and attack my core territory, his troops will have to crawl their way through roadless jungles where they usually get blown to kingdom come long before reaching my cities.
First, a brief comment on the government types, specifically Communism. The authors of the game have a very naive notion that central planning eliminates corruption and waste. No one who comes from Eastern Europe and is old enough to remember the time around 1980 needs to be told what an uncontrollable orgy of corruption and waste a centrally planned economy is. In Civ II, I don't really mind, though, as it makes Communism a perfect combination of military strength and research power (before switching to another inhumane but efficient government Fundamentalism). After all, it's just a game.
It is characteristical to my games that the CPs always get roughly two times more resources out of the same territory than I do. I am used to seeing enemy cities surronded by fields in beautiful colors, and it's really amazing how their Settlers and Engineers can achieve so much.
That can be explained by my different strategy: beating quality with quantity. When I have four or six times more cities than the enemy (and I usually do), I still have more resources and can do better science and afford more troops. You see, what it all boils down to is that in order to make terrain improvements, you need Settlers/Engineers. However, instead of having a Settler/Engineer spend time and eat food improving a terrain to achieve a not-so-big gain in resources, I prefer to send him out to build a new city. That way, I'll begin to get resources from two new squares instead of just increasing the gains from one square. Even though the new city will spend some time taking care of its basic defense and development needs, it will eventually start to make profit for the empire, not to mention providing a foothold for my troops.
Considering the experience from the games I've played, there is no doubt in my mind that it's always more useful to send a Settler/Engineer out to build a new city rather than make him do anything else. When there is no room for building new cities or your world has reached the maximum number of 255 cities (how I hate that!), or the game's end is so near that it wouldn't make any sense to create more cities, it's more reasonable to build something else than an Engineer.
So I never build an irrigation. I never build a mine. I never build a road. But I do build a huge number of cities. I leave hardly any unused land between my cities. Of course I settle the most resource-rich places first, but eventually I cover the land area that's available to me completely with cities. When the better lands are taken, I even use up the polar regions which the enemy never does. My territory spreads over the whole world while each CP limits himself to a relatively small area which is thinly populated with megalopolises, and keeps building Engineers to tear down hills and double-irrigate them. Which brings me to the next subject.
Civ II has an ugly but quite helpful feature pollution. It occurs (on a smaller scale) when the production in a city exceeds a certain amount, or (on a larger scale) when a nuclear bomb or a nuclear plant explodes. (The latter I've never seen.) If pollution isn't cleaned away, it eventually causes a global warming which changes terrains randomly here and there grassland to plains, plains to desert, forest to jungle etc. What is the result of that? The huge cities of the enemy that depend on best-quality agricultural land, begin to starve. His resources are bound in a hopeless race against time, trying to restore his food production. Also he keeps sending out Engineer after Engineer to try and clean away some pollution before my Stealth Fighters find them. As to me, my cities take significantly smaller damage (because they are smaller), and the ones on the coast can live off the ocean anyway. Already in the early stages of the game, I know that the ecological disaster is bound to occur eventually. Therefore, I build my cities on the coast whenever I can. The enemy doesn't. So, by the time most of the dryland is covered with jungles and swamps, he suffocates and I thrive.
I love the ocean. The ocean is life. The ocean is a fast road to anywhere. The ocean is the way to the islands the enemy is too stupid to discover and colonize. If you have expanses of water, why build roads? If you can fish, why irrigate? For that matter (as I quickly realized), why fight pollution in the first place? Since it does no damage to the ocean (which is strange, of course, but that's how the game has been designed), it's in fact useful to an thalassocratic player like me. The enemy cities built away from the ocean suffer, as does a small minority of my cities, but those on the coast don't care and the ones built on 1-square islands really flourish. Even polar cities blossom under the ecological disaster as long as I buy them a Harbor and an Offshore Platform.
Furthermore, having many small cities instead of a few big ones gives me a decisive strategical advantage. Thanks to having cities all over the world, it's easy to send my airplanes, missiles and Paratroopers out to any region. And to make it even easier for me, the enemy covers his territory almost without fail with a cobweb of railroads, which is ugly all right, but enables me to move around in my offensive zone with no movement point cost. So, once I have set foot on a continent, the CP's task of defending all his cities at the same time becomes impossible. Using Spies, I can investigate all the enemy cities within a railroad continuum and attack the one with the weakest defenses. Now, it can take an awful lot of time to conquer one city on a continent and send a number of Howitzers into it, but once that is done, the conquest of the (almost) whole continent becomes a piece of cake. Should the enemy, on the other hand, try and attack my core territory, his troops will have to crawl their way through roadless jungles where they usually get blown to kingdom come long before reaching my cities.
254 cities, with just 1 "pet" computer city to keep the game going
