Various novice questions

[Sir_Lancelot]

I have some novice questions about Civ2, and some comments.

1) Enemy Bomber movement
I'm confused over the range of Indian Bombers. How often do they have to refuel? Sometimes they show up in the middle of my country and I've never found any enemy carriers. India does not have cities or airbases close enough.

2) Terrain defense bonus
The civilopedia says the defense bonus on grassland is 105%. It can't be right, is it supposed to be 10.5%?
It says hills only got 50%, I don't know if I trust that either. I would think that hills had a higher bonus.
It says plains have 55%.
I don't know if either one of these figures can be trusted...

3) More cases of Civilopedia inaccuracy
I find the civilopedia inaccurate on more things, for one it says that settlers eat 1 food under Fundamentalism. They eat 2 food. Is the civilopedia notoriously inaccurate, or have I just stumbled upon all the cases where it is wrong?

4) How to destroy an enemy city?
Small settlements with a population of 1 are auto-razed, but not larger towns. How do you raze larger towns to the ground? The game never asked me what I wanted to do with the town. One time Persia made a town near the core of my territory, I did not want to keep it because it was badly placed. I left it undefended and tried to starve it to death, the size was 2 I believe. But luckily a Barbarian approached some turns later and threathened to sack it if I did not pay him a small amount of gold. I was willing to pay him a small amount of gold in order to get rid of that city for me. I let him sack it.

5) Special resources and terraforming
Do special resources like Gems disappear if I transform the terrain? (I'm aware that grassland cannot have special recources.)


Thanks in advance!

 

[Magic_gorter]

I have some novice questions about Civ2, and some comments.

1) Enemy Bomber movement
I'm confused over the range of Indian Bombers. How often do they have to refuel? Sometimes they show up in the middle of my country and I've never found any enemy carriers. India does not have cities or airbases close enough.

2) Terrain defense bonus
The civilopedia says the defense bonus on grassland is 105%. It can't be right, is it supposed to be 10.5%?
It says hills only got 50%, I don't know if I trust that either. I would think that hills had a higher bonus.
It says plains have 55%.
I don't know if either one of these figures can be trusted...

3) More cases of Civilopedia inaccuracy
I find the civilopedia inaccurate on more things, for one it says that settlers eat 1 food under Fundamentalism. They eat 2 food. Is the civilopedia notoriously inaccurate, or have I just stumbled upon all the cases where it is wrong?

4) How to destroy an enemy city?
Small settlements with a population of 1 are auto-razed, but not larger towns. How do you raze larger towns to the ground? The game never asked me what I wanted to do with the town. One time Persia made a town near the core of my territory, I did not want to keep it because it was badly placed. I left it undefended and tried to starve it to death, the size was 2 I believe. But luckily a Barbarian approached some turns later and threathened to sack it if I did not pay him a small amount of gold. I was willing to pay him a small amount of gold in order to get rid of that city for me. I let him sack it.

5) Special resources and terraforming
Do special resources like Gems disappear if I transform the terrain? (I'm aware that grassland cannot have special recources.)


Thanks in advance!

1. I don't know if it works the same for the AI but for the human player the bomber works like this: You have two turns of flying time. Each turn you can move it x tiles. So in your first turn (say 1000 AD) you can move the bomber 11 tiles (next to a city) and bomb it with the last movement option left. The next turn (1010AD) you can fly to one of your cities which is within 12 tiles of the starting location. You can see how much movementpoints there are left. If you fail to reach a city the plane will crash.

I guess it works the same for the AI because I always see such planes come and go.

2. Don't know this.

3. It contains lot of errors. Like the wonder Hanging Gardens. This one works for all cities and not for the cities on the same continent. I hardly use it because it's not that much helpfull and contains a lot of errors.

4. You only can destroy an enemy city (raze) if it's size 1. So if you start attacking a city at size 8 (and it doesn't have city walls) it will be size 7 after the first attack. As long as it has defenders you can't take the city. So if the city has 7 or more defenders in the situation I described you will raze the city. If you want to get rid of a city you own (note that this is not possible at the lowest level=chieftain) you have to starve it all the way down to size one by building settlers and then when at size 1 you build another settler (or your foodbox is empty) you get the option to destroy the city.

5. Yes they change. The special belongs to a certain terraintype. So when changing a special on a plaintile to a forresttile will give you another special. But when changing to grass it will disappear.

Hope the answers will help you.

 

[mackerel]

Magic knows his stuff, though I have no idea what a gorter is. I'm just a novice too but I've been reading a lot this last month.

1. I've heard AI bombers never run out of fuel, but I can't promise that's right.
2. Also clueless.
4. You can also poison the water supply (if you have spies) until the city is size 1, then destroy it.
5. Grassland can't have specials, but it can hide specials. If you're crazy and understand the pattern of specials, you can transform grassland into hills and get bonus coal sometimes.

These forums are full of excellent advice. One of the most helpful links I've found is the Civilinic Books, http://www.sethos.gmxhome.de/

Good luck!

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

1. I don't know if it works the same for the AI but for the human player the bomber works like this: You have two turns of flying time. Each turn you can move it x tiles. So in your first turn (say 1000 AD) you can move the bomber 11 tiles (next to a city) and bomb it with the last movement option left. The next turn (1010AD) you can fly to one of your cities which is within 12 tiles of the starting location. You can see how much movementpoints there are left. If you fail to reach a city the plane will crash.

I guess it works the same for the AI because I always see such planes come and go.

2. Don't know this.

3. It contains lot of errors. Like the wonder Hanging Gardens. This one works for all cities and not for the cities on the same continent. I hardly use it because it's not that much helpfull and contains a lot of errors.

4. You only can destroy an enemy city (raze) if it's size 1. So if you start attacking a city at size 8 (and it doesn't have city walls) it will be size 7 after the first attack. As long as it has defenders you can't take the city. So if the city has 7 or more defenders in the situation I described you will raze the city. If you want to get rid of a city you own (note that this is not possible at the lowest level=chieftain) you have to starve it all the way down to size one by building settlers and then when at size 1 you build another settler (or your foodbox is empty) you get the option to destroy the city.

5. Yes they change. The special belongs to a certain terraintype. So when changing a special on a plaintile to a forresttile will give you another special. But when changing to grass it will disappear.

Hope the answers will help you.

Thanks.

1) My Bombers only have 2 x 8 movement points, India's Bombers have much much longer range. I just counted tiles where one attack took place, it was 15 tiles away from their nearest town and they don't have any airbases. I have checked their territory.
I have been wondering if they are doing suicide missions but I've not heard any crash sounds.

4) I'm on Prince level so I should be able to use the Settler trick. I actually was in the process of building a settler just to see what would happen, but the Barbar came to my "aid" before I could test it.

5) That's okay, as long as I get another special resource. I was unsure if it would be a normal tile with no extras.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Magic knows his stuff, though I have no idea what a gorter is. I'm just a novice too but I've been reading a lot this last month.

1. I've heard AI bombers never run out of fuel, but I can't promise that's right.
2. Also clueless.
4. You can also poison the water supply (if you have spies) until the city is size 1, then destroy it.
5. Grassland can't have specials, but it can hide specials. If you're crazy and understand the pattern of specials, you can transform grassland into hills and get bonus coal sometimes.

These forums are full of excellent advice. One of the most helpful links I've found is the Civilinic Books, http://www.sethos.gmxhome.de/

Good luck!

It seems we crossposted...

1) That would be crazy! AI bombers ran out of fuel on Civ1, why would MicroProse make it less realistic and less fair in the sequel? Maybe it really is so, and it would explain what I see. But it's so lame that I really don't want to believe they never run out of fuel.

4) Good idea.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

More questions....

POWER PLANTS

6) I can't build Hydro Plants. Why? I'm researching Future Tech and I should be able to build them... I even tried with a city near a river but it didn't work there either. I don't got Hoover Dam, another civ built it.
I have got Mfg. Plants and Nuclear Plants, so I don't need Hydro Plants now, but I want to know why I can't build them.

7) Are the different power plants cumulative? If a city already has the Power Plant power plant, will it produce more shields if it gets a Nuclear Plant or Solar Plant also?

Edit: Found out they're not cumulative.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

The original link I found to the Civilinic Books was in this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=174857

The site is in English and is mostly a very nicely organized compendium of stuff found on this site and Apolyton.

There have been reports of AI bombers (and, I think, sometimes fighters) not having to stop to refuel. I don't know if this was fixed in a later version. It has been quite some time since I've seen an AI bomber in a regular game, however, so I can't say I've seen that. (it's harder to tell how long the bomber has been in flight in the scenarios I've played)

I don't know the exact requirements for hydro plants, but I think they require either mountains or river with some sort of proximity. If you decide to try to find out by messing around in cheat mode, I'm pretty sure that a flag is triggered when the city is built, and the game does not consider current circumstances.

According to my Civlopedia (and, while I haven't tested these numbers, I don't think I've seen them contradicted anywhere, nor have any of my gaming experiences led me to doubt their validity) the terrain defensive bonus is as follows:

Mountains: Units defend at 300% (that is x3 to their regular defense)
Hills: 200% (x2)
Swamp/Jungle/Forest: 150% (x1.5)
Grassland, Plains, Desert, Glacier, Tundra: 100% (x1)

A river gives +50% to the terrain defensive values.

The Civlopedia is not so inaccurate that you should disregard it completely, but it does have some errors and omissions. The biggest omission I've found is that republic generates an extra trade arrow like democracy (it took me an accidental government switch to find that out).

Among the errors are: Copernicus' actually doubles science output; Newton's only works if you have another science improvement, and its effect is not to double output (don't remember exactly how it works, however); Bach's actually works for all your cities, not just the ones on a specific continent.

 

[timtofly]

More questions....

POWER PLANTS

6) I can't build Hydro Plants. Why? I'm researching Future Tech and I should be able to build them... I even tried with a city near a river but it didn't work there either. I don't got Hoover Dam, another civ built it.
I have got Mfg. Plants and Nuclear Plants, so I don't need Hydro Plants now, but I want to know why I can't build them.

7) Are the different power plants cumulative? If a city already has the Power Plant power plant, will it produce more shields if it gets a Nuclear Plant or Solar Plant also?

Edit: Found out they're not cumulative.

If it works out, you can build the plants when they come "online" and then after you build the Solar plant you can sell them to help if you are low on funds, or need a boost in funds for a last minute project. The first plant is the power plant, but once the hydro plant is available, you can no longer build it. When the Nuclear Plant becomes available, you can no longer build the hydro plant. Once the Solar Plant becomes available, you cannot build the Nuclear Plant. If you go for Combustion and Automobile you will tend to build more Nuclear Plants and maybe a few Power Plants. Unless the city is on a River, you cannot build the Hydro Plant. If you go for Corporation and Electronics, then you have a shot at the Hoover Dam and will probably not build many Nuclear plants, just the Solar Plant. Once Solar Plants are available, and you build a new city, you have to build a Factory and then the Solar Plant. You cannot build any of the other "booster" plants. That makes having the Hoover Dam important, since the effect is there when you build the new city.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In all the years I've played Civ, I have never built a Nuclear Plant. I have enough trouble with controlling pollution, without risking a meltdown.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

I play a lot of OCC, and Nuclear plant is the power plant of choice there. In regular games I go for Hoover and rarely miss it. I have never experienced a melt down and I am never worried about it as a city going into riot is a big concern that gets addressed immediately and effectively.

 

[timtofly]

In all the years I've played Civ, I have never built a Nuclear Plant. I have enough trouble with controlling pollution, without risking a meltdown.

As I said in the other thread, Build Mass Transit and Solar Plants ASAP. If you miss Hoover, then build a couple of Nuclear plants to help boost production in some cities. By this time your trade should be creating WLTK cities anyway. Once you get mass Transits and Solar Plants in your cities, you can sell your power plants, hydro plants, recycling centers, and nuclear plants. They are not doing anything, but costing you gold each turn.

The Manufacturing Plant is the only Plant that adds to the Factory and "booster" plants. For those of you who do early conquest, factories may be of little value, but when you use capitalization, they help make gold.

 

[Peaster]

Seems most questions have been answered well already. Footnotes:

It seems that AI triremes never sink and their planes don't need gas. Not sure if this was intentional, but the designers probably gave the AI some advantages for play-balance, which is fine with me.

I agree with PG about the civilopaedia; the defense bonuses seem accurate, and it can be useful. Can't imagine how Sir Lancelot's program got those numbers.

One more note about razing cities (though the idea horrifies me). If you don't have spies for poisoning, then defeat all the defenders, but do not enter. Wait for the AI to move in, or build, more defender(s). Repeat, until it is size 1. It takes a while, but may be faster than you'd expect.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Seems most questions have been answered well already. Footnotes:

It seems that AI triremes never sink and their planes don't need gas. Not sure if this was intentional, but the designers probably gave the AI some advantages for play-balance, which is fine with me.

I agree with PG about the civilopaedia; the defense bonuses seem accurate, and it can be useful. Can't imagine how Sir Lancelot's program got those numbers.

One more note about razing cities (though the idea horrifies me). If you don't have spies for poisoning, then defeat all the defenders, but do not enter. Wait for the AI to move in, or build, more defender(s). Repeat, until it is size 1. It takes a while, but may be faster than you'd expect.

And AI triremes can sink non-AI Battleships.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

If it works out, you can build the plants when they come "online" and then after you build the Solar plant you can sell them to help if you are low on funds, or need a boost in funds for a last minute project. The first plant is the power plant, but once the hydro plant is available, you can no longer build it. When the Nuclear Plant becomes available, you can no longer build the hydro plant. Once the Solar Plant becomes available, you cannot build the Nuclear Plant. If you go for Combustion and Automobile you will tend to build more Nuclear Plants and maybe a few Power Plants. Unless the city is on a River, you cannot build the Hydro Plant. If you go for Corporation and Electronics, then you have a shot at the Hoover Dam and will probably not build many Nuclear plants, just the Solar Plant. Once Solar Plants are available, and you build a new city, you have to build a Factory and then the Solar Plant. You cannot build any of the other "booster" plants. That makes having the Hoover Dam important, since the effect is there when you build the new city.

I can build Hydro in one of my newest cities, it's adjacent to a mountain. No other of my cities is near mountains so this must be why I couldn't build it before. Just having a river in some city squares is not enough.

What you say is not completely accurate; I can build all sorts of power plants at the same time. If I don't misunderstand what you're saying, you said that the older tech power plants cannot be built after newer tech power plants becomes available.
But in one city, I can't build an old tech power plant after a newer tech plant has been built in that particular city. I gess this is what you meant to say.

I did never go for a particular technology, because I don't have the tech chart on paper. No instructions was printed and enclosed with the game cover, but it costed only about 2.80 Euros. There's a PDF file on the CD, but it's very little user friendly.
So I just pick one of the techs I can choose from, without planning more than one tech ahead of what's currently available for research.

The AI was ahead in research and the Hoover Dam was completed before I could start researching the tech that makes it available. And I did have the Great Library so go figure.
In the next game I'll steal more technology, I started stealing too late in this game.

In all the years I've played Civ, I have never built a Nuclear Plant. I have enough trouble with controlling pollution, without risking a meltdown.

Nuclear Plants is part of my plan to control pollution... I have never had a meltdown. Not in Civ 2, and not in Civ1 or Civ3 either.

I agree with PG about the civilopaedia; the defense bonuses seem accurate, and it can be useful. Can't imagine how Sir Lancelot's program got those numbers.

About the defense bonuses: Could it be that we have different versions? I have not updated to 2.42. I'm not sure but I doubt this is a new and patched edition of the game.
Can I see which version it is? The "About Civilization II" in the Civilopedia menu doesn't mention the version.

And AI triremes can sink non-AI Battleships.

Lol. Reminds me of in Civ3.
But the outcome of battles in Civ2 is more predictable than in Civ3.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Use Ctrl+O, or select game options under the "Game" menu. The title of the box with the game options will give you your version number.

By the way, I've never seen a trireme destroy a battleship in civ2. Perhaps Valka D'Ur is remembering a different civ game.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Use Ctrl+O, or select game options under the "Game" menu. The title of the box with the game options will give you your version number.

By the way, I've never seen a trireme destroy a battleship in civ2. Perhaps Valka D'Ur is remembering a different civ game.

Thanks! It reads 1.02 4-Mar-96.
So it's that old.

 

[haleewud]

The AI was ahead in research and the Hoover Dam was completed before I could start researching the tech that makes it available. And I did have the Great Library so go figure.

The Technology that is needed to produce the Hoover Dam is Electronics. One of the pre-reqs for Electronics is Electricity. The discovery of Electricity renders the Great Library obsolete. So, the Great Library could never help you get Electricity, Electronics or Hoover Dam.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

^ Okay, that could be it.


New question.
Is it really impossible to cancel a trade route? I send food from one city to another, and the city sending the food can't have a third real trade route. When that city builds a new Freight, a load of food is the only option.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

If there is a method for doing so, I don't know of it (except creating more routes so that the route in question is no longer in the "top 3." I seldom use food caravans to move food around, however.

Having a food route shouldn't prevent you from building at least 3 freight with different commodities, however. Did an AI deliver a caravan to your city? That might account for an extra blocked commodity.

As a note for an earlier comment, if you are unsure what to research, you can use the "goal" function to determine what you should research.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

If there is a method for doing so, I don't know of it (except creating more routes so that the route in question is no longer in the "top 3." I seldom use food caravans to move food around, however.

Having a food route shouldn't prevent you from building at least 3 freight with different commodities, however. Did an AI deliver a caravan to your city? That might account for an extra blocked commodity.

Here's the city (Caernarfon) that can't have more than two trade routes (I don't count food as trade).

Caernarfon:

Does it look like someone is sending Gems to this city? As you can see, Caernarfon is sending Dye and Oil to Delhi. It's weird that it says "Kells President", but that is food to my other city Kells. It was not needed but I just wanted to try sending food.
I built a new Freight but I could not load it with anything else than food.

Wait... Goods in parenthesis means that a caravan with that goods is already built? I don't think one city can build two caravans containing the same. But if Caernarfon has a third Freight somewhere I don't know where it is... If it has a third Freight out somewhere then I must search.

As a note for an earlier comment, if you are unsure what to research, you can use the "goal" function to determine what you should research.

I saw the "goal" button, but I didn't use it because I didn't know what my goal was. It's not so easy without the tech tree in front of you.