Quick Answers

[Pirate]

Originally posted by Grille
Immortals replace Swordsmen, so that upgrade shouldn't work. Also, Persia should not be allowed to build Swordsmen from scratch. If you had them with Persia, you probably got them from a warrior upgrade and that was then part of the bug I mentioned (which was fixed with some patch).

Sorry, I meant warriors to Immortals. And I think I was using v1.29, so it probably wasn't a bug. Maybe it was fixed in PTW. Moot point anyway. Thanks for the answer, Grille.

 

[Sphynx]

I play diplomatic game and I had no chance to survive in the beginning but conduct early wars. So I did not rape any agreements but I destroyed ceveral cities and was in wars almost all the time with different civs. Now its peace and Election is coming and only 2 civs are polite, 8 remaining are annoyed or furios. Can I still win if I declare war on my main rival and buy military alliance with every remaining civs against this rival? Or they will still vote for that AI even they are at war with him and in alliance with me? BTW are ther only 2 candidates to ONU or there could be more?

 

[anarres]

An AI will decide who to vote on based on which has the 'best' attitude rating with it. An AI that can vote for itself will do so (IIRC).

However, an AI will never vote for someone if they are annoyed or furious, or if they are at war (I think you can be at war an polite in unusual circumstances, and to be honest I have never tried getting someone's vote when we are at war and they are polite).

This means that if an AI is annoyed or worse (or at war) with everybody else they will abstain.

So, to answer your question: If you know the other UN candidate and get the world at war against them they will only get their own vote. The other AI's will abstain unless they are polite or gracious, in which case they will vote for you. Remember you need more than 50%, so for 5 AI's (plus you = 6 total) you need 4 votes...

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by Maestro
I have 3 questions:

1. Can somebody point me to an artical or post about "terraforming" the land. When should one irragate and when should one mine, for example.

2. What can you do with money besides support your troups. I've heard you can buy things like temples and libraries, but I don't know how. Can you buy technologies?

3. I can't use the search function on this forum. Everytime I click on it, it says I'm not authorized to view the page. Can somebody help?


Thanks,
Maestro

1. See Improving Your Opening Play by cracker, and Babylon's Deity Settlers by Bamspeedy. cracker's article in particular has good discussion about when to irrigate/mine, and include a link to an article on "forestry operations".

2. Betazed covered this. You can use cash to rush improvements if you are in Monarchy, Republic, or Democracy. You cannot *buy* techs, except from other Civs that already have discovered them. I am assuming you understand how to use the tax sliders on the F1 screen, to adjust how much of your income goes to Science Research, and how much goes to paying for Luxuries. The leftover amount is what you actually see as Gold Per Turn income.

3. The server was getting hit pretty hard by the influx of new posters with the release of Conquests, and many of us were getting "Server Busy" errors trying to connect. So Thunderfall turned off the search function to ease the load a bit. When things stabilize, he will turn it back on.

 

[betazed]

Originally posted by anarres


However, an AI will never vote for someone if they are annoyed or furious, or if they are at war (I think you can be at war an polite in unusual circumstances, and to be honest I have never tried getting someone's vote when we are at war and they are polite).

You missed a trivial case.

An ai civ will never vote for anyone else if it is itself standing for the elections. IMHO, this should be taken out in one of the next patches. Civs standing for the elections should not be allowed to vote explicitly. Instead they will be assumed to be voting for themselves.

I remember an instance where I hosted the UN election and mistakenly clicked my opponents vote and lost the game

 

[anarres]

Did't I say that betazed?

Originally posted by anarres
...An AI that can vote for itself will do so (IIRC).

 

[betazed]

@anarres: Of course. My bad.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by anarres
An AI will decide who to vote on based on which has the 'best' attitude rating with it. An AI that can vote for itself will do so (IIRC).

However, an AI will never vote for someone if they are annoyed or furious, or if they are at war (I think you can be at war an polite in unusual circumstances, and to be honest I have never tried getting someone's vote when we are at war and they are polite).

This means that if an AI is annoyed or worse (or at war) with everybody else they will abstain.

IMHO the war case would be the main determining factor that the ai abstains (respectively to not vote for someone). Attitude is of course very important, but a civ being furious (or just annoyed) towards you can actually vote for you. That is, I refer to the attitude status being observed at the end of the turn, just before the vote is held.
I used to raze a lot since RCP/rank exploit has been discovered and often played small maps. By the time UN comes around, it was not unusual to have just two ai opponents left w/o hitting the domination limit in the process. Making a war with one and having MPP'ed the other (plus eventually making further diplo efforts like MA afterwards) and then calling for a vote doesn't mean to risk suffering a loss, so I held elections in such scenarios. In some instances, my annoyed (or even furious!) ally voted for me. I'm not sure what causes this, but I *guess* the game might compare the 'raw' number of the attitude counter to decide to whom give the vote (ally was even more furious towards the UN rival). OTOH, as mentioned above, the 'current' attitude was just the last status of information I could get; so maybe I could severly boost the attitude by defeating enough units during the enemy's turn (if that counts/gets updated in time). Following Bamspeedy's study, the respective attitude bonus from enemy unit defeating could theoretically improve the status from furious (.ge.11 Attitude Points) to polite (.le.-1AP) during that inbetween turn, but this bonus is maxed out at -15AP and has a vanishing rate of 1AP per turn when no enemy unit destroying (and tile pillaging etc during your turn) happens. You'd get e.g. -1AP to -3AP for each enemy unit killed and you'd likely max that out as soon as a modern age war starts (and keep it at/near that peak during war time). So unless there was no fighting contributing to that bonus before, it was unlikely to boost the attitude during the inbetween turn. Shrug.
If there's actually no risk to lose the vote anyways (bribing the remaining civs gainst the rival, perhaps hoping that the rival role doesn't change thereby...), I'd hold a vote.

 

[anarres]

Hmm, interesting. Someone will have to do a study sometime to find out for sure.

 

[Scaevola]

Hello all.

I am an old time Civ 2 player then I got a mac and went to college. Now a friend gave me a copy of his game (he got a pc now, the bastard) so I have no manuel but I do have a few questions that will greatly help my first (what seems to be) victory.

I have never gotten a Great Leader, nor any of the Lesser Wonders aside from Forbidden Palace, despite a few long drawn out wars involving a lot of elite troops. Am I doing soming wrong? What can I do?

How do you disband one of your cities?

Can you trade troops with another civ? How do you request that they go to war with someone else for you?

After you drafted soliders can you put them back in their city or do you just have to disband them?

Scaevola

 

[Gainy]

[/quote]I have never gotten a Great Leader, nor any of the Lesser Wonders aside from Forbidden Palace, despite a few long drawn out wars involving a lot of elite troops. Am I doing soming wrong? What can I do?[/quote]

The chance in getting a Great Leader are 1/16, or 1/12 if you build the heroic epic (a small wonder). It's just luck if you get one, be patient
To build Small Wonders, there are prerestiquites, ie to build battlefield medicine, you need to have researched Sanitation, and built 5 hospitals if i remember correctly... Most small wonders are crap anyway

How do you disband one of your cities?

Right click on it, and click "Abandon City" which is in the drop-down menu, or simply build a settler/worker, when you town is not growing and is size 1.

After you drafted soliders can you put them back in their city or do you just have to disband them?

You can disband them in the city, which will convert them into shields (a small fraction of their actual cost). You do not get back the population that they used though.
I don't like drafting anyways...

Hope that helps

EDIT: I don't know how I managed to miss out some questions, the old eyesight must be failing

 

[Dianthus]

One bit Gainy missed is that you can only get a Great Leader from a unit that is an Elite and has not yet spawned a Great Leader.

How do you request that they go to war with someone else for you?

Once you have researched Writing a little E for Espionage button appears :

Press that to get to the espionage screen, from which you can pay for an embassy with another Civ.

Once you have an embassy (sometimes the other Civs will establish one with you, so saving you the expense) with a Civ the Miltary Alliance option appears in the diplomacy screen when trying to deal with that Civ. If your military is strong enough they might even pay you for the alliance!


EDIT: I've just remembered that recently Sir Pleb wrote an article over in Civ3 Strategy Articles about Creating and Using Leaders. There's quite a lot of information there, and from a master of the game too!

 

[Scaevola]

Thanks for your help.

Now I am at the point where I would like to blaze forward scientifically. When I make a scientist, however, he doesn't seem to increase my Beakers the way they do in Civ II. Where do I see the results of my scientists efforts so that I actually know that he is doing his thang?

I am diggin' the culture though.....

Scaevola

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by Scaevola
Thanks for your help.

Now I am at the point where I would like to blaze forward scientifically. When I make a scientist, however, he doesn't seem to increase my Beakers the way they do in Civ II. Where do I see the results of my scientists efforts so that I actually know that he is doing his thang?

I am diggin' the culture though.....

Scaevola

Unfortunately, it's a bit complex to figure out the benefit of your scientists. One scientist produces only one 'beaker' per turn (3 per turn in C3C) - not very much, if you compare that with a city's beaker production while running a decent research rate). Also, this scientist benefit is constant and will not be multiplied by libraries, wonders etc. On the other hand, corruption effects don't influence this benefit.
In theory, you could use some sort of TechCalc (possibly spy on the "tools" section of the Creation&Costomization forum) to get to know the number of beakers (respectively gold) required for a certain tech. You would then count the number of scientists 'manually' and beakers derived from cities to calculate your total beakers per turn rate/total beakers required. Only then, you could micromanage the optimal number of scientists needed; but you had to it every turn, since tech prices may change (tech gets cheaper with the number of already contacted civs that know the tech - this may just get to know it hile you're researching the same tech). Calling this method tedious is a clear understatement...
What is more, Civ3 lacks of a survey screen for beakers being accumulated towards the reqired total for the current tech (like there was in Civ2). Also, you would have to contact every civ via diplo to see if they already know a tech you don't (even then, you would not see all techs, just those you could theoretically research on your own by now). Again, Civ2 already had this feature; IIRC you'd get a pop up like 'civ A discovered invention' in both Civ1&Civ2 once you had an embassy and a rival just discovered a certain tech - or you could check the diplo screen to get a survey about all (to you unknown) techs of a civ. Why they scrapped that feature (SMAC had such, too) for Civ3 is a total mystery and there have actually been requests to implement it again in the add-on C3C (which did not happen).

So how to use scientists in Civ3?
You would hire only 1 scientist in your whole empire and set research to 0% if you wanted to research a tech at minmal rate, that's 40 turns (C3C: 50 turns) for any tech.
You would not hire a scientist in not-so-corrupt cities, since citizens working a commerce contributing tile (at least any tile that has a road on it) would give you a better benfit at decent research rate. This benefit would then also be multiplied by a library and alike. Note: contrary to Civ2, EACH beaker/gold multiplying improvement/wonder will only use the raw amount of commerce collected in a city - no need to establish a 'super science city' by building all these science wonders & improvements in that one special city (it's of course worth to build Newton's etc in a rather uncorrupt, high-commerce city, though).In case of reaserching @ min in early game, you could hire your scientist in a not-so corrupt city, if you wanted to prevent growth in the early game.

In the later game, you may hire an army of scientists in all these ultra-corrupt cities. Once you have like, say 100+ scientists (all depends on map size, of course), you could possibly *feel* their beaker production... but it's hard to control them .

taxmen: better hire them, get constantly 1 gold per turn (&taxman), then cut down taxes to improve research rate


To generally boost science, you would build a road on every working tile ASAP and let your cities grow to actually work enough tiles. Aquire lux resources (can cut down lux tax), gold harvesting improvements (can cut down taxes) and decrease the corruption (courts, FP placement, gov type...). Have a commerce bonus gov ASAP (would be republic which is a very good all-around gov for builders & warmongers) in place.


Miltitary Alliance (MA) issue: What Dianthus said. Plus, you could only offer/sign a MA (=you make the diplo effort) with a civ vs another enemy civ, when you're actually at war with that enemy. An ai civ would also only offer a MA (=they make the diplo effort), if they are at war with someone.

my $0.02-worth spam.

 

[Sphynx]

Thank you for info about diplo voting. Also I read Bamspeedy's article and now I believ that 5 razed cities will be easily compensated by MPP, RP, MA etc.

Also I recently noticed that sometimes when I move SCIENCE regulator (while lux regulator is 0) the citizens moods can cange sometimes Strange, because there is no logic in this - some times citizens become happier when I increase science and sometimes when I decrease science. Why?

2annares - you gave nice screenshot with smileys over the citizens' pictures (your reply about mobilization/normalcy). Wow! This way its quite easy to keep away cities from disorders. Is there any special file or patch to add to the civ to get this option? And if yes - will it be possible to open sav of this modified game if loaded from normal PTW?

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by Sphynx
Is there any special file or patch to add to the civ to get this option? And if yes - will it be possible to open sav of this modified game if loaded from normal PTW?

.Sav's with graphics only mods are able to be opened in regular PTW. You can file the citizen smileys (if that's what you were referring to) any many other great looking things here.

 

[Artofcybermars]

looking to find an good thread explaining the mysteries of RCP and OCP

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by Artofcybermars
looking to find an good thread explaining the mysteries of RCP and OCP

The RCP thread
I'm not really sure where to find material on OCP. My RCP usually fills up my noncorrupt zone and then it's ultracorrupt ICS for me after that, generally speaking.

EDIT: Missed a vowel.

 

[Artofcybermars]

Thanks superslug the initial readings of the thread are an bit mind boggling but sleep and an fresh open mind should cure that ailment. (sleep and an civ3 player? sounds like an Modern Age oxymoron)

 

[anarres]

Originally posted by Sphynx
2annares - you gave nice screenshot with smileys over the citizens' pictures (your reply about mobilization/normalcy). Wow! This way its quite easy to keep away cities from disorders. Is there any special file or patch to add to the civ to get this option? And if yes - will it be possible to open sav of this modified game if loaded from normal PTW?

Those pics were taken in PTW, and used graphics mods cretaed just for PTW/Civ3.

The good news is that I now have Conquests and have downloaded several new graphics packs, similar to my PTW ones but designed for the new Conquests features!

Snoopy's Terrain Graphics v4.5 for Civ3 Conquests (C3C)
Conquests version of watercolor terrain
Civ3/PTW/Conquests popHead Mood Badges a la EvanCiv (Happy/Contenet/Unhappy simley faces in city screen and F1)
GRAPHICS: New barb camp, goody hut, and mine
C3C resources with labels & icons

I have used all of these at some point in the past, and it is a credit to the modders that they have been updated for Conquests in such quick time!