Teach me and you. Give me a gem.

Pangaea said:

How does that work out? I've done that before, and haven't noticed an extra turn of golden age. It goes from for instance 1 turn left to 13 - unless I misremember right now.

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Don't know, I read that in rhe SGOTM thread from Team TSR. Seems to be common knowledge between the SGOTM players. It should work like you simply get 13T from it when built during a GA.

It does work. You'll see 12 turns added to the golden age counter when Taj finishes. But the Taj finishes between turns, 12 turns more than the previous turn means 13 turns added.

Lennier said:

In vanilla, the SE was on the spaceship tech path, so the only question was if the hammer investment in the SE would pay off; a GE in vanilla would almost certainly make that a good (or at least neutral) play. In BTS, the hammers saved by the GE are still unlikely to pay for the detour to Robotics.

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I sometimes build the Space Elevator in Vanilla. I'm surprised to hear that BTS spaceships don't require Robotics; considering that Civ spaceships are of a type we humans have not yet built in the real world, you would think that something we've been using as long as Robotics would be necessary. Really, for both the sense and the gameplay, I would have made teching basically to the end of the tree (sans Future Techs and mostly military side techs) necessary to get that last spaceship part.

Why is the AI not willing to trade more of its gold, what affects this?

I have city investigate on Mansa and he has almost 7000 , yet isn't willing to trade a single piece of it

* * *

Edit: Well, smack me down, it looks like I eventually found something via searching in the thread by The User Formerly Known as Tachywaxon.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12452678&postcount=161

Gold that has been traded throughout the game is subtracted from whatever the AI theoretically can trade away, so it's probably all the way down to 0 because ages ago I gave Mansa Drama for over 1000 Bummer. Some of that huge stash of gold could really have helped me out

I've often wondered that as well although I've put it down to the AI possibly rush-buying buildings/units with Universal Suffrage? No idea if this is right or not though.

edit: well that clears it up a bit!

Well AI has to be as similar as a single player as possible that wants to win and have itself the best. Once you have that mentality then you can figure out how the AI would act about things.

Necro resurrection!

A tip for demanding or trading for a vassal's resources:

Trade for the rare resources for which you have only one or two. You can't trade the vassal's resource to other AI, but if you have only one, you can trade it away.

For example, if you have one banana and your vassal has one, but no one else does, make sure to take his so you can trade yours!

This may have been mentioned on one of the preceding 20 pages, but it's worth repeating in that case.



To calculate how many an AI has invested into something in a city - very useful if you are competing for wonders, there are 2 ways. The civic cost way is not available if the AI has the same 5 civics as you.

1) City Revolt Way
SabotageProduction / SupportCityRevolt * 650/6 (or 108.3) =

2) Influence Civics Way
SabotageProduction / InfluenceCivics * 100 =
(*100 is for normal speed. Multiply with 150 for epic and 200 for marathon, and probably 67 for quick)


Since this is Marathon:
1) 731 / 1085 * 650 / 6 = 73

2) 731 / 2004 * 200 = 73

Not a lot of invested in this city, in other words, but this method can be incredibly useful when you are racing an AI for a wonder, or when you are trying to figure out if an AI you are at war with are building a settler/worker, or a defensive unit.

Wait a minute... does that mean the cost of changing an AI's civics with a spy depends on what they are building in their cities?

Imp. Knoedel said:

Wait a minute... does that mean the cost of changing an AI's civics with a spy depends on what they are building in their cities?

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No, it means the cost of sabotaging production (=destroying all progress they have done on their current build) depends on how many hammers they currently have invested into something.

elitetroops said:

No, it means the cost of sabotaging production (=destroying all progress they have done on their current build) depends on how many hammers they currently have invested into something.

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But what has civics switching to do with anything then?

Imp. Knoedel said:

But what has civics switching to do with anything then?

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You use the cost of civic switching to figure out the current modifiers you would have on espionage missions in that city.

-The base cost for switching civics is 600 on normal speed, 1200 on marathon.
-The base cost for sabotage procuction is 6*hammers invested on all speeds
-Both those costs will be affected by the same modifier, which is a complicated formula involving distance to capital, various religious bonuses, do you have trade routes to the city, espionage spending, possible counter espionage missions and so on.

So what really happens in this calculation is that first you calculate the modifier by dividing Influence Civics cost with the base cost of that mission:

Influence Civics / 600 (normal speed)

Next you divide the sabotage production cost with this modifier to find out the base cost of a sabotage production mission:

Sabotage Production / (Influence Civics / 600) = Sabotage Production / Influence Civics * 600

Finally you divide this base cost by 6 to get the actual hammers invested:

Sabotage Production / Influence Civics * 600 / 6 = Sabotage Production / Influence Civics * 100

Ah okay then.

Excellent threads should have more visibility

Maybe this is well known stuff by veterans but turning off Vassal States also turns off Colony Maintence. After including this option in gameplay - empire can be bigger without counting cities on different land mass (that otherwise would be limited to 3, maybe 4 cities with rare exceptions if land is near capital). Downside - can't capitulate AI, so no fast dealing with AI (specially if AI have multiple 1-tile islands on hills ) and no minor empire-wide happy boost (from having vassal).

Vassal mechanic is such a frustrating double-edged sword....

shulec said:

Necro resurrection!

A tip for demanding or trading for a vassal's resources:

Trade for the rare resources for which you have only one or two. You can't trade the vassal's resource to other AI, but if you have only one, you can trade it away.

For example, if you have one banana and your vassal has one, but no one else does, make sure to take his so you can trade yours!

Click to expand...

I'll also add to this that if you are in a shared war action along with your vassal, your vassal cannot refuse demands for resources. Not sure if they can break away and declare on you or not when at war with a third party, but since that is caused by a demand...which they can't refuse, I don't think it happens either.

Along the same lines of this, if you are playing a map with continents isolated from another with unique resources on that continent, be sure to trade them away to the guys on the other continents before the other residents of yours can! example: On Earth18, playing as HC or Rosie, as soon as you make contact with the old world, trade away all the corns you can with them before Monty does it first. Each trade deal he makes removes a potential one for you, cutting you out of happiness/health and even gpt trades since the AIs won't want your corn if they already have Monty's, and it's extremely hard to break AIs trade deals unless they go to war with one another.

From Undefeatable's account in this thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/immortal-challenge.414028/page-3

Undefeatable said:

Switched Peter into free religion to make others hate him less, and also reduce revolt chance (did you know that you can reduce revolts from something like 7% to 0% just by asking AIs to switch away from running a religion that the potentially revolting city has?

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I did not know that revolts had anything to do with religions, just culture. Nice tip for those annoying vassal-caused revolts!

ArchGhost said:

I did not know that revolts had anything to do with religions, just culture. Nice tip for those annoying vassal-caused revolts!

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More specifically, a city has a lower revolt chance if your state religion is present, and a higher revolt chance if the state religion of the civ the city is trying to revolt to is present. If both factors are in play they cancel each other out, and if either side isn't running a state religion they don't get the modifier.

Efficiency and Synergy are key. If possible change civics during golden ages, don't let workers be idle, make sure that your highest research city is where you build oxford university, and your highest gold city is where you build wall street. Trade resources to civs that are not a threat if you can, instead of trading with someone who is a competitor.

sometimes, if you time it right, you can take all the spare money from a competitor for a single resource and hinder it from making more lucrative trades with other AIs.

Why do the best threads die?

(I'm also saddened to see @rah as the last poster -- see here)

1. When (not if) the game's UI bugs out and nothing shows up when you hover over something like a tile or units, move the cursor over something in the UI. If most of the UI itself is gone because the next turn 'dot' is red, you can move the cursor over your civ's flag (next to the mini-map), and the graphical interface will "reset" so info shows up again if you hover over a city or whatever. I'm not sure what can trigger the UI going nuts, but it happens fairly frequently. This small tip helps to deal with it.
2. If you chop a forest without Math, but then trade for Math later that same turn, you will still only get non-Math yields for the chop. So 20 on normal speed. If you chop another forest later that turn, you do get 30 for it, like one would expect.
3. (Perhaps well-known?) Similarly to above, if you are about to settle a new city and have worker(s) that can connect the would-be city to the trade network, build the roads before the city is settled. That way the city gets trade routes that very same turn. If you build the roads after the city has been built, the trade network income only kicks in on the next turn.