Today I Learned (about Civ3)

[BlackBetsy]

As I read the formula, I can make the biggest difference by getting the city out of disorder (reduce the H factor), quelling resistance (reduce the F factor), and build local culture (reduce both Cc and T). Once I can get the border to pop with my culture, the tiles under foreign control (T) go down.

Scientists or other specialists are foreign citizens (F factor) but they are content, so they help keep the city from rioting. Using the governor to "Manage city mood" is useful in the short term to reduce the riot risk. The governor often uses clowns/entertainers to manage moods, which can result in some starvation also. For most cities that I conquer, I worry most about flip risk in the first 5 turns or so. I will usually keep the governor on for those cities until I negotiate peace or eliminate the civ. "War against our motherland" leads to unhappy faces, while the war is ongoing.

A key exception is when I capture an AI core city or its capital. The local culture (Cc) will be very high for them, especially if they have built any wonders in their core. Just popping some local culture is not enough. Making a worker or settler to shrink the city, allowing it to grow back with citizens of *my* nationality, will reduce F more quickly.

Since I like to generate a border pop with culture in ALL of my cities, I can usually get the ratio (Cte/Cty) less than 1.0 because my culture (Cty) is large. Rush building a culture building (temple or library, whichever is cheaper) gets me a quick border pop in conquered cities.

At higher levels (Emperor +), I just don't leave strong units in the city and leave 2-3 units outside to retake in a flip. I always turn the non-resistors into scientists or tax men and starve down to 1 unless the civ is wiped out and there is no longer a flip risk. Since the 1st turn after capture has no flip risk, I try to pile in as many spare units as possible to quell as many resistors right away.

I tend to be aggressive on city placement vs. AI Civs to grab tiles. Especially near the borders, where they may have settled to grab (invisible to humans) resources. This aggression can often lead to my own cities flipping...even in my current Monarch game, 2 cities aggressively placed near the Greek core flipped because of a lack of culture. In my last Emperor game, I did manage to get a Byzantine city to flip to my side because it was near my core. That's the first one I've had in a long while.

 

[Spoonwood]

Rush building a culture building (temple or library, whichever is cheaper) gets me a quick border pop in conquered cities.

That's quite expensive. Unless you want to keep a scientific civ around for their free technology, it's usually better to just finish someone off completely, and then there is no longer any probability of a culture flip, and resistance quashed at a ratio of one unit per citizen exactly.

 

[vorlon_mi]

That's quite expensive. Unless you want to keep a scientific civ around for their free technology, it's usually better to just finish someone off completely, and then there is no longer any probability of a culture flip, and resistance quashed at a ratio of one unit per citizen exactly.

Agree, to a point. After the first age, most of my wars are incremental to secure territory, luxuries, or strategic resources, rather than wipe them out. I rarely build a large enough army to take out a whole civ in one war. Part of that is due to pursuing a spaceship victory. Part of that is playing a continents map where the other land mass has time to grow and progress in tech. Part of it is probably just my play style. Finishing off a 10 city AI civ would require > 20 turns before cavalry. That feels expensive, measured in shields expended.

To give some more details -- I let the city build a shield or two into its box. Rushing the rest of the cheap building (either 30 or 40 shields) usually costs less than 200 gold. If I rushed the whole building, yes, it would be expensive in gold expended.

 

[tjs282]

To give some more details -- I let the city build a shield or two into its box. Rushing the rest of the cheap building (either 30 or 40 shields) usually costs less than 200 gold. If I rushed the whole building, yes, it would be expensive in gold expended.

If you want the Temple/Lib that badly, disbanding a redlined Cav, or a now-obsolete Mace/LBM, would make the shield-purchase much cheaper.

 

[BlackBetsy]

If you want the Temple/Lib that badly, disbanding a redlined Cav, or a now-obsolete Mace/LBM, would make the shield-purchase much cheaper.

Or if you capture a catapult in the age of Trebuchets or Trebs in the age of Cannon or Arty and don't want to pay for upgrades, disbanding one of your own and upgrading the captured one that's also a good choice. I'm more inclined to upgrade cats/trebs/cannons I captured because the "free" unit against support costs is important in a republic. It is not unusual for me to have 70% of my stack as captured arty. Can't decide whether I like capturing workers or artillery more.

 

[justanick]

As I read the formula, I can make the biggest difference by [...] and build local culture (reduce both Cc and T).

The effect on Cc will probably take more than 20 turns. T is easier to reduce by simply advancing further. Instead of spending 40 shields on a library it may be better to spend 30 shields on a settler. What you really want to do about flips, is to eliminate the enemy altogether.

Part of that is playing a continents map where the other land mass has time to grow and progress in tech.

Once you have secured your continent you may easily use kamikaze-galleys to make contact so you can progress in tech just fine.

Finishing off a 10 city AI civ would require > 20 turns before cavalry. That feels expensive, measured in shields expended.

But it will increase your net commerce and thus your research output significantly. Think less about shield, think more about money. Losing 40 horsemen may hurt in short run, but those losses may pay for themselves within 20 turns.

 

[Spoonwood]

AI workers CAN rework tiles:

My apologies for all the times I said that they could not do so.

Edit: Maybe one worker started irrigating on the that tile and another started mining at the same time? Nope. But, they started work on the tile a turn apart...

So I'm not sure that they can water mined tiles or irrigate mined tiles now.

 

[Spoonwood]

I guess also I've learned that AI worker moves are deliberately dumb or sub-optimal. The AI is supposed to be fun to play, not some sort of intelligent entity who understands how to do things well in terms of winning. It's only supposed to be intelligent in the sense of competent enough to help the human player have a good experience.

The worker irrigating the grassland here makes no sense to me with tiles able to get reworked:

since water can dragged through the flood plains or the city to one of the cows. Is dragging water through cities a bug?

I can understand the regular grassland watered here to drag water onto the plains, but why would the bonus grassland also get watered? There's no sense at all to having that tile watered also in despotism, is there?

The 6 spot from Karakorum got watered, but it makes no sense at all in despotism:

The '1' spot from Karakorum got watered also, but again that makes no sense. The '2' spot as watered would make sense instead.

Or maybe the coding of worker moves was difficult?

 

[tjs282]

YIL that if I buy 2 Luxes (my 5th and 6th, so they'd each give the same number of additional Happyfaces) on the same turn from the same AI, the second will be substantially more expensive if I buy it separately (72 + 93 gpt) than if I'd bought both as a single package-deal (145 gpt). Yeah, cheers Temujin -- you filthy chiseller...

Spoiler Why I took that poor deal... :

I'm playing as Sumeria on a Large DG (70%?) Continents map, and the early game was a struggle, since I had only Horses, no Iron, and got dogpiled by the Hittites (who, having killed the Iros and Yanks, now own about half our shared Continent), the Indians (now exiled) and the English (now also extinct, partly at my hand). I only survived because I spammed Enks and Archers during my Despotic GA, but the Hittite Culture was so strong that one of their outlying towns -- essentially part of my first ring! -- actually flipped 2 of its neighbours, despite all 3 towns being about 15 tiles from his Palace and only 3 tiles from mine (although to my astonishment, Agade did flip back to me later -- having first burned down my Lib + Uni, of course...)

We're now into the Moderns, and since I'd have to completely destroy the Hittites (still the tech leaders, although not by much) and then invade Mongolia for Domination, I'm looking at either Diplo or Space instead. So I'm racing the Hittites and the Mongols for the UN, with SETI as my fallback if either beats me -- which would still be fine, because Mursi and Temu just started fighting again, so there's no immediate danger of either of them calling a vote. But it is why I don't want Temu to have Computers just yet -- even though he would have given me 2 Luxes and all his gold for it.

And I was therefore hoping to get away with only buying one Lux from the Mongols, but unfortunately that wasn't quite enough to keep my Hospital'd core happy at LUX%=0. So I had to buy the second as well...

 

[justanick]

YIL that if I buy 2 Luxes (my 5th and 6th, so they'd each give the same number of additional Happyfaces) on the same turn from the same AI, the second will be substantially more expensive if I buy it separately (72 + 93 gpt) than if I'd bought both as a single package-deal (145 gpt).

That is probable because of marketplaces. Without them there should be no difference.

It can make sense to cut off some of your own luxuries to mitigate the marketplace effect and therefore the cost of importing luxuries. Of course you should first position workers to reattach your luxuries.

 

[tjs282]

This was not a renegotiation during the interturn.

My Embargoes with all the other AIs against Mongolia (signed because Temu had -- once again -- DoW'd me without provocation, breaking our previous Lux-deal) had just expired, and both new Luxes were bought during the active phase of my turn, and during the same round of negotiations (including a quick consultation with the Domestic Advisor to check the effect of the 5th Lux).

i.e. no new Markets had been completed between the two Lux-purchases, and no new citizens had been added by growth or Worker-joins. The 5th + 6th Luxes each add 3 Happies to a town with a Market, or 1 Happy to a town without, so the 6th Lux is not, on the face of it, more valuable than the 5th (in terms of 'additional' Happiness over the 4th Lux). Yet buying them separately still incurred a 20% markup on the 6th Lux.

 

[justanick]

and both new Luxes were bought during the active phase of my turn

That is what i am referring to.

The 5th + 6th Luxes each add 3 Happies to a town with a Market, or 1 Happy to a town without, so the 6th Lux is not, on the face of it, more valuable than the 5th (in terms of 'additional' Happiness over the 4th Lux).

Ok, that i was not referring to. So apparently there is indeed a bulk discount.

 

[Takhisis]

I played CivII for the first time in ages some time ago (I found a place where there were online emulators) and it just struck me how awfully ugly Civ games were before Civ3, which is the first true ‘pretty’ iteration of the game.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Don't forget Civ II's pixel graphics were intended to be viewed on a CRT monitor, so would look have looked a little better at the time because the colours would be blurred together (and the artists would have been aware of that, see the never ending efforts to create 'CRT shaders' to recreate that effect on modern screens). I think what really ages it is that it's a 16 bit windows application which means the GUI is mostly just the windows menu bar and buttons. At least these days there are many terrific graphics mods to freshen it up a bit.

 

[Civinator]

I am a friend of Civ 2 - especially of Civ 2 ToT - but what makes Civ 2 really outdated, is that it only has one movement sound for all kinds of movement and all kinds of units. One clack, clack sound, but of course it can be changed to one other sound file for all units, per example a foot marching sound of infantry. It is an interesting experience, when your jet planes are moving to the sound of marching infantry over the map. It is a pitty that nobody was able to fix this and the big animation error with the missing defense animations. Many Civ 3 units could be converted to Civ 2 ToT units - and Civ 2 ToT has events and multiple maps.

 

[Takhisis]

Don't forget Civ II's pixel graphics were intended to be viewed on a CRT monitor (…)

Oh I know, but other games on DOSBox have graphics that have withstood the test of time far better, including, say, Doom, Prince of Persia or Sonic.

 

[Quintillus]

Is there really that significant of a difference from a CRT to a LCD monitor? I played Civ III (among other games) on both, and the differences I noticed were color accuracy differences, deeper blacks on CRTs, and the curvature of non-flatscreen CRTs. No blurring effect that I noticed, unless we're talking from a low-quality VGA connection, which can apply equally to LCDs as the degradation is in the analog cable. Maybe it's because I mostly used 2000-ish CRTs which had improved from 1990-ish CRTs, and high-quality VGA connections?

And even if we assume a blurring factor, wouldn't the same thing affect Civ III graphics, which look great on LCDs, but were designed when CRTs ruled the roost?

There's probably an article out there that explains it, I'm just a bit skeptical given my observations. Alas, I just got rid of my CRT earlier this year, so my ability to try it for myself has since disappeared.

 

[Lord_Hill]

I broadly agree, hence going with 'a little better'. I just have vague memories of it all looking a bit more vibrant and less pixelated on the older monitors. Could just be nostalgia though!

 

[Takhisis]

Maybe it's because they were generally smaller than some of the metre-wide monstrosities I see some people use?

 

[bacchant]

TIL that the hotkey 'H' will center the map on your capitol. Admittedly, I felt a little stupid that I hadn't noticed before (because it is useful).