Meditation on Civ2 paradoxes...

[GenghisK]

Good point indeed, Starlifter. And thanks for cleverly contributing this thread

I didn't even think at that nuke-recon strategy

mm, hey btw, that could be a Civ2 fun sport too!

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[duke o' york]

Thanks for your answer above Starlifter. I probably meant that it costs that much to rush buy from scratch, which is not something that I ever find necessary. This is unrealistic too - even if the government made all scientists work towards a cure for cancer at the expense of all other projects and threw money at it wildly, it still wouldn't be discovered within the next year. Or I wouldn't have thought so.
Another unrealistic thing is the ability of a totally landlocked city to build Magellen's Voyage. How exactly did he get his boats across the grassland?

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in vino veritas

 

[starlifter]

posted July 04, 2001 04:53 AM
Good point indeed, Starlifter. And thanks for cleverly contributing this thread I didn't even think at that nuke-recon strategy

Tsk tsk, you mean you never had a "patrolling" CM or a "recon" nuke?

In real life, if we launched 4 nukes, and within one year, the all came back and landed in their silos asking to be refuled, I think it would be of interest to the press

.

 

[starlifter]

posted July 04, 2001 05:23 AM

Thanks for your answer above Starlifter. I probably meant that it costs that much to rush buy from scratch, which is not something that I ever find necessary. This is unrealistic too - even if the government made all scientists work towards a cure for cancer at the expense of all other projects and threw money at it wildly, it still wouldn't be discovered within the next year. Or I wouldn't have thought so.

Crash programs have worked before, like the Manhattan Project. It tooks lots of the best talent, plus lots of resources... and compressed a typical 15-year program into about 3.5 years. Still an amazing achievement to this day, IMHO.

About rush buying from scratch, even a wonder's rush cost can pale when you try to find things to spend 30,000 or 35,000 gold per turn on in late game.

Another unrealistic thing is the ability of a totally landlocked city to build Magellen's Voyage. How exactly did he get his boats across the grassland?

I think the abstraction is thet the city supports/funds the voyage. Both cities (like Venice) and countries (like Spain) would fund voyages in past centuries.

Did you know it is possible, albeit slow and expensive, to "sail" a fleet of battleships right into the middle of a mountain range in Civ II? I won't explain how, yet. That way, it can be a sort of puzzle to figure out how.

So if you even see landlocked ships jst sitting, trapped in the middle of a vast chunk of terrain, it is possible... though the AI won't do it.

 

[duke o' york]

If you've got that much cash left at the end, why not just buy loads of engineers from scratch and pile them all into a newly-founded city? This should increase your score at the end, especially if you have happy wonders and the origin cities will grow their one person back in just a couple of turns. Unfortunately, you cannot rush-build a city past size 8, but you can make as many as need be. By then you should have suppressed all resistance from other civs and will not need to buy improvements for these cities if you have the pyramids. A single unit for defence is all that is necessary as you can railroad in extra troops should the barbs turn up.

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in vino veritas

 

[starlifter]

posted July 04, 2001 09:58 AM
If you've got that much cash left at the end, why not just buy loads of engineers from scratch and pile them all into a newly-founded city?

In a game that I really pursue that late, there will only be a pet city left, like GOTM 5. On a smaller map, the income is "only" about 25,000 per turn. On a larger map, it is often well over 35,000. On larger maps, I'll already have well over 1,000 engineers, and all 254 cities will be underway.

Normally, I pump a new city up to 3, and let it celecrate past that, and rush build a new improvemnt every turn. Pumping it up to 8 is semi-pointless, because it cannot grow smoothly (every turn) starting at size 8. That's because of the need for marketplaces, aquaduct, colosseum (skip temple), bank, sewer, etc. etc. If you could pay extra and "double build" improvements in one turn, I'd love to be able to do that

.

So in the post-stealth, large world... as the newer cities come online with their improvements... all that cash can be used to "buy" an unconstructed wonder like Oracle, or less frequently, Great Wall, Eiffel Tower, Manhattan Project.

 

[GenghisK]

Mmm, after playing pitifully the GOTM6, I think that the trade system is quite stupid too. I mean when a city loses people (starvation) it's not normal that the trade route is broken and definitely deleted. That's unrealistic. I think on the contrary, those trade route should even help preventing starvation, right?

 

[starlifter]

posted July 07, 2001 04:43 PM
Mmm, after playing pitifully the GOTM6, I think that the trade system is quite stupid too. I mean when a city loses people (starvation) it's not normal that the trade route is broken and definitely deleted. That's unrealistic. I think on the contrary, those trade route should even help preventing starvation, right?

Well, GOTM 6 was more of a "challenge" than GOTM 5, due to geography and terrain. Simply winning GOTM 6 by any means is the real victory

.

Trade routes don't get broken until replaced with a more valuable route, or the partner city is destroyed (or of course if the home city bites the dust).

The trade route should not go away if you are losing population!

Are you sure that's what is happening? A few (but not all) citizens starve, and as the do your existing trade routes go away?!

A "Food Route" can be used to help stop starvation... but Civ II separates the 2 kinds of routes; you can't combine them into one, so a trade route won't affect food & visa versa. But one type of route can actaully displace an existing route of another type.

 

[GenghisK]

As strange as my macintosh version is, yes, the trade routes disappeared... Mmm, I suspect David Copperfield!

I had to build new freights to replace the broken trade routes

It's not annoying but it's surprising. Perhaps my "unofficial" version of Mac Civ is strange

 

[starlifter]

posted July 10, 2001 03:48 AM
As strange as my macintosh version is, yes, the trade routes disappeared... Mmm, I suspect David Copperfield!
I had to build new freights to replace the broken trade routes It's not annoying but it's surprising. Perhaps my "unofficial" version of Mac Civ is strange

Did the route dissappear, leaving nothing to take its place? e.g., you had three routes, then one was suddenly "gone", and now there were only two (not three) routes at that city? If this is true, it sounds to me like the trading partner city was destroyed.

If a route "disappears", but you still have 3 routes, it is because the Civ II game decided to retain a new route that you just established, and discard the old one.

But what you should never see is, for example, three routes dropping back to only two total (or even 1 or 0 total). The only way this is supposed to happen is if the other city is destroyed. But that said, it is possible (but unlikely) for the data to be lost or damanged in the save file.

 

[GenghisK]

2 trade routes with Tenochtitlan... One gone. And I have glasses, I can still see Tenochtitlan on the map

I've even built a city next to it to get the aztec protection so... I think this might be a bug. Never mind. Thanks for your help anyway.

 

[starlifter]

posted July 10, 2001 03:14 PM
...
2 trade routes with Tenochtitlan... One gone. And I have glasses, I can still see Tenochtitlan on the map
...

Sonce I don't have the game's source code, there is another explanation, and that is simply that my knowledge is incomplete in the area of disappearing routes

. There is probably something that triggers (or allows) it that I just have not encountered and tested. Perhaps a wiser Civ II guru that reads this thread can give both of us more details, as I'm kinda curious now.

 

[RallyK]

Starlifter: Just a guess, but you earlier said that a trade route sometimes get replaced by a more valuable one. Perhaps that is what happened.

If Tenochtitlan built a better trade route, that you're not aware of would it cancel your trade route? In other words, can your city have a route to Tenochtitlan but not vice versa? I didn't think it would work like this, but it is a possible explanation.

 

[starlifter]

posted July 13, 2001 12:09 PM
Starlifter: Just a guess, but you earlier said that a trade route sometimes get replaced by a more valuable one. Perhaps that is what happened.

The program stores up to three routes per city. At the instant a new trade route is established, the program determines if the brand new route should be kept or discarded. If the new route is more valuable at that moment, and 3 routes exist already, one route (either the first listed route, or one of the remaining 2 routed if one of those has low value).

This algorithm is applied independently to the source and destination cities. There are no dependancies for a reciprical route, which means one city might keep the route as one of its top 3, and the other may not. Or both may drop it, or both may keep it. Whether or not one city "keeps" the route as one of the top 3 in no way influences the calculation for the other city to keep/drop the route.

So if a destination city later drops the reported route with the source city (like if a more valuable route is established with a 3rd city), the original source city's route is not affected at all.

So bottom line... you have a good idea, but that's not how the Civ II program works, because the information is merely stored in a simple matrix associated with the city itself.


PS, By process of elimination, if routes are disappearing and no route is replaing the lost route (and if the destination city is not destroyed), there must be something in the game's algorithm that I'm not aware of, but I've not really sat down to figure out what it is

. If/when I see this effect myself, I will closely examine the effect and determine what is causing it. But I've never observed it first hand, and so can't test it.

 

[GenghisK]

Back to the list of paradoxes,we can also add the selling/buying system.

If it's normal that we can buy or train a rifleman in 1 turn, tt's funny to be able to build a nuke or even a carrier in one turn, just by throwing in money. And more surprising, how can we sell buildings? Imagine, they will need 100 helicopters to lift a collosseum or a bank and carry it to the buyers home

No but really, that seems stupid.
Now what I could eventually suggest for Civ 3 is a mortgage system. That could be a lot wiser. And you won't have to sell, thus to rebuild it again when you need it.

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[starlifter]

...
Now what I could eventually suggest for Civ 3 is a mortgage system.
...

It would be nice to have had some sort of basic debt system, especially in cases where you run low on cash and the computer automatically "sells" structures to pay the shortfall. Even a Loan Shark would be better than finding a city without walls because your're 3 gold short at a particular instant between turns!