Post short tips here!

[brash]

Definately random.....

I had iron run out on me ...so I loaded a saved game from the turn before it ran out did some diplomatic chatting that I did not do before (hence advancing the random number sequence for the game) and lo and behold the iron did not run out when I hit end turn. (although 5 turns later it ran out again.)

I suspect the resources change the resource is consumed increases each turn they are connected and each type of strategic resources increase at a different rate.

 

[tetley]

Hey Perry, on the Heroic Epic I meant army. It takes a win with an army to build Heroic Epic. I'd never build an army for any reason other than Epic. So that's what I meant--I allocated my first GL to build an army, so I could get Epic. I probably have the map where I spawned the GL's off barbs somewhere in my Recycling Bin, but after further play I'm finding the barbs just don't keep attacking you after like 4 of them come out of the same camp.

 

[micmc_atl_ga]

while waiting for the counter attack that comes after going to war, (after you massed your forces on the bad guy's borders of course) send the captured workers INTO the captured territory not out of it (as long lines of chattel) The AI will regrab their workers in prefernce to killing you. Very useful when it's knights vrs swordsman and you'd rather stay on the attack.

At higher tech levels, once calvary are around, I've seen enemy units get shot to pieces by the zone of control thing trying to 'rescue' one of their former own.

The recaptured workers are taken back into the closest city anyway (which you are about to do bad things to) so you only lose a couple of turns worth of 1/2 ability workers.

When the home nation is complete with railroads etc, leave a few native workers at home, (for pollution control) then take all captured forign workers to the war site, and turn em loose inside the borders, (never in stacks obviosuly, you are trying to eat up attacks here)

But I've stopped the dirty germans twice from doing midevil things to my cities by diverting them by throwing workers out until my offensive forces can get there, destroy the invading column and recapture the workers after hostilites are ceased.

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by Tranced
say your researching flight at 70% and it says it will take 5 turns to complete. instead of just saying ok, try to go down to 60% and see if the number of turns changes, if it doesn't, then try to go lower. what's the use of using 70% of your cash to research something in 5 turns if your gonna be able to get it in 5 turns anyway at a lower percentage level.

I do not think this is a bug or exploit of any kind. I think it is just not looking at the big picture. Suppose you are researching Code of Laws, which will take you 1 turn to learn. Well, it really takes a certain amount of beakers (is it beakers now?). Suppose it takes 50 more beakers to learn Code of Laws. You are at 70% science research, which generates 80 beakers. You tick it down to 60% and that generates 60 beakers. Either way, you learn Code of Laws, but you contribute either 10 or 30 beakers to your next research project, depending on the science rate. So that extra 10% research is by no means "wasted." It is simply applied to the next project. So by downticking the science rate, you are increasing your gold at the expense of your *next* research project.

This makes the decision less of a no brainer, and more situational, IMHO.

 

[Headline]

Airpot!!! the greatest wonder of all time.

how to fight an intercontinental war in the modern age?
the answer is airport.

have one transport fill with troops and escort it with ships. Land on a city nearest to a enemy city. Dump the troops and have they take over the city. Rush the airport immediatly before civil disorder, and u can sit back and relax seeing all of ur backup troops sending to the city in one turn. Of course u need to have as many airports as possible on ur main continent.

and see ur enemy crumble

 

[spork]

In the industrial times, your enemies will definitely have fast attack units. The fastest of them are cavalry, which move three squares on unfriendly territory. Here is a strategy for attacking a powerful neighbor with fast troops:

Declare war, but make sure at the end of that turn, all your attackers are shielded with good defendes (riflemen or better). That way the AI will usually ignore them. This is especially true when you lure them with bait. Their favorite is an unguarded city. You see, the AI cheats: they can see well into your borders and know even about interior cities which are unprotected. With cavalry, they can also reach rather far into your borders to attack. So pick a city very carefully: it must be one square out of range of their cavalry. They will almost always make a mad charge for the empty city, stopping one square short of it. In my last battle on Diety, the Germans stacked 26 cavalry just outside an undefended city. They must have thought it was as good as theirs.

However, I brought in artilliery which was waiting in the wings into the city, and blasted the stack with every last shot I had. That hurt them quite a bit. Then I brought in my own attackers. You see, cavalry are fairly bad defenders, especially in open terrain. When my own cavalry moved against them, I didn't lose a single unit. Then I finished them off with miscelaneous troops brought in from various corners of my empire. In a single turn, I managed to eliminate Germany's entire offensive army. I was then able to walk through their land with very little counterattack.

Another effective bait which has often been discussed are workers. The best way to use them, I find, is two squares inside your territory. If the enemy has fast units, they won't be able to help themselves, and make a mad rush for your worker. But then they end up stuck in your territory where you can bomb them at you leisure and finish them off, almost certain your troops will incur no harm. Then use one of your own fast units to recover the worker, who is still on your territory. He can do some work on the very same round!

These strategies are enough to totally neutralize the AI counterattack, even on Diety.

 

[spork]

I always thought it was a waste to raze counquered cities, something to be done only if you have no culture at all. However, now I think differently. I did some tests and found out that captured cities, even if their entire populations have been replaced by your own citizens, have a much harder time being happy.

I like to use corrupt cities for rush-building, and there is a HUGE difference between the happiness of workers in captured cities, and workers in cities I founded. This shouldn't be the case; you would think it would depend on the population demographics, but not so! It's all about who made the city first.

Because useful captured cities are always around a lot of food, the process of razing them, resettling in the same place and building up the population goes very quickly. In the long run, it is very much worth it.

As an added bonus, you get some extra foreign workers from razing a city. These guys are great, because unlike your own workers, you don't have to pay them 1g/turn. (Even in communism, I often exceed my quota of "free" units and have to pay extra unit costs--but foreign workers are absolutely key if you play Democracy.

Once you get the hang of razing, you may find it's woth having several "battle-settlers" travel with your armies. They are not only useful for rebuilding a city you razed, but also help when the march to the army's next conquest is long. The idea is to place your own settlements inside enemy territory, use them for healing your wounded troops, and enable a much faster resupply route to your front line. (Remember that in a war, you are free to settle a city inside enemy borders. Doing this strategically helps a lot!)

 

[skywalker]

If you don't care about what the other civs think of you, drop nukes right behind their lines all up and down the front; your units will be left unscathed, while they have virtually nothing. Bring a bunch of workers, though, because global warming is worse now than it was in civ2.

 

[Ralf]

Try to avoid just selling off soon-to-be outdated & non-upgradeable combat-units. Use them as fairly effective "cannonfodder" instead, and plan your empires expansion-phases accordingly.

The swordsman for example, is a great city-defending allround combat-unit, and most players ar likely to build them in numbers. However, the swordsman is not upgradeable - so, then your start to approach the "military tradition" tech (that gives you the very worthwhile Cavalry-unit); move out all your city-guarding swordsmen in good time, to some appropriate "launch platform border-city" into soon-to-be-conquered foreign territory.

Also remember that these slow swordsmen-units are just as effective in dealing with conquered resisting city-populations as the more expensive cavalry-units are - so you can use them very effectively (and perhaps primarily) for that purpose as well.

As a thumbrule: You need at least one martial law-unit for each foreign pop-point in that city, for a succesful and lasting conquerings without sudden overthrows.

 

[Genuis]

#1: If you are the Romans, build Legions instead of pikemen. Each has 3 defense but the legionary has 3 attack vs. 1 for the pike.

#2: Is it just me, or are the Zulu hard to attack? I attacked the Zulu continent when they were in the early medieval stage (without Chivalry or Invention) with about 20 of my leftover knights (I was in the Industrial Age upgrading to cavalry). I expected an easy victory but their Impis were uncannily good at defeating my knights. I eventually had to sue for peace after taking only 3 cities because my Republic was in revolt.

#3: Religious is by far the best civ bonus because of the no-anarchy bonus. Not having that means you can switch from Democracy in peacetime to Communism in wartime and avoid revolt problems while still being productive in peacetime.

Thats all folks!

 

[shotdown08]

if you've built hoover dam sell or remember not to build coal or solar power plant

 

[Chapz]

1. Tired of getting intimidated into handing over techs to other civs?
I'd renegotiate if I could but I don't have the dialog option to do that. I can't declare war cause my civ is has few units. I'd like to stay peaceful and yet not get stepped all over by bigger, burlier civs.
I've found a something that's worked for me (provided you have a few extra luxuries, and are properly networked with him). If a civ demands a tech, and you simply can't refuse, then try this.
a. Agree to his demands.
b. DO NOT EXIT THE DIALOG SCREEN YET. (if you do, the deal's value somehow drops by half)
c. Make a deal with him
d. Select an appropriate luxury, and demand per turn gold. You'd be surprised on how much you can earn.

Believe it or not, I've done a 300 gold per turn deal before. Of course the civ couldn't pay exactly 300 per turn after his treasury ran out, but it kept paying me whatever it had (100+/turn). I depleted its 800 gold treasury in 3 turns, and bumped up my research considerably, giving my civ the advantage. All for some pretty gems. It pays to build cities near resources.

2. (someone's mentioned this b4) Never trade tech when the AI wants any. Just give him gold (lump sum ONLY), maps (the AI knows where you are anyway).

3. If your city is surrounded by flat land (non-hill, mountains) with the exception of deserts, MINE everything.

4. If you ARE surrounded by mountains, irrigate the few land tiles that you have. You'll need the food when your city grows larger.

5. If cultural expansion is your target, democracy is your friend. Coupled with mines, railroads, you can build wonders in less than 20 turns.

6. Have at least two railroads connected one city to another. When one gets cut off, your reinforcements can use the other. Useful even when at peace. Get a railroad up any new city and you'll have instant unit/worker assistance from a city half a continent away.

 

[danila]

Originally posted by Moeniir
If you are in the deal-building screen (lists of everything you have to trade), you can press enter to leave the negotiation - no goodbyes, you just leave. When you re-enter diplomacy with the same civ (during the same turn), you are brought right back to the deal screen... with the same deal-in-progress still on the table. This also works if another civ approaches you on their turn... hit enter. Play resumes, and during your turn, you can go back to them and pick up where you left off (perhaps after checking with some other civs or an advisor).

Alternatively you can click on the Foreign Advisor's face (not on the text below him!) and you go to the Foreign Affairs screen (F4). From there you can get to any Advisor, or even to any city (through F1). Cliosing all new screens will return you to the negotiations room. Amazing, how useful it is when you want to check situation with diplomatic relations or resources!

 

[shotdown08]

Since it isn't possible to rush build wonders w/o a leader use workers to plant forest around the city building the wonder and then cut down the forest this gives the the wonder building city 10 shields for every forest cut down. Granted if this is to be productive you need many workers to replant and recut the forest every turn.

 

[spork]

Since it isn't possible to rush build wonders w/o a leader use workers to plant forest around the city building the wonder and then cut down the forest this gives the the wonder building city 10 shields for every forest cut down. Granted if this is to be productive you need many workers to replant and recut the forest every turn.

Wrong. This does not work. If you are working on a wonder, shields from unit sales and forest choppings will not go to that city. Most likely, they will vanish. This seems to have been the one thing the game designers were careful about.

 

[spork]

Picking up on the "upgrading" issue: if you play on Diety, plan to do a lot of units upgrading, because you will probably have lots of money (no research budget) but little time to build your armies. I find the most useful units are:

1. Spearmen: they upgrade all the way to mech infantry, that's like 5 levels!

2. Catapults!

3. Knights, because even though they only upgrade to cavalry, it's worth it, because armies of cavalry are what should win you most of your wars. (Don't wait for tanks before you kick ass.) Building knights is a great way to get started on your massive cavalry force, before it's even possible to build cavalry. When it comes time to upgrade, the cost is a miniscule 20 gold, 10 if you have Leonardo's workshop.

Try to avoid "dead end" troops like longbowmen and swordsmen, unless you really need to fight an agressive war before you can amass knights.

 

[ainwood]

* Deploy paratroopers close to the front-lines. Use them solely for dropping on to the AI resources and pillaging them. Much better to be fighting riflemen than Inf / Mech Inf.

 

[dfhny]

spork... what use have you found for bombardment via catapult or any other weapon (e.g. cruise missile). I have avoided building any bombard weapon because I would rather invest my shields in units that can destroy other units not just "miss" or destroy a hit point. The cruise missiles I built could not sink an iron clad, now that is a little silly.

Also, do you find the AI cheats on higher levels? I find that my units lose more often as time goes on (i.e. when I start out with cavalry they attack well, but over time lose quite often even to warriors). Or, does the AI just force you to lose often enough to make it interesting to you the player? I have been playing on Monarch and found combat outcomes to be "highly random" to say the least!

 

[LeroyJr]

My favorite strategy is being a Tech Broker.

Make a run for the Great Library early so you can catch up on tech. Go after all the science stuff and get ahead of the posse by a couple of techs. Then sell off the least desirable tech's to every single Civ in the same year. That way they can not profit and trade it for anything to another Civ. The per turn cash plus lump sum should then allow you to up your science rate's and discover new tech even faster. Repeat as necessary. One game I had 20 grand in the bank, was making 500+ a year and had a science rate of 90% with no tax rate and 10% to happiness.

The idea of dropping your science rate because it does not speed up the discovery is bogus. The extra science would go into the next tech you are looking for so dropping the science rate does not help overall science. You might add a year onto the next tech by doing so.

If you build the lighthouse and run into other civ's before the rest of the people on your continent do not ever trade your World Map. Keep the other people on your continent in the dark about the other Civs. You will maintain a monopoly in trade with them for a while.

Build as many cities as you can. This goes with the science thing but the number of people in your civ greatly increases your science rates.

Be generous with your extra cash and luxuries. I always offer gifts to the other civs that are somewhat friendly. I sometimes financially support the war efforts of both sides of a major war on another continent!!! Also if their is another dominent player on the other continent I will attempt to stregthen their emmediate neighbors with tech. Of course while offering a small cash gift to the other superpower.

I had captured workers and make them join my own cities. They are just useless to me when it takes them twice as long to do anything.

 

[jisc]

Is there no more way to see the whole map like in previous version of civ?