Is the Statue of Zeus too powerful?

[Divaythsarmour]

SOZ seems over powered. When I have ivory within a dozen or so tiles of my start I know that I can win. When the AI gets ivory I almost always lose or the game's no fun.

I've tried to remove Conquests and install Civ3 vanilla or PTW/gold edition, but can't get any of the others to work on Windows 7 - 64 bit. I'm not sure if it's because of residual pieces of conquests remaining in the registry or because they just won't work on Windows 7.

Is there a simple way of disabling SOZ in conquests? If there is, I might do the same with Knights Templar.

Another idea would be to get a little better at defending agains the AI's ancient cavalry. Does anyone out there have any helpful thoughts?

 

[ChaosArbiter]

The SoZ is powerful, but it's hardly gamebreaking.

However, if you have Civ3 Conquests, you already have Vanilla/PtW installed and can play them. Go to your game's folder (Firaxis Games), and the first folder will be for Vanilla civ - from there you can go to either the Conquests folder or the PtW folder, and you can run the applications from there (or create shortcuts).

 

[DWetzel]

Catapults and swords and hit them before they hit you, is the usual method.

I don't think SoZ is too powerful, though ancient cavalry are a very nice unit. Consider that for 200 shields you could have instead gotten six horses and an archer; obviously OVER TIME you far more than make that back up, but, well, that's over time.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

The SoZ is powerful, but it's hardly gamebreaking.

However, if you have Civ3 Conquests, you already have Vanilla/PtW installed and can play them. Go to your game's folder (Firaxis Games), and the first folder will be for Vanilla civ - from there you can go to either the Conquests folder or the PtW folder, and you can run the applications from there (or create shortcuts).

Chaos, That's the best news I've had all year!

I think PTW is actually my favorite of the three. I love getting great people in battle and having the option of using them for building a wonder. Thanks!

 

[dominatr]

instead of messing around in the games standard folders, open up the editor, make a secnaro, and under city improvements and wonders, search for SoZ.
Then you just delete it.

I dont think its too powerful, never once have i needed to resort to it, nor has the AI killed me with it.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

I find the AI is slow to build it so by the time they have AC's, I have units to deal with them

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

statue of Zeus is more powerful without accelerated production, because the Ancient Cav production is a constant

 

[MysteryX]

If you can trade for the ivory, you can build Statue of Zeus too.

As for playing Gold on Windows 7, it seems to work best if you run it in compatibility mode for Windows XP.

 

[Ataxerxes]

statue of Zeus is more powerful without accelerated production, because the Ancient Cav production is a constant

True. I never play accelerated production. I used to and will never go back.

I know early turns are more valuable, but I usually get at least about 20 AC's if I build it early enough. Best unit of the ancient age - with the extra HP, it's basically 4-2 1/2 -2 unit. Helps with my late AA expansion after peaceful expansion is over. If I have Ivory, I really try for it.

 

[dominatr]

True. I never play accelerated production. I used to and will never go back.

I know early turns are more valuable, but I usually get at least about 20 AC's if I build it early enough. Best unit of the ancient age - with the extra HP, it's basically 4-2 1/2 -2 unit. Helps with my late AA expansion after peaceful expansion is over. If I have Ivory, I really try for it.

why did you stop using accelerated production? the AI gets the bonus as well, so its pretty fair.

 

[Ataxerxes]

why did you stop using accelerated production? the AI gets the bonus as well, so its pretty fair.

I agree it's fair. With accelerated production you're often running techs in 4 turns at 40% research. Warfare changes because of your units going obsolete in the middle of a campaign. The map changes so fast it's hard to follow as you and the AI plop down cities - I wind up sending the settler "here, here, no here." You can explore the map before making some important decisions. I just find accelerated production a little frenetic.

For me, the game is a little easier without accelerated production. I'm curious, how many players use accelerated production? I'm not the most articulate person, so sorry if this is a little rambling.

 

[dominatr]

I agree it's fair. With accelerated production you're often running techs in 4 turns at 40% research. Warfare changes because of your units going obsolete in the middle of a campaign. The map changes so fast it's hard to follow as you and the AI plop down cities - I wind up sending the settler "here, here, no here." You can explore the map before making some important decisions. I just find accelerated production a little frenetic.

For me, the game is a little easier without accelerated production. I'm curious, how many players use accelerated production? I'm not the most articulate person, so sorry if this is a little rambling.

well, i'm the opposite i guess, i get impatient when one of my cities takes 40 turns to build a damn temple. Ive been using it ever since, and to compensate with things being built faster, i made settlers and workers move and work faster to keep the pace. I like to have games with heavy wars going on, and i play aggressive so i like the pace to be more intense.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

For me, the game is a little easier without accelerated production. I'm curious, how many players use accelerated production? I'm not the most articulate person, so sorry if this is a little rambling.

When I first started playing CivIII, back when I still played Chieftain, I used AP ... and still took games into 2000+ before finishing them. I'm not terribly fond of it, although part of it's because of the mapstyle I play: Huge Pangaeas with 1000 turns. I *like* the game taking a long time to finish.

However, I'm not sure it's really "fair." True, the AI gets the same bonus, but the AI doesn't know how to use the extra production the way a human can, as evidenced by games above Regent (case in point - the French had 50+ Cavalry and ~170 Infantry against my 11 Cavalry and 20-odd Infantry and access to my territory; they're currently dying to my 9 Panzers, less than 20 turns after they sneak-attacked me).

Now, AP does what it does do well, very well - accelerate the pace of the game and enable large numbers of units.

 

[timerover51]

instead of messing around in the games standard folders, open up the editor, make a secnaro, and under city improvements and wonders, search for SoZ.
Then you just delete it.

I dont think its too powerful, never once have i needed to resort to it, nor has the AI killed me with it.

He can also increase the number of turns to auto-produce an Ancient Cavalry, make it go Obsolete faster, make an additional resource required, or require the Ivory to be within the city limits.

You can do the same thing with the Knights Templar. Require Iron to be within the city limits. That will be a pretty good restriction.

 

[GamezRule]

I have never found either of those wonders make any real difference. I find that in my hands, SoZ is more powerful, and in the AI it is switched. My problem is probably that on higher levels, the wonder units are such a small proportion of the AI's force, that they make no difference. Besides, I would rather kill crusaders then muskets. They usually don't get much of a chance to attack. The best thing is to let them come to you with there first stack, so you don't have to worry about defending against them with you're new conquests.

 

[Zefyrinus]

I think the SoZ is way too cheap, compared to how useful it is. Although it often happens to me that either no one has ivory until very late so it becomes obsolete after only making a few ancient cavalries, or that an AI that's really far away gets it and I don't have a war against that AI until much, much later in the game, so I don't have to worry about it.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

I've been enjoying PTW.

 

[darski]

Whenever I manage to get SoZ, I always find it interesting to see if this is a game where they actually can kill something or can only be killed. it keeps the game interesting all round that does.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Whenever I manage to get SoZ, I always find it interesting to see if this is a game where they actually can kill something or can only be killed. it keeps the game interesting all round that does.

Usually the SoZ will be used to help kill off a nearby AI. It is more powerful if you're not using AP, because you get almost twice as many Ancient Cavalry. They aren't that much worse than Knights because of the extra HP.

 

[darski]

Usually the SoZ will be used to help kill off a nearby AI. It is more powerful if you're not using AP, because you get almost twice as many Ancient Cavalry. They aren't that much worse than Knights because of the extra HP.

This may be hard to believe but I have games where the AC just line up and die. I once sent 13 of them to attack a city and had 3 left at the end of the first attack run.

Now most of these fights were against (what started as) R spears so it is not a fair test. We all know that R spears can easily defeat tanks.