Destroying a space ship

[RedWolf]

(I know people have discussed this before but couldn't find any old threads. I apologize)

I never realized before that capturing the enemy capital destroys their spaceship (I found out in a game i played last night)

I thought that only works if they have already launched so it appears that I'm confused.

Does capturing the capital destroy the ship for EITHER circumstance? When it's on the ground AND after launch? I also heard someone mention once that they can move their capital and save their ship if they have enough money... So why in my case didn't they do so? they had over 2000 gold which is enough to rush buy a palace... why did they just let their ship be destroyed?

 

[Az]

WOW!?!!

I didn't know that!

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<IMG SRC="http://www.virtuallandmedia.com/img1/flags-4/europe/fra.gif" border=0> Az <IMG SRC="http://www.virtuallandmedia.com/img1/flags-4/europe/gre.gif" border=0>

 

[SunTzu]

Yes if you take the capital of the civ that is launching a spaceship or has launched a SS it will be destroyed and i believe if they have something like 2500 gold an option will come up after they've lost their capital for them to build a new capital right there and that will save the SS.

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Civilization God of War & Economic Prosperity
http://www.civfanatics.com Staff and forum moderator

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Elevators always smell different to midgets

 

[RedWolf]

Ahh... so 2500 is the magic number.

Thanks....

 

[drake]

Actually it's 1000g

<1000 Spacehip returns
>1000 Option to move capitol

Trust me Sun, I did the research for the Monday Night game......

 

[RedWolf]

Originally posted by drake:
Actually it's 1000g

<1000 Spacehip returns
>1000 Option to move capitol

Trust me Sun, I did the research for the Monday Night game......

That's what I had always heard...that $1000 was enough... (they had over $2000)

But then why didn't they move their capital?
In fact they NEVER built another palace for the rest of the game...
(i was playing against the AI)

 

[drake]

I think the game has some nasty bugs in this stage of the game. A great MP game had to be ended because the game malfunctioned at the point when a civs cap was captured and unable to move, even though they had the $....

Civ2 MP just isnt very capable in the modern era........

Civ 3 better be!

 

[Eric The Red]

I just lost a game on emperor level because I captured their capital and the space ship did not return.I think it only returns on king and lower not shure about king.

 

[allan]

What about civs without capitals? Once I captured Delhi and destroyed the Indian spaceship. They started building another one but didn't have a capital the rest of the game. I launched soon after, so it wasn't a problem, but I was just curious where their new spaceship was based. If all components are shipped to your capital (as it says in the manual), then it would stand to reason if you have no capital, you can build no spaceship....

 

[starlifter]

If you build a SS with no capital, the only way to destroy the SS is to exterminate the entire civilization.

A nefarious strategy in a competitive game is to destroy your own capital after lauch. Your SS will continue in flight, since no one captured your capital. And guess what... no one can possible destroy your SS, as long as even a size 1 city of yours survives somewhere in the world. So if you kill your own capital, you will win (assuming you'll arrive first) despite military interventions, LOL...

 

[Henrik]

I think the city that actually built the Apollo program also counts for the city that the spaceship can be destroyed by taking.

Hmmm, that sentence came out strange, I hope you get wath I meant

 

[Itzcoatl]

Erik the Red :
"I just lost a game on emperor level because I captured their capital and the space ship did not return.I think it only returns on
king and lower not shure about king"

No I don't think so because one month ago I did that to the Spanish in emperor level and they lost their spaceship. So it still works on emperor...

 

[allan]

Has anyone ever noticed that no matter how many spies you station in your cities, or whether or not they're veteran (made under commie), when it comes to spaceship techs the AI WILL get them from you, even if they don't even have spies, just lowly diplomats? Is this an AI cheat designed to increase competition in the end, even if you've built a hands-down lead in tech up till then? I've had pre-FLIGHT AI civs start building SS structurals, components, and modules. Sounds silly, doesn't it?

One thing I suggested over in "suggestions for CivIII" was that no civ, you or AI, be able to "steal" any tech more than one or two steps up the tech ladder from where they're at--since implementation would generally require knowledge of some supporting techs as well. Hope they do that....

But in the meantime, does anyone familiar with the programming know whether this is a thing built into the program (i.e. a dip's chances of not getting captured by spies=100% for space technologies, for AIs), so filling your cities with spies for that purpose is a waste of time; or are they just sending in dozens of dips and I don't even know it?

 

[allan]

As anyone guessed--I don't like AI cheats, I'd rather just have a better AI that didn't HAVE to cheat to stay competitive....

Same goes for them knowing where your SDIs are without investigating... they need to do away with that, too....

(BTW, in a post somewhere else I related that I was attacked by a nuke in a city where there was an SDI--on closer review (I saved right after that), I was wrong--I was BUILDING an SDI there, but there was a city 3 spaces away that had one--so the redundancy was a waste because THAT SDI deterred the bomb. But funny how the Indians (they're always bastards to me) wanted peace right after that--"OOPS, it appears we wasted our only nuke (they just got rocketry a couple turns back) on a city protected by a remote SDI--will you forgive us?" "Hell, no!" And they got their capital nuked and paradropped the next turn--THEN I forgave them....)



[This message has been edited by allan (edited June 29, 2001).]

 

[Conditional Zenith]

I think that after you have captured their capital, they can complete the spaceship parts that they are building but not start anymore. Im not 100% sure though.

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Conditional Zenith

you will only become strong if you obey the regulations

 

[starlifter]

But in the meantime, does anyone familiar with the programming know whether this is a thing built into the program (i.e. a dip's chances of not getting captured by spies=100% for space technologies, for AIs), so filling your cities with spies for that purpose is a waste of time; or are they just sending in dozens of dips and I don't even know it?

While I have no access to the original source code, I've experimented with this and noted the AI general algorithm. It seems that I can stop the AI pretty much as advertised, given a large enough sample size. My feel is that the basis for the RND seed, and the resulting mathematical sequence of RND numbers is rather "clumpy". That is, there will e long periods of success, and long periods of failure, in either accomplishing a spy mission or thwarting enemy spies. There seems to be a disposition for early RND results to go against the human, but I can't say for sure.

When an enemy spy/diplomat is thwarted in stealing a tech, then enemy dip/spy will be "stuck" just outside your city, and you can kill it on your subsequent turn.

Personally, I no longer bother with much defense of my techs... but usually my extended network of defenders outside the city will trap an enemy and expel/kill dips/spies before they reach one of my cities.

Once you have a good tech lead, it is almost irrelevant what the AI does... I often give the AI everything in late game anyway. I have very rarely personally seen a competitive space race, and it seems impossible to get the AI to finish, much less launch, a SS even after I launch mine.

Final note... it is my experience that the AI will steal advances based on the numerical rating assigned to the advances in the rules files. The result is pretty much predictable, but I haven't tested it very carefully. If you want to see what the AI prizes, try offering it some knowledge and see what it asks for. That gives a pretty good idea what it will steal, given the opportunity.