Needing more Strategic Resources

[undertoad]

I asked for right of passage in the peace talks, so I need to wait twenty turns before I can attack again. By that time WW would be gone, like VMXA said. I could cancel the agreement, but then I'd be negated, yes?. The other civ's won't allow ROP again for an extended period of time - twenty turns?. ROP keeps the civ's happy with me (unless I abuse it).

The ROP will allow me time to produce more defensive units and settlers. The military police on my main island are obsolete and I need more of them so other civs don't take advantage of that.

I agree about mutual protection pacts, their risky. If you know a certain civ is about to attack it could prevent the situation from happening. You need to be careful though.

ROP doesn't make a difference in terms of number of turns. If you sign a peace treaty after war, it always lasts 20 turns, regardless of what else is involved in the deal. Still, you could use the ROP while you're preparing for war again to cruise some fast units past the enemy's cities and see what kind of defensive unit they have.

I don't know about upgrading your home defenses. A stronger military (as a whole) is a deterrent to other civs attacking you; but I don't think they really care about whether your core is well-defended or not, beyond the extreme case where a city has no garrison at all (they love going for that). I'd be inclined to build one good defensive unit per home city, send the obsolete ones over to America to act as cheap defence, and increase happiness in other ways so that your core doesn't need more than 1 unit/city to keep the peace.

Forbidden Planet (there I go, Forgotten Palace, Forsaken Pillbox, Foreshortened Peanut) placement is a black art, much discussed - do a forum search with this phrase (I mean, Forbidden Palace, not the variants... ) on Titles Only and you'll get loads of hits. How far from the capital does matter - 2 cities away is too close, as the cities round it won't be that corrupt anyway, and so this placement doesn't take full advantage of the FP's effect. It's always hard to place it far away where it does most good: for one thing a big empire with faraway cities implies more cities, and the FP's construction cost increases with your empire size; also, as you say, faraway cities will be much weaker on production (smaller and more corrupt) and so add even more time to the construction. Using a Military Leader to rush the FP is a popular tactic.

My way of placing the FP is in a city that I can see will become very productive given the chance, with other potentially good cities close to it, and with a high level of corruption/waste. This is almost always a captured city, which means I build my FP late; so it costs loads, and I have to either put up with a long wait or hope I get enough MGLs to make a couple of Armies and rush the FP.

 

[CKS]

In Conquests, it doesn't matter much where the FP is, while in PTW or vanilla it should be far from the palace. In Conquests, the FP doesn't provide a second palace for rank corruption, so if you put it far from the palace, its city will have low corruption, but the cities around it will not. (See the corruption article in the War Academy: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/corruption_c3c.php )

If you are playing vanilla or PTW, you want your FP to be far from your palace, but rather than waiting forever to build one by hand far away, if you don't get a GL you might rather build the FP right next to your palace and then use the free palace jump to move your palace.

The cost of the FP does not change - it is always 200 shields, regardless of size of empire.

 

[Aabraxan]

I realise that, but I wanted the Pentagon pronto. I would have took something like nineteen turns otherwise.

I think that's a fair enough assessment. I can't recall ever having used an SGL for the Pentagon, but if there were no currently-available wonders and I'd waited a while for the Pentagon, I guess I can see doing that. I just wanted to be sure you knew exactly what trade you'd made. Apparently, you did.

Well what do I do if I lose rubber or don't have it?.

Garrison border towns with muskets and cannons, then take a big ol' stack of cavalry and go get some.

The last save that I uploaded to CFF I loaded up, and on the next turn the city of Washington and New York culture flipped and I lost control of them . I had to reload the save and abandon both of the city's. It's a real problem and it's constanly happening, what's the best way to deal with this?. Razing Washington meant that I lost The Temple of Artemis.

I play with culture flips on, but I know that some players turn them off at game setup. The way that I deal with them is: (1) starve captured cities down; or (2) raze cities rather than capture them. Also, don't leave big stacks of military in captured cities very long. Yes, it takes longer to quell resistance if you do this, but a city won't flip on the first turn it's captured, so you pile lots of units into it on the first turn, quell as many as you can, then move most of them out, leaving only a few obsolete units to keep quelling. As you probably know, warriors quell resistance just as well as modern armor.

I switched over to Monarchy for the fun of it and I was losing money, because I had too many units. I needed to drop my science research to eighty percent to make a profit. I think I'll go commie instead, unless you convince me it's the better Goverment.

As has been pointed out, that means another anarchy. Besides, 80% science isn't bad. What was the lux slider at?

Another reason for researching Nationalism is the ability to make mutual protection pacts.

As you know, MPPs are risky. I will occasionally use one to create a Mutual-Protection-Pact-of-Death if I'm looking to start a world war, but I generally avoid them. If I need a dogpile, I'll buy alliances.

A question about the Forgotten Palace, how far away should it be from the capitol, does it matter?. I only have it two city's away, because the city had fast production.

If you have CivAssist, you can use the Economy tab to see what putting it in various cities would do to your empire. I don't know if MapStat has this feature, but it's very handy in CA2.

 

[vmxa]

The last save that I uploaded to CFF I loaded up, and on the next turn the city of Washington and New York culture flipped and I lost control of them . I had to reload the save and abandon both of the city's. It's a real problem and it's constanly happening, what's the best way to deal with this?. Razing Washington meant that I lost The Temple of Artemis.

Why do you care about an obsolete wonder? I do not recall running into flips at Regent, maybe I have. It is not going to be an issue. I never read the flip risk, because I am not going to sweat it.

In my normal games, flips are going to happen, if I try to hold towns while they have any. They will have 3 or 4 times my culture. I sure will not have culture out in their old lands.

So I simply raze everything. Some exceptions, such as they are not going to be around for more than a few turns.

In games I play that others load, they are low level games and I can capture if it pleases me, because I can at least offset their culture.

In this case, if I was capturing those towns my choices are
1) raze
2) do not leave more than 1 unit inside after the first turn and recapture, if it flips.

 

[vmxa]

I asked for right of passage in the peace talks, so I need to wait twenty turns before I can attack again. By that time WW would be gone, like VMXA said. I could cancel the agreement, but then I'd be negated, yes?. The other civ's won't allow ROP again for an extended period of time - twenty turns?. ROP keeps the civ's happy with me (unless I abuse it).

The ROP will allow me time to produce more defensive units and settlers. The military police on my main island are obsolete and I need more of them so other civs don't take advantage of that.

I agree about mutual protection pacts, their risky. If you know a certain civ is about to attack it could prevent the situation from happening. You need to be careful though.

There is seldom a reason make RoP's at this level. The AI is not above a sneak attack via RoP rape. I am not saying never make them, but take care about it. Saving a bit of time is not a good enough reason in most cases.

 

[vmxa]

A question about the Forgotten Palace, how far away should it be from the capitol, does it matter?. I only have it two city's away, because the city had fast production.

That is just fine. It is more important to me to just get it up. If you have a leader can rush in a better place, great. Mostly you will have to hand build it and doing it in 1 or 2 net shield towns is too slow.

You will miss out on the small boost for too long. By the time it was done, it would be of little importance.

 

[vmxa]

Just in case you missed my edit to the no rubber after RP and skipped Nat. You will have a better unit than a rifle still, the guerilla.

 

[Ataxerxes]

vxma is right about ROP-rape. If you are in republic, the AI is going to scout around for any ungarrisoned city and attack it. They don't seem to suffer the reputation hits the human does. Since I'm usually in a Republic, I don't like ROP's. As vxma says, be careful.

At regent, I never even research Nationalism. I'm too cheap to use espionage much anyway. I always go straight steam power (awesome tech!, kill for coal), Electricity, Assembly Line (I usually have rubber, or some soon to be RIP neighbor has it). Besides, if you have to, build Guerillas as vxma said.

One thing this forum taught me was not to go for Democracy, even if peaceful. It's two optional techs, one very expensive, and anarchy. My game improved noticeably when I stopped going for Democracy. Commie has the same problem, only it's later so you have less time to enjoy the benefits of the government before the game ends.

 

[Illuminous]

After razing the city's should I be using settlers to do tight city placement instead, or should I just plop them down where their city's stood?. They use OCP.

Boston has Sun Tzu's AoW.

Your right VMXA, I shouldn't care about The Temple of Artemis, it's obsolete.

I'm also using Right of Passage to send galleon's near the city with coal for quick transport of units. It takes sixteen turns to get there.

Guerillas can't be upgraded to Infantry.

 

[vmxa]

"Illuminous"
"After razing the city's should I be using settlers to do tight city placement instead, or should I just plop them down where their city's stood?. They use OCP."

I guess it depends on what is going on at the time. If I am rolling over the landmass, I can get by with fewer settlers by spacing a bit wider. If it is going to take some time, CxxxC for defense.

Some times you can take a captured town ans rush a settler and then abandon. Use old units to rush.

"I'm also using the Right of Passage to send galleon's near the city with coal for quick transport of units. It takes sixteen turns to get there."

If this is an RoP with the nation you plan to attack, I do not do that. It is RoP rape of a sort. If it is some other nation, then fine, but what do you really save a few turns?
What do I risk?

"Guerillas can't be upgraded to Infantry."

They upgrade to a better unit, the ToW. Truth is I do not expect to upgrade anyway.

 

[Illuminous]

I'm still using Feudalism but I'm gonna switch to Communism, for zero WW. Feudalism's unit support is excellent, the only downside is WW (at least it's low). I'm not even anyway near the unit limit.

I'm using one defence unit in the city's to quell resistence. Thank's for the tip.

 

[undertoad]

In Conquests, it doesn't matter much where the FP is, while in PTW or vanilla it should be far from the palace. In Conquests, the FP doesn't provide a second palace for rank corruption, so if you put it far from the palace, its city will have low corruption, but the cities around it will not. (See the corruption article in the War Academy: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/corruption_c3c.php )

If you are playing vanilla or PTW, you want your FP to be far from your palace, but rather than waiting forever to build one by hand far away, if you don't get a GL you might rather build the FP right next to your palace and then use the free palace jump to move your palace.

The cost of the FP does not change - it is always 200 shields, regardless of size of empire.

Thanks for the correction - got some of my facts wrong! I think (though I may be imagining it) that I do see some improvement in the cities around the FP. (Conquests). I've never played the earlier versions, so it may be a minimal improvement compared to what happened in vanilla or PTW. The improvement would be down to the distance corruption effect - though as you say rank corruption still operates just as if the FP didn't exist. I'll have a look in my current game, as given what you say I may be sweating too much for a distant FP.

 

[Spoonwood]

As I recall, someone came up with some evidence that the AI does indeed suffer a reputation hit for RoP rape and breaking deals. However, it affects the AI's ability to trade for things to a much lesser extent than it does for the human player.

 

[Illuminous]

I didn't break any RoP agreement, I waited till it was over. Same with the peace agreement.

The Incan's decided to move their units in place to attack so I signed a mutual protection pact with their neighbors Japan. Apparently they want my coal, I ended up taking four of their city's from them. I kept on ferrying units across, to hold the fort.

Edit: The American's have one city remaining. I'm now at war with the Arabs, which have the biggest landmass. I've been keeping them at bay with aircraft, ships and subs.

I built the Theory of Evolution for two free techs, and also got the Hoover Dam up.

I've got quite alot of resources now, thanks for the help guys!.

 

[Illuminous]

I decided to go back all the way back to 1655AD to fix a few things. Before I finished the Theory of Evolution I was currently researching The Corporation, and had one turn remaining. When ToE was built it gave me The Corporation, WTH?. What a waste!, there was other techs it could have gave me, be them optional techs.

 

[CKS]

The ToE gives you the next two techs you pick. As you had already picked the corporation, it gave it to you, and then it gave you the next tech you picked. Because of this behavior, you want to time your build with your research, so that you always finish a tech just before you finish the ToE. If you can't time it right, don't research part of the tech the ToE will give you; accumulate cash instead. Otherwise all that research gets wasted.

 

[Illuminous]

Alright, thanks CKS!.

 

[vmxa]

What you would do is to select AT and set to zero research, if you cannot finish any techs, before the ToE is done. IOW you either pick a tech that will finish the same turn or pick the one you want and zero research.

AT is the best choice in most cases as it is very expensive and lets you pick Electronics next for free another very costly tech. Then you can roll your pre for Hoover and off you go.

 

[Illuminous]

I had an SGL to rush the Hoover Dam.

I have over 10000gp now - good for upgrades.

 

[Illuminous]

Regarding the Hoover Dam - should I be building factory's along with it?. Without the Hoover the factory is a prequisite of the Hydro Plant.