City Improvements, Technology & Culture

[outlaw]

I miss two elements from CivII. The first is that when you captured a city, you got the option of taking one of the techs they had that you didn't, and the second is that all the improvements that I know they must have in their cities seem to disappear when I capture them. I usually go for their capital, and find it doesn't even have a temple or barracks. All it may have left is the Aquaduct.

Has anyone worked out the algorithm for culture flipping? I've has a chinese city size 7 surrounded by six of my cities varying in size up to 27 with every available improvement, and the chinese city still didn't flip. Another country put a city on the borders of my capital in the desert and it was still taking up my city squares.

Sometimes I wish one could put the thing into debug mode, because I don't think my veteran tank should be beaten up by a spearman in a city, and I'd like to see what the magic numbers the random number generator managed to produce and put them in the lottery.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Originally posted by outlaw
The first is that when you captured a city, you got the option of taking one of the techs they had that you didn't

You mean a kind of "spoil of war" ?

It will be nice to exist a option for this - exactly like in SMAC ...
But the main reason for this is that now AI is so stupid and build a tone of hard-to-defend cities - so this feature will give a big advantages of human players ... the whole strategy of the AI have to be changed according with this option.

, and the second is that all the improvements that I know they must have in their cities seem to disappear when I capture them. I usually go for their capital, and find it doesn't even have a temple or barracks. All it may have left is the Aquaduct.

Well - looking at the actual game concepts is normal that any cultural improvements to be automatically destroyed - just think at the case of Constantinopole conquest ...

Regards,

 

[outlaw]

I don't think the AI would have to be changed that much. We might limit the tech capture to cities greater than a particular size, or the capital, the capture of which seems severely underrated in CivIII. If one thinks of the battle of Hastings, there wasn't actually a battle of London needed thereafter. Paris was captured in the second world war with practically no damage. I believe you should only lose improvements with bombardment, or when a city is captured using Tanks, not swordsmen or cavalry.

I've read the culture flipping thread. I'm not convinced that the algorithm is completely understood, so why not publish the code for that part? I sometimes wonder if the bugs arise from the fact that a database isn't being used rather than a lot of hard coding.
Given the number of clever users out there, Firaxis could publish some of the functions (such as culture flipping and combat) to see if there are any bugs the community could erradicate, or the code enhance.

 

[Klasanov]

because I don't think my veteran tank should be beaten up by a spearman in a city, and I'd like to see what the magic numbers the random number generator managed to produce and put them in the lottery.

It's in the manual, but it's based on attack and defense and chance.

What I mean is, take a calvary, attack of 6. Attack a rifleman with the calvary unit, it takes the calvary's attack rating of 6, with the rifleman's defense rating of 6, add them together for 12. So, with the calvary's attack rating of 6, the calavry has a 6 out of 12 chance of damaging the rifleman.

Simarly, if you attack a musketman with the calvary, you'll have a 6 out of 10 chance of damaging the musketman. The defender gets a 10% defensive bonues outside, and defense is upped 50% if a town (pop 6 or lower) has walls. At pop 7, walls don't matter, as the high population grants a 50% defense bonus.

After population 12 (13 or higher I think), it's a metropolis, so defense is doubled.

It's likely the spearman just got lucky. It IS possible for that to happen, with enough enough defense, but still quite rare. Personally, that's why I think they should have left firepower ratings in the game, like with Civ II.

Still, it's probably quite rare.

 

[outlaw]

It's in the manual, but it's based on attack and defense and chance.

That's what the manual may say, but empirically I don't believe it.
Usually my first attacker (however good) gets the **** beaten out of him without the defender appearing to suffer any injury. The next attack will usually hammer that defender, and thereafter it goes very much as you indicate in your examples.

I use cavalry or horsemen nearly all the time because I rarely lose them unless they go for that last throw of the dice when they and the defender are on their last legs, and they can recouperate in the city just captured thereby pacifying the resistors. I have rarely had a city flip when it has enough units in it, though others apparently have.

Thanks for your reply