19-01-2005 00:55									#61
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Arrain you would really hate Sid. I have cities that I do not even build anything, but a temple and an aqua. The aqua is just to get the extra support. No libs, no cath, usually no markets for corrupt cities.

Sometimes, current game, I just stay in Monarchy the whole game and do zero research after the ancient era. Instead of the brink of domination, it is the brink of disaster and the threat of a cultural loss.

	19-01-2005 01:40									#62
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vmxa1, you just described why I don't bother with anything above Emporer, excepting a few DG forays every now and then. What you described sorta sounds like civ, but it doesn't resemble civ in any sense that I think of it. Tightly packed, small, crappy cities for most of the game is not my idea of an enjoyable game. YMMV of course.

	19-01-2005 02:53									#63
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This is often so, but just different than say an emperor game where you are soon lording over the AI. Once you learn what to expect from either game, you just determine if you can enjoy it or not.

I like the sweating of early attempts at invasions, especially when they start to send 3 or 4 caravels filled at you in waves. If you get past that, then you turtle till you can invade someone.

Then you have the fun of seeing if you were able to bring enough to hold on. I like the first invasion attempt by me, but the rest are not so enjoyable. Afer that it gets tedious, but all the other ones do at the point where you are starting to get the upper hand.

At least here, I am still not a lock to win, only to survive. But I will toss in an easier game from time to time.

	19-01-2005 03:14									#64
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	19-01-2005 03:20									#65
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quote: Arrain you would really hate Sid.

Yes, yes I would. I've never tried it. In fact, I've never seriously attempted anything above Emperor.

Emperor I can do (and do well), but in order to achieve my goals, I would need to concentrate/micromanage more than is typically fun for me.

But yeah, my approach is very different from yours in that I don't have fun by playing games where a reasonable goal is survival, or even "just win, baby."

-Arrian

	19-01-2005 06:02									#66
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Ahhh so its no wonder I didnt quite understand why sometimes I wasnt able to switch to a GW. So the 3 main factors to not being able ot switch would be:

• Paying for resources (ie. hurrying production)
  
• Chopped forest
  
• Disbanded units

	19-01-2005 06:06									#67
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1. Yep, all cities get an HP...cool, eh?

2. Doesn't mean jack unless there's a Factory.

	19-01-2005 06:14									#68
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Heh, I've gotten so used to having Hoover before I get Industrialization, even (typically starting a Hoover prebuild around the same time as my ToE prebuild, and try to time it to get them done in the same turn), and therefore considering a factory to double production, that I spent a few minutes puzzled in my current game when factories were only giving 50% more shields.

Wow, long sentence.

	19-01-2005 10:07									#69
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I wonder why the game makers decided that corruption had to be so much higher in c3 than in the earlier versions of civ? it certainly doesnt add any realism, it takes away realism in fact. And I can't imagine they think it's more fun this way!

	19-01-2005 10:14									#70
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My current frustration involves epionage. i don't miss the diplomat or spy units in the least but the new system just doesn't seem to be working.

The biggest disppointment in the game so far had to have been when I completed the espionage small wonder. I immediently went to the espionage screen and amlmost everything there was grayed out, including propaganda which I had hoped to use to buy a small festering eye sore of a size 1 city that the AI managed to sneak in near my forbiden palace city.

Reading the description for propaganda it says that it can be used in the city where my spy is located. However, when I try to plant a spy none of the cities in the list are selectable. instead I just gives me an option to execute the order and the spy always end up planted in the enemy capitol after which the option to plant spies is grayed out.

Does this mean propaganda efforts can only be directed at the enemy capitol? That doesn't seem to be any use whatsoever. Is propaganda only useable under other government types? I wonder where they got the impression that democracies don't engage in propaganda?

I think I'm at a dead end with respect to this aspect of the game.

	19-01-2005 10:16									#71
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quote: Originally posted by Solomwi Heh, I've gotten so used to having Hoover before I get Industrialization, even (typically starting a Hoover prebuild around the same time as my ToE prebuild, and try to time it to get them done in the same turn), and therefore considering a factory to double production, that I spent a few minutes puzzled in my current game when factories were only giving 50% more shields. Wow, long sentence.

but hoover dam still only effects one land mass right? And it seems the freshwater has to be a river. My home continenet had no rivers and a single lake square adjacent to my capitol city square and I've been completey unable to build HD there.

	19-01-2005 10:59									#72
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo but hoover dam still only effects one land mass right? And it seems the freshwater has to be a river. My home continenet had no rivers and a single lake square adjacent to my capitol city square and I've been completey unable to build HD there.

Yes, that sucks. One getted used to the whims of the RNG map generator I guess... I think of it terms of Jared Diamond's 'GG&S' hypotheses: The equivalent being, "Too bad, you didn't get good animals!"

	19-01-2005 11:06									#73
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo I wonder why the game makers decided that corruption had to be so much higher in c3 than in the earlier versions of civ? it certainly doesnt add any realism, it takes away realism in fact. And I can't imagine they think it's more fun this way!

The reason for the higher corruption is to counteract the phenomenon of, "If your civ is twice as big as someone else's, it's twice as powerful as someone else's." In and of itself, the higher corruption is no fun at all. But in the bigger picture, the higher corruption makes it a lot harder to run away with the game by a huge margin. So even though I find it annoying, I think the game is better off with it than it would be without it.

	19-01-2005 11:20									#74
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo Reading the description for propaganda it says that it can be used in the city where my spy is located. However, when I try to plant a spy none of the cities in the list are selectable. instead I just gives me an option to execute the order and the spy always end up planted in the enemy capitol after which the option to plant spies is grayed out.

All that's needed is one spy for the entire civ. You should be able to use that spy to initiate propaganda (or conduct other missions) against any city once the spy is planted unless the enemy is in Democracy (which is immunte to propaganda). Unfortunatelly, espionage activities are so expensive that they are generally not considered cost-effective. And they have a nasty tendency to spark wars when they fail, at least if relations with the other civ were already bad. I've gotten to a point where I rarely even try to plant spies unless I want a war (or at least don't mind fighting one). Ironically, my main use of espionage is to try to get a civ that I want to fight to declare war on me instead of me attacking the other civ. (I don't know whether you've noticed yet, but a civ that gets attacked gets a happiness boost for however long the war lasts or until war weariness eats it away.)

quote: I wonder where they got the impression that democracies don't engage in propaganda?

The rule is not that Democracies don't use propaganda, but that propaganda cannot work against them.

	19-01-2005 11:27									#75
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo but hoover dam still only effects one land mass right? And it seems the freshwater has to be a river. My home continenet had no rivers and a single lake square adjacent to my capitol city square and I've been completey unable to build HD there.

Right. If you check the Civilopedia entry on Hoover, it specifies a river, not just fresh water. (In contrast, nuclear plants can use any source of fresh water.) And yes, Hoover only affects the land mass it's built on (another fact specified in the Civilopedia).

	19-01-2005 11:49									#76
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Nathan, unless I'm remembering wrong, failed espionage missions and nuclear weapons are the two exceptions to the "war happiness" boost.

Geronimo, the two things I find planting spies to be worthwhile for are knowing the other civs' military makeups in detail and investigating cities during a war (which you can't do with just an embassy, since it's closed, for obvious reasons). Once I get a spy planted, I'll hardly ever attempt anything else for fear of losing that information, and when I do, it's always stealing plans.

	19-01-2005 11:57									#77
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I'm pretty much positive that it at least used to be possible to get a happiness boost from having an enemy declare war after failed espionage. It's possible that that loophole could have been closed without my noticing, though. As for nuclear war, I don't remember ever firing a nuclear weapon in all my time playing Civ 3, so I have no experience with AI declarations of war resulting from such action.

	19-01-2005 12:04									#78
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I'm going off Oystein's article on WW on CFC. Never checked it out for myself, but that strikes me as pretty easy to detect in testing, so I'm guessing they closed the loophole, though I couldn't tell you when. Btw, until I read that article, I did the exact same thing, so I'm not arguing with you that it was once the case.

	19-01-2005 12:21									#79
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wow, I just realised that all of the rival AI civs in this game are democracies. no wonder I can't initiate propaganda. Is this game at all typical? so far the AI opponents have been so...civil, with the onerous exception of their grossly unfair and impractical trade philosophies.

It's now 1978 in my first game on warlord difficulty. I played the english with default settings on a really really big map. I established contact with every civ by 3500 bc and in all that time I have not seen one armed conflict break out at all between any of the AI civs or my own.

Furthermore, even when the irritating sobs are placing their colonies right on a continent I'm trying to horde to myself, they even seem to have the decency to carefully plan ahead with the placement such that our city worker radii will not overlap. That has really continued to shocked me, I remember all too well the willy nilly ugly ai city placement in the earlier versions of civ. If this is a really c3 change I'm observing it is one I can learn to live with.

Has anybody else noticed that the AI is less likey to stick cities in places where they are by all measures simply stupid location choices?

	19-01-2005 18:11									#80
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AIs generally use either Republic or, once they have it, Democracy when they are at peace, switching to other governments only if they are at war. (In the Apolyton University Mod, the use of Feudalism as a peacetime government is also common before the AIs get Democracy because of a change we made in corruption levels.) Also note that AIs don't automatically change to Democracy the moment they get it, or change back to a peace-time government instantly when a war ends, and AIs that get Monarchy before Republic may or may not be in a hurry to change to Republic.

Your game sounds like it definitely leans toward the peaceful end of the spectrum. There is a lot of variation from game to game in how much fighting the AIs do, and there is an aggression setting that is deliberately designed to make the AI play some civs more aggressively than others. (Germany is an example of a highly aggressive civ, and India of a civ with a low aggression setting.)

In regard to city placement, AIs don't like overlapping city radii much even when the cities are all within their own borders. Actually, that reluctance undercuts the AIs' effectiveness to a certain extent because until hospitals become available, a lot of tiles in AI territory go unused. (In contrast, top players tend to pack cities more densely based on the theory that the advantage of doing so in the early game easily outweighs the disadvantages later on. I usually try to rig things so all my cities can reach size 12 but virtually no land or coast, except maybe some mountains if I have a lot of them, goes unused at size 12.) It's certainly not unheard of for AIs to build a city that will eventually have overlap with a foreign city, but given a good alternative, AIs prefer to place their cities in ways that avoid such occurrences.

Incidentally, AIs cheat a bit in choosing where to build their cities. When AIs calculate where to build cities, the algorithm they use knows the values of different tiles, and the values it uses in those calculations reflect the existence of resources the AIs shouldn't know anything about yet. For better or for worse, that gives the AIs a leg up in gaining control of strategic resources. On the other hand, since humans do a better job of using the information we do legitimately have available (sometimes even building cities right next to AI cities to steal away resources the AIs had planned to control through border expansions), it could be argued that the AIs need their unfair knowledge just to compete.

	19-01-2005 19:34									#81
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quote: Originally posted by nbarclay The reason for the higher corruption is to counteract the phenomenon of, "If your civ is twice as big as someone else's, it's twice as powerful as someone else's." In and of itself, the higher corruption is no fun at all. But in the bigger picture, the higher corruption makes it a lot harder to run away with the game by a huge margin. So even though I find it annoying, I think the game is better off with it than it would be without it.

	19-01-2005 19:43									#82
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There is however a bug in the AI city placement algorithm, it doesn't know about the food bonsus being canceled if a city is placed directly on top of it.

Actually, the AI placement of the cities allows them to fit nicely into my own empire. Those cities will have rank orders so high that the best thing to do is to allow them all to grow to 20.

	19-01-2005 21:33									#83
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quote: Originally posted by nbarclay Incidentally, AIs cheat a bit in choosing where to build their cities. When AIs calculate where to build cities, the algorithm they use knows the values of different tiles, and the values it uses in those calculations reflect the existence of resources the AIs shouldn't know anything about yet. For better or for worse, that gives the AIs a leg up in gaining control of strategic resources. On the other hand, since humans do a better job of using the information we do legitimately have available (sometimes even building cities right next to AI cities to steal away resources the AIs had planned to control through border expansions), it could be argued that the AIs need their unfair knowledge just to compete.

Regarding making better use of the information:

When you see an AI Settler heading for an area that is both relatively distant from its capital and relatively devoid of any interesting features, you can expect there to be a Strategic resource there that you are unable to see yet. Sometimes it's too late and the AI city is alreayd founded, but it's worthwhile noting it down. This way you can predict with more accuracy where, say, there will be a source of Coal, given that the AI went out of its way to settle a bit too near that Jungle to make any sense otherwise.

	19-01-2005 21:41									#84
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quote: Originally posted by joncnunn There is however a bug in the AI city placement algorithm, it doesn't know about the food bonsus being canceled if a city is placed directly on top of it.

The AI calculates the value of a tile (for settling purposes) based on a weighted sum of the values (for working purposes) of all the 21 tiles a city on that tile would eventually have access to. This is why the AI will often place a city right between, say, two Cattle resources, that are only accessible once the city's borders expand.

I'm pretty sure that the AI does not include the value of the city center tile when determining the value of that tile for settling purposes; I have never seen the AI rush out to a big patch of Desert only to put a city directly on the only Oasis in sight. However, if there are other good tiles surrounding another good tile (like, say, a patch of four Cattle), it makes sense from the AI's perspective to place a city right in the middle of the patch, even though this results in the loss of a perfectly good bonus tile. This "bug" could be resolved by better coordination between AI Settlers or a planning algorithm for city-placement, but these are not quite as easy to code.

	19-01-2005 21:42									#85
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quote: Originally posted by Theseus 2. Doesn't mean jack unless there's a Factory.

Not true. A Hydro Plant will increase production by 50% regardless of whether there's a Factory or not. At least I think it's 50%, could be 25%.

	19-01-2005 21:44									#86
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quote: Originally posted by Willem Not true. A Hydro Plant will increase production by 50% regardless of whether there's a Factory or not. At least I think it's 50%, could be 25%.

AFAIK, Hydro Plants increase Factory production by 50% (25% of the city's base Shield output).

	19-01-2005 21:47									#87
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo I wonder why the game makers decided that corruption had to be so much higher in c3 than in the earlier versions of civ? it certainly doesnt add any realism, it takes away realism in fact. And I can't imagine they think it's more fun this way!

In the previous versions if you reached a certain size, winning the game was a foregone conclusion. The AI didn't stand a chance, since you could produce so much and research even more. By adding in the current corruption model, you still have to work at a victory even if you have a huge empire.

I think it's an improvement overall, though I think they should have included more way of combatting it, like more things you could build.

	19-01-2005 22:00									#88
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo wow, I just realised that all of the rival AI civs in this game are democracies. no wonder I can't initiate propaganda. Is this game at all typical?

It's typical having them all in Democracy, but not being peaceful. Generally there's always wars going on, at least at certain times. Your playing level has something to do with that, the higher you set it, the more aggresive they become.

quote: Has anybody else noticed that the AI is less likey to stick cities in places where they are by all measures simply stupid location choices?

The AI is much definitely better in this version of Civ when it comes to city placement, at least for most of the game. Things tend to break down somewhat as the land gets used up and there are less options. Plus, if there's a resource in the area, the AI may appear to be rather out of it. But overall it does pretty goog. Quite often it will build exactly where I would place a city as well.

	19-01-2005 22:06									#89
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quote: Originally posted by Dominae AFAIK, Hydro Plants increase Factory production by 50% (25% of the city's base Shield output).

In the editor, the Production bonus is a stand alone adjustment. You can't tie it into a particular building, it has to work with the base output. The reason people think it's tied to the Factory, is because you generally require a Factory in order to build one, Hoover Dam excepting of course. But the production bonus of all those types of buildings are independant of each other. and they all are calculated by the base output.

	19-01-2005 22:14									#90
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quote: Originally posted by Willem Not true. A Hydro Plant will increase production by 50% regardless of whether there's a Factory or not. At least I think it's 50%, could be 25%.

The Hydro Plant given by Hoover's won't work until the city gets a factory. I can verify this one, having often built Hoover's before even researching Industrialism. When it does work, though, you're right that it's 50% of the base shield output.

Effectively, production doubles with factory+coal/hydro/solar plant, and goes to 2.5xraw shields for factory+nuclear. Just add another 50% to the multiplier when you build a manufacturing plant.