Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[metamike]

1) What do I do with my 1 worker per town in-between the Middle Age-> Industrial Age period when all the improvements you needed are made, but you're still half a Middle Age tree away from getting Steam Power to make railroads?

2) My galleys can't go into deep waters, but people keep talking about suiciding them, I'm using Civ 3 vanilla, is something wrong?

 

[MAS]

1) What do I do with my 1 worker per town in-between the Middle Age-> Industrial Age period when all the improvements you needed are made, but you're still half a Middle Age tree away from getting Steam Power to make railroads?

Conquer more land, then they will have more things to do...
Or join them into slow growing cities.
You can also use them to plant and chop, for the shield bonus, once every tile. This will speed up production.

2) My galleys can't go into deep waters, but people keep talking about suiciding them, I'm using Civ 3 vanilla, is something wrong?

The Go-to command doesn't work when you try to send galleys over the sea or ocean, except if you do it one tile at a time. You can also use the num-pad on your keyboard to move the galleys.
When not near the coast, there is a chance your galley will sink each time you hit the next turn button, but there is also a chance it will not sink, with some luck, and enough tries, you could make contact with civ on the other continent early, and improve your ability to trade tech and gold. (but not resources)

 

[Tone]

Err, not to be a bother, but what are the "higher levels" monarch and above? Also, by tribute do you mean lump sum, or gpt?

Tribute is when the AI demands something; usually a tech or cash lump sum. I guess higher levels is to a certain extent a term relative to your ability and the stage of the game that you're in. It's when the AI can boss you around and demand tribute and you give in. The higher the level, the more likely it's going to happen due to their free starting units, production bonus and higher aggression levels but to a novice, regent can be pretty scary and lead to this situation. I was thinking about Emperor and above though where the AI gets a more significant number of starting units.

 

[btfx]

Tribute is when the AI demands something; usually a tech or cash lump sum.

Ahh, in civ2 Tribute meant gpt, but that was a terrible trade system! Don't Make Me Go Back There!

 

[metamike]

Can you start building one wonder (a.k.a. Collossus), and then when you Fuedalism switch over to Art of War wonder with all the shields from Collossus going into Art of War?

 

[Aabraxan]

Yes. You can also start palaces, small wonders, armies, etc. Just no "tainted" shields from forest chops or disbands.

 

[btfx]

Ahoy, all the way back to city placement, here is a little OCP map I made, the cities are blue, the only overlap is red (2 per city, meaning each city loses 0-2 tiles). But I don't want to lose the early high production of CxxC. SO I am thinking of settling the red tiles too, and using those cities to produce units (workers, settlers, regulars) while the other cities grow and build improvements. When a blue city can't work any more tiles, I free some up by making one of the surrounding red cities build workers/settlers. Has anyone tried this before?

 

[Sashie VII]

@metamike

Yes, you can. Actually, this is called "pre-building". You begin construction of something expensive without intending to finish the build, but to accumulate shields as a headstart on something else that is not yet available but will be soon (i.e. you will gain the tech before you prebuild completes). It's one of the ways to beat AIs to a wonder on the higher levels, despite their bonuses. But it works at any level too.

eDiT: Forgot to check the next page.

 

[vmxa]

Ahoy, all the way back to city placement, here is a little OCP map I made, the cities are blue, the only overlap is red (2 per city, meaning each city loses 0-2 tiles). But I don't want to lose the early high production of CxxC. SO I am thinking of settling the red tiles too, and using those cities to produce units (workers, settlers, regulars) while the other cities grow and build improvements. When a blue city can't work any more tiles, I free some up by making one of the surrounding red cities build workers/settlers. Has anyone tried this before?

Master Zen (apolyton) years ago make chart for placement that was intended to let you use OCP later in the game. This had a scheme where you placed camps to build workers and troops.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=179733

 

[BavariaValkyrie]

And your privateers will be attacked by the AI, no matter if they're in AI territory or not.

Hi & sorry to refer back to a discussion which is already "3 pages old"

I always thought that Privateers wouldn't show "colours" ie the other players (AI) wouldn't know that it's your ship kicking its backside? I thought the whole point of building a privateer instead of a frigate (I prefer frigates for their bombarding power) was that the privateer can go somewhere "Incognito"? Or have I missed a point here?

WHen I played as Elizabeth Queen of England, I did find those Man-O-War ships fantastic though.

 

[Turner]

Right, that's true.

However, the AI will hunt out those Privateers like they do Barbarians and kill them with everything they have.

Might be a useful tactic, to get some Privateers going away from where you want to be and the AI will go and chase them, then your navy can come in where the AI has left themselves unguarded.

 

[BavariaValkyrie]

Right, that's true.

However, the AI will hunt out those Privateers like they do Barbarians and kill them with everything they have.

Might be a useful tactic, to get some Privateers going away from where you want to be and the AI will go and chase them, then your navy can come in where the AI has left themselves unguarded.

Sounds like a plan! Thanks Turner.

I was just thinking maybe the AI "cheats" by knowing that if there are only two nations left (the AI nation and mine) that the privateers belong to me!

 

[Turner]

Oh, they know who they belong too. And you can find out to. But the AI is not supposed to act like they know. Doesn't always work out that way, however.

 

[thetrooper]

The AI knows the nationality of Privateers as Turner said. Sink one of their vessels and you'll get a temporary attitude hit. Wait a few turns and the attitude should be back to normal.

 

[Marsden]

Actually, maybe that's not really that bad, if you think about it. A privateer was bascially a pirate working for the crown, if a french privateer sunk one of my ships I'd be less than happy with them. The cheat is the AI always knows who owns the privateer, whereas the player doesn't know unless they tail the ship back to port.

 

[Son_Of_Dido]

Everybody knew Drake was really working for the English directly, they all just officially and on the record made public denials on that subject.

"oh no, he's a pirate, he's not affiliated with us in any way shape or form. No Carlos, I don't know WHY he never seems to attack any of our ships and only ever attacks yours. Fascinating coincidence I'd say. And just your tough bloody luck, ol' chap."

"How come you knighted him then."

"um....uh..... would you believe he stole that too?"

The AI also always knows it's me anyway because on Regent and Monarch where I generally play now, I'm usually the first to Magnetism by a significant margin anyway. So of course they know it's me, i'm the only one that can build them! Still, I get a kick out of imagining my shady used-car-salesman-esque Ambassadors trying to spin and deny my involvment to all these infuriated AI nations who keep losing their galleys mysteriously to these sailors that have no national markings but all seem to look and talk just like my people...

 

[Sashie VII]

The AI also always knows it's me anyway because on Regent and Monarch where I generally play now, I'm usually the first to Magnetism by a significant margin anyway.

Actually, the AI always know regardless of these kind of things. They know what resources are where from the first tun, who starts where etc. It's the same thing with Hidden Nationality units, AIs just know.

 

[Son_Of_Dido]

Well yeah.

But it's just so much more glaringly obvious when I'm the only civ with the tech to build them in the first place. Those chaps really might as well just fly the flag. And yet its still not a declaration of war. Such fun!

 

[Sashie VII]

I know what you mean. I used to have gigantic Privateer fleets solely to increase my collection of enslaved ones.

Would be more fun if the AIs actually build lots more ships to kill, really

 

[Marsden]

I know what you mean. I used to have gigantic Privateer fleets solely to increase my collection of enslaved ones.

Would be more fun if the AIs actually build lots more ships to kill, really

Of course, then there's when your privateers can sink a galley That's why I don't bother with them too much.