Caravan/Freight strategies?

[Rosicrucian]

How do you keep track of your caravans and freight? Say you have 10 caravans at once, how do you keep track of them?

Also, once you produce a caravan, you can view the supply and demand lists. However you can not look at your map to see where cities are - how do you make sure a city is accessible (i.e. not on a different continent, if you have no trireme)

 

[Alan_Nicoll]

Rosicrucian sez:
How do you keep track of your caravans and freight? Say you have 10 caravans at once, how do you keep track of them?

I keep track by writing on a piece of paper: Gold: Berlin (i.e., stuff it's carrying, and destination). Works for me.

 

[greenie]

personally I try not to have too many running in the game at one time, hence not to lose ttrack of them. But the easy way to do it is to make sure you have railroads, so any caravans can get to where they're going in one turn, as a quick as possible.

You have to remember that the Freight are also quite good explorers for you in the middle game, and will only be attacked if someone is really pissed at you.

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- Greenie

" Let us take by
cunning what we would
take by force"

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

When I am playing and have a lot going on I actually, dare I say it, take notes....

If it gets really confusing in games where there are lots of cities I will open up a spreadsheet and list out who has what and where they are going.

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Thanks,

Ray

 

[duke o' york]

I tend to write down a list of my cities, with their demands and supplies so that I can make quick reference for trading. Unless I'm building a wonder with them, I'll only send one caravan out per city and note what it contains and its destination by the city on my sheet. Once it has arrived, I'll amend the sheet to note which city has a route with which and so avoid duplicating routes. This really only works in the early game, as with over 100 cities I'd get very bored of writing out all the details, but by then I'm so strong that it won't matter so much. I only use it to get a huge boost in the ancient and medieval stages. I would use a computer to keep track like my fellow duke, but I like pen and paper more.

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in vino veritas

 

[starlifter]

After corporation, my numbers of Freight steadily increase until the SS landing. Typically, I'll have 10-50 freight in transit, in position, or ready to deliver (this may well bump 200 in a large post-stealth, peaceful world). Your objective should be to keep from getting overwhelmed.

Personally, I don't like taking notes, so I think its best just to develop a system geared to making specific freight trade get to the best cities. I use patterns of sleep and fortification to determine what a specific freight should do. For example, if I get a silver caravan sent across the world, and it is waiting outside it's destination city for delivery, but it is not needed on this turn because the science would be wasted (a very common scenario every turn after flight)... I fortify it just outside the city. A few turns later, when I scan teh board for a caravan to deliver to get that science up to the 99% mark again, any fortified caravans are readily identified. Double check before you blindly deliver, though, because sometimes the demanded commodity will change.

It is important to get demanded cargo to the most distant, proper city that is using all available trade squares. If you do this, many of your freight will deliver over 2,000 (and some can peak over 4,000).... and that is for a single freight after Flight. Undemanded freight is more like 400 to 800. Money is no object after flight, and almost all improvements can be RB'd or PRB'd. There is almost no need for science production (maybe 15 or 20 beakers... a couple scientists will do), and 70% taxes can be set, yet still make one advance per turn.

Set your taxes down to 30%, science up to 40%... and you should have two advances per turn, particularly if you keep gifting the purple civ with tech (assuming your power is supreme). Keep the purple beaten down and isolated from everyone else... for that matter, keep everyone isolated as much as possible!

 

[allan]

What's the deal with the purple civ (Sioux, Indian, or Mongol)? Just wondering.... some quirk in the program? How does giving them techs (or anyone) without exchange benefit you?

 

[Alan_Nicoll]

Starlifter sez:

After corporation, my numbers of Freight steadily increase until the SS landing. Typically, I'll have 10-50 freight in transit
...

Don't get out much?

 

[BlueMonday]

I split my caravans into two groups. One group is the low priority domestic caravans that I use for wonder building (usually low demand items like wool, gold, salt) and I "store" them in a location near my larger cities so that when I start a wonder, it's quickly built. By "store" I mean that I just have them sleep on a roaded hill or fortress.

In the early game, all my high priority caravans (high demand items like Dye, Spice, Copper) I send to overseas civilizations. When moving them I organize them into convoys of size appropriate for the transport of the era and "store" them near the seacoast where transport ships will come by easily. For example I'll say to myself: this group of four next to Rome is going to get on this Galleon and sail to Russia. Later on I develop more domestic trade as my cities grow bigger and trade amongst my own is quicker, easier, and more lucrative. Since Domstic trade usually starts up just as railroads are built I don't bother grouping them; as they're built, they're transported.

If you know that a civ out there has a city that demands a certain commodity that you have but you don't know where the city is, send it on over. Caravans are quite valuable as explorers since the enemy can't tell them to go away and they ignore the ZOC

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[starlifter]

posted June 27, 2001 05:38 AM

What's the deal with the purple civ (Sioux, Indian, or Mongol)? Just wondering.... some quirk in the program? How does giving them techs (or anyone) without exchange benefit you?

It is my understanding someone has actually discovered a great deal of detail about what I personally have termed the "reference civilization" that Civ II uses for relative comparison during the game. The reference Civ is used by Civ II to keep a certain game balance.

Assuming the human's power is "Supreme", it is my experience the reference civ is Purple. If in doubt, just liberally "gift" all civs in order to accelerate the entire game. Personally, I will not gift the immediate advances that lead to Flight before I'm ready for Flight myself (defense and Colossus are considerations). Ditto for powerful nations and The Bomb. By flight, I'm normally making one advance per day anyway, with some days of 0 science if gold is needed for something like bribing cities or rush building (and I can't make/deliver freight for some reason).

Perhaps one of the veteran Civ players can point the way to the phenomena I'm talking about... I plan to find those threads myself soon, so I can see the exact details too.

But my personal "general" rule is to reduce the cost of science and accelerate the game, gift techs (with a few notable holdbacks until I'm ready) to the Purple if your power is supreme, and to the white if you're the biggest woosie. If in doubt, or confused, gift to all. The drop in beaker cost for an advance can be AMAZING (use trade advisor to compute accurate cost).

 

[allan]

The cost of your own next advance will DROP if you give a tech to someone? I didn't know that. Said nothing about that in the manual, and usually they ask "rudely" (offering no gold or tech in return), so I tell them to f*ck off (in so many words)....

Any tips about manipulating diplomacy better? Seems once you're supreme EVERYBODY despises you, even your old allies whose arses you saved a few times.... So I tend to play the isolationist these days, knowing allies can turn on you viciously. But is there a better way to use diplomacy than that, given the limited scope it has in CivII (I understand the upcoming CivIII will have more stimulating diplomacy, BTW)?

 

[allan]

BTW, who's the "reference civ" if you're playing purple (I often play the Sioux from time to time)?

 

[starlifter]

BTW, who's the "reference civ" if you're playing purple (I often play the Sioux from time to time)?

You are the ref civ... which means you will not experience a fluctuation in research cost based on how far ahead/behind the other civs are. No benefit to gift the AI civs in that case.

Yesterday, somemone referred to a link to another site, where they have a "Great Library", and in it there is a much more detailed analysis of this subject. Their term for the Ref Civ is "the Key Civ", and here is the link:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001828.html?17

(Be warned that this apolyton site is very very slow at times... I can't even get that page up right now)

 

[starlifter]

Any tips about manipulating diplomacy better?

Once you are supreme, diplomacy will not be as advantageous for you. Look at they AI attitude to you before contacting them, and you can pretty much predict their response.

Tech gifting can make an AI worshipful of you, but the following turn they will plummet all the way back to hostile again. Seems they don't want to remember that you gifted them everything from Navigation to Stealth the turn before, LOL

The UN can force cease-fires or peace, if that is your goal. The AI may not respect them for long though, even if your record is spotless (I always keep a spotless record, simply to allow a more entertaining game).

There is simply not going to be long-term peace if you are supreme and the AI is capable of making military units. But you can "force" peace with a pet city if you stop growth/production in it. I'm doing just that to the last Viking city (size 2) in the GOTM 4 game I'm playing this week.