Starving for culture flips

I just want to add in one more bit.

I think that vmxa is a fabulous player. I have seen him play to some amazing wins. My only point was to say that this game is one Big Tent. There is room for every type of player and we can all enjoy the game and each other.

@ OP... sorry we took over your thread.

Doug.Lefelhocz said:

Darski, I have a feeling you and other newbies could easily win a 20k game on Monarch with a rather simple strategy and just one city. It would probably take you about 4 hours tops. Maybe you wouldn't enjoy it though.

What have you read on worker management, settler factories, reputation, trading, etc.?

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Hmm, I presume that I am a newbie, since I no longer waste my time in playing the standard game.

Could you possibly give me a good reason why I should worry about winning a 20k culture game on Monarch? Better yet, why I should worry about seeing how high I should get in general?

With respect to worker management, I think that I am reasonably competent, even if I have significantly shortened the amount of time it takes to complete jobs. Several centuries building a mine or road strikes me as being a bit absurd. Settler factories, have read about them ad nauseum, with zero interest in using them. Reputation, I have discussed in another thread, along with trading, in both cases, I have no interest in worrying about it. If you wish to do so, and manage to have fun doing so, fine.

TheOverseer714 said:

If you want slaves out of a captured city, disbanding obsolete artillery can get you a slave every turn, especially if you can cash rush. 1 trebuchet disbanded is 7 shields, add 12 cash and viola, a slave. Do it until the city is size 1, then when it grows, the new citizens are yours. It takes time and money, but grabbing a moderate empire can get you tons of slaves. As far as mines and irrigation go, ugly, definitely. Playing the game without terrain improvements, difficult or impossible without major overhauls. Cookie cutter games, if you don't like them, don't play them. Mod all you want, it's your game. Fun is how you define it. Just try to set a good example for the youth on here by not snipping at each other all the time. Too many grumpy old f*rts around here these days.

And if you don't see that bit of humor.... You are humorly challenged.

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For those individuals who like to make slaves, I would recommend a reading of some of the transcipts of the Nuremburg trials and the Speer papers. It should be fascinating reading for you, as they describe in detail the absolute minimum requirements of food, clothing, and shelter for one of Germany's slave laborers in WW2, to maintain minimal worker efficiency while slowing starving them to death. Some of the pictures might be a bit much, but so what, they are the inferior species serving the Master Race.

Then, of course, there were the female slave used by the Japanese, except that according to the Japanese, they really did not exist. It was interesting talking with the Solomon Islanders about the Japanese. They still hate the Japanese with quite a bit of passion, and regret that the Americans did not kill more of them. In many respects, I can share their viewpoint. The nice thing in WW2 was that the Japanese civilians killed themselves with the same enthusiasm as did the soldiers and sailors did to avoid capture. They knew what they did to captured enemy personnel, and figured that they would get the same treatment. Do not think that we would have been as aggressive in serving up captives for lunch and dinner however.

It's only a game.

I am definitely not a slaver in real life, and as Bartleby noted, it is just a game. But since we want to be serious, answer this question, Timerover. Is it more cruel to starve people, or make them into slaves? Both are monstrous things, and no civilized human being would even consider doing either. This game has no correlation to real life, but in this game, slaves are immortal. If you starve a citizen, it is gone forever. So death or eternal toil, which is better?

P.S. In real life, I've also never burned a city down and carted off the survivors as slaves, so my Hitler credentials are decidedly lacking.

Could you possibly give me a good reason why I should worry about winning a 20k culture game on Monarch?

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The following might not apply to you since you don't qualify as a newbie in all respects. I think that for newbies playing such a game helps them to *focus* in on a few aspects of the game. It gives them a focused goal around which to play the game. In Conquests, which I've assumed throughout, it basically implies that one focuses on building wonders and improvements... easy in my opinion than going out and whacking the AIs. You'll probably manage with fewer cities... all the better to learn the trading system when you need it. The game goes rather fast... or at least seems to in comparison to the time I've seen for militaristic games. You do a few things and click "next turn". At least for me, this means I don't feel like I need to get to the next turn... I have plenty of time to check my city for its happiness level (use MapStat or Civ Assist 2), to evaluate options, to micromanage city tiles, micromanage the luxury and science sliders, etc.

With a militaristic game you'll need all that to play it well, but, at least for me, you'll feel more rushed since you've already spent a good chunk of time moving military units, whacking AI units, or watching your units get whacked. Since you don't feel rushed, you might also more naturally feel inclined to actually read the civilopedia on what improvements do or what units do, or read an article here. Maybe not Monarch, maybe lower... that's not really the point... but a 20k on Monarch I really think such easy enough. Plus, if you win it on Monarch you'll have the confidence that you won when the AI had extra units and a better production rate... not something you'll get on Regent.

The biggest point here comes as that the 20k more easily creates a focused sort of game, at least in my mind, than any other game. Everything *revolves* around one city in a 20k game. You can pretty much mismanage the rest of the empire, as long as your 20k city does its job well enough and you get your techs on time (not too much to worry about until after Education here with a 20k game). You have to fully manage your entire empire in other types of games... that requires more attention. And when you don't know the game, that can imply information overload, or enough information at once that it seems more stressful than relaxing and fun. OCC 20k games use to take me 2-4 hours. Since I play a little more carefully now, something like 4-6 I'd say. Regular, peaceful, non-militaristic (as few wars as possible basically... maybe a GA war... maybe) 20k games probably something like 10-15 hours... for the whole game.

Better yet, why I should worry about seeing how high I should get in general?

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Maybe you'd find the game more interesting or more fun that way. Maybe not. By all means suit yourself.

P.S. In real life, I've also never burned a city down and carted off the survivors as slaves, so my Hitler credentials are decidedly lacking.

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Oh... lacking credentials? And you dared to walk into my office and apply for THIS job? Get out... now.

I certainly don't view civ III as some sort historical simulation... or at least not to the degree timerover51 does.

You discuss "focus". The focus of my normal game on one of my modified maps is as follows. Note, I have significantly boosted resource and terrain yields compared to the paltry levels in the standard game. I have also reset town to 8 and city to 16 to give me more production at each level. With the increased town and city population, increased resource yields, judicious city and resource placing, I normally can have highly productive cities without resorting to hospitals. The objective for each city is to be a one-unit per turn production center at accelerated production for everything accept tactical missiles and ICBM. I do not produce either settler or worker factories, but I have drastically reduced the amount of time for workers to build improvements. I micromanage each and every city to optimize it for what I need it to do at the present time, produce workers/settlers, units, or wealth. I might start off with the entertainment slider set at up to 30%, but once my economy starts really going, I cut back to 10%. Research is normally at 60%. City spacing is greater than CxxxxC.

Once I have a solid base, and probably a large tech advantage over the AI, I start looking for it. I preset the AI to be as far from me as possible to start with, and once located, try to contact every one as rapidly as possible. I then start testing my various units modification to see if they work well, while continuing to research as rapidly as possible, generally at a 2 to 4 turn rate, having reset minimum research time.

While doing this, I continue to micromanage my cities and workers, making sure that improvements are put in when and where needed. I do not normally clear forest, jungle, or marshland. I will plant forest in tundra terrain to increase production there. My normal objective is either a victory point win or a Space Race win, although a couple of times I have inadvertently achieved a domination win. Given my modifications, I suspect that I could achieve a 100K culture win as well. I probably would have to build more cities than I would normally like to do to increase the culture production per turn.

As I play archipelago and continent maps, all of my offensives against the AI require amphibious landing, for which I do careful planning. Attacking before the availability of transports is difficult but I have been successful at doing it. Transports definitely make moving armies much easier. I willingly concede that running a war consumes a massive amount of time, verses driving directly to the Star Ship. I do it to test unit mods to determine correct combat values. I have modded to get both corruption and pollution under reasonable control, with pretty good success.

Eventually, I will post one of my thoroughly modded games for any and all to study, criticize, denounce, fulminate against, and perhaps, just perhaps play.I I first need to produce a PDF giving all of the various changes, as they are quite extensive and extend throughout much of the game. I am not sure if I will include my Carthaginian War Elephants as the Carthage unique unit, also the Greek Successor States War Elephants. I would like a better leader head for Greece than the Macedonian drunkard, similarly with the Scandanavians/Vikings, and the Dutch. I do not think that I would attempt to try to replace the leaderheads however.

@ OP No impact on future flips to my knowledge.

But I usually find that cities that flipped to me are satisfied...after all they flipped to me so no need to starve them.

I usually starve newly conquered cities to prevent unrest.

You certainly don't seem to lack focus timerover51.

timerover51 said:

I would like a better leader head for Greece than the Macedonian drunkard, similarly with the Scandanavians/Vikings, and the Dutch. I do not think that I would attempt to try to replace the leaderheads however.

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Leaderheads are really quite easy to change over.

it's more fussy than difficult.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=172277

That link will give you a whole bunch to choose from.

Love those LH's