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The new screenshot size is good, the updates are much easier to read now. e: update on previous page
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Sep 18, 2015 22:28
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 04:09 |
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Name your artic city Ilia and have it only churn out (flying) horsemen. 
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Sep 18, 2015 23:57
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xxlicious posted:Name your artic city
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Sep 19, 2015 00:17
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I just need to point out that the plural of metropolis is metropolises if you're speaking English, or metropoles if you're speaking Latin.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:06
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Wait, all those combat bonuses are multiplicative with one another? Good lord, who thought this was a good idea?
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Sep 19, 2015 01:15
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One interesting quirk with the Barbarian leader units is that they become Diplomats when your own Diplomat or Spy bribes them to join you, like some kind of Diplomat zombie-bite victim. On lower difficulties where I was flush with gold, I enjoyed bribing them and using my new Diplomat duo to buy an army from the now-leaderless Barbarians. Not really practical or useful, but bloodlessly destroying your enemies like that feels like its own kind of accomplishment.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:27
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Man, you're really getting violent now aren't you Melth? I mean, Xerxes looked like he was kind of a mean guy anyway, but are you sure you're comfortable bullying people so much? War can be an awful thing you know... In all seriousness though, it looks like you've just about gotten the hang of your screenshots now! Only nitpick though. With screenshots like this...  It's a bit hard to tell what's going one. I mean, it SAYS there's an archer about to attack the Elephant, and the text below that shot said there was, but I couldn't actually SEE it at all. I spent like 1-2 minutes going "ok, wait, there's an archer? Where is it?". I think with situations like that, you'll want to be careful to make things visually clear too, and not just try to explain the situation with text. Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Sep 19, 2015 |
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Sep 19, 2015 01:32
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Civ II was the first one I played (got it at release as a 16th Birthday gift) and is still my favorite overall, but I've never been great at it, or any other Cv game for that matter. I've always wanted to see a winning Deity game played out; I only once managed a win on Emperor, playing with a great starting location on the largest island on an archipelago map. I was able to expand and build in complete peace, and managed to win a space race against the other most advanced civ--they actually launched their ship first, but mine was faster. I barely eked that one out, and it never would have worked on Deity.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:44
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Shame about the Sioux being in this particular game and doing well. That means no Gandhi, destroyer of worlds.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:50
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I usually find exposition about game mechanics and tactics kind of dry, but something about the way you do it is so irreverent and fun  It's probably the slightly arrogant tone.Also your attention to detail is pretty impressive, both in this and in the FE LPs.
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Sep 19, 2015 04:04
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Bloodly posted:You're going into extreme detail, but at the same time, your reasoning is also not clear at all, because I think I'm missing the initial basis for the conclusions made. Well I'm glad you're liking it anyway, but I definitely want my reasoning to be clear to people and for even newcomers to Civ 2 to understand what's going on. Do you have any particular questions I can answer? Are there any important aspects of the game I haven't explained well enough? So you asked how I can spam cities and Settlers without a military. Good question. But the real question is this: Why would I want to have or not want to have military units? Let me start with the reasons that building or owning a military unit can be bad and that I therefore want to have as few military units as possible: 1) Construction time. It takes several turns for a city to produce a military unit. During those turns the city cannot produce anything else which i might rather have (like a Settler). This is a serious problem because even a slight delay before producing my first Settlers can have a compounding effect that hurts me throughout the game. See, the sooner I build more Settlers, the sooner those Settlers can turn into new cities. Once I have more cities, I can produce even more Settlers faster. Which lets me found new cities even faster. And so on. The more cities I have, the better off I am in every way. Each city gives me Tax money, Science progress, and can build me more units. Therefore, spending time building military units hurts my whole economy- and it can even hurt my military in the long term. 2) Upkeep cost. Every unit has an upkeep cost which I must pay every turn. This cost is paid in "shields", which are the units of Production. For example, a city might start off with 2 shields worth of Production every turn. This means it would take 5 turns to build a unit which costs 10 shields- like the basic "Warriors" military unit. However, that newly built Warrior has an upkeep cost of 1 shield per turn. Therefore my city now only has 1 shield worth of Production to spare- the other shield is automatically spent maintaining the Warrior I already built. So if I wanted to build a second Warrior, it would take 10 turns instead of 5. And since that Warrior would also cost 1 shield, my city would no longer be capable of producing anything at all. Both of its shields would be spent on upkeep every turn instead of making anything new. Thus, building too many military units can prevent you from building anything else ever. Now my government starts off as a "Despotism" and I eventually turned it into a "Monarchy" and then a "Republic" Each of those governments has different special perks and problems. One of the perks of Despotism and Monarchy is that the upkeep of several units per city are paid for free. However, Republics do NOT have that advantage and it was part of my strategy to change my government into a Republic as soon as I could. Therefore, I knew that I would need to pay the upkeep of every single unit in my military eventually, with none of it for free, so I had an incentive to keep my military very small. 3) Unhappiness. One of the special disadvantages of a Republic is that my citizens become unhappy (which can cause "Civil Disorder", a major problem) if I have military units out in the field. This means I have a major incentive not to send my military units out to fight somewhere else in the first place. And if I'm not going to use them to fight, they're obviously not that useful. So with the reasons to not build military units out of the way, what are the purposes military units serve and the reasons I might want to build them afterall? 1) Scouting. Several military units (like Horsemen) are capable of moving very quickly. This makes them very good for revealing the map and thus helping me figure out where I should build my cities in the first place. HOWEVER, Horsemen were not available to build at the start of the game. The only military unit I COULD build doesn't move faster than a Settler, so it can't actually explore better. By the time I could build Horsemen, I actually had done most of the exploring I needed to. Thus I didn't build any scouts. 2) Preventing Civil Disorder. As I've mentioned a few times, "Civil Disorder" is a status a city can be in. While in Civil Disorder the city doesn't produce any units and doesn't contribute any Science or gold. Essentially, the city stops functioning entirely. What causes Civil Disorder? Well every city has a size, starting at 1. That size increases as the city stores up Good (the food gauge to increase size is always in the top-right of the city menu). A city is said to have a number of citizens equal to its size. Those citizens can be "happy", "content", or "unhappy". Think of "content" as the normal situation. If there are more unhappy citizens than happy citizens in a city, the city will go into Civil Disorder. It will stay in Civil Disorder until some action the player takes causes there to be as many happy citizens as unhappy citizens. So if you wanted to end Civil Disorder, you would need to either turn some content citizens happy or turn some unhappy citizens content. There are MANY ways to do that and I outlined a bunch of them in this post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3741434#post450109059 One of those many ways to cause unhappy citizens to instead be content (and thus end Civil Disorder) is what's called "martial law". This is an option under Despotism (the default government) and Monarchy, but NOT as a Republic. The way martial law works is that for every military unit you have in a city (up to 3), one unhappy citizen there becomes content. This is a decent way to end Civil Disorder. In fact, I did a bit of this. I DID build a pair of Warriors and also a single Horseman whose main job was to sit in cities that had been in Civil Disorder so that the disorder would end and the city would function again. HOWEVER, I knew that I was planning on becoming a Republic as quickly as possible. You CANNOT use "martial law" as a Republic. Therefore, any military units which I built just to enforce martial law would become useless for that purpose. Therefore, I decided not to build many military units for that purpose in the first place. Instead I used some of the other methods for preventing or ending Civil Disorder, such as building Temples or preventing the cities from growing past size 1 (cities above size 1 have more unhappy citizens in this difficulty mode) 3) Defeating barbarians. Barbarian units can appear on any tile at any time and will begin trying to kill your units and conquer your cities. They are a major problem. You can build military units to try to defeat the barbarians when they appear. HOWEVER, barbarian units are just too strong and too numerous for me to defeat them in battle easily anyway. In particular, the military units I could build at the very start of the game (Warriors) would be completely worthless against any barbarians. Therefore, there wasn't any point in building them to do that. In general, the sheer number of units I would have to build all over my country to be safe at this point is just too high to be feasible. Fortunately, the barbarians will allow me to pay them money to go away and not attack my cities. This is a much better deal, so that's what I often do until it becomes more feasible for me to maintain a strong military. 4) Defeating other civilizations. Sooner or later, fighting with another civilization is inevitable. Military units are essential for that. HOWEVER, it's easy to avoid war at the beginning of the game and a war then would not be good for me. Since I didn't want an early war and was capable of avoiding one, there was no need to build a pile of military units to fight it. Thus what you can see is that military units would actually not help me much in any way at all. None of their 4 basic purposes would be useful with the strategy I'm using. And, in fact, because there are disadvantages and penalties for owning or making them in the first place, they might well be less than useless to build. So that's why I didn't make many. It also helped that I happened to get a few free military units as random prizes at the goody huts early on. By using those 2 free units (plus a single one that I built) skillfully, I did the work of an entire army Carbolic Smokeball posted:
As I think I demonstrated in yesterday's update, Republic has its own great way to control happiness in numerous cities. Furthermore, Republics experience slightly less unhappiness from owning a large number of cities in the first place. Making a pit stop to Monarchy can definitely be a tempting option, but I believe that it ultimately does more harm than good if you're definitely set on playing as a Republic/Democracy eventually. All of those martial law units suddenly become not only useless for that job but also a major drain on your Production. And of course you've set your Science back by dozens of turns. On the other hand, pure Monarchy all the way is the key to at least one extremely powerful Deity strategy. That's the one I typically use to win by 1500 AD. Fister Roboto posted:I just need to point out that the plural of metropolis is metropolises if you're speaking English, or metropoles if you're speaking Latin. Melth the immortal God-Emperor of Romankind speaks only Roman. Any resemblance whatsoever to English is purely coincidental. ajkalan posted:One interesting quirk with the Barbarian leader units is that they become Diplomats when your own Diplomat or Spy bribes them to join you, like some kind of Diplomat zombie-bite victim. On lower difficulties where I was flush with gold, I enjoyed bribing them and using my new Diplomat duo to buy an army from the now-leaderless Barbarians. Not really practical or useful, but bloodlessly destroying your enemies like that feels like its own kind of accomplishment. Ah, I'd forgotten about that! Someone needs to step up and be the OrangeFluffySheep of this LP; Civ 2 is a game that demands drawings and cartoons of its zany action! Using Diplomats on barbarians actually can be a good strategy. They're often fairly solid units and they can be bought dirt cheap. Better yet, it pays for itself if you can use one new barbarian unit to capture the leader. Takes a bit of tactics, but it can work. Fionordequester posted:Man, you're really getting violent now aren't you Melth? I mean, Xerxes looked like he was kind of a mean guy anyway, but are you sure you're comfortable bullying people so much? War can be an awful thing you know... War is hell but peace sucks! Unfortunately there's actually not much I can do about that screenshot and others like it. The Archer actually WAS invisible when that announcement came. Units appear and disappear a lot in this game at odd times. I guess I could have doodled in a stick figure Archer or something to show where he was supposed to be? Redmark posted:I usually find exposition about game mechanics and tactics kind of dry, but something about the way you do it is so irreverent and fun Glad you like it! sheep-dodger posted:Wait, all those combat bonuses are multiplicative with one another? Good lord, who thought this was a good idea? Me! It's a marvelous idea. Along with the unit stack mechanics, it's one of the only two reasons why combat is tactical in this game. To understand why, you first need to notice that in every stage of the game most units have much more Attack than Defense. For example, in the ancient era there's 5 Attack/1 Defense Crusaders or 6/1 Catapults vs 1/2 Phalanxes. In the modern era there's 12/1 Bombers and 12/2 Howitzers vs 10/6 Tanks. However, there are basically no ways to increase your Attack power other than to be a veteran, while there are a half-dozen ways to boost your Defense. Thus in every era the defender deployed carelessly is easy prey but the maximally fortified defender is borderline invincible. For example, in the ancient era the toughest possible unit would be a veteran Phalanx in a city with City Walls on a Mountain that has a River. 2 (base) x 1.5 (veteran) x3.5 (Mountain w/ River) x3 (City Walls) for a total of 31.5. Sidenote, ordering the Phalanx to "fortify" does NOT stack with City Walls. The 50% fortify bonus is superseded by the 100% being in a "fortress" bonus or 200% in City Walls bonus. This means that, contrary to popular belief, there is actually no benefit to ordering units in such places to fortify. You'd be better off ordering them to sentry if you just want to not bother with them. Anyway, the principle that defending units are naturally easy to kill but are extremely tough if you stack the multipliers is key. It forces people on defense to play smart, plan their moves carefully, etc. And note that EVERYONE is on defense at least half the time. Even if you're invading someone, you're still playing defense on their turn, so you had darned well better think tactically. A gigantic attack force that could crush any defense can be slaughtered in a few moves if the invading player is dumb. But if there were units with high base Defense, that wouldn't be true. All the invader would need to do is stack his invasion force up with the high Defense guy and move in. Or if the Defense bonuses were just additive and one of them (like terrain) was just particularly large, the attacker could focus on maintaining that one Defense bonus and be too tough to attack. Multiplicative stacking provides a big incentive to make sure you take advantage of several bonuses at once instead of just homing in on one big one. This principle also means you need to think very carefully about military matters when founding your cities. If you put a city on a Hill, it may well be impossible for the enemy to take. But its economy will suck forever. If you build next to Forests or Hills, you can use them for Production. But an invader could stand on that Hill or Forest and be too tough to dislodge while they stack up Catapults or Cannons to crush your defenders. So the low natural Defense but massive power of stacked Defense multipliers make tactics very important whether you're invading or trying to stop an invasion. If there were a lot of stackable Attack multipliers too, that would cease to be true. And that's why there's only being a veteran- which is also a Defense bonus. But it gets even better. Besides requiring good tactics, the multiplicative Defense bonus phenomenon also forces good STRATEGY. See, it's quite feasible to put together a defense which can crush any conventional attack. But instead of making invasion impossible against a competent player, what that means is that the attacker needs to get smart. Don't just send your force of 50 Crusaders at the uber Phalanx and hope to chip him down, find a way to walk around him. There aren't a lot of Mountains in the world. And there's like .1 per game with a River. So set up a colony or use transports and attack from an unexpected direction. Or use a Diplomat to buy the city. Or to explode the City Walls. Or attack with a ship- City Walls don't work against ships. So this mechanic is the fundamental reason that you must think carefully about how to launch your attacks and use combined arms rather than one-unit masses to be effective. This is especially true in the modern era. The enemy can easily be invincible against Diplomats OR land assault OR nukes OR ships OR planes, but he sure can't be invincible against all of them everywhere. Find what he's weak against and where he's weak against it and smash him there. Have Battleships shell coastal cities with City Walls but no Coastal Fortress. Have marines take cities with Coastal Fortresses but no City Walls. Surround big cities and stand on their good terrain so they have to disband their own troops and starve to death. Use Nukes + Alpine Troops or Paratroopers to snatch up cities that don't have SDI Defenses. Buy cities that don't belong to Democracies using Diplomats and Spies. Blow up the City Walls of Democracies using Spies. Or hit them with Bombers or Howitzers. Have Spies plant nuclear devices. Or my favorite tactic of all: attack the planet itself by causing global warming and then sit back and prosper while they starve or disband their armies because I was smart and relied on Oceans while they relied on land terrain. Warfare in the modern era is cool because the defender can still maintain the edge against what he's trying to defend against, but there are dozens of different types of attacks you could launch. Of course, there's no way to have the resources and time to employ them all at once. So you've got to make choices. And that's what strategy IS: choosing how to use your limited resources to accomplish your goals. Carbolic Smokeball posted:Also some comments on what you said about wonders. Thanks for the tip-off about wrong wonder descriptions. I just did a whole bunch of experimenting and confirmed that the in-game description of Copernicus's Observatory, Isaac Newton's College, J.S. Bach's Cathedral, SETI Program, Apollo Program, and Hanging Gardens are all false or misleading or incomplete: -J.S. Bach's Cathedral does indeed work on every continent (same as in Freeciv). -So does Hanging Gardens (actually, the description of that one doesn't specify that it only works on one continent but I know I read that somewhere). Hanging Gardens also makes 3 people happy in the city it's built in, but the game doesn't mention that. -Copernicus's Observatory does indeed grant +100% Science instead of +50%. And this is MULTIPLICATIVE with Libraries, Universities, etc (those buildings stack additively with each other). That makes it more than twice as good as I thought it was. -Isaac Newton's College doubles the effects of Libraries, Universities, and Research Centers but does nothing on its own. This is always strictly worse than Copernicus's Observatory for the same number of research buildings in the city. AND it costs more to build and is available later. Fail. This is definitely on my worst wonders list. Copernicus's Observatory moves up to just being low-tier. -Apollo Program not only allows construction of spaceships by all players, it also reveals the entire map to the player who completes it (the game doesn't mention this in the description, but you get a message that astronauts bring back photos from space and then all is revealed). -And SETI Program DOES count as a Research Center in all cities as it claims, but the description that this "effectively doubles your Science output" is completely false. It's a 50% increase over your baseline. It is a smaller % of your total if you have ANY Libraries or Universities or Research labs already. This is about to get very long and detailed. The TL;DR version is that the Eiffel Tower is actually pretty good, Darwin's Voyage can be mathematically shown to suck, and so can Colossus. Now you're obviously free to have your favorite wonders, but the math is just not on your side for Darwin's Voyage or Colossus really. Before I get deep into those, let me talk about the Eiffel Tower. I actually consider it a mid-low tier wonder and I never heard anyone say they thought it was the worst before. The Eiffel Tower's effect is not a huge one, but it's available early and it's cheap to build and its effect is unique: there is no other way in the game to boost your diplomatic reputation. And diplomatic reputation is a very important resource. First of all, it's worth a lot of cash. People will pay you tons of money to not fight them if you have a spotless reputation and you know how to put them in a corner. With a very good reputation it's also much, much easier to make AI civs friendly to you and thus trade techs with you or to successfully demand tribute for your patience or to get them to share maps. And it makes other people much less likely to betray or sneak attack you or refuse to sign a peace treaty when you want one. Oh and forget about having allies without it. Iirc is actually impossible to EVER get someone to make an alliance with you if your reputation is not at least Excellent (one step down from Spotless, and bear in mind that a single breach of treaty drops you 2 steps). I said earlier that almost nothing is worth breaking a treaty over, and the near-impossibility of ever repairing your reputation is why. The Eiffel Tower is your one and only chance to fix your reputation if you do need to get up to some skullduggery. Does that make it a great wonder? Definitely not. It's fairly low tier in my eyes. But at the very least it can be situationally good, and unlike most other wonders there is nothing else that can do its job. What about Darwin's Voyage and Colossus though? Well, Darwin's Voyage only looks worse now that I know Copernicus's Observatory is more than twice as good as advertised. Darwin's Voyage has this huge problem that there are a ton of other wonders that do its job better. The following wonders directly increase your Science or grant you free techs: Colossus, Copernicus's Observatory, Darwin's Voyage, Great Library, Isaac Newton's College, and SETI Program. Numerous others indirectly boost your Science by letting your cities grow faster or letting you devote more citizens to high-Trade tiles and so on. But let's just talk about the directly science-y ones right now. With all the science-y wonders there are only 3 questions that matter: 1) how many techs will this actually get me? 2) When will it get me them? 3) How expensive/difficult to access is the wonder? First of all, the SETI Program can't really be compared to the others. For one thing, it's like 20x more powerful than all the others combined. A 50% increase to Science in every city in your late-game civilization is mind-blowing. However, it's unlocked by one of the latest techs in the game. By the time you could get it, the tech race is basically over. There is nearly nothing left to research. And you're probably so far in the lead anyway that it doesn't matter. There's just no way to really compare their usefulness. Second, the Great Library dominates all the others in all three categories. It's available almost immediately, gives you its benefits in the early-mid game when you need them most, and the sheer number of techs it can give you on Deity difficulty is amazing. Especially since it works BETTER the cruddier your starting situation is. Oh and it's THE science Wonder for people who aren't playing Republic/Democracy. So the Wonders I actually want to compare are Darwin's Voyage, Colossus, Copernicus's Observatory, and Isaac Newton's College Now Darwin's Voyage grants you 2 techs. Actually, as you touched upon, it grants you 1 and a fraction techs unless you time it properly and know what you're doing. Let's assume the hypothetical best case scenario where it grants you exactly 2 techs. Now the issue is that these are mid-late game techs. By the time you get Railroad (to unlock Darwin's Voyage), you should already be way in the lead in the tech race. And, as I mentioned, you already must have or could easily have all the techs there's actually a rush to get to: Republic, Monotheism, Democracy, and Railroad itself. So Darwin's Voyage doesn't look so great with regard to question 2; it gives you the techs at a less useful part of the game. It also looks bad in 3; it costs as much as or more than every one of those wonders and is also available later than every single one. So Darwin's Voyage sucks with regard to issues 2 and 3. The only thing that can save it is being better than the others at 1), granting lots of techs. Let's compare how many techs Darwin's Voyage and Copernicus's Observatory can give. Now that's a hard question because there are a ton of variables. I'm going to outline 2 different scenarios and compare the numbers in each case. The first scenario will be extremely biased in favor of Darwin's Voyage. I'll assume a lot of poor decisions on the part of the guy considering building Copernicus's Observatory and also that the game ends before he can get much use out of it, among other things. I'll call that scenario "Pro-DV". The second scenario will be a fairer comparison with much more reasonable numbers, but still not using Copernicus's Observatory to its full potential as it might be used by an expert. This will be a more normal game and I'll call that scenario "Standard" So let's talk "Pro-DV" first. Now Copernicus's Observatory is complete trash for smallpox, so the only people who will ever build it are either Bigpox or Celebration players. By the time they get it, they will have at least a size 8 city. To be absurdly generous to Darwin's Voyage and keep the calculations simple, let's say it's size 8 and never grows larger than size 8. But it's a solid Science city. A size 8 Science city should have 26 Trade (8 Oceans + the city tile with a Road as a Republic) with maybe a point or two of Corruption subtracted out. Let's pretend he never goes Democracy or does anything else to eliminate this Corruption. Call it 24 Trade. Let's be even more generous to Darwin's Voyage and say the Copernicus guy doesn't average 80% Science rate; he does more like 60%. Ok. So 24 Trade x 60% to Science makes 14 beakers (rounding down). That's the Science output of that city every turn before the wonder or anything else. Now he will definitely already have a Library and let's say he gets a University 50 turns after building the Copernicus's Observatory. And let's say he never, ever makes a Research Lab. So in the first 50 turns, his Science output would be 21 per turn without Copernicus's Observatory and is instead 42 per turn with it. Thus the wonder itself gets him 21 beakers per turn x 50 turns = 1050 beakers in the pre-University phase. Now we need to know how long the University phase lasts before the end of the game. Let's say it's a Deity game (which means the fewest turns and is thus best for Darwin's Voyage). Let's say Copernicus's Observatory is built in 1 AD (turn 100) and the University thus comes out at 1000 AD (turn 150). And let's say the game ends fairly early, 100 turns later in 1850 AD. So he has 100 turns with a University on top of the Library. With those 2 buildings but no Observatory he would get 28 Science per turn. With the Observatory he gets 56 Science per turn, so the Observatory is profiting him 28 per turn for 100 turns. 2800 beakers from the University phase. Add that and the Library phase and we have a total of 3850 beakers created across the whole game by Copernicus's Observatory in this scenario where it's at just about its lowest feasible effectiveness. Now how many techs is that? Well that's hard to answer since the tech price depends on a ton of stuff. Most importantly, early techs are cheaper than late techs. The most relevant question is how much the techs just after Railroad (when Darwin's Voyage is unlocked) cost since those are the ones Darwin's Voyage will probably be used to acquire. I believe Railroad takes a hypothetical minimum of 25 techs to acquire. But to be VERY generous to Darwin's Voyage once again, let's say the guy actually messes around a TON and acquires a whole 25 other techs either before getting Railroad or before finishing Darwin's Voyage. Thus Darwin's Voyage gets him techs 51 and 52 for free. The question is whether 3850 beakers could purchase both of those techs. How many beakers do techs 51 and 52 cost those cost? Well that's still unanswerable without a few more assumptions. Like most things in this game, the mechanics of how much each technology costs are bizarre and convoluted and secret and depend on loads of things. This site has most of the details for you if you want a look at the details: http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/2672-The-Cost-of-Research-Explained. The main thing we need to know is how many more techs the guy has than the "Key Civ" or "Reference Civ". You can manipulate who that is by exploiting a lot of the secret mechanics and underpinnings of the game, but no normal player has any idea how to do that and it's kind of cheating anyway. Therefore, let's assume the Reference Civ is a random AI opponent. In that case, we need to know how many more techs this guy has than the average AI opponent. Let's be generous once again and say that he has 18 more techs than the average AI civ despite playing so poorly that none of his cities went above size 8 and he never switched to Democracy or anything. This will greatly increase the price and thus help Darwin's Expedition in the comparison yet again. The price of tech 51 is 1632 beakers under these assumptions. Tech 2 is 1664. Their combined cost is 3296, which is less than 3850. So Copernicus's Observatory can buy the techs that Darwin's Voyage granted with spare change left over. And this was under absolutely absurdly favorable conditions for Darwin's Voyage! I mean, I assumed that the Copernicus guy NEVER built his city over size 8, NEVER put his Science rate above 60%, NEVER eliminated Corruption in the city, ended the game VERY early, didn't build his University till late, NEVER built a Research Center, and worked hard to make the cost of the techs Darwin's Voyage gets for free extremely high. And Darwin's Voyage was STILL worse. And that's not even considering the fact that it costs more shields to build and doesn't start helping you till much later! Now let's see how horribly Darwin's Voyage gets crushed under the "Standard" scenario. Again, nothing that favors Copernicus's Observatory tremendously, just something that looks like how an actual game involving an actual player who's decently skilled and trying to get good use out of Copernicus's Observatory would go. So first of all, his city should be at least size 12 on average. Let's still just call it 12. Maybe he only has 12 Oceans because this isn't actually a great Science location or maybe he's a Bigpox player rather than Celebration and he finishes higher than 12 but takes a long time getting there. Whatever, call it 12 for simplicity and to still be fairly nice to Darwin's Voyage. A size 12 Science city should have about 38 base Trade. He's going to be smart enough to switch to Democracy thus get rid of the Corruption penalty, so he will actually have the full 38. And he's actually serious about Science and knows how to play with Luxuries and Taxes down around 10% or so most of the time and still turn a profit, so he has 80% Science. He also knows that getting Universities is key for good Science gain, especially when he's trying to have one big Science city like this, so he gets a University in that city only 30 turns after building the Copernicus's Observatory instead of 50. Furthermore, 1850 was an unreasonably early finish time for most players. A typical game would go on well into the 1900s, but let's just call it 50 more turns because we're still trying to be reasonably nice to Darwin's Voyage. So how much Science does Copernicus's Observatory actually get him over the course of the game? Well in the Library-only phase it's like this: 38 Trade x 80% to Science (round down) is 30 Science. The Library multiplies that to 45. Then Copernicus's Observatory doubles it and thus creates 45 Science per turn. This goes on for 30 turns, so a total of 1350 Science in the Library phase. Then in the University phase it's 30 Science turned into 60 by the Library and the University, so Copernicus's Observatory gives 60 per turn for 170 turns. That's 10200 beakers of Science, for a grand total of 11550 beakers over the whole game. How many Darwin's Voyage-era techs is that? Well in a real game, the player is going to be facing fairly stiff AI competition on Deity difficulty and also is unlikely to mess around a ton before getting to a critical tech like Railroad. Let's say he has 35 techs upon completing Darwin's Voyage, so it gives him techs 36 and 37 for free. Let's also say he's maybe 12 techs ahead on average instead of 18. In that case, techs 35 and 36 cost 1080 and 1110. A total of 2190. So guess what? Copernicus's Observatory is more than FIVE TIMES BETTER. And it's cheaper. And it starts helping you earlier! What about Newton's College? Isaac Newton's College is terrible and strictly worse than Copernicus's Observatory, but is it still better than Darwin's Voyage? Let's keep scenarios "Pro-DV" and "Standard" more or less intact, but update them for the later unlock time of Isaac Newton's College and the different setup it requires. So back to the "Pro-DV" numbers. 24 Trade and only 14 Science in the size 8 city forever, 60% Science rate, game ends in 1850, the player has 50 techs before Darwin's Voyage finishes and is 18 ahead of the average AI opponent at the time, etc. However, Isaac Newton's College has University as a prereq. And (assuming a player knows that the in-game description is a lie and thus knows how to actually use it), it would never be built unless the player already had a University. So let's say it's built in the year 1000, with a University already present, since that was the year that the "Pro-DV" player finished his University. There are 100 turns till the end of the game. So each turn his city has 14 base beakers of Science and his Library and University would make that 28, but Isaac Newton's College makes it 42. So Isaac Newton's College gives him a profit of 14 per turn. For 100 turns. That makes a total of 1400 beakers, which is less than half the value of Darwin's Voyage under these crazy conditions. What about under "Standard"? Well under "Standard" for Copernicus's Observatory the University was built 20 turns earlier, so let's say Isaac Newton's College is built at that time in this incarnation of "Standard". And the game lasts 50 turns longer, so he has 170 total turns to work with instead of 100. And his profit each turn is 31 beakers. Remember, 38 Trade -> 31 Science -> 62 with Library and University -> 93 with Isaac Newton's College too so the wonder is giving him 31. Over 170 turns that's a total of 5270 beakers. And the "Standard" tech price is about 1080 beakers, so Isaac Newton's College buys 5 techs to Darwin's Voyage's 2. That's right. Under even halfway reasonable circumstances for a guy trying to use Isaac Newton's College, even that inferior wonder is more than TWICE as good as DV. And it still builds earlier! What about Colossus? Ok, so this one requires a bit more consideration since the Colossus actually expires. Let's start off by taking it back to the basics of the "Pro-DV" scenario though: size 8 city, 60% Science all the time, game ends in 1850, etc. But the Colossus would feasibly be built earlier than Copernicus's Observatory since it unlocks much earlier and is cheaper. Let's say it's built 30 turns early, with a Library, but that the University is still built in the year 1000. Then let's say Flight is developed about 20 turns before the end of the game since the Colossus guy would put it off for a while and clearly isn't winning by space race with his strategies. So the Colossus generates +8 Trade in a size 8 Science city. At a 60% Science rate, that's +5 Science. The Library phase is now 80 turns long, and during that phase the +5 Colossus Science becomes 7 with the Library bonus. Then for 80 turns it's turned into 10 Science by the Library + University. Then the Colossus is gone. So over the course of the whole game that's 1360 beakers. Which at the inflated prices we're imagining is not enough to buy even one tech in the DV completed phase. Man, the Colossus sucks! But it's still better than Isaac Newton's College since it's at least generating some cash and happiness too How does the Colossus look under the "Standard" circumstances? Well now it's a bit infeasible that the city is at 12 size when the Colossus is built. Let's say it's 8 for the first 30 turns then instantly becomes 12 the same time it was 12 when Copernicus's Observatory was built. Now how much further is Flight put off in this 50-turn-longer game? It's unreasonable to assume it's the full 50 turns; this player is researching lots of techs fast and will probably need a good one like that, though he IS trying to get good use out of the Colossus until he needs to start building Bombers for the final wars or tech to space flight. Let's say Flight is pushed back 20 turns. So for 30 turns the Colossus is generating +8 Trade with 80% Science rate and a Library. That makes 9 extra Science per turn. Total of 270 beakers over the 30 turns of the size 8, Library-only phase. Then for 50 turns it generates +12 Trade with 80% Science rate and a Library. That should be 15 extra Science per turn. So 750 Science. Then there are 100 turns with +12 Trade with 80% Science and a Library and a University before Flight is discovered. So 1900 for that phase. Total Science produced by the Colossus over the course of the whole game? 2920. At the new, more reasonable price for techs it will buy 3 DV era techs. Thus even the Colossus is better than Darwin's Voyage under reasonable assumptions even WITHOUT getting into the fact that it's generating gold and Luxuries too. Quod erat demonstrandrum: Darwin's Voyage is vastly inferior to all the other Science wonders under even remotely normal conditions for people trying to use those wonders even halfway decently. Funnier yet, it doesn't even shape up THAT well under ridiculous conditions cooked up to favor it. Copernicus's Observatory in particular still flattens it. Thought Experiment About Super-Science Cities: So you said the Colossus is good because you can use it as part of a super-Science city. That's an interesting concept and one I think most Civ players have thought about. Partly as a thought experiment and partly to analyze how good or bad the whole strategy is, I'm going to try to figure out what the best possible Science output one city can have is. Now technically this can be arbitrarily high because as far as I'm aware there is no limit to the number of Food Caravans you could bring in. Thus given unlimited time, you could make the population as high as you want and make everyone a Scientist. But this is an obviously terrible strategy. So let's ignore Food Caravans and look at the highest "natural" city size. Now the apex Science city actually DOESN'T rely on Oceans. You can get more Trade in the endgame with land tiles because of Superhighways. Since you want a high population too, what you want is a city in almost-pure Grassland, every single tile of which has a River. However, you want there to be 4 (the maximum number of resources the generator will let any spot have in range) Mountains with Gold (NOT Hills with Wine as you might think). These must also have Rivers. There are 21 tiles. Each tile has Irrigation, Farmland (the city has a Supermarket), Roads, and Railroads (the city has Superhighways). 17 Grasslands each grant 4 Food, the 4 Mountains each grant 1, That makes 72 Food total, so you can support a population of precisely 36. The government must be Democracy and the city must have the Colossus. Each Grassland with River and Road grants 2 Trade. This is boosted to 4 by Colossus and Democracy. Then to 6 by Superhighways. The Mountains with gold and Rivers grant 7. Boosted to 9. Then to 13 by Superhighways. So a total of 154 Trade. Now the complicated bit is Caravans. You'd better have maximally good Trade boosting caravans to make this truly the best. The way to achieve that is actually for another player to have 3 cities just like this one. Which is obviously out of the question. Let's assume YOU have them instead. But no Colossus there of course. Oh and they're connected to this one by both Road and Railroad, both have Airports, the "Trade Route" was established with a Freight unit, and both of course have Superhighways. Since the Trade of the other 3 cities is 116 instead of 154, the Caravan formula you can find here (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/strategy/scrolls#Turns) says we should be looking at 357 Trade from the sum of the 3 trade routes. So combining Caravan Trade and natural Trade, the city experiences a total Trade of 511. Assume a 100% Science rate, so that becomes 511 base Science (This city better have Shakespeare's theater). It has 20 citizens working tiles and 16 specialists who are all Scientists and thus grant +3 base Science each. Total base Science of 559. Assume it has a Library, University, and Research Lab of course. And Isaac Newton's College. And Copernicus's Observatory. Well the boosted Library, University, and Research Lab turn 559 into 1677. And Copernicus turns that into 3354. So there we have it! The hypothetical maximum Science that one city could generate without infinite Food Caravans and without relying on enemy civs also having perfect Trade metropoli is 3354. That's roughly enough to learn 1 lategame tech per turn on its own. Know what the crazy thing is? That's just not that much. Even after assuming multiple 1 in a quadrillion chance terrain formations, infinite time to setup, and everything. Even a halfway decent Celebration strat guy at a similar phase in the game is going to be packing much more total over his giant civ. In my recent 1800s space race win, I had about 2500 beakers per turn before I even got serious about building Libraries- let alone constructing SETI. And in that game I didn't even build Sewer Systems and only controlled part of one continent. Also, this super city will cripple itself. Once it forces you to learn Flight, it's going to take like a 1000 bulb hit. And actually so will all the cities it's Caravaning with. Let's take a quick look at a non-absurd super-science city. The kind of thing I've actually nearly made. Ok maybe just a little insane. 1x1 island with a Rivered Grassland. Surrounded by Ocean with 4 Fish (slightly better than Whales for maxing Population). That makes natural size of 26. Democracy, 100% Science rate. Library, University, Research lab, Colossus, Isaac Newton's College, Copernicus's Observatory. Harbor and Offshore Platform of course. No Caravans since it's an island and they're hard to get out there. And you don't have any other comparably spectacular cities to make the boosts huge. Grassland with Colossus and Democracy and River and Road (and let's just say Superhighways!) is 6 Trade. All 20 Ocean tiles are 4 Trade, so total of 86 Trade. So 86 base Science. Multiply by the Science buildings boosted by Isaac Newton's College and you get 258. Doubled by Copernicus to 516. That's all. That is the most you can get with an absolutely spectacular but conceivably findable super science city site without getting into Caravans. 516 is decent at that stage in the game. But it's going to be like 1/6 of your total science output if you have any kind of decent civilization. This demonstrates quite handily that super-science cities are just not actually viable. Even stacking up every possible wonder and building on ideal terrain in the endgame only makes them pretty good, and a drop in the bucket compared to what Caravan cheese or celebration strategies will land you in total. And that's why I regard all of the Science wonders except the Great Library as low or fail tier. Because they're actually just not impressive as a proportion of the overall Science your civ should produce. Phew! Delenda est Carthago! Melth fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Dec 10, 2015 |
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Sep 19, 2015 12:52
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I think I've learned twice as much about Civ2 from reading this thread than I did by playing it for hundreds of hours in my childhood. This is an excellent LP. Good job!
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Sep 19, 2015 14:17
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Melth posted:Me! It's a marvelous idea. Along with the unit stack mechanics, it's one of the only two reasons why combat is tactical in this game. Because as you laid out, a unit is either nearly invincible or borderline worthless, there is little in between, and as you have shown in the last update, the AI is... less than stellar at managing their positioning. Which then leads to the situation where an experienced player such as yourself can take out 16 enemy units with 3 of your own without any losses, and I'll assume that the losses are going to stay this lopsided throughout the coming wars. I'm sure it's a lot more tactical in Multiplayer, when both parties understand the systems involved, but against the AI it seems rather lopsided, because at least the impression I get is that the AI really doesn't understand the systems and can't work with them the same way you can, they only get to poo poo out more units than you because you are playing deity. I'm having trouble expressing exactly what is bugging me about it. I think it's that this system of multiplicative bonusses creates two sets of gameplay, one where the informed player can hold off tanks with spearmen, and one where the uninformed player, and by extension the AI, is mostly prey, because the possible strength of units varies by such a huge margin. Newer Civs have systems that don't fluctuate as wildly and thus are clearer to understand and handle for beginners and the AI.
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Sep 19, 2015 15:29
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Can you explain to us non-pro players what Smallpox/Bigpox/Celebration/etc. are? I'm not sure if they're strategies, settings, mods or what.
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Sep 19, 2015 15:34
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He's making up words for things that are usually named otherwise. Small-pox=usually referred to as 'Wide strategy' or in extremes 'Infinite city spam'. Lots of little cities producing a little, but adding up to a lot. Big-Pox='Tall' strategy; a few cities, well developed. He regards both as equally worthless. 'Celebration'; Every Civ has always had a mechanic where you get a 'We Love the X Day' if you get an equal number of happy people to content people and no unhappy people at all. The people love you, and that brings benefits to trade and growth while it lasts. Adjusting things to keep the good times rolling(As it were) is very useful and very important. Civ 5 has it, but it's entirely different from all the rest.
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Sep 19, 2015 15:42
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I suppose I should also explain my comment about Gandhi for those unfamiliar with this series. You may have heard that Gandhi in Civilization has a reputation for being a warmonger who will nuke the entire world on a whim, and this particular entry in the series is where that got started due to an infamous bug. Each civilization in Civ2 has subtly different AI patterns. It's not as noticeable or detailed as the system gets later in the series, but in particular each civilization/leader in Civ2 has an Aggression rating. India's is very, very low. As an added wrinkle, certain government types can increase or decrease a civilization's Aggression rating, and Democracy - which the AI does typically like for the same reasons as the player - lowers the Aggression rating. With India, switching to Democracy causes their Aggression rating to dip into negatives, triggering an overflow error that sets their Aggression rating to 255 on a scale that normally caps at 10. Meaning that the moment Gandhi switches to Democracy he is going to scream BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD and try to murder the entire planet, including using nukes on anything and everything if he has them.
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Sep 19, 2015 15:50
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Melth posted:Making a pit stop to monarchy can definitely be a tempting option, but I believe that it ultimately does more harm than good if you're definitely set on playing as a republic/democracy eventually. All of those martial law units suddenly become not only useless for that job but also a major drain on your production. And of course you've set your science back by dozens of turns. On the other hand, pure monarchy all the way is the key to at least one extremely powerful deity strategy. That's the one I typically use to win in 1500 AD. I guess it all depends on your playstyle. I find it quite beneficial when expanding early. I play a hybrid smallpox/large pox style. Maybe not the most efficient but it's just what I like to do. Martial law is a great way to control happiness as you expand early on, and give you a decent defense and lots of scouts to boot. Warriors only cost ten shields and are cheap enough to buy outright once a shield or two of production are in the queue, allowing the city to return to settler production faster. The biggest advantage that Monarchy has over Republic however, is that settlers only cost 1 food and no shields until the three unit cap. Switching to republic too early absolutely cripples early game expansion because of the two food cost, and generally your cities won't be large enough to absorb the cost unless you have some great food bonus tiles. For this reason, Republic only comes after my cities have been weened off settlers (no more than one per city, dependant on food resources available) and I start mass caravan production. Spare units can be disbanded and the shields delivered to caravan or wonder production, and happiness controlled with luxuries with caravans picking up the slack in science and taxes (whichever you should opt for in place of luxuries) until you can get Mike's Chapel. There comes a breaking point (around 45 cities or so) where Mike's Chapel becomes must more effective. Around this point new cities will, by default, start with double unhappy, black citizens. However, they take fewer luxuries to turn to happy than ordinary red unhappy people. I firmly believe Mike's Chapel is the best wonder in the game on high difficulties. For the cost of 3 1/3 cathedrals you get their benefit in every city and pay no upkeep, plus an extra unhappy>content citizen with Theology, which you want anyways for JS Bach. Conveniently, Monarchy is a prerequisite for Theology by way of Feudalism. I think you way overvalue Great Library. Its benefit CAN be very good, especially if you're behind. However, if you have a specific tech path in mind it can slow you down very easily. Tech cost in this game is floating, unlike later civ games where each tech has a definitive cost. It is determined by both how many techs you've researched (each is always more expensive the last), and also how far ahead you are of the other players. An unwanted advance from Great Library from a tech tree you don't want can slow your advances down drastically, and generally by the time I would complete GL I'm far enough down my chosen tech path that the chances of me getting any tech that helps me decreases, while increasing the risk of a "useless" tech. This is why I usually avoid huts early game too. Rolling Horseback Riding or Warrior Code is potentially crippling early game, jacking your tech costs and setting you several turns behind reaching a good economic tech. Unfortunately, you avoiding GL leaves it up for grabs for another player, which may be undesirable as well. Depending on your play style, you might not mind this. Many top level players prefer in mid-game to keep their tech advantage minimal in order to keep tech costs at a minimum. To this end, they'll end up gifting the techs to civilizations anyways.
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Sep 19, 2015 16:01
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Pierzak posted:Can you explain to us non-pro players what Smallpox/Bigpox/Celebration/etc. are? I'm not sure if they're strategies, settings, mods or what.
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Sep 19, 2015 16:03
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OK, I apparently missed that, thanks.
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Sep 19, 2015 16:10
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I wish there was an LP of Alpha Centauri that went into this much mechanics detail. This is a fun read.
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Sep 19, 2015 17:06
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Melth should win the game via space ship and do Alpha Centauri as his next thread. I have a feeling it'd still be really impressive and interesting even though he's unfamiliar with it; maybe even more so.
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Sep 19, 2015 19:41
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As thorough as your analysis is, you left out one key aspect of the Darwin's Voyage comparison: DV gives you its beakers NOW, not spread over a hundred turns. I haven't played civ2 in over a decade, but at least in civ5, the various things that instantly give you techs are generally considered better than beakers per turn because they let you start reaping the advantages of that tech immediately.
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Sep 19, 2015 20:38
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Who the gently caress thought caravans were balanced and why are they even more broken in Alpha Centauri?Cythereal posted:Shame about the Sioux being in this particular game and doing well. That means no Gandhi, destroyer of worlds. His bug is from Civ 1 or this one? For those that don't know the bug: AI leaders have "personalities", i.e. a bunch of stats that govern how they behave, including aggressivity. Some governments reduce the aggressivity, democracy the most. Gandhi has such a low aggressivity baseline that under democracy it underflows and turns him into a bloodthirsty, nuke-slinging madman. Incidentally, if a civilization has nukes they will remind you during diplomacy. Thus Gandhi threatening you. All civ games hard-code Gandhi to favour nukes just so the joke can be kept up (e.g. his "build nukes" personality stat in V is 12 out of a maximum of 10, so that even after the random +/- 2 variation at game setup it stays at 10).
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Sep 19, 2015 20:48
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Omobono posted:His bug is from Civ 1 or this one? This one. I explained it a few posts above yours.
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Sep 19, 2015 21:05
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Omobono posted:Incidentally, if a civilization has nukes they will remind you during diplomacy. Thus Gandhi threatening you. All civ games hard-code Gandhi to favour nukes just so the joke can be kept up (e.g. his "build nukes" personality stat in V is 12 out of a maximum of 10, so that even after the random +/- 2 variation at game setup it stays at 10). The joke is far more subtle in IV, there Gandhi's "build nukes" stat is 0 - but they coded it so that 0 nukeism actually means maximum nukes all the time, to keep up the appearance of it being a bug.
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Sep 19, 2015 22:46
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Melth posted:Phew! Delenda est Carthago! I've seen PhD thesis with less words and calculations than this. Too bad there isn't any university where you could get PhD of Sid Meier's Civilization series.
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Sep 19, 2015 23:52
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Omobono posted:Who the gently caress thought caravans were balanced and why are they even more broken in Alpha Centauri? Games were less thought out in this era as a whole- Colonization, Imperialism, etc. I don't mean to denigrate them too much but that kind of design wouldn't pass muster with the board game guys now at Firaxis, but in those days board games hasn't really had the revolution that the German board games brought over to us. Civ 4 is a significantly more balanced game than Civ 2 to me, but I can definitely see why someone would enjoy 2(and its derivative, AC) more. I can enjoy Imperialism 1 despite the end game devolving into endless hellwars because oil makes population obsolete.
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Sep 20, 2015 01:08
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sheep-dodger posted:Sure, and let me say first, that I haven't played Civ 2. But to me the question then is: How well does the AI handle it? I think what you're talking about is a real problem with the game; however it's one that's entirely separate from the combat system. The AI in this game just sucks. Even a completely new human player with no grasp of the mechanics beyond that high Attack units do well attacking and high Defense units do well defending can at least stalemate the AI and will probably make them suffer much higher casualties. And diplomatically smart players can run circles around the AI and make them give away free money or declare war or peace almost at will or trade great techs for junk. The AI builds terrible unit types, makes terrible city improvements (no Harbors EVER), never founds enough cities, is treacherous at stupid times, etc. It's not a smart AI at all. And it plays like an idiot at every aspect of the game, not just using the combat rules. But does this actually matter? Well quite possibly not. Let me play devil's advocate for a bit here. At the end of the day, a good AI is just a means to an end: creating a challenge for the player. Plenty of challenging and successful games don't have an AI at all. And no Fire Emblem game has ever had a good AI. Heck, the Fire Emblem AI understands the extremely simple Fire Emblem rules LESS well than the Civ 2 AI understands this game's complicated rules. Fire Emblem AI enemies will suicidally attack people they have a 0% chance to hit without a second thought. And their whole battle plan is just a disorganized charge- or even for some people to sit still and never make a move at all. But Fire Emblem games can still be good strategy games despite a pitiful AI. The AI only needs to be good enough to order mindless attacks in that game because the developers gave them such advantages in positioning and numbers and often equipment and stats that you must play very cleverly to win. Similarly, the Civ 2 AI cheats HARD, especially on Deity. Sure they have like 3 cities and those cities are small, but those cities nonetheless turn out an endless flood of units and buildings and wonders and can nearly keep pace with you in Science. And they're immune to most forms of unhappiness, don't have to deal with a senate as a Democracy, have options you don't have in diplomacy, don't suffer decreased reputation, never lose Triremes at sea, flagrantly break the rules by attacking directly off boats, know things they can't possibly know without embassies, flagrantly break the rules by sneak-attacking on the same turn they break an alliance even though that's 100% impossible for a human, etc. Plus they're all semi-secretly on a team against you and will all openly band together- even if they haven't actually met you- to form one giant alliance and smash you when you start doing too well. So the Civ 2 AI can present a serious challenge which can only be overcome by good tactics and strategy despite playing stupidly, same as the Fire Emblem one. You beat the Fire Emblem AI by standing on forests and switching to a weapon with triangle advantage to drop their hit chance to 10%. You beat the Civ AI by standing on Hills and switching to fortified mode to drop their chance of winning a battle to 10%. In both cases the AI will fall for it. In both cases they're too dumb to try anything similar themselves. And the result is similarly a massacre. In fact, from a game design perspective it might actually be GOOD to have a dumb AI in this kind of game and rely on unfair circumstances to present a challenge. The whole point of a game is for a human to have fun playing it and the entire idea of a strategy game in particular is for the player to have fun because they're thinking their way to victory. If your game puts the player in a situation where they would be guaranteed to lose to an opponent of equal intelligence, then you make the player feel smart when they win anyway. Even if they're only average or something for a human. If any human can out-think your AI but the AI has enough of an advantage (ideally scalable with difficulty modes) that they present a challenge anyway, then you've created a game that any human can probably enjoy on at least one difficulty mode rather than one which only a few very smart people will ever feel good at. However, I don't entirely agree with the above argument. There are some good points to it and I think it's more or less spot-on with regard to Fire Emblem. But there are at least two important distinctions between the dumb AI with massive resource advantage situation in Fire Emblem and the dumb AI with massive resource advantage situation in Civilization 2. First of all, in both cases the AI 'cheats' hard enough that they play a fundamentally different game than the player. In Fire Emblem the player can't receive mid-battle reinforcements out of stairwells. The player has 0 expendable units. The AI consequently only needs to kill a single player unit to force a restart and thus win, so the AI is designed to do that instead of to actually defeat your army. The AI units often have absurdly high stats or do things like break the weapon stat caps with custom-forged uber gear in Awakening. And of course they don't have some unit limit of only 8 people per battle or whatever. Nor do they need to manage funds and resources over a long campaign; they always have unlimited gear for free. In Civ 2 the AI just gets massive amounts of free production and Science and gold, doesn't need to deal with unhappiness (usually), doesn't need to deal with a senate or an international reputation, can make all kinds of illegal moves, etc. In Fire Emblem it's not a problem that the AI doesn't play the same game as the human because there's not actually any kind of story-equivalence between them. Most Fire Emblem games are about a tiny, poor. ragtag group of mercenaries, refugees, disenfranchised lordlings, children, and an occasional genuine badass going up against a vast and powerful and often outright inhuman empire. Of course the enemy has 10x as many guys, of course they have unlimited gear, of course they get reinforcements, of course they don't care about casualties the way you do, etc. The asymmetry is appropriate and actually even kind of satisfying. The good Fire Emblem games don't just make you feel proud of your strategic prowess for overcoming a materially superior opponent, they also make you feel sympathetic toward these brave underdogs you're always using. Civ 2 is different. The whole premise of Civilization is that you and the other leaders are fundamentally the same. I'm not going to win because the Romans are a small band of heroes and the Sioux are a giant, evil empire; I'm going to win because I made different choices than Sitting Bull. If I have fewer units, it should be because I chose to build fewer units. If they're richer than me, it should be because their economy is actually bigger or they chose to devote more of it to building their treasury rather than because the Romans are narratively supposed to be poor and ill-equipped. In Civ 2 I am supposed to be playing the same game as the AI leaders, but I am not. In Fire Emblem, the AI's advantages and cheats fit the narrative and premise. In Civ 2 they undermine it. And this is a problem. The second problem is one of HOW the game creates its challenge without a good AI. Not all things that make a game challenging are equally fun to deal with. A well-designed game should present a challenge which is actually fun to overcome. This is an area in which some Fire Emblem games fail too. For example, Fog of War chapters are dull and obnoxious luck-fests the first time you play them because there's no way to actually plan a strategy when you don't know what's out in the fog. And Fire Emblem: Binding Blade sucked from beginning to end because the game's 'difficulty' came entirely from vast hordes of spawn-moving reinforcements which poofed out of thin air to force what amounted to guess-and-check restarts. Good Fire Emblem games don't rely on stupid things like that to create their challenge. Civ 2 similarly has too many guess-and-check and luck-based elements. The AI always knows the exact type and number of units present in all of your cities, but there's no way to know what's in theirs without spending Diplomats or risking death in an attack. And they just know where stuff is in the Fog of War. Giant armies will show up at your arctic cities which have never been scouted by an enemy at any point, etc. Oh and barbarian groups can spawn-move from thin air at any time. That's EXACTLY like Binding Blade reinforcements. In fact, the way the enemy Triremes can cross oceans without sinking and the way non-Marine enemy units can cheat to attack off boats is similar too. An enemy army can suddenly appear from out of visual range in an impossible direction and sack a city that should have been safe instantly. And don't even get me started on goody huts. Who in the world thought it was a good idea to give them a chance of spawning a giant army of barbarians? If you get that in the early turns, it's game over. And speaking of starting stuff, there is a huge and permanent advantage if you have an extra starting Settler or a bunch of extra techs (ESPECIALLY if those techs lead to Monarchy or Republic). Or the game could dump you in an unwinnable starting situation like being trapped on the south pole with nothing but Glaciers around. Too much luck! And it gets worse from there. See, the single biggest way that Civ 2 creates challenge on the high-difficulties is not by giving bonuses to the AI but by giving massive penalties to the player. I am referring mainly to the catastrophic amount of unhappiness your citizens have on Deity difficulty. Deity is a fundamentally different game from Emperor because allowing your cities to grow AT ALL is instant disorder. And if you build more than 4 cities, even one of your STARTING citizens will be unhappy. Keeping your civilization functioning at even the most basic level requires constant micro-management of every single city you make. This is a gigantic, frustrating, and annoying slog of checking dozens of cities every single turn. Deity games are just not much fun because of this. And a game that isn't fun has failed completely. Like Fire Emblem: Binding Blade! So in conclusion I think I agree with you that this game has a very weak AI and that's a problem with it. The game would be more fun if it relied somewhat more on the AI being reasonably clever and somewhat less on the AI being allowed to cheat to create challenge. And it would also be good if the difficulties and problems it imposes on the player were less luck-based and less time-consuming to deal with. However, I disagree that any of this reflects badly on the combat system- or the multiplicative stacking of Defense bonuses in particular. That's a great idea for the reasons I explained before. This is a separate problem. Bloodly posted:He's making up words for things that are usually named otherwise. "Smallpox" and "Bigpox" are actually the typical terms among Civ 2 people and especially Freeciv people as far as I've seen. "ICS" caught on as terminology mainly with the later games (especially Alpha Centauri it seems). "Celebration" is indeed just my word for the clunky "We Love the X Day" that more people use, but I'm sticking to it. Also, I regard both pure Smallpox and pure Bigpox as badly inefficient strategies but they're not equal. Smallpox is better. And the ideal hybrid strategy for most games is much closer to Smallpox than Bigpox. MrWillsauce posted:Melth should win the game via space ship and do Alpha Centauri as his next thread. I have a feeling it'd still be really impressive and interesting even though he's unfamiliar with it; maybe even more so. Spaceship wins would look really boring to you guys. Actually, they're really boring to play too. I mean, a spaceship win essentially consists of a standard rush to maximum science and then just sitting down and pulling back all military units and ordering all Engineers to sentry so I don't need to bother with them and can just skip 50 turns in a row while the parts build in my cities. The ideal spaceship win strat will result in no military action going on and nothing interesting to do for centuries as I tech up and then build the parts. cheetah7071 posted:As thorough as your analysis is, you left out one key aspect of the Darwin's Voyage comparison: DV gives you its beakers NOW, not spread over a hundred turns. I haven't played civ2 in over a decade, but at least in civ5, the various things that instantly give you techs are generally considered better than beakers per turn because they let you start reaping the advantages of that tech immediately. It's obviously true that getting, say, 1000 beakers this turn is better than getting 100 beakers for 10 turns starting with this one. But that's not what happens here. What happens here is a question of 100 beakers for 10 turns starting with this one being obviously better than getting 1000 beakers 10 turns from now. As I pointed out, all of the other Science wonders are available BEFORE Darwin's Voyage. And most of them cost fewer shields to build too. They start paying dividends long before Darwin's Voyage can even exist. And since earlier techs cost fewer beakers, they actually give you even MORE techs than my analysis showed. Another point which I didn't bother making because I was pointing out the relative badness of Darwin's Voyage instead of its absolute badness is the question of how many shields are actually worth spending to get a tech advance. Here's the thing: Darwin's Voyage unlocks with Railroad. Pre-Railroad, Production shields are in extremely limited supply. In the endgame, massive Production is available, but this is because of Railroads built everywhere, Factories, Offshore Platforms, Power Plants, and eventually Manufacturing Plants. You can't HAVE any of those things when Darwin's Voyage unlocks. So you don't have good Production available. So building it then is a big investment of a rare resource for a small payoff in an abundant resource. Let me give a concrete example from my recent Emperor difficulty spaceship win. In the year 1630 I had not yet developed Railroads but was about to. I had put them off for a very long time because I didn't want to destroy my Hanging Gardens until I'd used it to help Celebrate all my cities. I had approximately 50 cities, 34 of them at size 12 and 12 between sizes 7 and 11. The others were tiny, recently founded villages. So celebrations were basically over and it was now time to learn Railroads. Average Production of one of these size 12 cities? 4 after unit upkeep. A few much higher, many as low as 1. There are many ways to generate massive Food pre-railroad. There are many ways to generate massive gold or Science pre-railroad. There is no way to generate massive Production pre-railroad. All you can do is pray for good terrain: like bunches of Hills with Coal or maybe Deserts with Oil or Mountains with Iron by a city which also has bunches of nice Grasslands so that it can grow big enough to actually work many of those good tiles. Oh and you can build the King Richard's Crusade wonder, which is really just not a great deal most of the time. In short, Production is at a premium and useful for many things in that phase of the game (Like a bunch of actually good wonders that unlock around then or getting started on all the factories that unlock 1 tech later and will actually let you have abundant Production in the future). Science is abundant and it's really easy to be pulling down a tech every 2 turns- or faster. I sure was and I didn't even have Libraries. Omobono posted:Who the gently caress thought caravans were balanced and why are they even more broken in Alpha Centauri? I can't comment on Alpha Centauri, but Caravans are actually decently balanced in Civ 2. They completely break everything only under idealized circumstances at the very end of the game. Circumstances which require you to already have multiple absolutely massive cities that produce insane amounts of Trade already (and oodles of Food to get that massive) and to already have very late techs like Corporation and Refrigeration and Automobile and Advanced Flight and then have built a bunch of expensive improvements in each of these cities. And THEN build 3 Freights apiece. In other words, the game is already over and you already DID all the research and you already HAVE all the Trade you need. So the uber Caravans serve very little purpose. You could have easily won the game in the time it took to set them up. During actual in-game circumstances your Trade routes are likely to produce something like 3-8 Trade each for much of history. Which is nice but not game-breaking. The number is much lower if you're not playing a Celebration strategy because only Celebration people are likely to have numerous high-Trade, high-size cities early on. To give real numbers again, in 1853 in that Rmperor game I've talked about a couple of times I had a bunch of Trade routes between my size 12 Trade-heavy cities. Most produced 3-4 Trade. I had a few giving 6-8. Carbolic Smokeball posted:
This is the key. If you have fun playing that way, keep doing it. Nothing wrong with that. All I'm saying is that it is, as you said, not the most efficient. Of course, what I do isn't actually the MOST efficient either. The maximally efficient strategy is really boring. For those of you out there who don't already have your own playstyle or have never played civ 2 and want to know why I would say stepping-stone Monarchy is not a good idea compared to either early victory pure Monarchy or pure Republic, here's why I disagree with many of these specific arguments: Carbolic Smokeball posted:
1) Alright, hold up. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. A unit can either scout OR do martial law. It cannot do both at once. Let me put some numbers on this and look at the very start of the game (when still a Despotism). Assume a typical, goodish city site: it's founded on a Grassland WITHOUT a shield on it and has a Grassland WITH a shield nearby. As I mentioned previously, founding on Grasslands without shields is a simple way to boost your Production forever for free. Anyway, at the start of the game this city has 2 surplus Food and will therefore spend 10 turns filling the Food gauge and then grow on on the 11th. It has 2 Production, so it builds the Warrior after 5 turns. Thus there are 6 turns between the Warrior being built and the city growing. This means you can scout out 3 squares and then walk 3 squares back. That's not much scouting since the city site already reveals a lot of the land around it, but it definitely helps a bit. So minor benefit there. If you're a Monarchy, you actually get 3 Food per turn and therefore grow on turn 8. Which means you an only do 1 square of scouting before needing martial law. In other words, you can't scout at all. So you MUST choose between scouting and martial law and cannot have both from the same guy. Now as a Despotism you COULD build a second Warrior who will finish just in time. The first one can then go off scouting while the second stays home. Ok. But this is a serious Production problem. Your Settler is now delayed 10 turns, which is a really major problem if, as you said, the goal is to do hybrid smallpox/largepox. You need to be founding cities earlier than that. Furthermore, once your city trains the Settler, it now is a size 1 city and has 3 units. Since you started as a Despotism, this means it eats a -2 Production upkeep penalty. Which means it produces NOTHING until it grows again or the Settler finds a site and builds there. Crippling. Being a Monarchy at least solves that upkeep problem, but you're still suffering a massive delay to build multiple Warriors before finally starting your Settlers. Fortunately, you probably don't need many scouts anyway. So you don't need to do that with every city. Nonetheless, I think I've made my point that the same unit cannot both scout any useful distance and enforce martial law and that building 2 or more Warriors so you can do both is problematic. Furthermore, Warriors may be relatively cheap but money is extremely tight. Your starting income as a Despotism/Monarchy with size 1-2 cities is about 1 gold per turn per city on average. Maybe less. Buying a Warrior that's already halfway finished is 8 gold. That's not cheap at all. That is 8 whole turns of income at the start, and quite possibly for some time thereafter. And there are so many better things to spend your money on or save it for. And finally, Warriors are not a good defense. They aren't even an ok defense. A barbarian Archer has 4.5 Attack vs the fortified Warrior's 1.5 Defense. Slaughter. And your city shrinks by 1, possibly being obliterated. If the Warrior attacks, it's 1 Attack vs 2 Defense. You'll still be crushed. And don't even think of trying to swarm him with a bunch of Warriors. First of all, you're likely to turn him into a veteran before you finish and therefore get completely flattened instead of chipping him down. Second, the sheer number of Warriors required would take dozens of turns to produce, crippling you with high upkeep and delaying your production of anything useful. And that's against just 1 Archer. And assuming he doesn't get to sit on any good terrain near your city! They often come in pairs. Warriors also get smashed by Horsemen, but you DO have non-zero odds of being able to beat a Horseman if you can first-strike it. Which has roughly 50% odds of being the case. So on average you have a small chance of beating one barbarian Horseman if you've built a Warrior. Yay? But it's worse than that. Warriors are often worse than no defense at all. See, barbarians will NEVER try to ransom a city that has a defender.They will ALWAYS attack it instead. So as long as you have Warriors in the city, the barbarians will attack the city- and thus decrease its population or obliterate it. If you have 0 defenders in the city, the barbarians will let you pay them to go away instead. Which is a much better deal. Furthermore, no other military unit is actually a good bet either. Phalanxes are crushed nearly as hard and cost twice as much. Horsemen actually have a chance (and also cost double), but you dismissed their tech as terrible to get early. In short, Warriors are not actually very cheap, can't both be scouts and enforce martial law, completely cripple your early-game Production if you build too many, and are less than worthless as defenders. 2) Partial fair point, high Settler cost IS slightly painful as a Republic. On the other hand, it's not THAT bad, as I'm demonstrating with my current game. For one thing, a Settler stopping to make just a bit of Irrigation solves the problem permanently for that city. For another, the problem only persists until the Settler founds a new city, which should only be a few turns usually. Third, it doesn't actually hurt your overall Settler production rate much at all. The limiting factor on how fast you can make Settlers is typically production, not Food. You need 40 shields vs 20 units of Food and automatic Irrigation + easy Irrigation of many tiles makes Food easy to come by once you're not a Despotism. Where I really have to disagree is that you don't switch to Republic until you can start mass Caravan production. That's not just delaying a few dozen turns, we're talking possibly a hundred or more as a Monarchy now. That is a TON of time spent with cruddy Science and Tax income. Definitely not worth it. The other thing is that this mass Caravan point is actually when a pure Monarchy smallpox player suddenly blossoms and becomes great. This is the point to double down on Monarchy and steamroll all opposition, not to completely switch strategies to focusing on Science after setting yourself back by most of a hundred turns. 3) Yes you can. But this is wasteful. It's better to not build the unit in the first place if you don't have to than to build it when shields are precious and then throw it away for only 50% of your shields back at a time when shields are more common. 4) Republic does this better. Not even close. That's Republic's main specialty. 5) I agree 100%. The MC is the best wonder in the game regardless of strategy on the high difficulties. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. J.S. Bach's Cathedral is nearly as good and you definitely do want both ASAP. Plus Hanging Gardens if you can get it. Those are the big 3 that I really want early on, with Great Library a distant 4th. However, it turns out Theology doesn't actually give that +1 effect to all cathedrals in Civ 2. It does that in Freeciv and I thought it did it here, but it doesn't. In Freeciv Cathedrals start off working on 3 people, upgrade to 4 with theology, and then downgrade to 3 with Communism. In Civ 2 they just start working on 4 and then downgrade to 3 with Communism. 6) True. More conveniently, a Republic has massively more Dcience than a Monarchy anyway though so you'll still get there faster. 7) Hold up. First of all, no early tech is unwanted. Some are higher priority than others, but ALL are needed eventually. And most are needed quite soon. Let's look at what's required to get to only Monarchy and Theology and Trade. Alphabet is required. Bronze working is required. Ceremonial Burial is required. Horseback Riding is required. Warrior Code is required. You can only do without Masonry and Pottery and Map Making even in this extreme short-term approach. Pottery is a great tech since it unlocks the excellent Hanging Gardens wonder. Well worth picking that up since we're talking mainly about how to get the anti-unhappiness wonders like MC and JSBC. Hanging Gardens is the cheapest and earliest of that type of wonder. Getting access to Triremes early is also extremely valuable, but you can definitely put that off until you have at least MC and possibly also JSBC done. Every single one of those tier 1 techs and nearly all of the tier 2 techs and most of the tier 3 techs they unlock are necessary for the critical Railroad tech that opens the industrial era of the game. Those low tier techs are precisely the ones that the Great Library will get you while you forge ahead to advanced goal techs like Democracy or Gunpowder. But because it will take some time before you actually BUILD the Great Library, you have ample time to get to Republic or Theology or whatever you want before completing it. Thus no slowdown. Only a massive speedup going into the rest of the game. Second of all, the amount you get slowed by learning a new tech is really quite small anyway. This is not some kind of massive, crippling problem ever. I'll concede that there are certain, very narrow circumstances in which you don't want to learn all the techs you can because you want to absolutely blitz to something key like Republic or Monarchy, but other than those situations you are better off getting as many free early techs as you can. Particularly if you're playing as a Monarchy for a hundred turns or something and therefore have a bad Science rate. 8) This I have to strenuously object to. The potential benefit of a goody hut is absolutely enormous. Getting a permanently free Settler early on is amazing. Getting an extra city early on is also usually amazing. Getting a solid military unit that you don't even necessarily have the tech for? Very handy. THOSE are your scouts. THOSE beat the barbarians for you. Look what I did with the 2 I got in this game. Getting a pile of gold when your income is like 2 per turn? Great. Getting a free tech? Also great because once again, you need every single early game tech eventually and the amount of slowdown you get (assuming the random tech you receive isn't actually one you want for your current project in the first place) is very small. The only thing you have to fear is a massive barbarian swarm. And honestly it's not unreasonable to just restart or reload that turn if you get one of those. Those are a stupid possibility and should not be in the game early on. 9) Wait what? You NEED Horseback Riding to get to the all-important Monotheism. And Horsemen are the first actually GOOD military unit. And you need Warrior Code to get to Theology. 10) Yeah, this is the other big one. This can be catastrophic and can destroy even the largest technology leads you have in a single turn. Do NOT let someone else get the Great Library if you can avoid it. Unless you're going for a low-tech early game win, in which case why ever go Republic? 11) Yeah, I won't do this. Yes, it's powerful and efficient. But it's an absurd and cheesy exploit when you take advantage of the poorly thought out and secret "Ref Civ/Key Civ" mechanics like that. You're supposed to have higher prices if you're ahead. That's supposed to be part of the game and it's a good part of the gameplay, if poorly implemented. Again, there's nothing wrong with playing the game you want to play, but I definitely hold that the Great Library is excellent, if not top priority, and that spending a pile of time as a Monarchy before switching to Republic is inefficient compared to either rushing Republic or staying Monarchy and going for early conquest. Delenda est Carthago! Melth fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 01:12
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I'm really enjoying your writeups so far. I appreciate how in-depth you're getting about the mechanics. A lot of other 4X LPs here tend to be very light on the details, in favor of weird roleplaying which always seems to rub me the wrong way.
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Sep 20, 2015 08:42
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One thing I don't get. Is there any kind of separate worker unit or do settlers do double duty? I'm far too used to the worker/settler split, but it may have originated from Centauri.
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Sep 20, 2015 09:37
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I disagree some more! But I don't wanna bog down your thread with these debates because mostly is comes down to play style. I'm just excited to talk Civ 2 with somebody! It's popularity has seriously waned in its age, as newer games exist that have a lot more depth. But I love it not only because I grew up on it (usually play a game or two every year) but also because it doesn't have the depth the newer games have. It's much easier to pick up and play, and the turns don't grind to a painful slow crawl like they do in late game Civ 4.Omobono posted:One thing I don't get. Is there any kind of separate worker unit or do settlers do double duty? No, in this game your settlers do both. But they do get a kickass upgrade mid-game.
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Sep 20, 2015 12:25
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Fister Roboto posted:I'm really enjoying your writeups so far. I appreciate how in-depth you're getting about the mechanics. A lot of other 4X LPs here tend to be very light on the details, in favor of weird roleplaying which always seems to rub me the wrong way. Count me in as another one who's enjoying these long posts on strategy. It's interesting to see just how deep (or broken) a game is that I only played and didn't understand as a child. Melth, do you play any other 4X games?
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Sep 20, 2015 12:41
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Fister Roboto posted:I'm really enjoying your writeups so far. I appreciate how in-depth you're getting about the mechanics. A lot of other 4X LPs here tend to be very light on the details, in favor of weird roleplaying which always seems to rub me the wrong way. Yup. This is my view as well. I love 4X games, but it's not terribly satisfying to watch someone play one without explaining what's going on. Keep fighting the good fight, Melth. It's why we named you emperor.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:43
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > Civilization 2: TL;DR: I Always Win
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Sep 20, 2015 14:48
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Did anyone else play the heck out of Civ 2 on the Playstation? I think it took up a whole memory card for save data.
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Sep 20, 2015 15:45
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Ramc posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > Civilization 2: TL;DR: I Always Win The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > Civilization 2: I'm totally not IBM's WATSON, I swear!
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Sep 20, 2015 16:24
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TravelLog posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > Civilization 2: I'm totally not IBM's WATSON, I swear! The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > Civilization 2: All I Do Is Win, Win, Win Fix'd
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Sep 20, 2015 16:43
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Carbolic Smokeball posted:I disagree some more! But I don't wanna bog down your thread with these debates because mostly is comes down to play style. I'm just excited to talk Civ 2 with somebody! It's popularity has seriously waned in its age, as newer games exist that have a lot more depth. But I love it not only because I grew up on it (usually play a game or two every year) but also because it doesn't have the depth the newer games have. It's much easier to pick up and play, and the turns don't grind to a painful slow crawl like they do in late game Civ 4. I think slowing down to an inevitable conclusion is a problem in literally every 4x for a lot of reasons. The first 50-100 turns are the best in every game like this.
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Sep 20, 2015 17:01
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Did anyone else play the heck out of Civ 2 on the Playstation? I think it took up a whole memory card for save data. I wouldn't say I played the hell out of it but I had quite a few games on it including one back in 2013. IIRC it took 10 out of 15 memory card blocks. It was a lot better to play on PS2 because the increased disc read speed made a lot of things go much quicker. A lot of my games on that have used the money cheat including one where I built the maximum number of cities with every improvement and maximum terrain improvement on chieftain difficulty for some reason. That particular game would have been unbearable with the PS1s slowness. It took 10 minutes to deal with one turn's buildings because of the sheer number of cities and the fact that I would have them all buy new improvements as they became available.
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Sep 20, 2015 18:42
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Did anyone else play the heck out of Civ 2 on the Playstation? I think it took up a whole memory card for save data. Back when I had a bad PC, yes. Still have the thing. Also Warcraft 2 for the Saturn, Red Alert for the Playstation, and Populous: The Beginning for the Playstation. Still remember the voice of the Playstation version. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 19:17
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