Late Game

[undertoad]

Hiya

I've just finished my first CivIII game in ages (played a few other games, but got bored at the end and never finished!).

Anyway, in this game I was going for a Spaceship, made friends with the Sumerians (who had been nice to me from the start), smashed everyone else, and then, 1 turn away from completing the Stasis Chamber (the last spaceship component) - bloody Cultural Victory in 1878! I must remember to turn that option off at the start, along with Domination. Sure, I could have sold all my cultural buildings and whacked the lux slider up to cheer up the miserables - but I'm too much of a builder to do that!

I'm playing on Warlord, maybe I should notch up to the next level next time.

Anyway, here are a few late-game-related questions:

1. Is it possible to completely eliminate pollution? Seems that some cities have two "death-poison" symbols that can't be got rid of, even with the full kit of Recycling Centre + Tube Trains. And as I don't need to tell you, pollution is a PITA. Easy to deal with with my army of 132 workers/slaves, so global warming isn't the issue - but oh God the boredom of shifting them all around!

2. What do Courthouses actually DO? They seem to have a pretty pathetic effect.

3. I dealt with corruption by inducing WLKTD everywhere. I read that this only affects waste (shield corruption) as opposed to corruption (trade corruption) - but does the city display actually change to reflect this, or does it show the base level of waste? I ask because WLKTD didn't seem to have any visible effect (but maybe this is because I had such a huge empire that I wasn't paying attention). WLTKD doesn't have a clear indication in the city display (only the fireworks visible on the map) - or am I missing something? I use CivAssistII to help with this, but as it relies on savegames it's often just one turn out of date.

4. Does starving (or rather, eating up food from the Storage box, not actually starving - so city has a red number, but doesn't actually shrink) prevent WLKTD? After Longevity, it becomes very hard to manage cities so that they're stable, rather than growing by 2 and then starving.

5. What is the point of the "minimum number of turns to research" setting? (Usually 4 turns). In the late-game, waiting around and building innumerable Hospitals, REcycling Centres and Tube Trains while the propellerheads figure out e.g. Robotics is another PITA.

6. Assuming you're not going for a Diplo or Conquest victory, what do you DO in the late game? I had most of my cities fully-tooled-up with Factory/Hoover/Recycling/Mass Transit, and financial, scientific and happiness buildings up the yingyang, and was left with just building innumerable Mech Infantry, which I'd use to disband Infantry wherever something "important" (usually a pollution-reducing improvement) was under construction. This is pretty boring. There's always Wealth I suppose, if only to prevent that "construction completed" popup.

Maybe I need more of a challenge...

!

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Anyway, here are a few late-game-related questions:

1. Is it possible to completely eliminate pollution? Seems that some cities have two "death-poison" symbols that can't be got rid of, even with the full kit of Recycling Centre + Tube Trains. And as I don't need to tell you, pollution is a PITA. Easy to deal with with my army of 132 workers/slaves, so global warming isn't the issue - but oh God the boredom of shifting them all around!

Once you get a large enough city, I don't think it is ... my games tend to end in the early Modern (or tended to, anyway), so I've never actually built a city just for pollution testing.

2. What do Courthouses actually DO? They seem to have a pretty pathetic effect.

Reduce Corruption and Waste; seriously, start a game and when you get to Republic, find the city farthest away from your capital. I've had 14-Production (8 Waste) cities jump to 14-Production (4 Waste) from Courthouse (no FP). Late game, once you start breaking the OCN, they become less useful, and I'm not sure how useful, if at all, they are for Democracy and Communism, as I never use those.

5. What is the point of the "minimum number of turns to research" setting? (Usually 4 turns). In the late-game, waiting around and building innumerable Hospitals, REcycling Centres and Tube Trains while the propellerheads figure out e.g. Robotics is another PITA.

Probably to keep the player from tech-overrunning the AI, or vice-versa on higher difficulty levels. Also gives people who never touch the sliders a bop on the head for all the money they're wasting.

6. Assuming you're not going for a Diplo or Conquest victory, what do you DO in the late game?

Go for Domination VC I've only done Dom/Conquest VC in my games, except one (easy) Victory Point, and my first, which was a Culture (on Chieftain, Germans).

If I'm building something for the sake of building something, it'll be either units or Wealth, since I don't feel the need to build pretty cities for the sake of pretty cities.

 

[The Professor]

2. What do Courthouses actually DO? They seem to have a pretty pathetic effect.

They decrease corruption by 10%. A 50% corrupt city would become 40% corrupt. For the very, very corrupt cities out in the boonies, they won't have any noticeable effect--you'll still just get one shield and one commerce out of them.

3. I dealt with corruption by inducing WLKTD everywhere. I read that this only affects waste (shield corruption) as opposed to corruption (trade corruption) - but does the city display actually change to reflect this, or does it show the base level of waste? I ask because WLKTD didn't seem to have any visible effect (but maybe this is because I had such a huge empire that I wasn't paying attention). WLTKD doesn't have a clear indication in the city display (only the fireworks visible on the map) - or am I missing something? I use CivAssistII to help with this, but as it relies on savegames it's often just one turn out of date.

Yes, having WLKTD does decrease waste, but it can be hard to spot, because you'd have to check the uncorrupted shields just before WLKTD happens, and then check again one turn later, and compare. Again, in the really, really corrupt cities, you'll probably still just get one shield and one commerce.

4. Does starving (or rather, eating up food from the Storage box, not actually starving - so city has a red number, but doesn't actually shrink) prevent WLKTD? After Longevity, it becomes very hard to manage cities so that they're stable, rather than growing by 2 and then starving.

Yes, I believe that a city with insufficient food to sustain the population will immediately stop celebrating WLKTD's. Probably as good a reason as any to not build the Longevity wonder. At some point, I micromanage my cities so that they are neither growing nor shrinking. That might require planting trees or changing irrigation to mines, etc.

5. What is the point of the "minimum number of turns to research" setting? (Usually 4 turns). In the late-game, waiting around and building innumerable Hospitals, REcycling Centres and Tube Trains while the propellerheads figure out e.g. Robotics is another PITA.

As ChaosArbiter said, it is to prevent players from running away on technology on Chieftain setting, and the AI from running away with it on SID.

6. Assuming you're not going for a Diplo or Conquest victory, what do you DO in the late game? I had most of my cities fully-tooled-up with Factory/Hoover/Recycling/Mass Transit, and financial, scientific and happiness buildings up the yingyang, and was left with just building innumerable Mech Infantry, which I'd use to disband Infantry wherever something "important" (usually a pollution-reducing improvement) was under construction. This is pretty boring. There's always Wealth I suppose, if only to prevent that "construction completed" popup.

If you're going for Space, all the cities that aren't building spaceship parts can be building Wealth. Simplifies matters alot.

Oh, and one of the settings for worker tasks is Automate--clean pollution. This can save a little tedium. But honestly, if you're building all the wonders, all the improvements, have enough cities to be winning culture victories accidently and launching your spaceship, you should probably consider a higher difficulty level.