My Strategy.

[Xeven the God]

Here is a simple startegy I use in Civ2. I am by no means a Civ2 expert, so my strategy my have some major flaws.

Despotism --> Monarchy --> Comunism --> Fundy

Despotism:
In this gov't the idea is to expand and learn. Build as many cities as possible and connect them with roads for extra trade (Water, and the Colosus help alot). Set your Tax as low as possible (e.i. set it so you don't lose money), your Science as high as possible, and your lux at 10%. This gov't really isn't that good, so try to get Monarchy as soon as possible. Also, try to build as little units as possible (About 3 to 4 defensive units in each city is enough).

Monarchy:
In this gov't you need to expand, scout, and build a standing army. In this gov't you need fast units a lots of settlers. The object is to connect all your cities and maximise production (to build units), and find all your close neighbors (If you want, you can even conquer a few.). I suggest going after Knights and Dragoons as they both are very fast and pack a reasonable punch, though they are not cheap. This gov't is simple, just produce, and expand.

Comunism:
This is simple. Switch to this as soon as you get it and produce even more units, upgrading each one as it becomes obsolete. You should also build happy improvements in prep for Fundy. Jack your science as high as it goes, ignore lux, and set tax to a reasonable level.

Fundy:
Even more simple than Commy. Build Fanatics and Howitzers like crazy and send them at your opponents. You'll win by shear numbers, if not by strength (I had 900 fanatics in one game once. I lost about 500 of them .). Set the Tax to 20% (You should have banks, and happy improvements by now.), Jack the Science to 80%, and ignore the lux. Basically conquer everything in your path using your Howitzers and Fanatics.

That is it. Thank you for reading . I hope it wasn't that boring and stupid...

 

[starlifter]

Hey, that's a very well organized post!

There are probably about as many Civ 2 Strategies as there are Civ 2 players... .

But since you invite comments, I'll make a quick plug for Democracy... it's the most powerful form of gov't, properly used (in most situations).

Despotism:
I never allow the luxury setting above 0% in despotism. To keep the post short, I won't go into the sound math why, but just say if you insist on diverting science and taxes into lux, make sure you are getting a good return. And I can say that in an early game Despotic Gov't, that is not possible. No Marketplaces. No trade routes. I doubt that most cities can produce even two goblets (in the city status window).... probably 1, which is better used as tax or science. Lock it to 0 and forget it .

About the 3 or 4 defensive units... that must be a misprint. That is way too many, . One, and later maybe to, then bam... you should be into Monarchy anyway.... the fastest path to Monarchy is 5 advances (4 required, and one "junker"). As you pointed out, get out of Despotism ASAP.


MONARCHY

Pretty good strategy overall... but hopefully you won't be making Dragoons in Monarchy.... go right for the Democracy advance, build the Statue of Liberty, and Switch to Communism, then work on Leadership. The reason is that the advanced forms of Gov't have a much greater impact on the course of the game in most situations.

COMMUNISM

You need not build happy units "in prep for fundy". If Fundy makes you happy, the simply go straight from Monarchy to Fundy as soon as you build the SoL. No need to the intermediate Communism if Fundy is your goal.

FUNDAMENTALISM

Yup, build those Howies, bombs, missiles and even let the dirty tricks (with spies) fly.... Fundy is great for that. However, all your science abot the 50% slider level is lost in Fundy. Never set Fundy science about 50% in standard SP games. Raise your taxes to at least 50%, and set Lux to 0%, unless you are adept at a "Power Fundy" govt.... which takes a lot of effort, and whose hallmark is lots of trade and key cities with at least 50% happy citizens (to get the extra trade icons).

hope it wasn't that boring and stupid...

Nope, and doubtless there will be many more people with good ideas for you. Once you get the feel of Fundy, you might try long-term Communism, and then Democracy later on. There are lots of posts about making a war-mongering Democracy by people at CFC.

 

[Xeven the God]

I think you mis-understood me about building happy improvements. The point of building happy improvements for Fundy is that you get tithes (money) instead of making people happy. I set the Science at 80% and the Tax at 20% because by the time I get Fundy I have lots of happy and science improvements in each town. I can get a tech a turn and about 3000 gold with those settings.

Welcome back, Starlifter! Check the OT, we have a spammy thread in there for you.

 

[starlifter]

by Xeven:

I think you mis-understood me about building happy improvements. The point of building happy improvements for Fundy is that you get tithes (money) instead of making people happy. I set the Science at 80% and the Tax at 20% because by the time I get Fundy I have lots of happy and science improvements in each town. I can get a tech a turn and about 3000 gold with those settings.

Actually, I knew what you're referring too (I was a Fundy Monger before I was a Demo Monger, LOL). Partly as a result of your thread, and partly because others were talking about Fundy in other threads, I broke down and wrote an overview of "Power Fundamentalism", with a main thrust of high science and trade in Fundy (see link later in post).

You might not be aware that setting the science slider to 60%, 70%, or 80% wastes 10%, 20%, and 30% of your resources, accordingly. This is because there is a cap (can be modified in rules.txt, though) of 50% science in Fundy. This is totally different than the "50% science penalty" of Fundy.

What happens is this. Civ 2 looks at your slider... if set to 60%, 70%, or 80%, the game (without warning you) simply computes the amount of science as if the slider was set to 50%, despite the way the human set it. That computed amount then cut in half (rounded down), and that is your generated science.

This means you should raise taxes by 30%, and drop the science from 80% to 50%. You will gain gold, and not "lose" a single beaker of Fundy science. Prove it to yourself by playing with the slider, and looking at your beakers at the end of your Trade Advisor (Function Key 5).

Your Markets, Banks, etc. will be working overtime with glee to process all the extra gold coming their way.

Now.... if you really really want a powerful fundy gov't with no science penalty (possibly a single beaker's penalty at most), then you need to set your science to 0, Luxuries to about 40%, taxes to 60%, and let the caravans fly across the map by the bushel. Your stealth fighters will ahve a field day against AI legions, LOL....

Here is a link with more details:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=308378&t=4186#post308378

Welcome back, Starlifter! Check the OT, we have a spammy thread in there for you.

I'll take a look later tonight .... to be honest, I have not even looked at OT yet, cause if I get going in there, I'll probably never get out, and I still have this GOTM to finish!! But I'm coming soon ....

 

[sethos]

No luxuries in despotism - no effect.
In Fundy, set your taxes as high as possible, science at 20 %.
Your research program: Diplos ans Spies - steal the teachs, don't invent them.
Rush build temples, market places and so on - that will increase your income. You must prepare for democracy, except you want to conquer the world. I prefer space race.
Think of your allies - you should give them a tech every 5th or 6th turn.
Build 6 or 7 caravels in different cities and fill them with 3 diplos/spies. Let them discover the world, open goody huts, bribe barbarians and AI cities, steal techs. Stealing techs will cause no war.
If you get the tech for a wonder, rush build it. Begin to build it in one of your better developped cities, buy it when you read that another civ will finish it the next turn. I had games where I finished 3 wonders in one turn. Darwin's Voyage is a key wonder when you're in Fundy. Steal the needed tech and build it, so the AI can't get two extra techs - and you're close to electricity and electronics (Hoover Dam - a must have!).
From that point of the game the AI should build no more wonder - dont let them steal your points (every wonder counts 20 points in the end).
Cure for Cancer will help you later when you switch to Demo.

 

[Ren]

COMMUNISM

You need not build happy units "in prep for fundy". If Fundy makes you happy, the simply go straight from Monarchy to Fundy as soon as you build the SoL. No need to the intermediate Communism if Fundy is your goal

I have a feeling Xeven does this so he can get some research in to get those Howitzers.

Now.... if you really really want a powerful fundy gov't with no science penalty (possibly a single beaker's penalty at most), then you need to set your science to 0, Luxuries to about 40%, taxes to 60%, and let the caravans fly across the map by the bushel. Your stealth fighters will ahve a field day against AI legions, LOL....

How do you work this when you run out of supplies???

 

[Xeven the God]

Thanx for the tips, Starlifter.

As for sethos, Na, I don't like caravans and don't really need them. I understand that they give you research bonuses/etc., but I could really care less. They're just too slow and weak(defensively, they can't attack anyway.) for me.

Correct, Ren. Commie is for the Howitzers.

 

[Old n Slow]

For those of us who haven't fully mastered the Power D or the master trade networks try the toggle power that the SoL gives. Once I have SoL, I often jump to fundy to get a reprieve on unhappiness, get "quick cash" to seed what I need, catch up on infrastruture & then return to Democracy.

A side effect note -- I remember reading (& it also seems the case in my games) that the ai will try to mirror my strategy -- if I'm racing the tech tree the ai's will be Rep or Dem & follow (& trade amongst themselves of course). If I'm in fundy they'll follow (if possible, or go commy or Mon).

For those of you that like big battles, stay in fundy mode for a while, build fanatics, ship them over to your favorite enemy, resupport them from a (new) nearby city to them & then leave that city un (or under) defended -- some of those troops might survive to give you targets later on.

 

[starlifter]

For those of us who haven't fully mastered the Power D or the master trade networks try the toggle power that the SoL gives. Once I have SoL, I often jump to fundy to get a reprieve on unhappiness, get "quick cash" to seed what I need, catch up on infrastruture & then return to Democracy.

That is an excellent strategy, IMHO. It is exactly how I began leaning how to move into and run a good Democracy. With time, the switch to Democracy got earlier and earlier! And now I just skip Fundy and Commie altogether in most games. But it sure did not start out that way!

 

[Ace]

Starlifter,

how did you discover this:

"You might not be aware that setting the science slider to 60%, 70%, or 80% wastes 10%, 20%, and 30% of your resources, accordingly. This is because there is a cap (can be modified in rules.txt, though) of 50% science in Fundy. This is totally different than the "50% science penalty" of Fundy".


I have not played in fundy for quite a while, but, IIRC, it is a lot of fun. One cannot score as high as with PD, but for sheer entertainment, (for an old warmonger) you cannot beat fundy, just go forth and conquer!!

Unfortunately, I do remember setting the science rate above 50% to try to increase science. Next time I try fundy, I will certainly do it your way. Thanks

:tank:

 

[starlifter]

Starlifter,
how did you discover this

From the school of hard knocks. Unfortunately, I had not yet had the brainstorm to find other Civ2 players on the internet... so when I noticed that I was getting rooked out of my science, I was pretty displeased (to put it mildly), and experimented to find out why. Later on, I realized that this stuff is indeed in the rules.txt, and now I know that Sid and his boys did this to balance gameplay.

The confusion comes from page 58 of the MGE manual: "Under Fundamentalism, tax/luxury/science rates cannot be set higher than 80 percent. In addition, ... all scientific research is halved."

And the cosmic section of the rules.txt:

@COSMIC
3       ; Road movement multiplier
2       ; 1 in x chance Trireme lost (mod. by Seafaring, Navigation)
2       ; # of food each citizen eats per turn
10      ; # of rows in food box (rows * city_size+1 = box)
10      ; # of rows in shield box
1       ; Settlers eat (govt <= Monarchy)
2       ; Settlers eat (govt >= Communism)
7       ; City size for first unhappiness at Chieftain level
14      ; Riot factor based on # cities (higher factor lessens the effect)
8       ; Aqueduct needed to exceed this size
12      ; Sewer System needed to exceed this size
10      ; Tech paradigm (higher # slows research)
20      ; Base time for engineers to transform terrain (x2)
3       ; Monarchy  pays support for all units past this
3       ; Communism pays support for all units past this
10      ; Fundamentalism pays support for all units past this
0       ; Communism is equivalent of this palace distance.
50      ; Fundamentalism loses this % of science
50      ; Percent shield penalty for production type change
10      ; Max paradrop range
75      ; Mass/Thrust paradigm (increasing slows spaceship time)
5       ; Max effective science rate in fundamentalism (x10, so 5 = 50%)

Note the last line.

So I examined the patch history to (as a programmer and AI designer with some game experience, the contradiction sounded like a patch to me), and found it was introduced in patch version 1.07:

-- Civ2 Patch version 1.07 --
....
* Under Fundamentalism, any science rate above 50% will have no
  additional effect on research.  Below 50%, research still continues at half effectiveness.
...

So that's the history of the Fundy science issue, and in part what made me want to figure a way to overcome the weaknesses of Fundy science (see various posts on "Power Fundamentalism").

I like Fundy, and if you zoom through the tech tree to Stealth ( I really really really really love vet stealth fighters!), then just switch to Fundy and go wild!

 

[Ace]

Veeery Interesting!!! That explains a lot!!! Thanks.


:tank:

 

[Marlos]

Originally posted by Old n Slow
A side effect note -- I remember reading (& it also seems the case in my games) that the ai will try to mirror my strategy -- if I'm racing the tech tree the ai's will be Rep or Dem & follow (& trade amongst themselves of course). If I'm in fundy they'll follow (if possible, or go commy or Mon).

I've noticed this as well, but to a lesser degree. Like others, I prefer the PD due to trade bonuses and the inability to be bribed . The AI does seem to mirror your governments, but if you have a 'smart' opponent (esp. Spanish or Babylonian) they will stay at democracy so that they cannot be bribed either. Not all civs mirror this strategy, though, IMO.

Nevertheless, if you start a war with your democratic neighbors (and you have to if you want their cities) and take some of their territory, they generally flip to another government. While this strategy is very silly for the AI to do, it makes your conquest that much easier.

I have also found a way to declare war while in democracy that doesn't require the UN. This may be old news, but have a diplomat perform industrial sabotage while at peace, and the AI will declare war! Your government falls (scandal in the Senate! ) but if you have SoL, you can immediately re-select democracy. Your reputation takes a big hit but does anyone really care about reputation?

Call me Teddy Roosevelt, I'm just a war-mongering democrat!