A mildly disturbing strategy

[Siegmund]

Had kind of an unpleasant experience this afternoon, which I imagine some of you may have shared.

I was playing the Americans, had a continent to myself with the Chinese on the next island over to the east within galley range. They planted a city on my island to grab some unclaimed dyes so I drove them back off my continent then invaded theirs.

They and the Indians had several large cities close together, it was getting to be a long way from my capital, and I had a lot of jungle to cut down .... so it was convenient for me to bring their unhappy big cities down to size 1 or 2 by pop rushing workers. This war dragged on for a good 20 turns while I conquered 6 Chinese cities.

It got to be sort of a mechanical ritual with two galleys doing ferry service between Nanking and Buffalo: swordsmen east to kill more of Chinese, slaves west to be put to work cutting down my 100 squares of jungle and then popping temples in new small towns.

I quit having fun when I realized just how much the whole "armies east, slave labor west to be used and then disposed of so they don't cause unrest" reminded me of Poland and the Ukraine in the early 1940s. I guess I am supposed to say it's just a game and pat myself on the back for extracting maximum value out of a civilization that was otherwise useless to me ... but it gave me just a little bit TOO much insight into the "was Hitler a coldly calculation genius or just a raving lunatic or both" debate.

Let me be very clear, that I *don't* want this to be a thread about WWII - that can stay on the History forum. I just wondered if others have found the same thing happening in their Civ games / if there are certain strategies you know work but deliberatedly avoid using / if there are other episodes of history that you've found yourself seeing in a new light after playing Civ.

 

[bladester]

I just treat it as a game i.e. not real and go from there.

If I thought like that I would find myself not attacking anything, not playing anymore FPS, no more trading workers etc...

I would probably be stuck with educational games if I thought that way

 

[Akka]

Well, if you talk about things I have trouble to do just because I feel them "bad", I could say that I have an EXTREMELY hard time to decide to attack a rival without provocation.
Or I'm reluctant to pop-rush anything.
Or to finish a poor, weak civ.

 

[Brewster]

The main reason I play games is for the total escape from reality. In the past few months I have been a spy (DeusEx), a rampaging killing machine (Unreal Tourny), an aspiring golf course designer and landscaper (SimGolf), and both a mild mannered diplomat and blood thirsty tyrant (Civ3). These games give you the chance to leave reality and try things that are both illegal and immoral (Vice City).

Just try not to let the games interfere with everyday life (Everquest).

 

[Park Ranger]

Siegmund, I know exactly the feeling you describe. This game is pretty immersive, and evey once in a while it will cause a double take and you find yourself thinking about Hitler or Stalin or Idi Amin.

Anyway one of my first games I got lured into a nuclear war with the English (think I was Persia). Egypt joined in, and then I bowed out and watched Egypt and England nuke each other relentlessly until their cities were all pop 1 and global warming was converting several tiles a turn. I got slightly queasy thinking about the way my "world" had gone.....

I also tease my GF when I catch her using AI-like war strategies of attrition, or being careless and leaving her cavalry undefended in the open...call her "General Haig" and stuff like that, but she's seemingly more immune to the immersive aspects than I am.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Park Ranger
Siegmund, I know exactly the feeling you describe. This game is pretty immersive, and evey once in a while it will cause a double take and you find yourself thinking about Hitler or Stalin or Idi Amin.

Anyway one of my first games I got lured into a nuclear war with the English (think I was Persia). Egypt joined in, and then I bowed out and watched Egypt and England nuke each other relentlessly until their cities were all pop 1 and global warming was converting several tiles a turn. I got slightly queasy thinking about the way my "world" had gone.....

I also tease my GF when I catch her using AI-like war strategies of attrition, or being careless and leaving her cavalry undefended in the open...call her "General Haig" and stuff like that, but she's seemingly more immune to the immersive aspects than I am.

That's because us women know it's just a game, and can treat it like a story.

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by Chieftess


That's because us women know it's just a game, and can treat it like a story.

Just you women, Chieftess?

 

[Moulton]

In a recent campaign, playing Japan on a real world map, I set out to conquer the world, thinking historical patterns, but not really attempting to follow any particular pattern.. Took Chna, then India, moving east...
By the time I got to Babalonia, I owned about 1/3 of the world. They were still quite small and underpowered, but his tech was not far behind mine. I posted a few tanks on his border and demanded a tech I did not have... he said something like "I would not give your worthless civilization the time of day."

I could not help but think of the Desert Storm affair 12 years ago -- when Saddam Hussein said to the rest of the world, "Come on and try.. we are ready for you, and will show you how to fight..."

I realize this is a world wide forum, and mean no disrespect for the Iraqi people.

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Akka
..... I have an EXTREMELY hard time to decide to attack a rival without provocation. ....

Same here. I prefer to force the other side to delcare war initially.

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by Chieftess


That's because us women know it's just a game, and can treat it like a story.

No no, that's just because women are inherently evil and do not mind to use others to attain their goals

Same here. I prefer to force the other side to delcare war initially.

That's what I do, but even here I feel a bit guilty, because I know that I'm the initial agressor, just trying to be manipulative ^^

 

[Sukenis]

Personally, I raze cities (or pop rush workers) and have them work until the war is over. I then join them into cities ( that aresafe from flipping). Kinda of like a "relocation" plan. I find this works well with cities that are in the tundra and rely on the sea to grow (and thus grow REAL slow). Keep an extra unit of two stationed there to help prevent an unexpected flip and wait for the new citizen to assimilate.

This works even better if you plan to wipe out a civ completely. That pretty much nigates the flip problem.

 

[Quandary]

I got used to wiping out other, previously friendly, Civs just for their land, but at first I hated the concept as well.

I don't need to worry about "slaves". I play, always, an industrious Civ so I'm rarely going to use captured workers that take twice the time to do everything.

Civ 3 (I passed on Civ 2) is no doubt far too combat oriented for many of us, though. If you want a good score, not just a weak "win", you're going to have to take down other Civs.

It's been a long time since I played Civ 1, but it seems to me I could get very respectable scores without ever engaging in a war in that one. That could just be "convienient memory", but I almost never went to war in Civ 1.

 

[Dark Yoda]

combat oriented? nope, the only military way i've won is by domination and that was only once. i've won it diplomatically, space race and cultural. civ2 was far more military oriented than civ3.

 

[JoseM]

Originally posted by Siegmund
Had kind of an unpleasant experience this afternoon, which I imagine some of you may have shared.

I was playing the Americans, had a continent to myself with the Chinese on the next island over to the east within galley range. They planted a city on my island to grab some unclaimed dyes so I drove them back off my continent then invaded theirs.

They and the Indians had several large cities close together, it was getting to be a long way from my capital, and I had a lot of jungle to cut down .... so it was convenient for me to bring their unhappy big cities down to size 1 or 2 by pop rushing workers. This war dragged on for a good 20 turns while I conquered 6 Chinese cities.

It got to be sort of a mechanical ritual with two galleys doing ferry service between Nanking and Buffalo: swordsmen east to kill more of Chinese, slaves west to be put to work cutting down my 100 squares of jungle and then popping temples in new small towns.

I quit having fun when I realized just how much the whole "armies east, slave labor west to be used and then disposed of so they don't cause unrest" reminded me of Poland and the Ukraine in the early 1940s. I guess I am supposed to say it's just a game and pat myself on the back for extracting maximum value out of a civilization that was otherwise useless to me ... but it gave me just a little bit TOO much insight into the "was Hitler a coldly calculation genius or just a raving lunatic or both" debate.

Let me be very clear, that I *don't* want this to be a thread about WWII - that can stay on the History forum. I just wondered if others have found the same thing happening in their Civ games / if there are certain strategies you know work but deliberatedly avoid using / if there are other episodes of history that you've found yourself seeing in a new light after playing Civ.

Sometimes I build cities in hills sorrounded by hills and mountains and i make mines in all the hills/mountains and make the city size 20 by adding workers each turn, although i know they will starve, i just keep adding workers each turn... with a sized 20 city sorrounded by mined hills and mountains you can have a 100+ production city.

 

[Moulton]

Originally posted by Quandary
I got used to wiping out other, previously friendly, Civs just for their land, but at first I hated the concept as well.

It is not 'wiping out a civ' -- think liberationg good people from a worthless civilzation...

 

[BigBirdZ28]

#1. Remember it's a game, just like when u r the bank in monopoly & you steal for your own gains !

#2. Play it all the ways ! The good guy who would never harm an innocent sole, the brutal dictator that starves out his own cities instead of paying from his own pocket, the efficient burrecrat who cuts people down ONLY if it there is a profitable advantage, etc...

pick a strategy & play it out !

alternatively you could start out in the ancient times as a brutal despotic chief & with each new age you conform to more humanitarian ideals.

 

[Hygro]

OK listen up.

That terrible slave trade was under the American despotism.

TIME FOR REVOLUTION. Just switch governments, and give back or assimilate the slaves

 

[Strikefang]

I never lose sight of my goals, and I do all I need to to achieve those goals. If that means I have to ruthlessly plow through every other civ, destroying them city by city without mercy and forcing slaves to work on the terrain and everything, thats what I do, and without remourse. More often than not, the AI does the same to me. I do not however pop rush, ever. I either raze the city or put it to use, I never kill citizens to complete any improvement.

I dunno, maybe I'm just an evil warmongering civer, or maybe, I just don't want to let Germanys military trait go to waste.

 

[itsa95thing]

I think as otheres have mentioned it just depends on how you look at the game. i usualy just pick a way to be either agressive, or very non war and go with that.

 

[Richard III]

Sure, Siegmund, I feel exactly the same way. One of my very first posts on CFC was about a game of CivII I was playing while waiting for CivIII to come out; in that game, I was desperate to end a savage war with the Japanese, and so dropped a nuke on a few of their cities without thinking about it, only to then realize that the final target had been Nagasaki. Stopped at that point. Also was a little chilled in one of my first CivIII games by the fact that some frigate/ironclad-borne shellfire of mine was destroying 2,000 year old temples and libraries, making me think of the Serbian shelling of Dubrovnik - and act of pointless vandalism comparable to the shelling I was conducting at the time.

I am really brutal about wiping out Civ populations if I'm really steamed at them, but on occasion if it gets really brutal, I do find myself wondering just what it is I'm supposed to be "simulating."

R.III