Questions on the Rules

Urtica dioica

Chieftain
Joined
May 8, 2008
Messages
76
To me, there's not much more frustrating than playing a game without knowing the rules. I've been playing Civ 1 lately -- a fun game -- but without some clarification, it's hard to plan ahead, and that makes it hard to enjoy.

So here are some questions I can come up with off the top of my head:

1. There seems to be a barbarian grace period early in the game, like some of Civ's sequels, but when is it in this game?

2. What are the odds of each particular event when capturing a goodie hut? How is it affected by the barbarian grace period?

3. When does a new unit become owned by NONE?

4. Perhaps related to the last, how far does a city's influence extend on the replay map? I'm suspicious units become NONE when they fall outside your civ's color. (Also, what happens when a square is equally close to different cities? Maybe oldest wins?)

5. I don't build the Colossus often, and I've never had it at the same time as railroad. I know railroad doesn't enhance the trade benefit from republic/democracy, but does it enhance the effect of the Colossus?

6. When you trade for a tech or get it from a hut or a conquered city, does it still increase the light bulb requirement of the next tech, just like researching it? What about techs you start the game with? The past few games, I've played by not hitting any huts and declining tech trades, and it seems like my research goes a lot faster, but I haven't looked carefully at my science advisor to be sure.

7. In the third patch, an ambiguous limitation was added: "citizen unhappiness will increase with the number of cities you control." Not a bad idea, but I hate not knowing how many cities will have what effect. I've seen elsewhere, and confirmed, that the effect starts on the eighth city in Despotism on Emperor, but when does the effect increase with even more cities, and what's it like in other governments?

8. When attempting to enter a mountain tile, why do my two-move units sometimes refuse to move even with full movement, and how can I predict when it happens? And why do I never seem to have this problem with my one-move units?

9. Isn't it silly that you can't railroad in a city? Once I figured out it wasn't being built for me, and my settler wouldn't make it either, I realized I had to build rail around each city to make a network, I would still lose .1 movement just by starting from a city (bad for catapults and cannons as defense in democracy), and it would be a good idea to stop building cities on oasis early on. Annoying!

That's a lot of questions, but understanding any of them would make this a much better game. I've already done some testing on the goodie hut problem; if I figure anything out I'll post it. If I stump everyone, I'll keep testing 'til I get it or get bored.
 
1. I never heard of the barbarian grace period. Interesting.

2. Not a simple question. Advanced tribes will only occur when the hut is well placed for a city. They will not occur close to an enemy city.
When you are close to an enemy city (Don't know what the radius is) the chance of a mercenary unit is increased. This could be your first clue that there may be an enemy nearby.

3. The settler(s) you start with are owned by NONE. There are two other times when a unit might get a hometown of NONE:
- When you bribe an enemy unit.
- When you build a settler in a 1-point city (unless its food box is full).
When either of these events occur, the game finds the nearest city to call home. If that nearest city is not yours, the hometown is NONE.

4. It's strictly a nearest city rule. Your city could be closest even outside its color radius on the replay map.
I have never run the tests to find out what happens when distances are equal.

5. Absolutely. Typical railroad land squares get 4 arrows each. Railroad sea squares get 5 arrows each (in republic/democracy).

6. The first tech you discover always takes the same number of bulbs (12 for king for instance).
After that, all the techs you've acquired are taken into account to set the size of the research box.

7. I can answer for emperor/democracy. The first 12 cities you build do not erode citizen happiness.
With the introduction of the 13th city, one city (the 5th on the roster I think) loses a born-content. Each city you build causes another city (beginning with city number 5 and proceeding down the roster) to lose a born-content. By the time you have 24 cities, all of them will have only one born-content citizen. With 36 cities, you have no born-contents anywhere. Then you start adding double unhappy citizens.
If you list your cities in columns of 12, every city you add impacts a row of your list.
For example, when you have 48 cities, every city will have 1 double unhappy citizen (shown as "red shirts" in the happiness display). When you build your 49th city, a second red shirt is added in the 5th, 17th, 29th, and 41st cities.
The pattern continues.

8. It seems to be completely random. I thought this happened to 1-move units also.

9. If you build a city in a square where you already have rails, the rails are not destroyed.
If you take this to the extreme, you can regard the cities you build before the discovery of railroad (except those with wonders) as TEMPORARY.
I limit myself to 12 (see question 7) pre-rail cities.
 
1. There seems to be a barbarian grace period early in the game, like some of Civ's sequels, but when is it in this game?
I suspect the same but cannot provide concrete information.

2. What are the odds of each particular event when capturing a goodie hut? How is it affected by the barbarian grace period?

I haven't kept statistics, but I can give clues to behavior. Odds rundown are roughly:

  1. Barbarians
  2. $50
  3. Discovery
  4. City
  5. Unit

If there's not a 100% chance of obtaining 1-3 on any given hut, it's something like 95%, though sometimes the chance of discovery is marginal. 4 and 5 appear mutually exclusive and not always available, though it's possible that odds get to be so marginal that hitting 4 and/or 5 easily escapes casual testing. Huts are definitely deterministic, at least within a turn and/or neighboring turns, so each individual hut behaves predictably. There seems to be an inverse correlation between an event's rarity and its repeat probability, i.e. if a hut may contain a unit, it's difficult to obtain anything else upon multiple reloads. Chances of Barbarians (and probable count?) increases with difficulty level. Over many huts, events 1 & 2 probably eclipse 67%. Discovery has its own set of sub-probabilities that determine which technology you receive. I don't know if number of discoveries available to be learned factors into probability of triggering hut discovery. My memory is rusty, but I believe technologies available via hut is a subset of what's on the advisor's list.

3. When does a new unit become owned by NONE?

A Calvary or Legion obtained from a hut roughly ten spaces from a friendly town will be marked as "NONE". A smartass can also name a town "NONE".

8. When attempting to enter a mountain tile, why do my two-move units sometimes refuse to move even with full movement, and how can I predict when it happens? And why do I never seem to have this problem with my one-move units?

I recall the same as Valen. However, Settlers (and Caravans?) seem to get a free pass. At least, I can't remember a Settler getting hung up when its move was 1.

9. Isn't it silly that you can't railroad in a city? Once I figured out it wasn't being built for me, and my settler wouldn't make it either, I realized I had to build rail around each city to make a network, I would still lose .1 movement just by starting from a city (bad for catapults and cannons as defense in democracy), and it would be a good idea to stop building cities on oasis early on. Annoying!

I don't remember what happens in other Civilization titles, but I get a small twinge of joy when discovering Railroad in FreeCiv because all towns retroactively upgrade upon discovery.
 
I still haven't done much testing, but I'm planning a conquest game where I can do lots more. I can save every turn early, and use a map editor to find the barbarians, maybe repeating that a few times to see if there's a pattern. Every time I find a hut I can save and enter it repeatedly. I'll get the pyramids and switch to all the governments every new city starting with the 8th. And I can do some save-loading when I get to mountain tiles.

I'll tell you what I've found now though, cause it's interesting enough and it contradicts some of what I've read.

I took an old save game with several cities in Democracy, and Pyramids. I built up size 2 cities until the HAPPY tab in the city display showed only 1 free content in one of my cities. At the 15th city, my newest city had only 1 free content, and my 2nd city also lost a free content. That's 14 free cities, not 12, in CivDOS patch 5, on Emperor 7 civs, in Democracy. I even abandoned the last city and built it back up again to confirm the result. Maybe one of us did something wrong, maybe it's because I lost a couple early cities to barbarians and that skewed it somehow, or maybe the number of starting civs matters, and Valen was using 6 (the math makes sense).

Anyway, I ran the experiment badly, not using save games. Someone got Communism before I could finish, so I lost my Pyramids. I saw though that the results at 14 and 15 cities were the same in Republic as in Democracy. At 15 cities in Monarchy, as I remember, there were 11 cities with 1 free content, 4 with 2. In Despotism and Anarchy, most cities had 0 free content, a couple had 1, but the two governments were the same.

I also did some research on hitting huts before the first city is founded. The results are in the attachment, if you can figure out how to read it. The impression I get is 50% money, 25% tech, 25% unit. Note that in 44 huts I never got a barbarian or a city. Later I was playing a game where I hit an early hut after building my first city, and got barbarians. I'll mark that down as a(n unexpected) rule, that before you've built a city, huts never give barbarians.

After that of course, on Emperor, there seem to be OVERWHELMING odds of getting barbarians. ;) And I've only ever got a free city once, on an uninhabited continent, and I don't remember if I was playing Emperor back then.
 

Attachments

Very interesting questions!
If you what to find out a lot more about the game, I strongly recommend reading the book «Sid Meier's Civilization or Rome on 640k a Day» by Johnny L. Wilson and Alan Emrich.

I have read that book twice but it has so many information (tables and formulae) that I can't remember everything. Many of your questions are answered on the book.

From what I remember, here goes a little help:

1. Barbarians are divided in two types: those who invade from the sea and those who uprise from unsettled parts of continents. The sea barbarians are looking for space. They will not pillage irrigated or mined squares. They want to capture cities. The land barbarians however are in search of loot. They will pillage irrigated or mined squares before getting to the cities. This type includes the barbarians found on the huts.

The essential thing about both types of barbarians is that they originate from unsettled regions. This explains your "barbarian grace period". Gradually, following the exploration and colonization of continents and islands, the barbarians will disappear from the game. However, you may have noticed that in the first two or three millennia the barbarian activity is relatively scarce. I believe this is for giving you some time to grow and build your defence system. Around 1000 BC they start appearing more often unless you and other civilizations have explored and colonized most of the world.

2. I remember that this particular question is not answered in the book. From my personal experience, the odds for getting a unit, technology, money or finding barbarians are more or less the same. Much rarer is the discovery of an advanced tribe. Advanced tribes only occur in suitable locations for cities. And from my experience, it seems to me that advanced tribes never appear close to your existing cities and are more likely to occur at distant places.

Let me tell you a strange story about huts. I once was playing Earth (which I seldom do) and started as the americans or aztecs. The entire American continent was on my own. I decided to leave the huts unentered until I have founded all my cities and they were all well defended. After many many years, when I finally entered the huts, all of them (more than 10) gave me the same thing: a unit! That was strange.

Having said this, I strongly disagree with Whelkman on this particular subject. Finding mercenary units on huts happen a lot, at least on version 474.03.

3. It is great to obtain "NONE units" because they don't need support (production shields, and food in case of settlers; they also don't count for unhappiness on the more complex forms of government). When you enter huts that are far away from your cities (perhaps the 10 squares as Whelkman puts it) and the result is a unit, that unit will always be owned by NONE.

4. Too difficult. Can't remember anything about it.

5. I guess it was already answered.

6. The technologies with which you start the game doesn't count for this purpose. After the start of the game, every technology you get (no matter which way) will count.

7. I guess it was already answered.

8. It's true: this never happens with 1 movement point units, unless they are using roads. Why does it happen sometimes with 2 or 3 movement point units, I don't know. Maybe it is a bug or maybe Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley wanted to add a little more of random features to the game.

You may have noticed that the list of technologies presented for your selection by your science advisor is not always complete. Sometimes there are techs for which you have already discovered the precedent(s) technology that will not appear in the list. Sid explained later that he felt that the player should not have everything available at all time. He felt that this added a touch of uncertainty to the game. I like it a lot. Maybe the answer to your question is similar to this situation.

9. I guess you can regard it as traffic congestion that affects every major urban area in the real world. The only solution as it was pointed out is to build a railroad before creating the city.
 
I did more research on auto-contentedness a while ago, and most of what Valen said was confirmed. There's a cycle of degrading auto-contendedness, size 6 in Despotism/Anarchy, size 9 in Monarchy/Communism, and size 12 in Republic/Democracy. I still don't know how to determine in which order the cities will lose contentedness though.

To demonstrate the cycle and the unpredictability in the middle, here are the numbers of cities with only one auto-content in a conquest game, using Pyramids to check all the governments.

Column 1: empire size
Column 2: contentedness lost in Despotism/Anarchy
Column 3: contentedness lost in Monarchy/Communism
Column 4: contentedness lost in Republic/Democracy

7. 0 0 0
8. 1 0 0
9. 2 0 0
10. 5 0 0
11. 8 1 0
12. 12 3 0

Despotism/Anarchy now shows cities with no auto-content citizens.

13. 2 4 1
14. 4 7 2
15. 7 9 5
16. 10 12 5
17. 14 15 8
18. 18 18 10

Despotism/Anarchy now shows cities with a double-unhappy citizen. Monarchy/Communism shows cities with no auto-content citizens.

19. 3 2 12
20. 6 3 13

Also, if a city is hit at a position in one cycle, it'll be hit at the same position in the next cycle: for example, if a certain city loses a content citizen in Monarchy when you get your 11th city, it'll lose one again when you get your 20th.

The reason I got no 1-content cities in Democracy in my previous test must be the same reason I got none at 7 cities in Despotism in this test, and why I didn't lose any on my 16th city in Democracy this time. I can say on average how much auto-contentedness should be lost with a new city, but I never found a way to say how much, or where. If there should be about 2 auto-contents lost on average, you may lose 3, and you may lose 0.
 
. .. .. .. .. That railroads thing is messed up. I thought you could only get railroaded cities through cheating, guess I was wrong.

Hmm... to disband cities or not. That is the question.

I guess the easy solution is to use Dack's Terraform (or equivalent) to cheat the map (by giving you railroads in all your city centers). The one thing I hate with that is how it reveals the entire map to you. Awwhhh!!
 
Back
Top Bottom