Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Zibong]

Yes, pirates used to mostly raid ships by getting really close and then getting pirates on board the ship, but nowadays, you can't do that anymore with the massive ships.

<Offtopic>

Actually, modern pirates are indeed a problem, especially in the waters around Malaysia/Indonesia/Singapore. As large as these huge container ships are, it's still possible to board them. They may not be able to steal the cargo without commandeering the whole ship, so their targets are usually the cashboxes and the crews themselves. The ransom on a captain can fetch a pretty penny, and the shipping companies will usually quietly pay the ransoms to keep the public in the dark about the raid.

</Offtopic>


And to keep it on topic, can the F-15 trigger a Golden Age on a successful interception? How about a lethal bombing run (in PTW or C3C)?


--Zibong

 

[Tone]

And to keep it on topic, can the F-15 trigger a Golden Age on a successful interception? How about a lethal bombing run (in PTW or C3C)?

Many years ago when I thought that the Americans were a good civ to play, I often triggered GAs in vanilla games when an F-15 shot down a bomber. I haven't used them to start a GA with lethal bombing though so maybe someone else can comment here. I would imagine that they would if it resulted in a kill.

 

[Aramazd]

Many years ago when I thought that the Americans were a good civ to play, I often triggered GAs in vanilla games when an F-15 shot down a bomber. I haven't used them to start a GA with lethal bombing though so maybe someone else can comment here. I would imagine that they would if it resulted in a kill.

The Korean UU starts a Golden Age if it kills a unit in C3C, so I would say the F-15 could start a GA also.

 

[btfx]

<Offtopic>

Actually, modern pirates are indeed a problem, especially in the waters around Malaysia/Indonesia/Singapore. As large as these huge container ships are, it's still possible to board them. They may not be able to steal the cargo without commandeering the whole ship, so their targets are usually the cashboxes and the crews themselves. The ransom on a captain can fetch a pretty penny, and the shipping companies will usually quietly pay the ransoms to keep the public in the dark about the raid.

</Offtopic>--Zibong

Oh yeah, they never care to report this stuff, unless of course the crew manages to handle the situation. Pirates also never attack large cruise ships from wealthy nations, because the situation would be difficult to contain, and it would result in a big media fuss, and lots more naval vessels (from those wealthy nations), but smaller cruise ships from poorer countries, are targeted.

Moving on...

Nations X and Y have the following trades:

1. X -> Y resource
2. X -> Y gpt
3. Peace, ROP, MPP, Alliance, Embargo
4. Y -> X resource
5. Y -> X gpt​

A. X signs an embargo against Y, what on that list gets canceled, who takes a rep hit?
B. A third party blockades or destroys a road between X and Y, what on that list gets canceled, who takes a rep hit?
C. X blockades or destroys a road between X and Y, what on that list gets canceled, who takes a rep hit?

Edit: Also, when pop rushing, do foreign nationals get used up first? (Could I join a few foreign workers to poprush without killing my own people)?
ALSO, how is the price of rushing determined? Both for gold and pop.

 

[Tone]

Nations X and Y have the following trades:

1. X -> Y resource
2. X -> Y gpt
3. Peace, ROP, MPP, Alliance, Embargo
4. Y -> X resource
5. Y -> X gpt​

You have written it as if they are five separate deals but note that if 1 and 2 were part of the same deal, then if the resource (1) is cancelled, then so is the gpt (2).

A. X signs an embargo against Y, what on that list gets canceled, who takes a rep hit?

1 and 3 get cancelled. X takes the hit.

B. A third party blockades or destroys a road between X and Y, what on that list gets canceled, who takes a rep hit?

1 and 3 get cancelled. Both take a hit.

C. X blockades or destroys a road between X and Y, what on that list gets canceled, who takes a rep hit?

What I do know is that you cannot blockade whilst at peace. Cutting a road? I don't know if it's only X that takes the hit or whether it's X and Y.

AIs invariably lose their rep anyway so I never really bother about trying to force them to break a deal just for the sake of them losing their rep. I just try to maintain mine when I want to.

Edit: Also, when pop rushing, do foreign nationals get used up first? (Could I join a few foreign workers to poprush without killing my own people)?

I rarely draft but I do know that you cannot draft foreign nationals. I therefore assume that only your citizens would get used up and so this route is really not what you're after.

ALSO, how is the price of rushing determined? Both for gold and pop.

Coin rushing:
4 gold per shield unless there is nothing in the bin, in which case it is 8 gold per shield.

EG: To rush a knight straight off, 70 shields=560gold. However better options would be either to rush a worker at double cost (10 shields= 80 gold) and the rush the final 60 shields at normal cost (240 gold) for a total of 320 gold.

OR disband a unit first to get some shields in the bin and then not suffer the penalty. For the knight example, if you have a warrior to disband, that will give you 2 shields in the bin. Rushing the other 68 shields will cost 272 gold.

Short rushing is another option. If that town is producing 10 spt, then let it have one turn of production. Then rush the next 50 shields (200g) by rushing a musket but then switch back to the knight production. the town the produces a further 10 shields to complete the knight in two turns. This can be pretty expensive so I tend to use this more when a city is wasting a lot of shields in an overrun. Eg for a 20spt building a knight, I'll rush the 20->30 stage to cut down production from 4 turns to 3 at a cost of just 40 gold.

Pop rushing:
If you have some shields in the bin, each citizen will give you 20 more so:
1-20 shields to complete the build needs 1 citizen
21-40 shields to complete the build needs 2 citizens
etc.

The double cost penalty is still in effect if you rush with no shields in the bin. i.e.
1-20 shields=2 citizens
21-40 shields=4 citizens
etc.

A knight with no shields in the bin would cost 8 pop points!!!
Waiting a turn would cost 4 pop.
Waiting until you have 10 shields in the bin would reduce the cost to three pop.

Also note that you cannot whip more than half the population at any one time so for larger builds you need to do it in stages. In the situation above where you waited for the 10 shields but only had 5 pop points, you couldn't rush the knight straight off as rushing 3 pop needs a town/city with at least 6 pop points. However if you switch the build to a settler, rush the settler for 1 pop point, taking you up to 30 shields. you can now switch back to the knight and rush the final 40 shields using another 2 pop points.

(I presume you know about the associated unhappiness caused by the whip?)

Hope that helps but please ask again if any points are unclear. I'm typing this at 5am!

 

[btfx]

You have written it as if they are five separate deals but note that if 1 and 2 were part of the same deal, then if the resource (1) is cancelled, then so is the gpt (2).
1 and 3 get cancelled. X takes the hit.
1 and 3 get cancelled. Both take a hit.
What I do know is that you cannot blockade whilst at peace. Cutting a road? I don't know if it's only X that takes the hit or whether it's X and Y.

AIs invariably lose their rep anyway so I never really bother about trying to force them to break a deal just for the sake of them losing their rep. I just try to maintain mine when I want to.

I rarely draft but I do know that you cannot draft foreign nationals. I therefore assume that only your citizens would get used up and so this route is really not what you're after.
Coin rushing:
4 gold per shield unless there is nothing in the bin, in which case it is 8 gold per shield.

EG: To rush a knight straight off, 70 shields=560gold. However better options would be either to rush a worker at double cost (10 shields= 80 gold) and the rush the final 60 shields at normal cost (240 gold) for a total of 320 gold.

OR disband a unit first to get some shields in the bin and then not suffer the penalty. For the knight example, if you have a warrior to disband, that will give you 2 shields in the bin. Rushing the other 68 shields will cost 272 gold.

Short rushing is another option. If that town is producing 10 spt, then let it have one turn of production. Then rush the next 50 shields (200g) by rushing a musket but then switch back to the knight production. the town the produces a further 10 shields to complete the knight in two turns. This can be ppretty expensive so I tend to use this more when a city is wasting a lot of shields in an overrun. Eg for a 20spt building a knight, I'll rush the 20->30 stage to cut down production from 4 turns to 3 at a cost of just 40 gold.

Pop rushing:
If you have some shields in the bin, each citizen will give you 20 more so:
1-20 shields to complete the build needs 1 citizen
21-40 shields to complete the build needs 2 citizens
etc.

The double cost penalty is still in effect if you rush with no shields in the bin. i.e.
1-20 shields=2 citizens
21-40 shields=4 citizens
etc.

A knight with no shields in the bin would cost 8 pop points!!!
Waiting a turn would cost 4 pop.
Waiting until you have 10 shields in the bin would reduce the cost two three pop.

Also note that you cannot whip more than half the population at any one time so for larger builds you need to do it in stages. In the situation above where you waited for the 10 shields but only had 5 pop points, you couldn't rush the knight straight off as rushing 3 pop needs a town/city with at least 6 pop points. However if you switch the build to a settler, rush the settler for 1 pop point, taking you up to 30 shields. you can now switch back to the knight and rush the final 40 shields using another 2 pop points.

(I presume you know about the associated unhappiness caused by the whip?)

Hope that helps but please ask again if any points are unclear. I'm typing this at 5am!

Holy canole! Thanks a bunch! Super explanation, though I actually don't know how much unhappiness whipping or drafting causes I'm sure someone can fill me in. By the way, so long as the rush is less than 20*(draft rate) shields, wouldn't it make sense to draft and disband for 20 shields? You get double value for your pop if my estimate is right. Also, you can draft from many cities and disband in one central city.

My other question still stands, do foreigners get killed first, last or random. This would change the draft trick a bit, since you can only draft your own people.

Another question is, do conscripts have a 100% chance of promotion, or have mine been extremely lucky?

Another question/survey: do you draft and how much? I like to draft any extra (scientist/tax collector) people in my nation, try to get them promoted to regulars (softening up enemies with artillery first). Then I use masses of these regulars to build "peace blockades" (I don't know if there is a more official name for this, basically I build a wall between two nations I am peaceful with when they are at war, or a wall to make a one-way ROP). If I am not at war or there aren't enough weak enemy units to upgrade all my men to regulars, I use the plain conscripts.

 

[Aceman101]

<Offtopic>

Actually, modern pirates are indeed a problem, especially in the waters around Malaysia/Indonesia/Singapore. As large as these huge container ships are, it's still possible to board them. They may not be able to steal the cargo without commandeering the whole ship, so their targets are usually the cashboxes and the crews themselves. The ransom on a captain can fetch a pretty penny, and the shipping companies will usually quietly pay the ransoms to keep the public in the dark about the raid.

Offtopic/
Yes, but they are in far fewer numbers then they used to be, and as btfx said they target poorer countries ships that are incapable of defending themselves with the proper equipment. Say there was a pretty old ship from a country (Not saying any names) and it had goods in it like food, materials etc. It would be likely to be attacked in pirate waters. But a Modern ship, or a fairly tough ship capable of defending itself, like a destroyer with AA rockets and 8 inch guns for ship-to-ship attacks, the Pirates would see that the ship has modern weapons on it and hardly ever attack it. Even if they did, what do they have advantage of, there's not much supplies in it.

Anyway that was my opinion that the pirates would choose old ships to raid.
But Modern Pirates are very sparse and companies or countries paying ships to attack other ships (buccaneers) was so 1900s. Nowadays, pirates are pretty much small clans of usually violent people. Not companies paying them.
Offtopic/

Anyway my question is, When water tiles turn into land tiles by global warming, do ships have a risk of being 'grounded' if they are sailing in the coast.

 

[Tone]

... though I actually don't know how much unhappiness whipping or drafting causes

Well actually I'm not 100% sure of all the finer points on this either as I rarely use it myself. I do know that if you pop-rush (or draft) one citizen, this causes one unhappy face for 20 turns. I have read that if you whip more than one the cumulative effect drags on. i.e. if you whip 3 citizens, then you get 3 unhappy for the first 20 turns, 2 unhappy for the next 20 turns and then 1 unhappy for the final 20 turns. I can't confirm this to be definitely true as when I do use the whip more than once, it is for 100K victories and by the time I've whipped a temple, a library, a cathedral, a university and a collosseum the town is sized one with a taxman, unfit to work the land again so I have no idea how long it would take to recover from all that! Maybe someone else can confirm this to be true?

By the way, so long as the rush is less than 20*(draft rate) shields, wouldn't it make sense to draft and disband for 20 shields? You get double value for your pop if my estimate is right. Also, you can draft from many cities and disband in one central city.

drafting a rifle then disbanding it gives you 20 shields so it no net gain or loss. However you can use it to rush in other cities as you said. Drafting infantry (giving 22 shields) and Mech Infantry (27 shields) is certainly better than pop rushing.

Another question is, do conscripts have a 100% chance of promotion, or have mine been extremely lucky?

If you are playing a militaristic civ, you're not being lucky. The odds of promotion are here.

Another question/survey: do you draft and how much? I like to draft any extra (scientist/tax collector) people in my nation, try to get them promoted to regulars (softening up enemies with artillery first). Then I use masses of these regulars to build "peace blockades" (I don't know if there is a more official name for this, basically I build a wall between two nations I am peaceful with when they are at war, or a wall to make a one-way ROP). If I am not at war or there aren't enough weak enemy units to upgrade all my men to regulars, I use the plain conscripts.

I invariably play in Republic and this sounds like a sure way of getting a horrible combination of WW and draft unhappiness. I'd be crippled within a few turns. I only draft in an absolute emergency but I'm sure that many players do use the draft to great effect. Possibly when playing in communism it's a good way of getting a dominant force. You could post this in General Discussions maybe?

@Aceman: I've never heard of it. I didn't even know that water tiles could turn into land tiles!!! Maybe someone produced a Screenshot of the Day for this a while back?

 

[Aceman101]

@ Tone. Look here, you'll see what I mean. Look at post 47 onwards .

 

[gmaharriet]

@Tone - Thank you for an excellent explanation of both pop- and cash-rushing! Another great candidate for a War Academy article.

Meanwhile, I'm going to copy it for my personal reference in a spot where I can find it later. I've used rushing of several types, but I often forget the details.

 

[MAS]

Well actually I'm not 100% sure of all the finer points on this either as I rarely use it myself. I do know that if you pop-rush (or draft) one citizen, this causes one unhappy face for 20 turns. I have read that if you whip more than one the cumulative effect drags on. i.e. if you whip 3 citizens, then you get 3 unhappy for the first 20 turns, 2 unhappy for the next 20 turns and then 1 unhappy for the final 20 turns. I can't confirm this to be definitely true as when I do use the whip more than once, it is for 100K victories and by the time I've whipped a temple, a library, a cathedral, a university and a collosseum the town is sized one with a taxman, unfit to work the land again so I have no idea how long it would take to recover from all that! Maybe someone else can confirm this to be true?

Hey, in this thread I got a different answer, so what is it??

And no one actually gave me a good answer in that thread anyway...

 

[Aceman101]

I think Tone is right about this one, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the same thing as Tone mentioned.

 

[Tone]

Hey, in this thread I got a different answer, so what is it??

Can I trump that with two different answers in one thread? WOA and Arathorn are both top class players so when they disagree you know that you've got problems! It was a while ago when this was posted so maybe they managed to come to an agreement later on but I couldn't find anything.

Turner's suggestion in your thread is definitely incomplete, as I am certain that whipping several people causes several others to become unhappy. As he said though, he wasn't sure.

Out of the two options in that old thread, my experience suggests that Wacken is correct, but as I said before, I am not sure at all. I've seen a number of 'answers' to this problem but I think this is the most frequent that I've seen.

Maybe a little bit of testing needs to be done. I'll see if I have anything suitable to mess around with...

 

[MAS]

In civ4 I know for sure, you get 1 unhappy for 20 turns (depends on game speed actually, but lets say 20 for the sake of this argument) no matter how many people you kill in one instance. You only get multiple unhappiness over increasing amount of turns if you whip again, before the first 20 turns are over.

It makes sense that way, and you'd expect it to work similar in civ3. But anyway....

 

[Tone]

OK. I did a quick test. It suggests that what I was saying is true. I'm not claiming that this is an exhaustive test but if anyone wants to pick up the baton and look at it in more detail, feel free to do so!

Here's a content Babylon in 3000BC (game turn 21):

Spoiler content Babylon :

1 happy, 1 content and 1 unhappy due to the lux slider.

I then use two citizens to whip a granary...

Spoiler Babylon whipped :

As the game is on Emperor, I now need two content factors (1 MP and 1 from entertainment tax) to keep this citizen content to counter the 2 happiness points lost.

This situation continued until game turn 41 ( the 21st turn after I whipped the granary) when I then only had one happiness point lost:

Spoiler after 21 turns :

Then in game turn 61 (41st turn after the whip) I had no penalty points on the happiness in Babylon.

Spoiler after 41 turns :

It fits with the theory suggested by WOA in the thread I linked to earlier so it's probably correct.

 

[MAS]

Thx for putting effort into this. At least now we know.

But this makes whipping even worse than I thought. I like the Civ4 way better...


UPDATE: but wait a moment, you have 22 shields in the box, a granary costs 60. you can't rush more than 50&#37; of the pop, so you must have used short rushing... in other words, you whipped 2 times. What if you whipped 2 pop all at once?

 

[btfx]

Question, have you ever take out a loan to keep the peace between yourself and a superpower? Right now I'm concerned that the Inca, who are the second most powerful nation might declare war on me. This would put me in a jam considering my current situation. Should I take out a hefty loan to ensure peace for 20 turns? I think the AI wouldn't be stupid enough to declare war when their money is in my hands. Has this ever worked or not worked for anyone?

 

[Turner]

Generally, if the AI is ready for war with you, they go to war with you. You could try it, and see if it works. And if it doesn't, more gold for you.

 

[Tone]

UPDATE: but wait a moment, you have 22 shields in the box, a granary costs 60. you can't rush more than 50% of the pop, so you must have used short rushing... in other words, you whipped 2 times. What if you whipped 2 pop all at once?

Good point. I'll look at that later. I was thinking that it would be the same as it is during the same turn but I don't know that for sure. The good thing about that save is that there is plenty of food to increase the pop quickly.

@btfx: Moonsinger used this technique when playing her 88000 point Sid victory, and if you are using the same techniques as her you can't be going far wrong! (She created a thread in the HOF forum for that game so pop down and take a look if you're interested.) It didn't always secure peace but, as Turner says, if they do declare war you keep the cash and you can always use it to rush units or buy an alliance.

My thoughts are that they will be less likely to declare war on you if that haven't started to send troops in your direction already. You'll have a deal in place which will help improve the attitude rating and you're paying them gpt which has got to be in your favour as well. In declaring war on someone, the AI will often do it to gain a resource or to cancel a massive gpt deal that they can no longer afford to pay. At other times that just want a victim. I've noticed that on the higher levels, the AI will declare on another AI after I've just paid them tribute. It's as if they just have too many troops and they need to use them on someone! It is this type of situation where your deal may just help.

 

[btfx]

I've noticed that on the higher levels, the AI will declare on another AI after I've just paid them tribute. It's as if they just have too many troops and they need to use them on someone! It is this type of situation where your deal may just help.

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?