It's a game option you can turn on using CTRL+O. It means that, with a stack selected, you can simply send it to attack without having to attack with the units one by one. (You should bombard first). Very useful in MP, but I don't like it in SP because I'm not sure how it picks the order of the units.Quick question: What is "stack attack"?
Cute, but vulnerable to air units. As the AIs don't build a respectable airforce, it's unbeatable.
Can colonies break away like voluntary vassals or are they more like war submitted vassals?
My suggestion had less to do with the difficulty level. It just seems that combat is giving you a big edge in your games and tends to end your games early. If you want somewhat more balance and a longer game then these suggestions would help.
Bigger map: It typically takes about the same time to conquer a city, but when you capture 2 cities out of 20 of an AI on a huge map, then that will barely put a dent in that AI while if you capture 2 cities out of 6 of an AI on a small map, then that AI will be crippled.
Aggressive AI: The AI will focus more on military and less on economy. This can hurt the AI in the economic department a bit when you play on the lower levels. The AI barely notices the higher maintenance on the highest levels. The larger military will make it more costly to walk over AI's militarily and will make them capable to harm you militarily. So war becomes a relatively less attractive path to victory. It can even be so that it's best to let the other AI's fight while you try to stay out of it. However, I tend to do some aggressive fighting myself anyway. Wanna have some fun, right!
BetterAI: The mod improves the AI and thus makes the game harder. Especially the latest version seems to be a great leap in AI improvement. The gains in AI ability are militarily and economically. The military gains are more interesting to you, I guess.
Difficulty level: Of course, the difficulty level will make war tougher, but it more generally makes the game tougher, so it's not the change I was trying to suggest for your games.
It's not so hard to merge BUG with BetterAI (there's a thread about it in the BetterAI forum).
By the way, you should of course play the game how you like it. Maybe you like early conquest victories the most and then you should definitely not make any changes to the settings. I just thought I caught a hint of the feeling 'it's a shame I never experience the late game because I tend to win early'.
Why do civs become voluntary vassals? What are the requirements for it?
Nice tips. I always forget you're playing against thinking people in MP. (I'm not being sarcastic). The dogpile suggestion is very good, thanks.
What exactly does 'working a tile' mean? I hear the term often on this site, and ingame, I notice that a Village will say 'Village must work to become Hamlet'. I don't really understand what this means though, so anyone care to enlighten me?
It means which tiles or being used by the nearest city. When you go into city mode tiles within its two square radius are hilighted. The squares with circles around them are being used or "worked" by the city. Any improvement on these tiles benifets the city, if there is a farm being worked the city will get its food bonus. If there is a gold mine that is not circled you'll still get the gold bonus but the city will not recieve any comerce or production from it until it is being worked. The same holds true for cottages, with the addition that they will not grow until the tile is being used.
Cities start off using just one or two tiles but will work more as they grow. In the city mode you can also change which tiles are being worked which is useful for increasing production, wealth, and food to suit your needs.
Some map types lend themselves to a lot of late goody huts. Terra, for instance... the new world is full of goody huts when you head over there around Optics/Astronomy.That's right, goodie huts stay around forever (at least until someone finds them). It is possible (although unlikely) that you may enter the industrial age with goodie huts still on the map. Granted, you would have to a large island/continent all to yourself, have very poor expansion skills, and never scout out the land around you.... so yeah, pretty unlikely.
And yes, the AI is pretty good at finding them, so don't waste any time.
Roland already answered these, but just an additional tip: Generally it's best to try to strike first if at all possible. If you're keeping them busy by invading their territory, it doesn't matter so much if your homeland isn't so strongly defended, because (usually, unless they're a very good player indeed) they will be concentrating solely on trying to get you out of their lands rather than sending in their own invasion.Two questions regarding MP:
1- What is FFA?
2- How do you position your troops? If you keep a single SOD, the others can see where it is and attack you in the other side of your empire, if you spread your forces all around your land, they can attack you anywhere with a big SOD and you won't have time to group them to fight them off.
This is true, although from experience I've found that diplomacy is usually a minor to non-factor in fast-paced online games. Diplomacy only becomes the heart of the game in much slower-paced games, like PBEM and Pitboss.Diplomacy is probably even more important in multiplayer games. You can't single handedly defeat all the human opponents at once. You can't hope to win when surrounded by enemies from the start of the game. So you need to make deals with several of the human players, maybe to take out another player together or for other reasons. If multiple human players combine their forces against you, then you're in trouble.
It's definitely similar in Civ, especially with more players. Once you start getting to 3 or 4 people, and especially when you get up to 16-18 or more, diplomacy starts to become a key aspect to the game. Nobody can hope to win an 18 player megagame by themselves without making some kind of deals along the way with other players.But I don't know how much time there really is for making deals. In the tabletop boardgames that I've played with human opponents, deals are typically extremely important. No one is capable of winning those games by themselves.
Not sure what you're saying here. Let's say we start with your 3 1 tile. If you build a farm, that tile will get +1 , making it 4 1 . If you build a cottage, the tile will give +1 , making it 3 2 .I see, thank you! Another question thats kind of related to my previous. When I hover over a tile, for example a Plains tile, it'll show 3 1 for example. If I placed a Farm on that tile, which is +1 Food, that tile would produce 4 Food, but no Commerce, right? And if I placed a Cottage, which would give +1 Commerce, it would give +2 Commerce but no Food?
Please note that in competitive games (such as in a league or a ladder) the Free for all (FFA) games usually have rules that prohibit such activity. You might see "CTON" listed as a type of gameply. (CTON is the name of a player who came up with the set of rules). Basically, diplomacy is turned off. No trading, no nothing. And text messaging is prohibitted, so you cannot tell your buddy that "his stack is in the east" or whatever. It prevents team-making... because honestly, I (a mediocre player) could go online with my two sons (poor civ players) and mop the floor with the very best MP civver out there in a FFA. If its not a team game, teaming up (as Roland seemed to suggest) would unbalance the game so severely it wouldn't be any fun for anyone.
And that kind of stuff happens all the time on MP
Note: when MP games are good they are better than any SP game! But for every good MP game you will have to suffer through 5 lame ones (and for every lame one you will have to suffer through 5 interface-related problems, delays, reloads, out-of-sync events etc).
I wholly agree that multiplayer games are far more enjoyable (at least for me personally) when there is a good diplomatic aspect on the side. Negotiating trades, border agreements, military alliances and the like just adds to the fun in my opinion.Hmm, this is the reason why I started my post with 'I don't play multiplayer games'. It shows that I don't know about the conventional rules.
I must say that your post only strengthens my resolve to never play these kind of multiplayer games. It seems that the game is reduced to a military conflict as any other type of contact with your neighbours is prohibited. I do understand why these rules exist, but still a huge part of the game is removed due to these rules. I would think that there would be other better games to play to just enjoy military conflict.