Informal "Cloak and Dagger" Department

[Bacon King]

Cloak and Dagger (C&D): the process of revealing as much as possible about another Civilization with various tricks, usually involving the demographics (F11) page.

What everything means:

approval rating: calculated as (#ofHappyCitizens + .5*#ofContentCitizens + .5*#ofSpecialists)/#ofCitizens

GNP: each gold, PRE-CORRUPTION, is one million here.

Mfg. goods: each shield, POST-CORRUPTION, is one megaton here.

Land area: each square is 100 sq. miles. Includes water territory.

Literacy: (#PopsInLibrary Cities + #ofPopsInUniversityCities + #ofPopsInResearchLabCities)/(#ofCitizens*3)
-if a city has TGL, Newtons, ToE, SETI, Internet, or Cure for Cancer, it's considered to have all three improvements. Apollo and the Intelligence Agency count as one and a half improvements (for a max of the three, so a single city is never considered to have over 100% literacy). Also there's a 3% bonus when you discover literature.

Disease: % of total tiles that are either jungle or floodplains. I believe water tiles are included in the total here as well.

Life Expectancy: Just like Literacy, except replace libraries, universities, and research labs with granaries, aqueducts, and hospitals. Can only range from 20 to 99.

Family size: (Total amount of excess food being produced)/(2*#ofCities)

Military Service: (10 * #ofMilitaryUnits)/#ofCitizens

Annual Income: # of connected luxury and strategic resources + 1 for the first trade route w/ another civ. This number can't be zero and starts at 1.

Productivity: #ofUncorruptedGold + #ofUnwastedShields + #ofUneatenFood

One can infer quite a lot based on this early stuff given our numbers and our rankings that the F11 screen gives us, especially in the early game. We could, as an example, tell that another civilization founds a settler factory on floodplains if we notice one turn that our rank for disease has improved along with a decrease in land area or population or a relative increase in something like life expectancy.

This is easier to do in Civ 4 where it gives best, worst, and average rankings (thus you can figure out each civ) but it's still not that difficult to place together a picture of each civ's performance based on turn-by-turn observation. I'd like to translate the other forums to learn some Civ 3 specific methods I may not know, but this is a job I can do for everyone (if y'all would like) as the game begins.

 

[Bacon King]

Also, the military adviser can be surprisingly helpful as well.

Took me a while to find that link; haven't used it in so long. But considering the relatively small number of early combat units available, for a while it's not too difficult, based just on what the military adviser says about another civ, to establish a pretty definite ceiling on the number and types of combat units they have.

 

[Cyc]

Sounds good, BK. Please keep us informed and keep all information internal. A running analogy of the other three teams progress or possible goals will help us greatly improve the planning process.

 

[EvilConqueror]

Hmm, very interesting. I would never have thought that screen could be so valuable.

 

[Bacon King]

Question: in Civ 3 multiplayer games, does it list the turn-by-turn score of each team in-game? It's been so long since I've played that I don't remember; in Civ 4 it's one of the best tools to use for this sort of stuff.

 

[Cyc]

Yes. The game screen score marqee lists each team's current score. The Victory Screen also lists the scores, along with other info.

 

[Bacon King]

Ah, beautiful. I couldn't recall.

The equation for score is:

(#ofLandTiles + 2*#ofHappyCitizens + #ofContentCitizens + #ofSpecialists) * difficulty level.

Based upon turn-by-turn changes you can keep track of when new cities are founded, when cities grow, when luxuries are connected, etc.

Also, some other fun things I've remembered, based on the cost of the steal tech mission you can tell how many technologies another civ has, and based on the cost of the sabotage production mission you can determine EXACTLY how many shields another civ has invested into a current project! No need to actually spend any money; just look at the cost. You can also figure out the to-the-tile distance away an enemy's city is based on the cost of Investigate City, if they've founded a city somewhere we don't know.

(I really wish I had my copy of Civ 3 right now, discussing this has made me realize how much of a refresher course I need!)