Cheats, Tips, Strategies, And more

[Unexpected]

I have a small, probably obvious, tip when trading, just before you move the caravan into the city, go to it's home city and rearrange the workers so as to maximise trade, do the same with the recieving city if it's yours too. This gives a bigger one-time payoff= more gold and more beakers . You can then just rearrange the workers back.

 

[mangor420]

thank you i never heard that before will try next game

 

[ElephantU]

Related tip: if you want to "set things back" quickly, in the City Screen click the city center square first, then rearrange workers as necessary. Clicking the center square arranges things as the AI does, emphasizing Food first, then Shields and Trade last, the opposite of the way you arrange it for caravan delivery.

And don't put off the re-arrangement; do it right after delivery or you will forget.

 

[mangor420]

thanks elephant i was in philly once saw bob dylan at temple u.and phillys at the vet. from what i saw a tough town ,second light turns green people behind you start honking

 

[MightiestEd]

Originally posted by ElephantU
Clicking the center square arranges things as the AI does, emphasizing Food first, then Shields and Trade last, the opposite of the way you arrange it for caravan delivery.

Yeah i really hate it when the AI automatically puts your workers on a 2 food square when your city grows. It looks so unproductive!! I've also noticed the AI also automatically puts workers on squares closest to your city, even if they are less productive!

Does anyone know if the extra workers from growth are added on the turn of growth or the following turn? Just curious really but worth knowing methinks.

 

[Old n Slow]

Food box fills, next turn growth.

Or with Rep/Dem, city makes something, (offer to open the city window, play around, etc.) growth occurs -- you can watch the size change as the last item in the city process activity.

 

[Mr. Guy]

In tot, if u select a unit and then select a city and scroll between cities in the city view to a city on a different planet, u can send it to that different planet even if it's not supposed to be able to go there. I find this VERY useful for dreadnoughts

 

[MightiestEd]

lol i today realised it's never a good idea to transform forest. It takes about 8 turns longer than irrigating the forest and then transforming the plains afterwards. In addition you can road or irrigate the terrain earlier seeing as getting extra food/trade was your goal anyway

Transformation times:

Mountains = 28 turns approx
Hills = 19 turns
Forest = 19 turns
Glacier = 19 turns
Swamp = 19 turns
Jungle = 19 turns
All the rest= 8 turns

So just remember bare land takes less than half the time.

 

[MightiestEd]

Also, i'd always assumed railroads take the same amount of time whatever the terrain.

Havn't found them all out but:

Mountains = 4 turns
Forest = 3 turns
Hills = 3 turns
Grass = 2 turns

This is with engineers btw if you hadn't guessed

 

[ElephantU]

I like to keep the stats in "Settler-Turns", which is usable from the start, and just halve them for Engineers. For Roads, it is 2 STs for flat land (grass, plains, desert, tundra), 4 STs for all the rest ("rough" land) except Mountains, which is 6STs. Add 2 extra STs each for RR, and 2 extra for Rivered terrain. Transformation is divided into the same groups (flat, rough, mountain), but doesnt make sense to use STs as Settlers cannot do it, so I use ETs: 10 ETs for flat, 20 ETs for rough, and 30 ETs for mountain. The difference between your numbers and mine for Transform is that I counted the number of turns from when I first assign the Engineer to start the work to the turn when he is available to move again. The terrain actually "transforms" on the turn before the Engineer is ready to move again; it takes his last ounce of work so he is stuck there till the next turn. If you are trying to plan ahead for doing several Transforms in a sequence it is helpful to know the "ready again" number.

Yes, if you do the math is is faster to irrigate forest and transform plains than transforming forest. Same thing for turning Jungle or Swamp to Plains. It is just faster in general to work on flat land than on rough. Remember to flatten the land BEFORE you RD/RR.

If more than 1 Settler or Engineer is working the land, only one of them "stores" the work done. Two can work together normally, but if you interrupt them to do a priority job like pollution, one of them will be able to do it instantly (but probably waste the extra turns of work stored; pollution cleanup takes 4STs which is only 2 ETs). There is a trick to "ganging" more than 2 Settlers or Engineers to get things done in one turn: see the Great Library in the Strategy Forum at Apolyton.Net for the description. There is also a great thread that documents all the tricks for Settlers and Engineers (including how to destroy Forts).

 

[Old n Slow]

Hand in glove with the accounting of the workload is the turn it takes to move onto the space. Since rough terrain "costs" an extra movement point over flat land, it would take a Settler "five" turns to road a forest, and an engineer could do it in "three". On the other hand, it takes "three" turns for a settler to road flat land, but an engineer can do it in "one".

So when one has mixed settlers and engineers, keep the engineers working on flat (or roaded) terrain as much as possible -- also I think that an engineer/settler combo may work a touch more efficiently with irrigation activities (fewer wasted work turns overall.) than other activities -- less chance of a wasted "half" engineer work slot.

 

[WarMonkeY]

Since this seems to be a general strategy thread, I'll post my "invasion-of-rr'ed-territory-in-1-turn" strategy:

It is really quite simple.
All you need are howitzers, tanks and some controlzone igoring units
Use your controlzone igoring units to make a path up to an enemy city, and empty it with howitzers, then place 1 tank just outside it ready to take it over.
Simply do this with all his cities, and when all of them are empty, take them over..
This must, ofcourse, be done in 1 turn, but with the "magnificent" island fortresses the ai usually controls, that should not be a problem.
It is ofcourse fully legal to use your entire arsenal, just remember to wait with taking over his cities until all of them are "ready" for you

Pretty foolproof, except one little thing: If you do not take all his cities, you WILL have to take precautions to counterattacks and partisan pillaging

 

[bouncelot]

Since this seems to be a general strategy thread, I'll post my "invasion-of-rr'ed-territory-in-1-turn" strategy:

It is really quite simple.
All you need are howitzers, tanks and some controlzone igoring units
Use your controlzone igoring units to make a path up to an enemy city, and empty it with howitzers, then place 1 tank just outside it ready to take it over.
Simply do this with all his cities, and when all of them are empty, take them over..
This must, ofcourse, be done in 1 turn, but with the "magnificent" island fortresses the ai usually controls, that should not be a problem.
It is ofcourse fully legal to use your entire arsenal, just remember to wait with taking over his cities until all of them are "ready" for you

Pretty foolproof, except one little thing: If you do not take all his cities, you WILL have to take precautions to counterattacks and partisan pillaging

It doesn't even need to be armour. Personally, I like using veteran MechInfs to take and hold enemy cities. If you won't be taking all their cities, make sure that you have at least 1 unit in every land square in the city radius, especially hills, forests, mountains, and forts. That way, you don't need to worry about partisans. Either that or bribe them.

 

[WarMonkeY]

It doesn't even need to be armour. Personally, I like using veteran MechInfs to take and hold enemy cities. If you won't be taking all their cities, make sure that you have at least 1 unit in every land square in the city radius, especially hills, forests, mountains, and forts. That way, you don't need to worry about partisans. Either that or bribe them.

Or, If you are the lucky owner of the UN, make peace the same turn

I kinda like to do it with armor, there are from time to time units that needs to be remowed, and it would be suicide to let a howitzer do the job.. you know, losing howitzers because you could not get them into a city really sucks..