Can you stop an enemy spaceship if they have no Capital city?

[Kadence]

I'm playing Emperor difficulty, and the Greeks are building a spaceship (they haven't launched it yet). But, they don't have a capital city.

If I can't capture their capital, is there any way for me to stop the spaceship once they launch it? Other than capturing all their cities, which does not seem feasible as they have a large empire. Or am I just out of luck in this case?

 

[RedKi-rr]

Unfortunately, I dont know the answer. Probably capital doesn't matter forvthe Spaceship.

In general, Civ 1 is quite random. Any wonders and spaceship part are given for free to AI (with certain probability every turn) if they have the corresponding technology.

 

[tupi]

Nope, the only way to stop them in this case is to destroy them completely. If their empire is big and they have plenty of units and city improvements, they can sometimes build a new Palace when they have nothing to do. But chance for this is slim.

 

[RedKi-rr]

By the way, it is another to afraid of AIs with many cities (except preventing their landing). With many cities they construct Spaceship parts just too fast)

 

[Mize]

Short answer is 'no'. But you could theoretically delay their launch by engaging them. When they're under attack, the AI cities will tend to prioritize building units to replace lost defenders instead of spaceship parts.

 

[RedKi-rr]

Well...but is not AI get spaceship parts for free? Similar to wonders. Or may be building warriors instead of buildings they make chance of wonders/spaceship lower?

 

[Mize]

I'm not sure if they get them for free or if they rush them with cash, but a city can only build one thing at a time, so the more AI cities you attack or conquer, the less spaceship parts the AI will be able to build in the same turn.

 

[tupi]

They don't get SS parts for free, but can speed up its production at 2$ = 1 shield rate (but only if you already have some ready SS parts too). And after Robotics they set science to 0%, so they have good flow of cash (they don't pay for city improvements, after all). BTW, if you somehow give them Robotics early, when they still don't know space flight, then they will get stuck in research and will not be able to build spaceship. So, for example, when Alexander demands Robotics from you when he still have no idea about space flight yet - do it.

 

[RedKi-rr]

Thanks! Good to know it. By some reason I thought that Spaceships is free as well. But Wonders are free, right?

 

[tupi]

Thanks! Good to know it. By some reason I thought that Spaceships is free as well. But Wonders are free, right?

Usually yes, I wrote about it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-1-explained-ai-wonders.656707/
But if somehow Wonder was selected in AI city and AI finished it, then you will get newspaper message about it instead of "Travelers report:"/Foreign Minister's report and map tile with the city which completed the wonder will be discovered (but not the city itself in this tile). And it really happens sometimes, even if pretty rare. I think AI should never select to build Wonders, but it does anyway sometimes due to some bugs (maybe writing beyond array boundaries somewhere or something). (not only Wonders, but I witnessed it selected even non-existent city improvements beyond Cure for Cancer)

 

[Blake00]

If you can't get around it then I guess you could edit your savegame in JCivEd and give one of their cities a Palace and then load up your modified save in Civ1 and stomp the city haha. I'll leave it with your moral compass to decide whether that's cheating or fixing a bug.

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

I'm playing Emperor difficulty, and the Greeks are building a spaceship (they haven't launched it yet). But, they don't have a capital city.

If I can't capture their capital, is there any way for me to stop the spaceship once they launch it? Other than capturing all their cities, which does not seem feasible as they have a large empire. Or am I just out of luck in this case?

I thought every civ has its own capital.
Even when you conquer the capital, a new city is chosen for capital.
Have you checked your diplomacy advisor?

For example, in the game I'm currently playing, the Zulus launched a spaceship.
To stop that spaceship before reaching Alpha Centauri, I organized a military operation to capture their capital Zimbabwe.
The mission succeeded and as a result the Zulu empire split in two.
After the split, checking my diplomacy advisor, I've learned that the new Zulu capital is now Ulundi and the French capital (new civ which took half the Zulu cities) is now Berlin (Berlin was once founded by the Germans who were later eliminated by the Zulus).

 

[Blake00]

Empire splits don't always happen. There's some calc that compares your size to theirs to decide whether a split happens if I recall.

 

[Mize]

Yes, empires don't always split and an AI that loses its capital will often spend the rest of the game without one. But I also sometimes happen upon AI civs that have no capital but also never had it captured. The only logical conclusion I can reach is that sometimes, under certain circumstances, the AI can sell its palace. Which is actually an interesting tactic, albeit mostly only in theory. Imagine you're in the position of the typical spacefaring AI. You've just launched a space ship, and here comes another player trying to stop you by capturing your capital. You just sell your palace and give him the finger. Or maybe you're about to have your capital captured and your empire split. You can avoid the split by selling the palace. This is, however, purely theoretical, since human-controlled civs cannot be split, IIRC.

 

[tupi]

Yes, empires don't always split and an AI that loses its capital will often spend the rest of the game without one. But I also sometimes happen upon AI civs that have no capital but also never had it captured. The only logical conclusion I can reach is that sometimes, under certain circumstances, the AI can sell its palace. Which is actually an interesting tactic, albeit mostly only in theory. Imagine you're in the position of the typical spacefaring AI. You've just launched a space ship, and here comes another player trying to stop you by capturing your capital. You just sell your palace and give him the finger. Or maybe you're about to have your capital captured and your empire split. You can avoid the split by selling the palace. This is, however, purely theoretical, since human-controlled civs cannot be split, IIRC.

It can be that AI civ lost their capital and then reclaim it. Are you sure that nothing like this happened in replay? Another option: they moved their capital and then lost this city, and because you did not have an embassy at the time, you just did not even know that they moved their capital. It's rare, but at least it can happen by the game rules.

I remember that once I tried to capture Zimbabwe to stop Zulus from SS victory, but nothing happened. I reloaded an old save and their capital was NONE in diplomacy report. I'm not too sure, but I think in replay they never lost Zimbabwe. But maybe I just did not look close enough. For the time, I decided that AI actually can sell their palace under communism. Maybe their moved their capital and then lost it.

The truth is, AI never sell any buildings (if not because of bugs/memory corruption). Before I started to reverse CivDos, I actually wrote some logic for selling of city improvements in my stupid Genesis port. Because at the time, in this port AI actually paid for maintenance. But in the original game comp. player does not pay maintenance, so there's no many sense for AI to sell anything.

>since human-controlled civs cannot be split, IIRC

There's some leftover from this in exe (non-existent *SCHISM message in king.txt). So it was planned at some stage. But probably just like an idea to "start over" after your civ is destroyed, it was discarded because any player would load the old save file or start over in this case.

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

Yes, empires don't always split and an AI that loses its capital will often spend the rest of the game without one. But I also sometimes happen upon AI civs that have no capital but also never had it captured. The only logical conclusion I can reach is that sometimes, under certain circumstances, the AI can sell its palace. Which is actually an interesting tactic, albeit mostly only in theory. Imagine you're in the position of the typical spacefaring AI. You've just launched a space ship, and here comes another player trying to stop you by capturing your capital. You just sell your palace and give him the finger. Or maybe you're about to have your capital captured and your empire split. You can avoid the split by selling the palace. This is, however, purely theoretical, since human-controlled civs cannot be split, IIRC.

I see. So, this means that when there's no split, the palace is lost and the civ has no capital.
I can't remember seeing this happens but I don't check the diplomacy advisor that often so I'll keep on eye on it.

As to the tactic you're suggesting, it seems very interesting: maybe I will give it a try and next time I launch a spaceship I sell my palace and leave my capital undefended to see what happens.

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

Empire splits don't always happen. There's some calc that compares your size to theirs to decide whether a split happens if I recall.

Yes, you are right, it seems they need to have at least 8 cities, they need to be larger than your civ (I don't know how this is measured) and a vacant colour must be available.

 

[tupi]

I don't know how this is measured

4 advisors on negotiations screen aka #1 on Powergraph. You cannot easily calculate it in-game anyway (even if formula is very simple: gold/32+8*population+number of civ advances+cost of all units in shield rows), it's not like Civ IV where you can see everybody's score. Without cheating you can only see the current state of Powergraph after End of Times. So the only way to know is 4 advisors. With "Instant Advise" you also will get message "Their civ is big and strong HOWEVER etc etc" at the end of negotiation screen.

Also I can say that new capitals for both civs calculated as closest to center of their new empires (i.e. average of X and Y of all cities). It can be a pretty miserable and poor placed city. EDIT: correction: I remembered it wrong. Actually for every city sum of distances from other cities are calculated, and a city with smallest sum of distances became new capital.

 

[Mize]

The truth is, AI never sell any buildings (if not because of bugs/memory corruption). Before I started to reverse CivDos, I actually wrote some logic for selling of city improvements in my stupid Genesis port. Because at the time, in this port AI actually paid for maintenance. But in the original game comp. player does not pay maintenance, so there's no many sense for AI to sell anything.

My only viable theory is this: the AI will rush build defenders when its cities are threatened. If it has no money, and there are units about to take over one of its cites, then MAYBE the AI will sell off its buildings to buy defenders.

Yes, you are right, it seems they need to have at least 8 cities, they need to be larger than your civ (I don't know how this is measured) and a vacant colour must be available.

I've often split civs with far less than 8 cities.

 

[tupi]

I've often split civs with far less than 8 cities.

It can happen only if you double-split them at the same turn, because game updates "number of cities" variable only at the beginning of turn. (Same for barbarians from a hut: if you have 1 city, you can found new city (and even more than 1) at this turn, but you will get 3 barb. units from the hut anyway, just like if you still have 1 city). So with railroads and tanks it's feasible. I remember thread here on Civfanatics about such situation, at the end AI even did not have any cities left for a new split. I presume Powergraph place is not updated either or it would not work.