Miscellaneous questions for veteran players

[St. Omp]

1) How does movement work? Often, the "goto" command seems to choose sub-optimal paths. Is that normal? Additionally, sometimes a unit will have a fraction of a move left, but when I go to move it, the game will use up the rest of it's turn without moving it.
2) How do nuclear units work when used on an enemy naval unit? I know that nukes used on water tiles do not cause pollution, but are there any other effects that I need to be aware of. What happens if a nuke uses up all of it's sixteen moves, and then crashes?
3) Let's say that I have a colosseum that's being built, and it will be finished on the same turn that my population will increase. Will the people in that city revolt, or will the colosseum "kick in" before then?
4) I heard that you can use caravans and diplomats to smuggle military units across borders. I never made heavy use of caravans or diplomats, so I am wondering if this is really true.
5) I heard that the invention of the automobile does not have any effect on the observatory wonder. Is this is true, does it hold true if an AI player has the wonder instead of me?

 

[Mize]

1) GoTo is kind of buggy, while fractional moves will indeed sometimes fail, more often on rugged terrain, just like sometimes a 2MP unit will not be able to climb a mountain even with full MP (solution to that is to leave it with just 1MP and move).
2) Nuke kills all naval units in the nine tiles the explosion effects, unless there are more than 10 units on a tile, in which case some will remain alive. 'Crashing' nukes just disappear without exploding.
3) No revolt here, buildings go first.
4) Yes, it is true. You can use planes too because they also ignore zones of control and can move on enemy territory without a declaration of war.
5) The Observatory never goes obsolete for human or AI players.

 

[rahorvat]

1) How does movement work? Often, the "goto" command seems to choose sub-optimal paths. Is that normal? Additionally, sometimes a unit will have a fraction of a move left, but when I go to move it, the game will use up the rest of it's turn without moving it.

Oh, yes definitively. The answer has been given on this historic conferences:

*** CompuServe Civilization Conference ****
with
Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley

(3-9,Gar Blackjack) Wow, thank'ee! Nothing earth-shattering, but I would like to take a moment to talk about your friend and mine: The "Go To" algorithm.

(3-9,Gar Blackjack) It seems to work pretty well at sea, although I wouldn't go so far as to entrust my triremes to it. HOWEVER on land, it behaves in a totally inexplicable manner! Yesterday I watched it tromp one of my catapult units well off the beaten path, taking it leagues out of its way, and when the unit finally came to rest, it was a jillion miles from the spot I told it to visit, standing on the shore of some lonely promontory. My question: How smart is Go To, and what should we reasonably expect from it?

(3-2,Sid/MicroProse) OK, OK, nobody's perfekt. We actually took the Goto out towards the end of our playtest, but some people liked being able to forget about certain units for a while. We do not recommend using the command for any important or critical moves.

*** GEnie CIVILIZATION CONFERENCE ***
Hosted by Scorpia
1992 by GEnie and Scorpia

<[paul] P.MACLAUCHLA> Is it my imagination, or does the "Go To" instruction sometimes use a non-direct route?

<[Sid & Bruce] MICROPROSE> The GoTo command has a few weaknesses. It will try to use roads if possible and this may lead to an indirect route. Its best to move a unit yourself unless you're not to conerned about when it gets to its destination.

The conference transcript can be found on Internet archive from MPS web page.
It's important to note that the GoTo function is so buggy that it corrupts game data (I'm speaking from experience).
The AI uses GoTo function often so you can't stop it from making havoc in the Game. You should save your game as often as you can and use that when the game crashes.

2) How do nuclear units work when used on an enemy naval unit? I know that nukes used on water tiles do not cause pollution, but are there any other effects that I need to be aware of. What happens if a nuke uses up all of it's sixteen moves, and then crashes?

I'm not sure about effects on water, but the nuke is lost if it has used all of it's moves and is outside city.

3) Let's say that I have a colosseum that's being built, and it will be finished on the same turn that my population will increase. Will the people in that city revolt, or will the colosseum "kick in" before then?

The colosseum will be built and then the game engine will evaluate your city status.

4) I heard that you can use caravans and diplomats to smuggle military units across borders. I never made heavy use of caravans or diplomats, so I am wondering if this is really true.

Yes, it should be.

5) I heard that the invention of the automobile does not have any effect on the observatory wonder. Is this is true, does it hold true if an AI player has the wonder instead of me?

I guess you mean Copernicus observatory. The Game has a bug that will prevent Copernicus observatory from being obsoleted. The Civilopedia clearly says that Copernicus observatory should be obsoleted with the discovery of Automobile. The JCivED has added the wonder obsoletness table, so you should be able to change that.
Yes, it's not important who has the wonder, the old wonders will obsolete after any civilization builds more modern wonder.

Also you can look on this thread about other bugs https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...sion-what-should-be-fixed-in-openciv1.688773/

 

[Tristan_C]

3) Let's say that I have a colosseum that's being built, and it will be finished on the same turn that my population will increase. Will the people in that city revolt, or will the colosseum "kick in" before then?

The building comes first and prevents the disorder.

The tricky part is that on a new turn, you need to either 1) visit the city screen for every single city or 2) save, quit, and reload the game to see whether any new population units are unhappy. The attitude advisor doesn't seem to catch up with the internals of every city. If a city seems to randomly go into disorder without you even being able to see the blackshirt, it was probably there for a turn already without showing up on the advisor.