Originally posted by knowltok2
Here's a thought though, let's say I am mobilized and I have been benefiting from the increased production on say...a battleship. Now peace is declared and I am demobilized. Can I switch to a non-military building, or for that matter, anything at all? What about switching to a wonder?
Originally posted by robinm
Does this exploit work ?
Mobilize your Civ. Start work on an expensive unit... say ICBM, and benefit from the shield boost.
Just before it completes switch to an allowed wonder ( eg United Nations ).
Yes to both. You can switch to allowed buildings after having accrued the bonus shields, and, after a peace treaty can switch to a civilian building or even a wonder (even though you've generated a lot of extra shields). Certainly a possible exploit, though, I think, not a huge concern.
BTW, I originally posted the FAQs elsewhere, and followed them up with my own thoughts on the utility of mobilization -- but I didn't include that secoind post here in this thread.
This is what I orignally wrote after the FAQs:
What does this mean for strategy / tactics
My experience is that mobilization can be a godsend if the tide of war is turning against you. When you really need to pump out units, and the fate of the war is uncertain, mobilization can save your bacon. This usually occurs in a defensive posture however, even if that "defensive posture" involves trying to consolidate your massive gains.
The other situation where I have utilized mobilization as an extremely effective tactic is during a massive world war, where 6 or more civs are going at it, and where military alliances and MPPs virtually guarantee continuous warfare for some time, even if the individual combatants occasionally "take a breather" or even switch sides. Mobilization can be very effective here for one fundamental reason: the ability to de-mobilize (or go back to a peace-time economy) presents itself with a fairly steady frequency. Because you likely have the opportunity to make peace with one of the combatants, you can generally ease yourself out of the mobilization. The ability to move back into a peaceful economy is critical -- you need to be able to build temples / libraries / marketplaces etc. in the cities that you've conquered; the inability to do so during a mobilization, and therefore the inability to expand the borders of newly captured cities and/or bring some much needed happiness to help combat resistance and war weariness, can seriously jeopardize your offensive and substantially increase the chance of newly conquered cities flipping back to your foe.
With a massive world war, you can mobilize and de-mobilize again and again, for the most part providing yourself with a "golden age" for producing units, but without suffering the restrictions against building non-military units / improvements for more than several turns. Note that this also means you can use a variant of the "palace build" tactic many employ for wonder building - you have cities work on military units so as to generate the extra shields; you then de-mobilize when given the chance; you then switch to high-cost non-military builds (while preserving the extra shields already accumulated during the previous mobilization); and finally you re-mobilize in another turn or so to resume your "military golden age" and continue your war. (Could be an exploit some feel uneasy with.)
I myself have not seen a great deal of utility in mobilizing unless, as noted above, I have a large scale war going with a world full of combatants, or, I really need more units to hold a precarious position. The inability to build temples, marketplaces, wonders, or other run-of-the-mill city improvements during a mobilization is simply too costly to my style of warfare (which is to raze cities only very, very rarely, and to war for a set of narrowly defined objectives as opposed to trying to inflict as much damage on an enemy as possible).
).
) and fired up my laptop with Civ 3 loaded while at work. I tested the "building queue of non-military units" survivies mobilization question -- it does not. Even with a lengthy queue, once mobilized the next build project must be an allowed build -- your queue of civilian improvements will be ignored / deleted. I have no idea (and don't care) whether your queue is "remembered" and reverted to once mobilization ends.
