this is a problem thats been irritating me for a long time and im finally ready to talk about the need to change it.
civilization and most games like it have long periods where empires experience something called "exponential growth". simply put this means their size doubles after X turns. and it does so repeatedly. the secret to winning is reducing the size of X to the smallest number possible. for example if i can double every 20 turns then after 200 turns i will achieve 1024 times my original size. but if i can double every 18 turns then i will achieve over 2000 times my original size in the same number of turns. this means that when all the civs run out of space and this doubling phenomenon comes to an end the player who can get that doubling time from 20 turns down to 18 turns will have twice the empire size. this is THE reason why micromanaging early in the game is so powerful. and it is the reason why painstaking calculations on efficiency to reduce that doubling time pays such big dividends.
but it gets worse ...
early wars do not pay for themselves unless low corruption territory can be acquired by way of them.
so when we play on deity to say nothing of sid level we go out of our way to avoid unnecessary wars. they play havoc with the doubling times. i had the intention of giving up the game (still do) and i decided i wanted one last great game on huge level with a militaristic civ on deity level. i got off to a very poorly played start so my "doubling time" was maybe 25 turns instead of the oh-so-important goal of 20. this left me at a quarter the size i should have been at.i was almost an entire age behind in tech. i was fortunate to be able to move into a great giant jungle that the ai ignored to eventually catch up in empire size. i won the game but i did so by having no military whatsoever for the duration of 2 ENTIRE AGES. you would have laughed to see me build 80 artillery when they were the ONLY military units i had because i couldnt spare the change to acquire either iron or saltpeter at that time. i refused to draft riflemen because i was not willing to pay the support cost. i was so desparate to catch up in tech that i repeatedly sold off my only horses every time the 20 turns came up. the gambit paid off. i reduced my doubling time enough to eventually catch up until i got my modern units and then i tromped over everybody in about 45 turns.
but that's not the game i want to play!
why should i play 250 turns of hoping hoping hoping the ai will ignore my undefended empire? you know very well i won that game by luck. i was lucky they ignored me although to be sure i made much of diplomacy to maximize the chances of that. but i had to do it. i had to get my doubling time down. and this ALWAYS is a problem on games like civ when played at the highest levels.
how many of you were experts at civ II? how many of you could turn the entire world to grass in under 300 years on deity or lauch a spaceship in 220 turns? how many of you learned to double your gold intake every 13 turns for a stretch of 130 turns to go from 50gpt to 50000gpt? how many of you could rush production on every one of your 254 cities and have so much gold left over that the game truncated it back down to 30000gold in the interturn? for those who think im boasting i will say this much. this was easier to do in civ II than to win a deity game of civ III. i am absolutely impressed with the community here for teaching so many players absolutely immaculate playstyle that we have so many deity players here. its not easy folks.
but i dont like the method required of us. it keeps coming down to the same old thing. i have to play each turn doing nothing but producing infrastructure, rushing marketplaces, working my workers flawlessly counting squares religiously to place my cities, switching my cities between food and shields to shave off a turn on my settler production calculating the placement of my fp with much care and checking the diplomacy window every single turn to get the best deals i absolutely can going back and forth and back and forth between the ai as i do so just because i want to change my doubling time from 20 turns to 18 turns. all the while i use every trick in the book for playing the ai against each other. the art of destroying ai reputations i take to shameless levels. i consider rop rape childs play compared to the tricks i pull on the ai but curiously i avoid that exploit in particular because it has been declared taboo. and i do it all for one purpose. to increase their doubling time.
and i get cheated out of the fun of early wars which screw massively with my own doubling time.
if you havent figured it out yet this is a rant on the whole exponential empire growth concept. we need an alternative.
as a postscript to all this: if you havent detected it yet civ III to me requires every braincell ive got for stretches of up to 80 hours. its extremely taxing on the brain to me and i go to work with my brain absolutely fried from it. it is a large part of the reason im preparing to disband my computer. i will continue to lurk about the boards off and on from other people's computers at least for a while.
as a second postscript: ive never participated on a board like this one that has such a great bunch of people posting.
civilization and most games like it have long periods where empires experience something called "exponential growth". simply put this means their size doubles after X turns. and it does so repeatedly. the secret to winning is reducing the size of X to the smallest number possible. for example if i can double every 20 turns then after 200 turns i will achieve 1024 times my original size. but if i can double every 18 turns then i will achieve over 2000 times my original size in the same number of turns. this means that when all the civs run out of space and this doubling phenomenon comes to an end the player who can get that doubling time from 20 turns down to 18 turns will have twice the empire size. this is THE reason why micromanaging early in the game is so powerful. and it is the reason why painstaking calculations on efficiency to reduce that doubling time pays such big dividends.
but it gets worse ...
early wars do not pay for themselves unless low corruption territory can be acquired by way of them.
so when we play on deity to say nothing of sid level we go out of our way to avoid unnecessary wars. they play havoc with the doubling times. i had the intention of giving up the game (still do) and i decided i wanted one last great game on huge level with a militaristic civ on deity level. i got off to a very poorly played start so my "doubling time" was maybe 25 turns instead of the oh-so-important goal of 20. this left me at a quarter the size i should have been at.i was almost an entire age behind in tech. i was fortunate to be able to move into a great giant jungle that the ai ignored to eventually catch up in empire size. i won the game but i did so by having no military whatsoever for the duration of 2 ENTIRE AGES. you would have laughed to see me build 80 artillery when they were the ONLY military units i had because i couldnt spare the change to acquire either iron or saltpeter at that time. i refused to draft riflemen because i was not willing to pay the support cost. i was so desparate to catch up in tech that i repeatedly sold off my only horses every time the 20 turns came up. the gambit paid off. i reduced my doubling time enough to eventually catch up until i got my modern units and then i tromped over everybody in about 45 turns.
but that's not the game i want to play!
why should i play 250 turns of hoping hoping hoping the ai will ignore my undefended empire? you know very well i won that game by luck. i was lucky they ignored me although to be sure i made much of diplomacy to maximize the chances of that. but i had to do it. i had to get my doubling time down. and this ALWAYS is a problem on games like civ when played at the highest levels.
how many of you were experts at civ II? how many of you could turn the entire world to grass in under 300 years on deity or lauch a spaceship in 220 turns? how many of you learned to double your gold intake every 13 turns for a stretch of 130 turns to go from 50gpt to 50000gpt? how many of you could rush production on every one of your 254 cities and have so much gold left over that the game truncated it back down to 30000gold in the interturn? for those who think im boasting i will say this much. this was easier to do in civ II than to win a deity game of civ III. i am absolutely impressed with the community here for teaching so many players absolutely immaculate playstyle that we have so many deity players here. its not easy folks.
but i dont like the method required of us. it keeps coming down to the same old thing. i have to play each turn doing nothing but producing infrastructure, rushing marketplaces, working my workers flawlessly counting squares religiously to place my cities, switching my cities between food and shields to shave off a turn on my settler production calculating the placement of my fp with much care and checking the diplomacy window every single turn to get the best deals i absolutely can going back and forth and back and forth between the ai as i do so just because i want to change my doubling time from 20 turns to 18 turns. all the while i use every trick in the book for playing the ai against each other. the art of destroying ai reputations i take to shameless levels. i consider rop rape childs play compared to the tricks i pull on the ai but curiously i avoid that exploit in particular because it has been declared taboo. and i do it all for one purpose. to increase their doubling time.
and i get cheated out of the fun of early wars which screw massively with my own doubling time.
if you havent figured it out yet this is a rant on the whole exponential empire growth concept. we need an alternative.
as a postscript to all this: if you havent detected it yet civ III to me requires every braincell ive got for stretches of up to 80 hours. its extremely taxing on the brain to me and i go to work with my brain absolutely fried from it. it is a large part of the reason im preparing to disband my computer. i will continue to lurk about the boards off and on from other people's computers at least for a while.
as a second postscript: ive never participated on a board like this one that has such a great bunch of people posting.
One can always hope, right? 
