GOTM Techniques, Cheats, Rules & Discussion Thread

[Ace]

The idea behind the "airbase disallowed" rule was that one got way more benefits from an airbase than Sid intended. I.e., an airbase gives roads/railroads, farmland as well as an actually airbase, and, as the airbase magic table shows, one gets food/shields from some terreign types that are more than intended. The rule is not intended to ban airbases, completely, just to stop players from using them to: 1) do stuff not normally available, like irrigating a mountain, and 2) building an airbase instead of RR, irrigation or mining a hill. Its much quicker to just build an airbase rather than spending the engineer time to do the usual work.

You can build any airbases you want, as long as they are used as a legit airbase to project airpower. Putting airbases on top of every mtn just to get an extra food (as well as a free RR), is not allowed. Likewise, mining a hill, than putting in an airbase just to get the extra food is not allowed.

IIRC, the purpose of the rule was to "disallow" the extras that were available according to the "airbase magic table". That said, unless one is trying to get a high score landing game ending in 2020, the airbase trick is not of much use in regular game play.

 

[HangingChadDad]

Has anyone duplicated the "Paulicy" on some other site? I note that all links to it yield redirects. I assume he has allowed the site to revert. I did do searches to find valid links. If I missed it, I'm sorry.

 

[SlowThinker]

Has anyone duplicated the "Paulicy" on some other site? I note that all links to it yield redirects. I assume he has allowed the site to revert. I did do searches to find valid links. If I missed it, I'm sorry.

It's from my HDD:

 

[HangingChadDad]

Thanks kindly for your prompt response.. and for providing others a link that is "here and now"

 

[Magic_gorter]

I want to discuss some weard things that happened to me and other players of GOTM 107 and how we should deal with it.

The following did happen:
A. while having Marco Polo the last civ was destroyed. Normally the game should end but didn't. There was no new civ mentioned looking with F3. This way it is not possible to "find" the civ with help of Marco Polo...only to search the entire map. This look like a bug in civ2 which do not happen much.
B. while having Marco Polo the only settler (no cities) was bribed instead of destroyed. Looking at F3 the civ is still alive without any unit.

For problem A I think we should allow to reload and attack again.
For problem B I want to know if others have experienced the same and an opinion how to deal with it.

Please reactions....

 

[Peaster]

Problem A occured in my game, but not with the last civ, and I didn't notice it immediately. During normal troop movement, I discovered a Settler from a civ which was not on the F3 screen. This was several turns after the attack that [probably] created that Zombie-Settler, so it would've been hard to replay that attack. Not sure I even saved that turn.

Unless others report similar experiences, it may be simplest to just ignore what seems to be a very rare bug. Or, we could agree that the game ends when there are no civs left on the F3 screen [I think the program would end then anyway, even with the Settler, I but didn't test this in my game].

BTW - the Zombie Settler did not seem able to move. After 2 turns, I killed it with a crusader, which was injured in the fight. As far as I can tell, some parts of the program recognize the Settler is there, and some parts don't.


I have not seen Problem B in my games. But am curious - how did the player know that the civ had no other units, such as a 2nd settler on another continent, for example ? Did he try to make contact thru Marco, and get an AI map, for example ?

 

[Magic_gorter]

Problem B is happened to me. I wanted to know if it's possible to bribe the last unit instead of destroying because my score would be lower (peace score).

This is what happened. The game I played was GOTM 107...The orange civ respawned....I changed maps with help of Marco Polo/United Nations. The unit was very close to my units (they surrounded the settler so it couldn't move because of the ZOC). I let the settler alive until all other civ's were down. In the original game I destroyed it to be sure I won. After that I reloaded the final save and bribed the unit. I don't remember if I got the message that the civ was destroyed but when pressing F3 the same civ was on the list. So I tried to get the map but could not find any unit (there was hardly any room for a respawn. Perhaps some 1 tile islands.....
I did not yet tried to find the civ with the cheat mode on...I will try that as soon as I have time....

 

[Peaster]

Sometimes I get an AI map via Marco, but don't notice at first that it has respawned in TWO separate locations. I thought this may have happened in Example B, but from your post it sounds like something else. Did you finish your turn after the bribery ? If so, did the game end ?

 

[Magic_gorter]

I just tried it again. And surprise surprise this time after finishing the turn the game did end.
I now doubt if I did end my turn but I'm pretty sure I did......Looks like another rare bug.?

 

[SlowThinker]

By a request, I am sending the DaveV's ICS strategy:

 

[Hoffmann]

By a request, I am sending the DaveV's ICS strategy:

Thanks for the effort!

I tried downloading the .7z file and decompressed it with Stuffit. That gave me a bunch of .tmp files of which I was able to access three with my windows internet explorer. This gave me three nice looking graphic images, but no text. Bottom line, no ICS strategy guide for me yet.

Is it possible to upload the ICS guide in another format? PDF, HTML, or whatever...

 

[SlowThinker]

Is it possible to upload the ICS guide in another format? PDF, HTML, or whatever...

It is not possible, since it is not a single file.
Open .7z with this: http://www.7-zip.org/

 

[Hoffmann]

Thanks much Slow Thinker,

That really did the trick!

 

[Catwalk]

Ah, didn't know the rules were that generous. I'm (almost) not cheating then

I notice that using <nil> caravans seems to be legal. Is this really the case? Why is this not considered an exploit? Seems to me like it bypasses an integral part of the game design, limiting how many caravans you can send at any one time. If it is indeed legal, I'm certainly going to make generous use of it in this game!

 

[Ali Ardavan]

As far as I remember in certain versions of the Multiplayer Civ2 you can get <nil> caravans. I believe they are considered a bug and not legit. It is certainly impossible to get them in the single player version and since all our games are supposed to be playable in that version any significant departure from that is not allowed. Perhaps you need to upgrade your version with a patch. Others who are more knowledgeable about the subject can tell you which patch to use.

 

[Catwalk]

Yeah, it's not working for me Was difficult to look up information about it, may be a good idea to clarify it in the rules thread.

 

[grigor]

You get <nil> caravans when you bribe them from the AI when they are closer to an AI city than one of your own.

 

[Peaster]

What is a "<nil> caravan" anyway? Grigor is guessing it is what we usually call a "NONE" unit, eg one that is not supported by any city. AFAIK these are legal, as long as you don't home them (and even that might be legal, since the rule probably refers "REhoming" vans ... not sure).

Also, I wonder how the game treats those wrt bonuses ? IIRC this came up in an old PBEM, but I forget the answer .... IIRC it computes distances (and ongoing benefits) based on the original home city (an AI city in this case), but it computes foreign/domestic based on the current owner. IMO these vans are rare, and would be hard to exploit in a GOTM. I wouldn't object to people using them.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

<nil> is definitely different from None. I recall seeing a discussion about it years ago in the forums. Under some circumstances when playing multiplayer Civ2, a city that has no commodity caravans left can produce a <nil> caravan. Since my Civ2 version is single player, I have never run into this, nor did I have a method for testing it at the time. I recall vaguely that this is a bug which was fixed in the later versions.

 

[Catwalk]

Yeah, I was referring to the MP exploit. I didn't know it was MP only, saw it referenced in the rules thread. Back to the drawing board...