3 more questions

[sabo]

geeez the more I play this game the more questions I have, thanks everyone for being so patient with me

1. If I put a fortress around a strategic resource on my coast, like say coal. Will it protect it from AI's ship bombardment

2. When one of my units is automatically moving, what's the preference I need to set to stop upon reaching an enemy unit. I have "Cancel orders for enemy combat unit" selected but my guys still fly right by him and I can't even take a shot at him.

3. And this is the biggie, AI took one of my cities on an island 2 squares from my coast, that was the only city he controlled within 1000 miles. I loaded up a Galleon 5 squares away from that city. I moved it to within 2 squares of said city and within his line of site. I thought "No problem, hows he gonna know it's loaded with calvary?" Well as you veterans probably already know, out comes a frigate to sink my Galleon from the city he stole from me, well I survived that attack but then he sends out an Ironclad to finish me off. Wierd things have happened like this before so I decided to try an experiment. I reloaded that turn but THIS time I put the Galleon 4 squares away, out of his line of site and positioned to invade next turn and much to my expectations he found me again!! HOw is this possible?? I didn't try it again cuz like I said, things like this have happened before. Luckily I survived the Frigate and Ironclad this time around or I"d probably throw my PC out the window. I'd love to see the source code for this game

REM Disregard Fog of war
IF ENEMY-UNIT WITHIN REACH
DEL ENEMY-UNIT

a little Basic, COBOL, and DOS batch language mixed together but you get the picture

I can understand the AI giving itself alittle help cuz lets face it, it don't think like a human and sometimes it ain't too bright. But I think random meetings with the enemy should be just that, random. Please don't tell me that yes the computer cheats and it knows where all my units are all the time regardless of fog-of-war, if that's the case it will take alot of fun out of playing this game for me.

Sabo <<-- my initials, Scott Allen Bowman

 

[sabo]

Say it ain't so Joe!!!! no one is responding to my post. Does that mean my worst fears have been realized??

ps... if it's a secret you can email me @ sabo10@yahoo.com

 

[BCLG100]

you did only start the thread a few hours ago maybe there havnt been many visitors too the site or maybe they dont no how to reply to your post

in answer to your question 1 if you put a fortress round a resource when a ship bombards it will destroy the fortress then destroy any roads to it unless the bombing fails in which case it wont do anythin

 

[sabo]

Ok thanks, that's useful. Can anyone answer 2 and 3?

 

[TheDS]

4) Do you live on this board? I don't. I some times even don't log onto the whole INTERNET for days at a time (though it gives me the shakes when I do).

2) Your setting is correct. Perhaps you're not at war with those particular enemies? Set the "Cancel orders on Friendly units" too, just for fun. And if that still isn't working for you, then you might have to not use auto-move so much. (And make sure you're running the latest patch.)

3) It COULD be dumb luck. Surely you have stumbled into fortuitous circumstances before... If you used a small invasion fleet to take an enemy island, wouldn't your forces still be in the area a few turns later, waiting for reinforcements or the next boatload of troops for the next invasion? So it's no big deal.

What worries ME is that your galleon survived both a frigate and an ironclad. I think you should throw your computer out, because it is obviously cheating you out of a fair game.

Chances are, the AI doesn't experience fog of war. It sees your subs just fine, so why should we expect the rules to be followed? I mean, come on! Empire never had this problem, and that was what? 12 years ago? I guess we lose the things we take for granted as being reasonable.

WAITAMINUTE! I'm going offf on a rant. Don't wanna be like Zouave. I like this game, mostly. I like the idea of Culture and borders. Zouave and I are nothing alike.... well, we're both smart asses.

 

[sabo]

No... I dont live on this board, but I have "always on" connection, DSL so it's not hard from me to hit my windows key on my keyboard and pop over here when I have a quesion.. I hate to admit though, I've just been playing CIV III about a month I HAVE been living playing the game alot cuz it's still new to me. "can anyone relate?" now God ... Empire, boy did you bring some memories back. I can't believe I was so addicted to a game whose sound effects sounded like a mini-lawnmower, and it for me at the time was black and white CGA graphics and all it was was a bunch of x's and o's bumping in to each other. ANd then look at this game, we've come a long way baby, by the way I'm using patch 121f, is that the right one? Is there a better one out there?

 

[bobgote]

1)No doesn't protect from ship bombardment, only direct land unit attack.

2)In my games, my unit will stop only if the enemy unit is in its path. I don't usually send my units off on un-reconned missions tho, for long sojourns, i move one square at a time. (or use "j" and move within my line of sight. As long as you have a fair number of units together they should be safe anyway.

3)This is probably just luck, the AI has fog of war restrictions like you and me. I have noticed that when you reload (not that I do it anymore) that things seem to happen the same way anyhow. To avoid your "they sunk my galleon" problem, DON'T SEND THEM OUT UNESCORTED!!!1 simple solution that saves a lot of heartache. And to remove fog of war would mean that you don't need tactics at all. This is what intelligence and reconnaisance are about!

 

[sabo]

You move all your units manually? HOw can you do that. If I have 200 units there is no way I'd remember what I wanted each one to do from turn to turn i.e. reinforce a city or something like that. I'll forget which city I'm going to or even what I wanted him to do the last turn.

 

[joycem10]

hate to disagree with you guys, but the AI knows the location of all units at all time. your units, barbarian units and barbarian camps.

if you dont believe me try this. next time you are at war leave a city that is a little back from your borders undefended. watch the AI relelntlessly moves his forces thru your territory towards the undefended city. then move forces back into that city and leave a different one undefended. the AI will now focus attention on the now undefended city.

or watch the AI move forces towards a barbarian camp of which it could not have had knowledge.

if you know about this you can exploit it. atilliary comes to mind rather forcefully. but keep this in mind when it comes to things like undefended ships and paratroops/helicopters.

sabo10 - there are a number of threads on the general discussion board explaining this phenomenon

 

[pills]

I can attest to the AI knowing your defenses. I took over three French cities with a large amount of cossacks They had a stack of ~50 infantry/riflemen/musketeer in my territory that they moved towards the weakest defended of those three. I moved a large amount of Cossacks to that city... and then the AI moved towards what was then the least defended city. It was a really easy way to keep the majority of their forces under control while I took the rest of their territory.

I was cutting down any stragglers, so the AI should not have been able to see what was coming into my cities from the positions of the troops.

 

[mauiduck]

yea, the AI knows your defenses and they know where your subs are too even without the AEGIS. In my latest game the Indians declared war on me for my antics in the Far East and the first thing they did was attack my subs even though they are not supposed to see 'em. And like I said in another post I have seen the AI build roads to Uranium when they are waaaay far from having the tech to supposedly see the resource in question. I also capture some key AI cities early in the game because 9 time out of 10 they are sitting in the primo spot where a lot of advanced strategic resources will pop up later on.

 

[sabo]

So I guess my next game I'll leave a city unguarded say on the south end of a bottleneck lined with Mountains, I'll load mountains with Arty and bombers in the surrounding cities... don't you guys agree that this is probably a good reason the AI should not cheat, cuz it can be exploited and we are smarter than the AI. Oh well back to the game

 

[bobgote]

Ok, you have a way of finding their least defended cities too. It's called ESPIONAGE. And I have never found that they attack my subs. Only once have they ever hit a square where i had a sub. Play smart, find out where your enemy is before you attack. The AI does so you should too.

(EDIT):

Originally posted by sabo10
You move all your units manually? HOw can you do that. If I have 200 units there is no way I'd remember what I wanted each one to do from turn to turn i.e. reinforce a city or something like that. I'll forget which city I'm going to or even what I wanted him to do the last turn.

I don't move them all manually. You can use the Go or Stack Go moves to reinforce things in your own empire, that's ok. But if you're venturing out in to uncharted territory, take it easy. Recon if you have fighters, otherwise send one fast unit ahead to see if it's all clear. Then stack-move ("j" if you didn't know) the rest of your units the space of one turn. You don't forget where your war host is going. Micromanagement is sometimes hard, but just this level is not.

Just a question, not a criticism... how long have you played, what difficulty do you play at, and how much/long have you used this forum?

 

[sabo]

bobgote
To answer your questions
1. One month (civ II about a year)
2. I move up one level each successful game, Im a regent now and I like large map
3. 3 weeks

any tips or suggestions, I'm wide open... thanks

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by sabo10
by the way I'm using patch 121f, is that the right one? Is there a better one out there?

Not yet. There's a new one coming out soon though, possibly by the end of the month.

 

[bobgote]

ok, cool sabo.

Anyway that micromanagement stuff like having no governers, and no automated workers is stuff I do at the start of the game, but soon fall out and just automate everything. I could get a bit more production and stuff if i did it myself but i want the larger game to go quicker .

Anyway, try the reconnaisance and see how you go, this scouting stuff makes the game more realistic, so i don't want you to get unhappy cos of the fog of war .

I never knew about the stack move thing before, I didn't see it in my manual and i don't know if it's there, but now i use it religiously. It's handy for escorts for artillery and stuff like that too.

Regent is a good level to experiment with playing styles. It's not so easy you can do it in your sleep, and not so hard that you have to fight for survival every turn. I'm on monarch now, and it's a lot more challenging. instead of dominating from the start, i had to work myself into contention. I'm using standard map cos of the time factor, but i like huge maps best, with all civs involved.

 

[TheDS]

quote:
No... I dont live on this board, but I have "always on" connection, DSL so it's not hard from me to hit my windows key on my keyboard and pop over here when I have a quesion..
:unquote

I was just whining because I always see some one post a desperate request, and then there's two or three more messages, seperated by only a few minutes, wondering why no one has paid any attention to their question. Many experienced people will wait at least a day between posting and expecting a reply.

Wow, I mentioned Zouave and he didn't come a runnin to see what was the matter! He must be slacking....

I play on huge maps, with 16 civs, and a game takes most of a month to play, at several hours a day. I don't trust my city governors, and rarely trust the worker's auto-improve (usually too many things I need done to waste time on that). I like the path-finding; it's good nearly all the time, so I often use that, but when enemies are near or I'm hunting, I manually move. You can sail right by stuff you want to attack otherwise.

I have played Regent several times, cuz I like a fair game, but I bumped it up a level to see if I could cope with the minor AI bonuses. SO far, I'm okay, but I got rid of my good computer (1300 MHz) and to try playing on this one (450 MHz) would require about 5-10 minutes to process late turns, so I haven't played for a month. When I get my new one (months from now?) I'll lock myself in my room for a couple weeks and use the game as a weight loss program (get so occupied with the game that I starve myself thin).

 

[Maple]

Don't throw your PC out of the window, it mite break.

Always use escorts for transports.