Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[Theov]

The files you need to replace are the 'popheads.pcx', which you will find in your ...\Civilization III\[Conquests\]Art\SmallHeads\ folders. (Amongst others,) CFC-users @Puppeteer and @GreyFox both produced (or assembled) such files. @Theov included one in his Mod as well. You should be able to find them in the 'Downloads' section...

I'm using Puppeteer's pack, since he also provided popheads.pcx for each of the Conquests Scenarios (Mesopotamia, Sengoku, etc.). And *rummage*
HERE IT IS.

My popheads have a few things:

- Happiness smilies by color; dark is unhappy, middle is content, light is happy, red is resisting.) So it's easy to spot a resisting town, and an unhappy town and makes it easier to see if you need to adjust the slider or not.
- Since green changes to the color of the nationality, it's easy to see the different nationalities in your population.
- Specialist indicators.
- Elvis (my mod has Elvis as the cultural advisor)

Download the popheads --> View attachment 403609

Spoiler :

 

[Prince Bolkonsky]

1. When starting a game you have the option to turn off the various victory conditions. Will doing so effect how the AI plays the game? For instance, if Wonder Victory and Culture Victory are turned off will the AI civilizations be less likely to attempt building Wonders. I like Histograph victory condition and would prefer not to have the game end early due to other victory condition but I don't want to change how the AI plays. Of course I realize that all the things that lead to a specific victory add to Histograph victory.

2. I'm not clear on what the Victory Point Scoring selection does. Is it somehow associated with Histograph victory? What is the purpose of the plinth that appears in the start hex?

 

[tjs282]

The Wonder and Victory-Point VCs are always turned off by default in the epic game — both these VCs are more intended to be used for (time-limited) Multiplayer games, or for specific Scenarios (e.g. the 'Mesopotamia' Conquest-scenario uses both the Wonder-VC, and VP-scoring). So no, turning the Wonder-VC off (or rather, leaving it off) will not discourage the AI-Civs from building Wonders!

A VP-win is achieved by accumulating a preset number of VPs, and AFAIK, even if VP-scoring is turned on for the epic-game, VPs do not directly contribute to the Histo VC, per se. The obelisks you see when you turn on VP-scoring are the 'Victory-Point locations' (on a randomly generated map, like the Strategic resources, the VPLs will also be randomly scattered): for every turn that a unit occupies a VPL-tile, the unit's parent Civ accumulates XX VPs. The actual VP-value awarded for this and various other conditions (e.g. no. of cities founded, no. of enemy units killed/captured, no. of Wonders built, etc.), plus the 'total-VP' target, are all set in the [Scenario-name].biq file, but off the top of my head, I don't know if VP-targets and values were also set for the epic-game conquests.biq file (if you open it in the Editor, you can check for yourself). If so, then it is possible that a VP-win might be (accidentally) achieved by you or one of the AI-Civs — likely largely depending on difficulty level — before the timer runs out for a Histo-VC.

I have no idea what would happen if you turned off the Cultural VC(s) — which are part of the default epic-game — but I suspect it would not make a significant difference to the AI's behaviour, since the Civ3-AI does not 'plan' to achieve any specific VC to begin with: when it does so, this happens entirely by 'accident'. Turning off the Cultural VC will certainly not discourage the AI from putting up Culture-producing buildings, since Wonders, Temples, Libraries, etc., all provide additional benefits apart from Culture. Anyway, if an AI-Civ is left to its own devices for long enough, it will tend to build everything it can, in every one of its towns (without making any kind of cost-benefit analysis). And besides, the actual conditions required for a Cultural VC are not very conducive to the AI winning that way: at Regent and below, the human is more likely to do that (by snaffling all the Wonders), but at Monarch and above, the AI's tendency towards militarism generally means that Civs with good lands/ strong traits will simply roll over the weaker Civs, rather than beating them Culturally.

The 20K-City VC requires an extremely Wonder/Culture-focussed approach for just one city, which the AI is largely incapable of following: the AI-Civs instead tend to spread their Wonders around multiple cities. To win a 100K-Civ VC requires that the next-best Civ still has <50K Culture, but again, due to the AI's hard-coded tendency to found towns 'looser' than the human (Cxx[x]xC rather than Cx[x]C), AI-Civ-wide Cultural production rates tend to be quite slow, and 100K Culture usually isn't achieved by any AI-Civ until the late Industrial. But that far through the game, even if the human player is significantly behind on Cultural production (which will usually be the case, for a long game where the human has rather focussed on Science and/or Military), the 2 largest AI-Civs still standing will likely be relatively equally balanced (due to their tendency to build everything everywhere), so neither of them will pose much if any 'danger' of winning that way, either.

FWIW, I have never seen an AI win by Culture in any of my epic-games (usually played on Continental/Pangaea maps, usually at Emperor/DG these days), but it apparently does happen occasionally!

 

[Takhisis]

Oh, it can happen. If you're not careful, of course. The best training for that is Plotinus' The Rood and the Dragon scenario. The Irish (AI) can achieve a cultural victory but you cannot. What you can do, however, is keep a rate of cultural achievement high enough to prevent the Irish from winning while you achieve victory in a different way.

 

[GeneralAchilles]

What does the set (continental) rally point command does?

 

[tjs282]

What does the set (continental) rally point command does?

It allows you to choose a destination tile for all newly-built units to head towards. A Continental RP applies to all units built out of all your cities on that continent. An 'ordinary' RP applies only to the specific city it's been set for. As with all C3C unit-automation options though, there are several caveats:

• First of all, a(C)RP only starts working on the interturn after it's been set; so don't bother setting one in the expectation that currently active units will head for it -- they won't.
• Secondly, a (C)RP applies to all units built, not just military units; so newly built Settlers and Workers will all head for a CRP, as will new ships if the CRP is a coastal city.
• And finally, if the units' journey might take multiple turns (prior to rails), and an enemy captures the destination-tile during that time, your units will still continue to head towards it, which might accidentally put them within striking distance of an AI-attack.

These basically mean that using (C)RPs is really not a useful option until after your rail-net is already complete, because otherwise your units may/will take multiple turns to reach it. This can be especially annoying if you wanted your Workers doing something else, somewhere else -- before rails, you will have to locate them en route, cancel their orders individually, and then waste more turns sending them (back) to where you wanted them in the first place (whereas once you have a thin rail-net in place, your new units will instantly assemble on the target tile, with all their MP still unused).

However, if you are currently conducting an overseas invasion, then setting your intended port of departure as your CRP may well save you some busy-work each turn, since you won't need to direct each individual mil-unit to their ship.

 

[Samson]

Can a javelin thrower army capture slaves? What if you add 1 of another unit?

 

[Takhisis]

A army consisting only of Javelin Throwers can capture slaves.

If you add 1 of another unit… IIRC it's the same as with promotion. Each unit in the army is promoted individually, and each unit can capture or not individually. You might just test it, have an army with a JT and a longbowman and see whether the longbowman can capture or not.

 

[GeneralAchilles]

It allows you to choose a destination tile for all newly-built units to head towards. A Continental RP applies to all units built out of all your cities on that continent. An 'ordinary' RP applies only to the specific city it's been set for. As with all C3C unit-automation options though, there are several caveats:

-- First of all, a(C)RP only starts working on the interturn after it's been set; so don't bother setting one in the expectation that currently active units will head for it -- they won't.
-- Secondly, a (C)RP applies to all units built, not just military units; so newly built Settlers and Workers will all head for a CRP, as will new ships if the CRP is a coastal city.
-- And finally, if the units' journey might take multiple turns (prior to rails), and an enemy captures the destination-tile during that time, your units will still continue to head towards it, which might accidentally put them within striking distance of an AI-attack.

These basically mean that using (C)RPs is really not a useful option until after your rail-net is already complete, because otherwise your units may/will take multiple turns to reach it. This can be especially annoying if you wanted your Workers doing something else, somewhere else -- before rails, you will have to locate them en route, cancel their orders individually, and then waste more turns sending them (back) to where you wanted them in the first place (whereas once you have a thin rail-net in place, your new units will instantly assemble on the target tile, with all their MP still unused).

However, if you are currently conducting an overseas invasion, then setting your intended port of departure as your CRP may well save you some busy-work each turn, since you won't need to direct each individual mil-unit to their ship.

Okay, thanks for the explanation!

 

[Takhisis]

Achilles, to complement that I suggest that you learn how to move units in stacks. X then click for all (moveable) units in a stack to move, Ctrl+X then click for all units in a stack of the same type as the selected unit to move. Be careful, as the stack will move at the speed of its slowest unit and might include units which have already spent movement points this turn.

 

[GeneralAchilles]

Achilles, to complement that I suggest that you learn how to move units in stacks. X then click for all (moveable) units in a stack to move, Ctrl+X then click for all units in a stack of the same type as the selected unit to move. Be careful, as the stack will move at the speed of its slowest unit and might include units which have already spent movement points this turn.

Thanks for the additional info!

 

[web25]

How does bombard work with guerilla and tow infantry?

 

[Theov]

How does bombard work with guerilla and tow infantry?

This is a so called defensive bombardment. When attacked they will fire a salvo before starting the defense. They do this also when another umit in the stack is attacked. The archer/guerilla etc will shoot before the other unit start its defense.
Because it has 0 range, it can not be used in offense and has received the name defense bombard.

 

[tjs282]

How does bombard work with guerilla and tow infantry?

They have defensive (range=0) bombard only, just like Longbows (and Privateers, IIRC?). That means that they'll only bombard an incoming unit if (1) there is at least 1 other unit stacked with them and (2) they have not yet fired their def-bomb that interturn.

So if you have a stack of 2 TOWs, and 2 attackers incoming, whichever TOW is stronger ('TOW1') will be selected to defend against the first attack while the weaker one ('TOW2') will fire a def-bomb as the attacker runs in; assuming TOW1 survives (but likely injured), it will then fire a def-bomb while TOW2(?) defends against the second attack. But if a third attacker then runs in, neither TOW will fire another def-bomb, and whichever TOW has the highest HP-percentage remaining will defend (i.e. a 100% healthy 3/3 regular will be chosen in preference to a 75% healthy 3/4 veteran, which in turn will be preferred over a 60% healthy 3/5 elite; conversely, a 4/5 elite would defend a 3/4 veteran, and a 2/5 elite would defend a 1/3 regular).

If you're asking how the (defensive)-bombardment 'hit' is calculated(?), that's done by pitting the (defensive) Bombard-strength (B) value against the attacking unit's D-value, with the 'standard' combat RNG-calculation. So e.g. a Guerilla (B=3) def-bombing an incoming Cavalry (D=3) on flat ground will have a roughly 50% probability (B/[B+D] = 3/[3+3.1]) of removing 1 HP from the Cav, but a TOW's def-bomb would have roughly a 66% probability (B/[B+D] = 6/[6+3.1]) of doing so.

Should also be noted (e.g. for modding) that, regardless of the bombard-capable unit's actual Firing-Rate (F) statistic (="shots fired per bombardment"), for the purposes of a def-bomb F is always limited to 1 — so a successful def-bomb will only remove max. 1 HP from the incoming attacker. An epic-game Artillery unit has F=2 (and Range=2), so can remove up to 2 HP when firing offensively; but only 1 HP when firing defensively.

Hmm... I see I'm now cross-posting with @Theov. Ah well...

 

[web25]

Does a happy citizen outproduce a content one?

 

[Takhisis]

Outproduce as in having a better yield of food/gold/shields per tile? No. But you need them to balance out the unhappy ones.

 

[tjs282]

Does a happy citizen outproduce a content one?

To add to what Takh said: if you have more happy than content people, and no unhappy people, then you get a "We Love The [King] Day", which somewhat reduces the town's waste, raising its useful shield-output (which is then multiplied by any shield-boosting buildings), for as long as the celebration of your awesomeness continues.

 

[GeneralAchilles]

To add to what Takh said: if you have more happy than content people, and no unhappy people, then you get a "We Love The [King] Day", which somewhat reduces the town's waste, raising its useful shield-output (which is then multiplied by any shield-boosting buildings), for as long as the celebration of your awesomeness continues.

Indeed, there is also one more condition the city must at least have a population of 6.

 

[web25]

can you build a city on your border that shares with another civ to take a resource? I read about someone doing this in the japan coming from last place thread.

 

[Takhisis]

You cannot ever build a city right next to another city (you might preplace one with a hacked editor, maybe - ask Quintillus).

You can build a city inside enemy borders: this will automatically trigger war.
You can build a city right next to the enemy's borders: this will not trigger war. However, it's not for certain that you will get the actual resource, as the usual interplay of culture between your newly built city and the all-but-declared-enemy's will still take place. That means that if you select your settler and press the move key and move the mouse around you'll see the possible city radii* and you can check whether building a city next to the enemy's borders would actually get you the resource in question, or at least help you cut that city off from the others by making their road yours.
Or, at least, if you have any wonder that gives you free cultural buildings, then just place the city there and wait for cultural expansion to take place.

*correct Latin plurals for Mr. @Plotinus' sake