WeirdoJoker
King
I ended up with a UN defeat. I was ahead by one turn, but then Hittites managed to squeak it out ahead of me. Sabotage would have been a great idea, and in fact I may go back & try to play it that way just to see if I can do it.
Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions
- Thread starter Turner
- Start date
I go for the space race frequently; I lost a UN vote because I didn't build it and I had made war against nearly everyone else in the world at some point to get resources.
Learned from my mistake -- Now, as I'm researching the last few techs in the Industrial Age, I always start a prebuild for the UN. Build it, and never hold an election, since I probably have more frenemies than actual friends, who might be manipulated into voting for me.
WeirdoJoker
King
I've even done that before & just didn't start the prebuild quickly enough. Apparently, I did not learn from previous mistakes ... probably got blinded but all that extra cash lying around...
I prefer the space race myself, but I'm so bleah about how I screwed this one up that I think I'll just play China & go for domination on a small map just to make myself feel better.
As has been posted a dozen times already, just find out who's going to be your main rival and time things carefully so that your generous disinterested gifts get everybody on your side for the upcoming righteous world war against said main rival (the AI never votes for somebody it's at war with)
WeirdoJoker
King
Yep - and I've done it before, too. That's what makes this one so humiliating.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Doesn't always work, though.
Case in point: I am (sorta currently, on the old XP laptop) in the final throes of a Tides of Crimson run (Random-Ramayanians, Random-70% Standard Archipelago, Emperor), in which 6 tribes (of 11 total) have survived to the End Times.
According to everything the game was telling me, the Lizardmen were the 2nd most advanced/ largest/ highest scoring survivor after me
Spoiler :
Spoiler :
The next election should be mine though, because with enthusiastic assistance from the Dwarves, I'm now ripping through the Lizards' core. Once they're gone, the votes will go 3:1:1, giving me the majority.
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WeirdoJoker
King
I've recently noticed that, when not playing for a cultural victory, my borders don't expand as far without the cultural buildings (e.g., temples & cathedrals), and this affects score and % of land mass for Domination purposes. Is there a way to compensate for that, or should building culture be an integral part of seeking a Domination victory?
In some situations (on a large landmass) building - or even better capturing - the Temple of Artemis helps a lot. But that is assuming that you achieve Domination before you learn Education. (Which usually is the case, even if you have to go all the way to Military Tradition. We don't need no Education...!)
Without that option, a much better/cheaper way of achieving Domination is building Settlers instead of Temples (culture). A Temple costs 60s and 1gpt maintenance and covers approx. 12 additional tiles. A Settler only costs 30s and even provides 1gpt + 1spt income (and can provide another +2gpt, if you are still running a deficit in unit maintenance), and it can cover approx. 20 additional tiles, if using a smart settling pattern.
So in short: when going for Domination victory, forget culture, build/rush settlers instead. Lots of them...
Without that option, a much better/cheaper way of achieving Domination is building Settlers instead of Temples (culture). A Temple costs 60s and 1gpt maintenance and covers approx. 12 additional tiles. A Settler only costs 30s and even provides 1gpt + 1spt income (and can provide another +2gpt, if you are still running a deficit in unit maintenance), and it can cover approx. 20 additional tiles, if using a smart settling pattern.
So in short: when going for Domination victory, forget culture, build/rush settlers instead. Lots of them...
That's true... But nevertheless it is also the right thing to do in this special situation. (Fast Domination victory.)
WeirdoJoker
King
Ok, good. I haven't played a culture game in a long time, so I haven't been building temples or cathedrals at all, even for my spaceship games (which is the majority). I was just wondering if I was missing something in that.
If you're going for spaceship, and succeed in building the Internet, the free Research Lab in every city will start expanding your borders. That's been a pleasant surprise for me during some late game warring. I don't need to rush (or slow build) a culture building to get a border pop.
While I agree that the shield-optimal way to grab territory is to build lots of settlers and pack in cities, I don't find that very aesthetically pleasing. Starting a temple, waiting a few turns, and spending ~200 gold to finish it is more pleasing to me than a crowd of size 3 towns with names like "New New Cumae"
The last bit is only because you don't look up new names for your cities, but anyway. Packing in cities too tightly isn't that productive. CxC is just demented unless you absolutely have to garrison somewhere specific e.g. an isthmus.
Culture never comes amiss because the extra distance from your borders to your cities means that any invading enemy will not have the benefits of roads while you definitely will.
Culture never comes amiss because the extra distance from your borders to your cities means that any invading enemy will not have the benefits of roads while you definitely will.
Actually it makes much more sense economically than you imply, especially before aqueducts. At 4 free unit support per town in despotism this makes a lot of sense. If you play at Sid you may easily be forced to get the most of ouf your very limited amount of land.
The main reasons why it makes sense to not maximize the amount of towns that way are corruption and maintenance costs. In the industrial age a developed city can have buildings costing more than 15 gtp in total. So having fewer cities to cover the same amount of tiles pays off in the long run. I may even argue that hospitals should be built before factories, but that point of view may be a bit more controversial.
In fact, this is a very interesting point, about which I still haven't come to a "final" conclusion, even after 21 years of Civ3...
If you just look at the numbers, a Hospital pays off big time: less maintenance (for buildings as well as units), more income/production from the city center, less corruption, and in many places you can finally get the commerce from all the coastal tiles you couldn't work before with size-12 cities.
However, there are more sides to the story: namely what is your desired victory condition? There are basically three types: military victory (Conquest, Domination, 100K), science victory (Space and UN) and cultural victory (20K). (Note here that 100K is basically a military victory condition, not a cultural victory...!
)If you are playing for a military victory, there is no need to go past Military Tradition, so these games will be over long before it is even possible to get Hospitals. So Hospitals are not a factor for these.
For a science victory, it basically boils down to the question, "can the time spent for the optional tech Sanitation be made up again by the benefit the Hospitals provide"? If you can achieve 4-turn research without Hospitals, then the 4 turns wasted on Sanitation can never be recovered, so it is obviously bad to go for Hospitals. This more or less covers all games at lower difficulty levels, where it shouldn't be a problem to have 4-turn research some time in the middle of the middle ages (after Universities). So that leaves the higher difficulty levels. And for these I often found a useful "compromise": I research the non-optional techs (so I don't lose time on the way to the required techs like Fission for the UN or the techs for the spaceship parts), while a powerful AI usually comes up with Sanitation "early enough". Then I trade for it and build Hospitals in those coastal cities that can work 3-5 additional tiles for a much higher commerce output. So the answer is: "Hospitals yes, but let the AI do the work for you"... (I follow a similar approach for Communism/Police Stations, which are also very important in those cases where you struggle to maintain 4-turn research. The AI usually goes for Communism quite early, and that's good enough for me...)
That leaves the special case of a 20K victory. Here it is not necessary to get a number of required techs as fast as possible. Instead you only have to make sure to get the tech for the next cultural building on time. But if the 20K city is currently building a wonder for 20-30 turns, you may afford to go for an optional tech that is not strictly required for the next cultural building. And still have the tech for the next wonder ready in time. But do you need Hospitals in this case? The 20K city should have Shakespeare's Theater, so it won't need a Hospital. And the remaining cities (which mainly provide the required research) don't need them that urgently. So on the higher difficulty levels, you can leave the job to the AI again, and on the lower difficulty you can do Sanitation at a convenient time, when there is nothing more important to do...
I am at Emperor, playing longer games than that. So better-placed cities makes for a better mid-game in Republic, especially given my current focus on granaries and temples. In any case, the orography dictates a lot of the placement.
Hey, does anybody know why sometimes a civ decides to go from ‘polite’ to ‘annoyed’ when I sell it a tech for some gpt?

I have been able to bait an AI into starting a war by asking it for unpayable stuff i.e. 300 gpt, but this is just a case when the AI says it can pay for it and immediately our relationship goes bad.

I have been able to bait an AI into starting a war by asking it for unpayable stuff i.e. 300 gpt, but this is just a case when the AI says it can pay for it and immediately our relationship goes bad.
Bartleby
Remembers laughter
One possible reason is that if you sell them a government tech they might go into Anarchy when you had both previously been in their "favoured" form of government.
