Civ3 rules question

[uman]

Do your cities get the food, gold, etc. from working squares in their radius at the beginning of a turn or the end?

For example, say I am playing as the Persains and one of the AI civs is the Russians, who I am at peace with. Every turn, I move eight units into the radius of one of their cities, preventing them from working any of the squares, and every turn they force me to leave or declare war. Will this prevent the city from ever accumulating food, shields, etc., effectively starving it? Or will they get all that because they kicked me out before their turn was over?

 

[capnvonbaron]

The latter. The only way you are really denying them food is by keeping them from irrigating it, assuming that is what you are doing.

IMO, thats kind of a waste of your time/resources. If you have 8 immortals sitting around, you're better off just to take the city for yourself and burn it if you don't want it. That's what I would do. The AI can't get use out of something they don't even have!

 

[Sashie VII]

You cannot prevent the citizens of a city from working the tiles within the fat-X by placing your units on it unless you are at war with the city's owner. A simple test would be to sign Right of Passage with said civ, place your units on all 21squares around the city and wait a few turns. The city will not starve or stop production. I think this is because friendly (at peace) troops do not hinder the civilians.

If you are at war, however, placing a military unit on a square will deny it to the city's citizen. They will not be able to work the square as long as you have the unit there. So when at war, starving a city includes surrounding the city's 21-tiles completely with units so that there are no squares available to it's citizens to work. To test this, you can see your own town where there are hostile units within it's radius. You'll find that you will not be able to set citizens to work the tile with hostile units on it.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Good job clarifying, sashie. I didn't really do that great of a job

I wanted to add/confirm a couple of things...

In peacetime, if the AI has improved all the tiles within the city radius (whether its the small 8-block or the 21-tile "fat cross" once the city has culturally expanded), you cannot deny it anything, so don't try. If the tiles are unimproved (ie, no roads, mines, irrigation, etc), having your units there will keep AI workers from improving them thereby denying the city full potential. AI citizens still live there, they just produce fewer shields/food/gold when living on virgin terrain. Without a RoP, its a pointless maneuver anyways.

In wartime, neither AI units nor citizens can occupy a tile that is occupied by your units. However, this is a weak maneuver because 1) you need enough units to cover all 8 (or 21) tiles within the city boundaries, 2) starvation takes several turns, 3) not stacking units leaves them extremely vulnerable to AI counterattack. In higher difficulty levels, you will not be able to sustain an offensive if you spread units this thin... the AI will pick off too many of them or damage them beyond usability.

I maintain that if you have that many available units, just take the city. The best way to deny the computer growth is not "sustained planting", but instead by "slash-and-burn".

 

[ecuwins]

You don't need to occupy all of the squares to starve the city down. With size 13 towns, I will usually go for three of the high food production squares. If they have lots of rails maybe 1 or 2 more, it just depends. You definitely want some defensive units when doing this.

 

[Sashie VII]

Or you can just modify the terrain around the target town so as to produce less food