Let's discuss the Zoom to home city trick

An explanation I borrowed from a play called Samson -

In the City Display, if you click on a unit supported from another city you are given the option to Zoom to its home city in the display. This feature also works during the city processing phase at the beginning of a new turn. If you Zoom into the display of a city which has just built something, you can zoom from there to another city (via a supported unit) which has not yet been processed that turn and alter its production orders.

Why is this useful? To take advantage of newly discovered technology. In a recent game, I completed research on Automobile by delivering a couple of freights, ensuring this tech would be acquired after my first city contributed its science. I sent a supported unit from my SSC into my second most recently established city and rushbuilt something there. On the next turn, I zoomed into the second city, followed the link to my SSC, changed its production orders to Superhighways, then rushed it. This allowed me to build the SH in my SSC on the same turn I discovered Automobile. The extra science in the SSC from highways gave me a second tech that same turn. I did this again with Computers and Research Lab.

By using defense units supported by other cities, it's possible to set up a chain of links running through all cities and upgrade production orders in any city. I'd be interested in knowing if others have used this technique and for what purpose.

Here endeth Samson's lesson.

Okay I am sure some of you are well aware of this exploit. But there are so many more things you can do with this I'll put a few down

Benefit 1
You can build a wonder on the same turn you discover the require tech to Build it
Benefit 2
You can do the same with units and city improvements
Benefit 3
You can scrape up the few extra gold in the city processing cycle to afford a rush build.
Benefit 4
You can sell off an improvement you don't need anymore.
Benefit 5
You can share resources between a maximum of 4 cities! such as whales or maybe even better a mined grape hill ( this changes the game the most ) when calculating the worthiness of land improvement such as mining or irrigating ESPECIALLY when employing the next trick on my list will force players to reconsider long entrenched tactics.

Lets say you have city A,B,C and D warrior from A goes into City B city B warrior goes in city C, City C warrior goes in city D now everything is set. ah not yet, City D has to do something so that you can "go to city" in the city process cycle(CPC) now you are all set ( this can be difficult to do every turn I'll come back to that later there are many tricks there too! ) now lets say city D comes up in the CPC you built a temple so of course you go to city
First rearrange workers take them off any resource you want City C to work on, If you share a trade route with city A,B or C put on ocean squares for good trade as your trade city may benefit whichever city you are trading with.

Second rehome any charging settlers *see Benefit 6 you can alsosell off any city D improvement you feel you no longer need at this stage too.

Third find City C warrior and zoom to home city. You will find yourself in the City C window

Fourth rearrange your field workers and rush buy an improvement, unit or wonder now available from the tech you newly acquired from lets say City E or D

Last close the window you will find yourself straight back in Window C so repeat for City B

Benefit 6
As stated just above You can charge a settler from city A in city B when the processing gets to city B re-home it there and wake it up your settler has escaped it's two shield one food penalty ( okay this is not strictly a ZTHC trick but you do this while rearranging your workers in the city status map.) It can be a nice idea to have a trireme to take the settler back to city A after the CPC re-home trireme and settler send the settler back to city B and charge it there again. next time the settler will walk back up the road and the Trireme can ferry it back next CPC you can re-home the trireme avoiding the shield upkeep. I have done this extensively through games micromanagement at its most anal. The trireme isn't there for just that though I like a trireme around with a Diplomat on the ready to turn the Barbs against each other and capture lone barb leaders that may foolishly leave their flock. but I will leave the ins and outs of that little tactic for another day.

Okay now some ideas to get into city windows to start the chain going.

Building an improvement, wonder, settler, Dip/spy
Revolt and back from revolt - dont mind it in some cities one revolt for the price of two windows if you are hard up.
Food is running low - one of my favs, won't cost gold and you can do things to make it more palatable caravans mined gold or copper will help
WLTPD opening and closing is another good one
The upgrading unit message helps on occasion as long as you don't forget to take advantage of which I often do.
City D is still building... - another fav also lots of things you can do to make this work.
Benefit seven (or five if you like)

Your WLTPD will have so much more milage when sharing city resources and allow you into city windows too!
One more benefit is your cities no longer need spacing out there is no overlap tiles restricting growth! and that is massive. Roads connecting cities spaced every two squares speeds up movement and saves turns, Settlers can go along a chain A to B to C to D without suffering shield and food penalty. Cities are happier and more defendable. Rehoming units to get that one more shield is that much easier, Triremes can move from one city to another in one turn. railroads become almost instant. Helper Cities can help one or two moves quicker. Less need for station cities. Less chance of getting hemmed in by another civ or trapped on an island. Its just all win.


Well that's all for now hope you enjoyed.

That's a new tip to me, AngryB, thanks a lot. I'm sure it will come in very handy, especially at Deity level. What I would like to hear are forum member's opinions about whether they regard this kind of trick as a "cheat" or not. Personally, I regard any "trick" that redresses the seemingly absolute power of the AI as legitimate. I don't believe it is possible to win at Deity level with 7 civilizations without "tricks" of this nature. But with them I think Civ2 reaches new levels of study.

Undefeated said:

What I would like to hear are forum member's opinions about whether they regard this kind of trick as a "cheat" or not.

Click to expand...

It is NOT! It's stated in the GOTM-rules and Samson used it in his outstanding 16 AD landing. You can't build a spaceship before 1 AD, so the only option you get to achieve a really early landing is to build your spaceship parts by this zoom-home trick and launch at the end of your turn. So the earliest landing you can ever achieve is at 6 AD with the fastest ship.

I use this trick often when it is handy, like build a wonder (Newton or SETI for science, CFC or Bach for happiness, Apollo so that next turn my cities do build the spaceship without having to employ this trick), superhighways in my SSC or whatever.

My greatest exploit of this was:
-Let an early processed city discover democracy
-revolt right away (causing some inevitably riots)
-some city builds something (mind it might be rioting, so rushed before)
-have a unit there to zoom home
-have a prebuilt wonder in that city and switch to Statue of Liberty
-choose Fundementalism at the end of the turn

It was really great to see it all work out as planned!

Wow!! That's really brilliant. Thanks a lot. Cant wait to finish my present experiment to give these ideas a try-out. In my present game, which has reached 1998 AD, I have launched a spaceship to land in 2012. The only serious opposition left are the Japanese and I'm sure that I found the AI actually cheating with a Nuclear Missile launch at one of my cities. I will try to attach the two relevant saves, to be checked for anything I may have missed, when I find out how to do this -- hopefully in my next post.

Nice...with all of those micromanagement tricks you should try Ape Island... every turn counts in that game, especially if you are playing against people.

Sounds good Major advantage But as for my own game, I have never really gone with SOL or Fundy in the past. I asked about it a while back but received no reply.
I only play early landing power democracy tactics. Only very recently have started seeing the benefits of SOL in the Democracy game.
I am using this trick every turn with a chain of cities it's so important when celebrating cities sharing resources helps to give you surplus of food even though you have 1,2 or even 3 entertainers there simply isn't time to irrigate on a one tile for 1 city approach.
After you have a trade route and ship chain things start going at break neck speed.

AngryB,

I have heard of this technic before and I have used it on occasion but you have elevated it to new heights. I never thought of it as a way to share resources among closely placed cities. Early in the game that can be quite powerful. I have to remember to give it a try.

Undefeated,
As Major Advantage correctly pointed out this, and any other exploit not expressly forbbidden, are legitimate in GOTM games.

Cheers Ali,
This tactic played right should give you about ten percent improvement on your landing date 10% is kind of a guestermate it is also an art form and hard to get right first time.
I learned how to make the most of it by playing a cheating practice game and was ready for my spaceship with max gold and 60 odd cities all linked up about 15 turns before 1AD.
Lots of things can mess up if you are not 100 percent on the case.
I think I will post some more stuff tomorrow on capturing Barbs.

AngryB said:

...
Benefit 5
You can share resources between a maximum of 4 cities! such as whales or maybe even better a mined grape hill ( this changes the game the most ) when calculating the worthiness of land improvement such as mining or irrigating ESPECIALLY when employing the next trick on my list will force players to reconsider long entrenched tactics.

Lets say you have city A,B,C and D warrior from A goes into City B city B warrior goes in city C, City C warrior goes in city D now everything is set. ah not yet, City D has to do something so that you can "go to city" in the city process cycle(CPC) now you are all set ( this can be difficult to do every turn I'll come back to that later there are many tricks there too! ) now lets say city D comes up in the CPC you built a temple so of course you go to city
First rearrange workers take them off any resource you want City C to work on, If you share a trade route with city A,B or C put on ocean squares for good trade as your trade city may benefit whichever city you are trading with.

Second rehome any charging settlers *see Benefit 6 you can alsosell off any city D improvement you feel you no longer need at this stage too.

Third find City C warrior and zoom to home city. You will find yourself in the City C window

Fourth rearrange your field workers and rush buy an improvement, unit or wonder now available from the tech you newly acquired from lets say City E or D

Last close the window you will find yourself straight back in Window C so repeat for City B
...

Click to expand...

Just read your post over again. Some highly interesting ideas you mentioned there!
However, to get it going constantly, you need to have something going on on city D and build-barracks-sell-barracks (or something like that) doesn't seem efficently. That got me thinking that you would be better off with a "sacrifice-city" E whose sole job is to allow entrance into that whole zoom-chain. That could be by "still-building" (as you mentioned) or by "riot-on-riot-off" in a size-3-city: In democracy and as long as you don't have Bach Cathedral, you only need 1 unit outside of the city to cause riots, allowing you to zoom-to-city. During next turn, move that unit back into that (or another) city and you should get a message " order restored", allowing the next z-t-c. Move the unit back out next turn and so on. Of course you need a dip hosted by city D in city E. And that city does not have to be useless, it might be a station city and/or wonder bread recipient or a port city for your ship-chains.

Well, this would still be a very RL-time-consuming exploit, especially if you want to calculate your beakers for the most of efficiency...

For early landing games this has been used for a decade. The real life penalty of time is a tradeoff, depending on the game objective (e.g., reference game, GOTM, HOF, early finish, private, etc.). Most things in Civ "are" an exploit of one form or another, its a game not reality.


What I would like to hear are forum member's opinions about whether they regard this kind of trick as a "cheat" or not.
Historical footnote, this technique has never been considered disallowed here or at Apolyton in "the old days" in any of the major game variants (not a cheat). Pretty much the opposite. If you can properly plan and execute on the 1st try, in a competitive game, well then its good work (and RL time to ensure it was done right).


I don't believe it is possible to win at Deity level with 7 civilizations without "tricks" of this nature.
Yes, you can win Deity/7. Even Deity+2 or Deity+3 and Raging Barbarians+1. But, some "tricks" can reduce the game end year.

QUOTE=starlifter;12773013]For early landing games this has been used for a decade.

Really? Maybe for building a wonder or something like that but what I am mainly promoting here is in the sharing of resources between cities.

And in response to Major A it is really no problem keeping the city d box opening lets just look at the city running low on food box that allows you to zoom to city. Lets say you have 3 wheat in your food box and are running at a deficit of 1 wheat that means you will have access to the zoom to city for the next 3 turns.
Or you just may continue building the bank you just made - it really isn,t hard to keep it going once you get into it