v1.29 Impossible to win against?

[joshbodily]

So I've been playing Civ III on and off for a while. I recently added the 1.29 patch just for stack movement since I mostly like to warmonger. I noticed some really strange rule changes after patching.

So, before what I would do is play Iroquois and hurry an army of 10 Mounted Warrior and then start a war w/ nearest civ (on standard map) around 1200 BC. I would then sue for cities and tech and strike the next one around at the rate of about one every 300 years. I could get a domination victory in the very early ADs. Seems like a solid strategy, and its awesome to watch the power graph go exponential as you crank out units and culture from the captured cities. To work this strategy, I usually have to start scum just a few times for close horses. Even when they're far it still works as long as I can get a road out there in time. So, it's a pretty failproof strategy.

So, after installing the patch, I noticed 3 HUGE things which essentially render my strategy ineffective:
(1) Capturing a pop one city sometimes destroys it without giving you the option to sieze it. What is that?
(2) I can no longer hurry units until they only have like one or two turns left to finish building. Huh?
(3) Attacking in the open field, retreating units no longer retreat? I attacked a warrior and my Mounted Warrior just kept attacking him (even though the warrior never dropped to one HP) and never retreated?

I can understand that the game designers might consider my "strategy" to be exploiting the "hurry" unit feature, but how else are you able to keep pace w/ the AI.

I also get that the game designers might think the game is more enjoyable if you only win under "ideal" conditions with your favored strategy and you shouldn't expect to win everytime as has been my previous experience w/ this strategy. The last game I played with the patch was very ideal, and these changes from the patch basically neutered me. I basically don't think this strategy will EVER work on the patched version.

That said, my questions are:
(1) Can anyone confirm the above behaviors, especially, why does a city automatically get razed? That is the most puzzling.
(2) Is the game still winnable with an early UU rush strategy (on Emperor)? If the patch made the rush strategy less viable, in what ways did it make other strategies more viable? If any

I was really hoping to take this strategy along w/ the stack movement upgrade from the patch and get my first 'Deity' win. Guess I'll have to go back to vanilla or find a better strategy. Is the problem that I've always seen the game as me vs. everybody else and that the only way to win is be way out in front of everybody so the AI doesn't team up or gang up on me? Do they play fair w/ you if you go the peaceful route?

 

[Yoda Power]

First of all it's good that you patched up.

Cities are razed when they are size 1 and doesn't have any culture or a foreign citizen in them.

You should still be a ble to hurry units and retreat, but I don't recall if they changed the cost of hurrying.

 

[CKS]

In 1.29, fast units don't always retreat. They have a chance to retreat (that depends on whether they are elite, vet, or regular); you should still see retreats, just not every time.

Rushing and short-rushing works in 1.29, so I'm not sure what that is about.

 

[Puppeteer]

There was a bug before 1.29 where you could pop rush 39 shields per pop unit, if I recall correctly. After the patch you get no more than 20s per pop unit.

Also sometime in the early patch days you could trade gold, tech and stuff for cities which turned out to be very unbalanced towards the human player, so one of the patches makes the AI refuse any deal in which they give up a city and any amount of gold, tech, resources is offered by you. (I'm not sure if you can trade city for city...but fundamentally you can only demand cities as part of a complete concession package and are unable to offer them something in return trade for any deal with a city.)

Also at some point the AI figures they will resist you even if it's hopeless for them. I'm not sure what factors into that; possibly attitude and reputation.

 

[vmxa]

The AI is no longer allowed to trade or sell towns, they will give them up in a peace deal. You can rush with zero shields (at least in c3c). iirc you have to have enough gold or enough pop if pop rushing.

As has been stated you autoraze towns of size 1, unless its borders have popped or it has your nationality as its citizen. Basically that means they took one of your towns and you took it back.

You can rush a civ on emperor or even deity. never been able to do it on Sid though.

 

[templar_x]

it depends what you would call a rush. 10 MWs are surely not going to cut it, but that would have been the case on i would say even already Emperor with or without patch. if you want to rush a Sid civ, better make it 40-100 MWs depending on map size and individual strength of that civ. but you will likely face pikes defending... and muskets in your next war.
t_x

 

[vmxa]

To me a rush is just making attackers asap and not doing anything else. It can be warriors, archers. You just hit them, as soon as you get the number of units you think you need. I mostly rushed with archers, waiting for a tech like HBR is too late to rush imo.

It may be possible to rush with impi or jw on Sid, but I never tried. For sure you cannot wait or they will have units you cannot handle. I have semi rushed, where I catch them out hunting barbs and take a town or two down and hang on for peace deal.

I can't see being able to make 100 MW and being able to use them effectively on Sid. They will have advanced too far in tech and have a lot of units. MW are not going to do well vs pikes and muskets.

The time I would need to make 100 MW, I would be afraid they would have rifles lol.

 

[templar_x]

i see. no, i do not see a chance to rush a Sid civ then in a normal game. of course there are scenarios when it *could* be successful, but it would require playing a certain type of game over and over which is just not my beef.

however i need to contradict with regards to MWs. their issue is *not* that they are too weak compared to pikes and muskets. in a contrary, they are considerably *stronger* than knights. knights are not really useful in most cases, because you could build more than TWO mounted warriors for the same shield count, but get twice the chance to retreat and not lose your shields, twice the flexibility, only their defense is really bad. not a problem in most of the cases if you are the attacker... only in very hilly/mountainous/marshy/jungly areas this would considerably weaken them.

100 MWs actually are not that many, but i think you were ironic here. however, on regular maps 50 would suffice anyway. for a while i played quite a few HoF Sid games of that kind. since i am not the most patient player, most of the time i started against the closest nation already with 30+ or 40 units, but that is quite the minimum if you want to avoid heavy losses. you can have those shortly after 1000bc with a good start.

but that would not qualify as a rush then of course. i play that kind of rushes only if i get really cramped in by the surrounding civs and am desparate for land. otherwise i do not think it helps your game to start off with building so much military. therefore, josh, it is absolutely a good thing if the newer version does not allow you to play that old practice any more

t_x

 

[joshbodily]

Thanks everybody for your responses. I'm glad people are still playing C3 or at least can recall all this information.

Thanks for the info on the 1 pop city razing. That one was particular frustrating b/c everytime I marshalled a stack of units on the outskirts of a pop one city, the AI would just pop rush a spearman, or switch their production to a worker (I'm guessing).
This did make me think about a thread I was reading earlier where someone was asking why there was no 'raze own city' or 'relocate city' feature. If you could do that during wartime, you could relocate your city and 'flee' a stack of attackers that only have one MP, or you could just raze the city to spite them.

@t_x, you're right that an early rush doesn't really help your game. The 39 shield always seemed cheap to me esp. since the AI never avails itself of it.

I think I'll try to get a Deity win on unpatched using my "strategy" just to get that behind me and then go back to patched and maybe bump the difficulty down and work my way back up the ladder using micro-management, diplomacy and settler factories. I've really neglected a lot of areas of game play using just warmongering and rushing, so hopefully it leads to a richer experience.

I know its possible to win patched on Deity as many have attested to. Back to the drawing board, after I get that Deity win

 

[vmxa]

joshbodily, you can abandon a city at any time. Can't recall when it came in, but right click and the list should have abandon available.

You can sort of get away with your troops in a pinch. You move them into the town and gift the town to someone. That will send the units back to the capitol. This is often consider an exploit and not used in SG games.