Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Lanzelot]

The AI will always accept a town as gift. But sometimes (if your rep is broken) the AI will refuse that gift, if you add some gpt to it!!
How much sense does that make? "I'm willing to accept a deal as it currently is. But if you add something to it from your side, I will of course refuse it..."

 

[Takhisis]

I have replaced the Sumerians with the Austrians. The Hussar is their UU, so you need to do one more step....

marijan, you should replace the Americans. I really hate that Abe Lincoln.

The AI will always accept a town as gift. But sometimes (if your rep is broken) the AI will refuse that gift, if you add some gpt to it!!
How much sense does that make? "I'm willing to accept a deal as it currently is. But if you add something to it from your side, I will of course refuse it..."

They don't want to get burnt and lose out on promises.

 

[Lord AJ]

Why does the AI refuses if we are giving them our own city. Even for 1 gold. Thnx

I have a fain idea that the earlier versions had an exploit where one would grab several of the AI cities and then when the war ended trade them back for massive amounts of gold techs and gpt. This trading could also be done with the other AI (those who didn't originally have those cities) thereby triggering AI wars with the human gaining from the trading done on both sides. There might be more to this but this is all I remember right now.

 

[Arjav Jain]

I have a fain idea that the earlier versions had an exploit where one would grab several of the AI cities and then when the war ended trade them back for massive amounts of gold techs and gpt. This trading could also be done with the other AI (those who didn't originally have those cities) thereby triggering AI wars with the human gaining from the trading done on both sides. There might be more to this but this is all I remember right now.

Thnx a lot

 

[Lord AJ]

Is there a particular condition to be met to get the people admire your achievements popup or is it just a random event?

 

[justanick]

Is there a particular condition to be met to get the people admire your achievements popup or is it just a random event?

This is being discussed here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=443076

 

[Lord AJ]

This is being discussed here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=443076

Okay. Will go there.

 

[Lord AJ]

I wanted to ask you people what is the disconnect reconnect strategy? What I've gathered from reading at several different places is that under this strategy one first trades a resource to the AI and gives them lots of gpt. Then we make another deal with the AI where the AI is giving us the gpt. Finally the trade route is broken and we start getting gpt for free. Is this all there is to this trick or am I missing something? Also to me this looks quite similar to Lord Emmsworth deals which aren't allowed in the hof so does this mean that we aren't allowed to do this as well? Also does this trick get me a rep hit?
Hope someone can answer all those. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Rodrig0]

I wanted to ask you people what is the disconnect reconnect strategy? What I've gathered from reading at several different places is that under this strategy one first trades a resource to the AI and gives them lots of gpt. Then we make another deal with the AI where the AI is giving us the gpt. Finally the trade route is broken and we start getting gpt for free. Is this all there is to this trick or am I missing something? Also to me this looks quite similar to Lord Emmsworth deals which aren't allowed in the hof so does this mean that we aren't allowed to do this as well? Also does this trick get me a rep hit?
Hope someone can answer all those. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

What this trick does is make the AI go bankrupt, since it is giving you gpt but not receiving. You're not getting gpt for free though, you're getting it in exchange for what you traded.

And yes, it gets you a rep hit, since by cutting the trade route, you broke the first deal.

 

[Lord AJ]

What this trick does is make the AI go bankrupt, since it is giving you gpt but not receiving. You're not getting gpt for free though, you're getting it in exchange for what you traded.

And yes, it gets you a rep hit, since by cutting the trade route, you broke the first deal.

Okay. I was planning doing this in a Diplo win. Now I'll refrain from doing this. But I'll use this If I really need to as I believe that the rep hit will only prevent any future gpt deals and I can still get their votes by gifting them to graciousness.

 

[Lanzelot]

No, completely wrong. Disconnect/connect means using shields and commerce for building units quickly. Works for all units that are upgraded from a predecessor unit that has less strategic resource dependencies. For example: Horseman (Horses) --> Knights (Horses + Iron).

1. You need a warrior and 6 workers on your single iron hill. Use your warrior to pillage your iron.
2. Go into all your cities currently working on your military and set them to produce Horsemen.
3. Now activate your 6 workers and repair the road on the iron hill.
4. Finish the turn, and whenever one of the city popups comes up announcing the completion of a Horseman, zoom into the city and upgrade the Horseman to Knight (e.g. for 80 gold, if you have Leonardo's Workshop).
5. And voila: the following turn a Knight is ready to go.
6. Rinse and repeat.

If you have enough cash, you can basically build Knights at the speed of Horsemen. (Or Cavalry at the speed of Horsemen, if you do the trick later on a Saltpeter resource instead of Iron.) This is much more cash-efficient than short-rushing, which would require 160 gold to "replace" 40 of the shields by commerce: e.g. in a city with 10spt, you would collect 20s in 2 turns, then switch to temple or granary (something with 60s), cash-rush it for 40x4 = 160g and switch back to Knight. In the third turn, the city production of 10spt will complete the 70s. Again you have completed a Knight in 3 turns like in the disconnect/connect example, but it costs twice as much gold.

And this is the big disadvantage of War Elephants and Ansar Warriors: they do not require iron, so the disconnect/connect strategy cannot be used on them...

 

[Lord AJ]

No, completely wrong. Disconnect/connect means using shields and commerce for building units quickly. Works for all units that are upgraded from a predecessor unit that has less strategic resource dependencies. For example: Horseman (Horses) --> Knights (Horses + Iron).

1. You need a warrior and 6 workers on your single iron hill. Use your warrior to pillage your iron.
2. Go into all your cities currently working on your military and set them to produce Horsemen.
3. Now activate your 6 workers and repair the road on the iron hill.
4. Finish the turn, and whenever one of the city popups comes up announcing the completion of a Horseman, zoom into the city and upgrade the Horseman to Knight (e.g. for 80 gold, if you have Leonardo's Workshop).
5. And voila: the following turn a Knight is ready to go.
6. Rinse and repeat.

If you have enough cash, you can basically build Knights at the speed of Horsemen. (Or Cavalry at the speed of Horsemen, if you do the trick later on a Saltpeter resource instead of Iron.) This is much more cash-efficient than short-rushing, which would require 160 gold to "replace" 40 of the shields by commerce: e.g. in a city with 10spt, you would collect 20s in 2 turns, then switch to temple or granary (something with 60s), cash-rush it for 40x4 = 160g and switch back to Knight. In the third turn, the city production of 10spt will complete the 70s. Again you have completed a Knight in 3 turns like in the disconnect/connect example, but it costs twice as much gold.

And this is the big disadvantage of War Elephants and Ansar Warriors: they do not require iron, so the disconnect/connect strategy cannot be used on them...

Now this appears quite legitimate and definitely in accordance with the HoF rules. I had a huge misconception I see. Silly me [emoji12] [emoji5] So this is how it is. Thanks a lot Lanzelot. You've always been a great help to me.

 

[Takhisis]

I am always surprised by how surprised I am at new instances of people playing Civ on munchkin mode.

 

[Buttercup]

I'm always amazed at how much money people seem to be able to amass from the AI civs in order to perform all these cheese mechanics. 80 gold per upgrade (under the pretext of having Da-Vincis) and then performing a 'rush'? What's that? 1600 gold for 20 units? 3200 for 20 units with no Da Vinci?

I just don't have that kind of gold until the Industrial age. You'd have to spend a lot of turns under-performing in tech to increase tax to that kind of revenue, so it stands in opposition to maxing tech. As for trades with the AI, every time I look at them the most they've got is 100 gold, most of the time they have 0gp and don't want any gpt trades. They're in Despotism with hardly any roads and 20 towns spending all their spare tax on 10 spearmen per city for heaven's sake.

And, most of the time, I either have production cities or useless cities, to which the production cities can bash out 20 Knights with pre-builds in not much time anyway. It always seems odd to me to cane through so much hassle to save 5 turns...?

Is it a difficulty level thing?

 

[Lord AJ]

I'm always amazed at how much money people seem to be able to amass from the AI civs in order to perform all these cheese mechanics. 80 gold per upgrade (under the pretext of having Da-Vincis) and then performing a 'rush'? What's that? 1600 gold for 20 units? 3200 for 20 units with no Da Vinci?

I just don't have that kind of gold until the Industrial age. You'd have to spend a lot of turns under-performing in tech to increase tax to that kind of revenue, so it stands in opposition to maxing tech. As for trades with the AI, every time I look at them the most they've got is 100 gold, most of the time they have 0gp and don't want any gpt trades. They're in Despotism with hardly any roads and 20 towns spending all their spare tax on 10 spearmen per city for heaven's sake.

And, most of the time, I either have production cities or useless cities, to which the production cities can bash out 20 Knights with pre-builds in not much time anyway. It always seems odd to me to cane through so much hassle to save 5 turns...?

Is it a difficulty level thing?

Yes it is a difficulty level thing. I learnt this on CFC. Now that I've started at Emperor (btw I feel a huge difference from monarch, I don't know why) it isn't as difficult to get gpt and lumpsum from the AI. Also you'd often find the AI willing to easily offer gpt (they have plenty of it) in exchange for techs and luxes. So yes you won't be able to use connect disconnect on warlord or regent but it is definitely possible on Emperor and above.

 

[justanick]

And, most of the time, I either have production cities or useless cities, to which the production cities can bash out 20 Knights with pre-builds in not much time anyway. It always seems odd to me to cane through so much hassle to save 5 turns...?

Is it a difficulty level thing?

It is, but maybe with contrary sign.

As you correctly point out one soon reaches a point where production is not scare compared to the research output. Using gold for upgrade is of limited use. It can be of big use, especially with Leonardo. But once you have many units they will cost maintenance thus reduce available Gold.

On deity and below research is relativly cheap. Once you switch to Sid research is 50% more expensive than at deity. If you need 50% more turns per tech than this is 50% more production per tech and more than 50% more production available for military as cities can build each building just once. Unless war results in loosing huge amounts of units one will have to pay quite some gold for maintenance. And the less Gold is spent on research the more needs to be spend on maintenance. In the long run it is the better choice to disband obsolete units instead of upgrading.

 

[Lord AJ]

I'm playing a game on a standard map with 7 opponents. I have trade routes with only one neighbour (which I had to build by sending in my workers in their territory) . Now I have magnetism and have gifted it to everybody and harbors in most cities yet I still can't get trade routes. I was thinking of settling a city around my territory, build a harbour and gift it to a civ. Would that work? I know that there's always a chance that the opponent civs don't have even a single harbour but it seems quite awkward that even a seafaring civ like byzantine shouldn't have at least one harbour. If this is the case then us there anything apart from roading to their towns that I can do to get hold of a few luxes from them? Thanks.

 

[justanick]

I was thinking of settling a city around my territory, build a harbour and gift it to a civ. Would that work?

Probably not. The problem lies within the home territory of the AI. The lack of trading routes has several reasons:

1. Lack of requires roads to the capital.
2. Lack of harbours.
3. Lack of techs.
4. Lack of exploration. At least one partner needs to know a passage.

If this is the case then us there anything apart from roading to their towns that I can do to get hold of a few luxes from them?

You can attack them till you established something what would after a peacetreaty work as a trading route. Instead of giving AI a city you should give your self some more of them.

Also increasing the difficulty level will help as AI will have better cities and thus more cities with harbour. If you only increase difficulty level enough AI will have more roads and harbours than you.

 

[Lord AJ]

Lack of exploration. At least one partner needs to know a passage.

Could you explain what you meant by this.

You can attack them till you established something what would after a peacetreaty work as a trading route. Instead of giving AI a city you should give your self some more of them.

I'm aiming for a Diplo win so attacking is not a choice. Thanks.

 

[justanick]

I'm aiming for a Diplo win so attacking is not a choice.

Yes it is. This is especially true if you attack the party that later will be your contestant for the UN victory. Else you can still take out the attacked civ in its entirety. War affects mostly the attacked civ, the rest of the wolrd does not care much about it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=44999

Could you explain what you meant by this.

I am not sure how it works in details, but if there is no chain of tiles unconvered from the black fog of War, than the trade route cannot be initiated. I assume any combination might work. So if you know a route from your capital to the harbour of the AI it will suffice that AI knows a route from there to its capital. Exchanging maps via the navigation tech is no requirement.