walletta
King
It should be possible to drop parachutists from helicopters. But is it?
Correct use of ...
- Thread starter walletta
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ZergMazter
Prince
I always thought of this, but it's not possible to airdrop from a helicopter. Only the helicopter airdrops itself. It should be allowed!
I have found that allowing airports to have the trade capacity also greatly slows the game down. Since the airfields that workers build can be used for rapid transport, and harbors/roads can handle trade, I edit out the airports' trade capacity and just make them air bases that create veteran air units.
Walleta: don't underestimate the vanilla bombers. Keeping a couple of hundred bombers around is very useful. Artillery of course should be used on cities and AA sites, but nothing compares to bombers for all-around usefulness.
walletta
King
Thanks for the advice agonistes. This 'couple of hundred' thing intrigues me. I regard 20-30 bombers as a lot. Previously, I've been told to build 150 Mounted Warriors when, again, I consider 20-30 to be plenty. Is this is a map size thing? I tend to play tiny or small maps. Is it on huge maps that these mega-numbers apply?
It depends on the map size, but not too much either. During the mid of the middle ages the growth of production tends to almost stagnate once values around 200 are reached at a small map, at a huge map i would be more around 400 if you have the territory for it. If you take the production of 20 turns as investment into the military you have 20 x 200 = 133.33 x 30. So in such a short period of time you can have almost 150 Mounted Warriors. In early wars the entirety of you military will likely be worth less than 20 turn of the current production, in later wars it may exceed the production of 20 turns.
More important than the map size might be the enemy you are fighting. If fighting a Sid-AI or a human opponent you will be required to obtain a military of formidable size. At Emperor and below smaller numbers tend to suffice. At higher levels however chances are that large militaries wear each other down to smaller numbers after some initial fighting.
More important than the map size might be the enemy you are fighting. If fighting a Sid-AI or a human opponent you will be required to obtain a military of formidable size. At Emperor and below smaller numbers tend to suffice. At higher levels however chances are that large militaries wear each other down to smaller numbers after some initial fighting.
Probably the best example I could give would be Bamspeedy's epic game where he tweaked it so the AI actually had a greater build capacity than the game normally has.
Hopefully the game is still lying around somewhere. Probably in the epic games section or whatever its called.
I'm kind of combining advice here for both you and the other guy who asked for 'advanced tips.'
Things I would take away from Bam's game:
1) Don't give up even if it seems the AI has a huge advantage. Sometimes you can get ahead early on Sid, sometimes you can't. If you get behind, you can catch up, even if the AI is 2 eras and a hellza lot of cities ahead.
2) Stack sizes. The game shows you what some stacks can look like.
3) Core invasion strategy. Artillery and defenders (from cannons on). Not many offensive units are needed.
4) Advantages of starting on an island if you expect the AI to be off too a much quicker expansion than you.
5) Advantages of an archipelago map if you expect the AI to be off to a much quicker expansion than you.
I use a lot of artillery and bombers because losing units in battle is highly inefficient. Bombers can wipe out an enemy stack without losing a single unit. Bombers can destroy roads, railroads, and mines. Bombers don't need roads/railroads to move quickly to a target, and naturally retreat to safety. With artillery, I usually have 40+ workers sitting in reserve for invasions and pollution detail, and target first those cities I can get in artillery range and shoot on the same turn, building railroads if there are none, then ramble in with some tanks to take and fortify the city. I always leave a few mobile infantry stacked with the artillery as a precaution. I absolutely HATE losing units.
[One game I made the mistake of having a ROP with someone, and had a stack of about 20 artillery sitting unguarded. At least I wasn't dumb enough to have all of my artillery in one stack.]
If you can't get your target in range on one turn, due to borders, move a spare settler in (always good to have a few extras lying around), build a city, then move in and shoot the following turn.
I always rush buy walls, barracks, and temples in newly taken cities. Sometimes I'll rush buy as many cultural improvements as necessary to expand the borders quickly if border expansion will aid the invasion.
I almost never waste time destroying enemy improvements, as I will be using them myself shortly.
If your military is struggling, remember Longstreet and Martel: better to dig in and defend, using the terrain to your advantage, and remember Napoleon (his folly) and Patton: always have and protect your supply train. In my current game, the AI actually attacked my unit fortified in a fort on a mountain, rather than take the road around him.
Bonus tip: if both artillery and bombers can reach the target, use the artillery first.
Bonus tip 2: Don't disband all of your cavalry. They remain useful even in later stages of the game. Keep a dozen or so around.
Hopefully the game is still lying around somewhere. Probably in the epic games section or whatever its called.
I'm kind of combining advice here for both you and the other guy who asked for 'advanced tips.'
Things I would take away from Bam's game:
1) Don't give up even if it seems the AI has a huge advantage. Sometimes you can get ahead early on Sid, sometimes you can't. If you get behind, you can catch up, even if the AI is 2 eras and a hellza lot of cities ahead.
2) Stack sizes. The game shows you what some stacks can look like.
3) Core invasion strategy. Artillery and defenders (from cannons on). Not many offensive units are needed.
4) Advantages of starting on an island if you expect the AI to be off too a much quicker expansion than you.
5) Advantages of an archipelago map if you expect the AI to be off to a much quicker expansion than you.
I use a lot of artillery and bombers because losing units in battle is highly inefficient. Bombers can wipe out an enemy stack without losing a single unit. Bombers can destroy roads, railroads, and mines. Bombers don't need roads/railroads to move quickly to a target, and naturally retreat to safety. With artillery, I usually have 40+ workers sitting in reserve for invasions and pollution detail, and target first those cities I can get in artillery range and shoot on the same turn, building railroads if there are none, then ramble in with some tanks to take and fortify the city. I always leave a few mobile infantry stacked with the artillery as a precaution. I absolutely HATE losing units.
[One game I made the mistake of having a ROP with someone, and had a stack of about 20 artillery sitting unguarded. At least I wasn't dumb enough to have all of my artillery in one stack.]
If you can't get your target in range on one turn, due to borders, move a spare settler in (always good to have a few extras lying around), build a city, then move in and shoot the following turn.
I always rush buy walls, barracks, and temples in newly taken cities. Sometimes I'll rush buy as many cultural improvements as necessary to expand the borders quickly if border expansion will aid the invasion.
I almost never waste time destroying enemy improvements, as I will be using them myself shortly.
If your military is struggling, remember Longstreet and Martel: better to dig in and defend, using the terrain to your advantage, and remember Napoleon (his folly) and Patton: always have and protect your supply train. In my current game, the AI actually attacked my unit fortified in a fort on a mountain, rather than take the road around him.
Bonus tip: if both artillery and bombers can reach the target, use the artillery first.
Bonus tip 2: Don't disband all of your cavalry. They remain useful even in later stages of the game. Keep a dozen or so around.
Here it is, please be prepared to witness insanity.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=66169
Desertsnow
πr²
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2004
- Messages
- 1,794
Ah, yes, the old "Beyond Sid" game. That was truly epic!
walletta
King
Yikes! Just read the first few pages of that thread. That is some game.
Desertsnow
πr²
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2004
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It was freakin' amazing.
ZergMazter
Prince
That game looks pretty fun, however in my opinion playing like this too much could make the game repetitive and it gets old quick as I've experienced before. I choose not to go over the 'Noble' difficulty and play more realistically and not like a warmonger. This is the reason I mostly get to enjoy the game to it's fullest through the modern era.
I try to coexist with my counterparts, and prepare myself for that possible ultimate challenge, the 'Armageddon', then try to unite the planet to achieve global peace, never fully killing my enemies, instead I make them surrender with 1-4 cities left and, then I 'occupy' their lands with a forced right of passage, and a forced mutual pact protection.
I win by domination, but most civs are still alive, but surrendered to me. I spare those few cities to simulate their culture within my empire. Any future wars between them and my civ I view them as a revolt within my empire, and then I really go for the kill to crush the uprising once and for all.
It's a bit of strategy, and role playing I guess lol, but it's pretty fun and most importantly the game never gets old. Sometimes to my surprise they actually rebuild their civilization a bit and I decide to give them their independence, by ending the forced right of passage and mutual pact.
Nevertheless that was an awesome game, and sometimes it's good to be a warmonger.
I try to coexist with my counterparts, and prepare myself for that possible ultimate challenge, the 'Armageddon', then try to unite the planet to achieve global peace, never fully killing my enemies, instead I make them surrender with 1-4 cities left and, then I 'occupy' their lands with a forced right of passage, and a forced mutual pact protection.
I win by domination, but most civs are still alive, but surrendered to me. I spare those few cities to simulate their culture within my empire. Any future wars between them and my civ I view them as a revolt within my empire, and then I really go for the kill to crush the uprising once and for all.
It's a bit of strategy, and role playing I guess lol, but it's pretty fun and most importantly the game never gets old. Sometimes to my surprise they actually rebuild their civilization a bit and I decide to give them their independence, by ending the forced right of passage and mutual pact.
Nevertheless that was an awesome game, and sometimes it's good to be a warmonger.
I'm not taking anything away from the achievement of the Beyond Sid game, but you do have to bare in mind some important qualifications:
1. It was a remarkably good start position combined with horrible global settings. His island was the largest on the map combined with pretty much all the islands well separated. This prevents the AI from taking advantage of their main advantage against a human player and forward settling/early attacking and stops them from pooling their tech knowledge. I'm not being controversial here, Bamspeedy even highlights these facts as intentional gaming of the system.
2. It takes the usual advantage of the AI being programmed to ignore Literature and therefore permit the human player to build the Great Library, even though all the other AA Wonders are gone almost instantly. Which leads me to number 3...
3. His immediate neighbour is the civ that's built nearly all the Wonders. Virtually the first city he takes proceeds to give him a laundry list of very useful Wonders. And, again, these points are all addressed in the thread.
None of this takes away from the victory and 200 hours for one game combined with a harder than hard difficulty setting is better than I will ever bother with, but it's still the easier/easiest settings of Beyond Sid if there were difiiculty sliders within Beyond Civ and tremendous, couldn't have planned it better, lucky positioning for which the nub of the process is seeing how many giant stacks of doom you can produce versus loopholes in the AI of the AI giant stacks of doom.
The statement "It was freakin' amazing." is still 100% accurate, but more for the sheer patience and quantity of micromanagement that was required - that is the truly above human aspect. I mean, holy moly, I get bored clearing out the last few islands on Regent, I couldn't even begin to imagine doing the process at Beyond Civ levels of repetition.
1. It was a remarkably good start position combined with horrible global settings. His island was the largest on the map combined with pretty much all the islands well separated. This prevents the AI from taking advantage of their main advantage against a human player and forward settling/early attacking and stops them from pooling their tech knowledge. I'm not being controversial here, Bamspeedy even highlights these facts as intentional gaming of the system.
2. It takes the usual advantage of the AI being programmed to ignore Literature and therefore permit the human player to build the Great Library, even though all the other AA Wonders are gone almost instantly. Which leads me to number 3...
3. His immediate neighbour is the civ that's built nearly all the Wonders. Virtually the first city he takes proceeds to give him a laundry list of very useful Wonders. And, again, these points are all addressed in the thread.
None of this takes away from the victory and 200 hours for one game combined with a harder than hard difficulty setting is better than I will ever bother with, but it's still the easier/easiest settings of Beyond Sid if there were difiiculty sliders within Beyond Civ and tremendous, couldn't have planned it better, lucky positioning for which the nub of the process is seeing how many giant stacks of doom you can produce versus loopholes in the AI of the AI giant stacks of doom.
The statement "It was freakin' amazing." is still 100% accurate, but more for the sheer patience and quantity of micromanagement that was required - that is the truly above human aspect. I mean, holy moly, I get bored clearing out the last few islands on Regent, I couldn't even begin to imagine doing the process at Beyond Civ levels of repetition.
walletta
King
I thought it was awesome. And very funny somehow. I loved the screen shots showing entire islands surrounded three deep with his galleons. I agree that he cleverly hobbled the AI when setting up the game but even so, he also showed a great understanding of how the AI works.
Zergmaster - I like your approach and sort of share it, although I have not perfected the art of ruling over an empire that includes subjugated nations to quite the same extent as you. With your RoPs do you zone off your land with captured slaves to make sure its a one way street? Also, what do you when one of the towns you captured flips? Do you start a war and re-take it? Also, once the world is totally under your thumb, do you convert to democracy or some other government and, if so, which?
ETA (edited to add) I tend to blow the place to smithereens with my stockpile of ICBMs at the end of the game but maybe I'll take the more civilised route hereafter
ETFA I like your idea of 'coexistence' LOL
Zergmaster - I like your approach and sort of share it, although I have not perfected the art of ruling over an empire that includes subjugated nations to quite the same extent as you. With your RoPs do you zone off your land with captured slaves to make sure its a one way street? Also, what do you when one of the towns you captured flips? Do you start a war and re-take it? Also, once the world is totally under your thumb, do you convert to democracy or some other government and, if so, which?
ETA (edited to add) I tend to blow the place to smithereens with my stockpile of ICBMs at the end of the game but maybe I'll take the more civilised route hereafter
ETFA I like your idea of 'coexistence' LOL
walletta
King
They are exceedingly annoying but, for me, not allowing them would feel like cheating. Not that I don't cheat in other ways of course .
They are exceedingly annoying but, for me, not allowing them would feel like cheating. Not that I don't cheat in other ways of course .
Yes, I know that's the case for many players. I don't feel guilty at all. It seemed like every town I took, I lost to culture flip. It was aggravating. Everyone has their little quirks and style of play. It's fun to read about them here. I never use nukes, though I've let one off in the past for fun. I rarely even build them. If I do build a few, it's more for deterrent.
I like large maps and always play to the 66%. (domination?) Or space race, but I usually try to destroy my nearest competitor's rocket, (by taking their capital.)
My method of cheating is I changed the default corruption from 100% to 92%. Still pretty corrupt, but I can squeeze a little more out of distant towns after police stations.
walletta
King
Oh just go commie if you hate corruption. Communism is my favourite late game government.
I started a thread about cheating. I think reloading for a good start and cherry picking opponents is about as bad as it gets now. If I make a blunder I usually trash the game and start another, unless it's a very silly oversight like leaving my capital undefended or something minor like that ...
One thing I do is play the same game over, from the start, to see if I can improve my play, but then I have all the dope on where the resources are and that's gotta be cheating too.
Desertsnow
πr²
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2004
- Messages
- 1,794
I'll grant that. I currently play at monarch level usually and occasionally try emperor if I'm feeling froggy. I very much doubt that I could muster the masochistic patience to play at higher levels, let alone a "Beyond Sid" game.
This is my own style, except that I my leave them a little more, typically 5-7 cities; on the other hand if I'm feeling sadistic I'll leave them to play out the remainder of the game with a one city challenge, in a jungle or marshland.
I get a lot of criticism for playing a commie government myself, but hell, I just don't want to deal with the corruption.
ZergMazter
Prince
@Walletta: This is how I handle culture flips:
-If I have one of those governments that limit the freedoms of it's citizens like communism, after capturing a city I proceed to make use of my forced labor as I am their new master and I gotta show the people who is boss lol. After I've taken the population to at least level 6, then I let it grow so my citizens serve as a counter to culture flip, I station at least 1 military unit per foreign citizen until I've gained enough culture and surpassed the number of foreign nationals with my own nationals. All this helps counter culture flips (At least that's what it looks like)
-If I have one of those freedom governments like democracy I respect the will of the people and let them live. I station 1 military unit per foreign citizen in that city, make them as happy as I can, and grow it's culture. All this helps fight culture flips.
Over all I'm pretty fair with the AI. If they choose to flip I'll respect the will of the people. If I really wanted to keep the city because I'm either small, need resources in that city's vicinity, or wanted to keep it's wonder, then I would have taken measures for it such as bombing the city to at least size 6, starving them to at least size 6, even nuke them prior to conquering if I felt like being evil.
If I am at peace I will not declare war because of a culture flip unless they killed a very important unit in that city which I consider an act of terrorism and proceed to exterminate them by razing the city if it doesnt have a wonder in it, otherwise I'll bomb it to a pulp and re-conquer it. Any captured terrorists (Pows) as a result of razing I take to different cities which could use a culture boost and I execute them (sacrifice and yes I have it enabled). Executing is such a rewarding feeling
As you can see about 1/3 of my game is role played, but it's fun as hell. Instead of thinking of a captured unit as a worker, I think of it as a terrorist and so on.
As far as governments go I build my story as I go, so that I don't end up doing the same thing in every game, and so that it never gets old. Sometimes I go feudalism-communism-fascism, other times morachy-republic-democracy, other times from evil to good, and some other from good to evil, and some times I redefine what it means to be good or evil (What if fascists didnt try to conquer the world by force, but to unify it peacefully?). It's a different story line every time, and my government reflects my actions. If I'm fascist I'm probably gonna act like a nazi. If i'm a communist I could be like China, or Russia. Democracy I could be an empire like the modern day America, or a true democracy like India.
End game I will stockpile nukes until I feel 'safe' because you never know when the AI will nuke you. I will also build a peace keeping force of ToW infantry and attempt to garrison my ally's borders to protect them from aggression. I will also attempt to use propaganda on any size 1 city in the world so that it can flip to my side and expand my influence around the world.
Of course modded games can greatly expand end game fun. I for example added a unit that can be traded and I can influence nations with them. Lets say I'm the only one who owns Oil in the world. Oil allows you to build an improvement which requires oil within that city. That improvement auto produces an 'Oil barrel' which could be upgraded to another version of the modern tank which is cheap to upgrade, is a bit weaker than a modern armor, and requires no oil to begin with. You just gift/sell those barrels to any civ, give them a bit of gold if they are broke and watch their influence grow. This way you could help a much weaker civ survive, or even defeat a much bigger foe.
You know I'd love it if there was a tool that I could use once in a while to switch civs in game. Lets say I defeated Rome, and they only have a few cities left. I'd love to become Rome, and attempt to fight the tyrant who enslaved me (My previous civ), and maybe one day become free. That could be fun and the games would last a lot longer!
-If I have one of those governments that limit the freedoms of it's citizens like communism, after capturing a city I proceed to make use of my forced labor as I am their new master and I gotta show the people who is boss lol. After I've taken the population to at least level 6, then I let it grow so my citizens serve as a counter to culture flip, I station at least 1 military unit per foreign citizen until I've gained enough culture and surpassed the number of foreign nationals with my own nationals. All this helps counter culture flips (At least that's what it looks like)
-If I have one of those freedom governments like democracy I respect the will of the people and let them live. I station 1 military unit per foreign citizen in that city, make them as happy as I can, and grow it's culture. All this helps fight culture flips.
Over all I'm pretty fair with the AI. If they choose to flip I'll respect the will of the people. If I really wanted to keep the city because I'm either small, need resources in that city's vicinity, or wanted to keep it's wonder, then I would have taken measures for it such as bombing the city to at least size 6, starving them to at least size 6, even nuke them prior to conquering if I felt like being evil.
If I am at peace I will not declare war because of a culture flip unless they killed a very important unit in that city which I consider an act of terrorism and proceed to exterminate them by razing the city if it doesnt have a wonder in it, otherwise I'll bomb it to a pulp and re-conquer it. Any captured terrorists (Pows) as a result of razing I take to different cities which could use a culture boost and I execute them (sacrifice and yes I have it enabled). Executing is such a rewarding feeling
As you can see about 1/3 of my game is role played, but it's fun as hell. Instead of thinking of a captured unit as a worker, I think of it as a terrorist and so on.
As far as governments go I build my story as I go, so that I don't end up doing the same thing in every game, and so that it never gets old. Sometimes I go feudalism-communism-fascism, other times morachy-republic-democracy, other times from evil to good, and some other from good to evil, and some times I redefine what it means to be good or evil (What if fascists didnt try to conquer the world by force, but to unify it peacefully?). It's a different story line every time, and my government reflects my actions. If I'm fascist I'm probably gonna act like a nazi. If i'm a communist I could be like China, or Russia. Democracy I could be an empire like the modern day America, or a true democracy like India.
End game I will stockpile nukes until I feel 'safe' because you never know when the AI will nuke you. I will also build a peace keeping force of ToW infantry and attempt to garrison my ally's borders to protect them from aggression. I will also attempt to use propaganda on any size 1 city in the world so that it can flip to my side and expand my influence around the world.
Of course modded games can greatly expand end game fun. I for example added a unit that can be traded and I can influence nations with them. Lets say I'm the only one who owns Oil in the world. Oil allows you to build an improvement which requires oil within that city. That improvement auto produces an 'Oil barrel' which could be upgraded to another version of the modern tank which is cheap to upgrade, is a bit weaker than a modern armor, and requires no oil to begin with. You just gift/sell those barrels to any civ, give them a bit of gold if they are broke and watch their influence grow. This way you could help a much weaker civ survive, or even defeat a much bigger foe.
You know I'd love it if there was a tool that I could use once in a while to switch civs in game. Lets say I defeated Rome, and they only have a few cities left. I'd love to become Rome, and attempt to fight the tyrant who enslaved me (My previous civ), and maybe one day become free. That could be fun and the games would last a lot longer!
Kirejara
King
That is allready possible.
You can turn with this tool, KI players into human player and and vice versa:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=456432
You must only be aware, that you do not turn the human player into a KI while it is still his turn. Turn a KI into a human player and then turn your former self into a KI while you are allready in the turn of the new human player, otherwise the game may enter an endless loop.
