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Squalitude posted:
Yep, you can (usually) do that. On the other hand, it just makes you trade a turn where that city produces nothing due to civil disorder for one where the city produces basically nothing because its only citizen is an Entertainer instead of something productive. A slight profit I guess. Knowing that the city will grow regardless of surplus if the Food box is full is very useful though; I was meaning to talk about that one of these updates. What's interesting is how differently the Food and Production boxes work. To ignore buying units and talk about how natural Production works, units appear if the box is full AFTER that turn's shields are added to it. So if you end a turn with 1 shield short and your city has 2 surplus Production per turn, you will get the unit at the start of next turn and the box will be completely empty (with 1 shield wasted). When you buy a unit, you fill the box and it will therefore be produced next turn, but BEFORE shields are added for that turn. Let's say you buy a unit or building or whatever but then shift tiles worked around to make your surplus Production go negative. At the start of next turn, the unit is built and then it or other units are automatically disbanded until you hit 0 surplus Production. Regardless, the box starts empty again, so any positive surplus Production is wasted. You can therefore achieve a slight advantage sometimes by shifting citizens around to work, say, tiles that provide additional Trade or Food and less Production such that the Production box will exactly fill at the start of next turn instead of there being extra shields that are wasted. These mechanics also play into a cheesy exploit called "partial rush-buying" which some people have mentioned but which I don't generally do. The gist of it is that you can buy a unit or building for much less money than it's supposed to cost by exploiting the production mechanics and the fact that you can freely switch what your city is making with no shield loss as long as it's still the same category- even AFTER buying whatever it is (in Freeciv you can't change after buying, preventing the exploit). Let's say you want a 40 shield Settler and you have 11 surplus Production but only 7 shields in the box. Well you COULD just buy the Settler and get it next turn. But that would be expensive. And it would waste your 11 shields for next turn. Instead of paying for 33 shields of Settler, you can change what you're building to a Warrior and pay for a much cheaper 3 extra shields of Warrior, putting a total of 10 shields in your box. Then immediately change to making a Phalanx, which you are 10/20 shields done with. Pay to finish that, putting you at a total of 20 shields in the box. Now switch to making an Archer which you are 20/30 shields done with. Pay to finish that. Now switch to making a Settler which you are 30/40 shields done with. Do NOT pay for that. Just end your turn. Your 11 shields will be added to the box and you'll get the Settler. You wasted only 1 shield instead of 11 and saved a pile of money. If your city produces less than 10 shields, you'll need to pay for the last 10 of the Settler too, but you still save some money. Anyway, the Food box works very differently. Growth occurs or does not occur if the box is full BEFORE surplus Food is added to it. So if your box fills, your city will grow NEXT turn. And it will grow next turn even if your surplus has dropped to 0. Or below 0. Your city will start next turn 1 size higher with its new surplus in the box. Except if that surplus is negative, the box will just start at 0 rather than have the city shrink immediately. Ugh, the game is full of so many weird exceptions to its hidden rules that it takes me hours of experiments to find anything out for sure. Once again, you can possibly score a slight Production or Trade advantage by working tiles that give more of those and less of Food such that you still fill the Food box. However, you probably want to shift back to Food tiles on the turn the box is full because the more of a surplus you have then, the more you'll have starting in the larger Food box next turn. What happens when Settlers are built? As we know, the Settler costs the city 1 size. If the Settler would be built by a size 1 city, then you can either have the Settler NOT be built afterall (and the whole Production box of shield is wasted) or disband the city and have the Settler appear, supported by another city. But if the city building the Settler is already size 2 or something, it just shrinks and the Settler is produced like any other unit. So what if the Settler being finished and city growth to size 2 are both supposed to happen at once? If you end your turn with the Food box completely full and the Production box fillable by next turn's shields, the city grows and THEN you get your Settler. So it all works out perfectly. Just make sure to remember that you don't grow when the Food box fills, you grow the turn after. So if both boxes are about to fill at once, you will not get your Settler and 40 shields will be wasted. Oh and speaking of Settler stuff, if your city shrinks to build one, then its current Food in the box is put into the smaller box for the smaller city size. This quite possibly fills it immediately, in which case it will grow the next turn. That's nice and efficient. Any surplus Food beyond what would fill the now smaller box is wasted though. Edit: I think I will indeed try for a 1500 AD conquest run after this. I was waffling until I started up a random game and got starting techs and position better than I even imagined were possible. Delenda est Carthago! Melth fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 18:12
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Just found this thread and read through it. Echoing that it's really great seeing a technically complex game like Civ2 be played on high level, and with all the mechanics thoroughly explained. Two pages back, some were talking about upgrade costs... what was that about? Civ2 doesn't have any kind of upgrades, except for those given by Leonardo's Workshop. And since switching production between two types of units doesn't incur any loss of shields, automatic production upgrades caused by a new tech should be free as well. I also have a suggestion for another game to play, another Civ2 era 4X but quite different: Stars, obviously a space/scifi themed game. It plays on a tile-less board with unevenly spread star systems, which can be colonized. You design ships and space stations from hulls and parts, somewhat similar to SMAC, but with more freedom. (E.g. some hulls can have multiple weapon slots you can equip with different weapons.) There are three mineable resources, and different ship designs require various amounts of each to build, ships need fuel, and fuel spent on travel depends on ship weight including cargo load, and chosen speed. Different engines have different efficiency at each speed. You play as a race, which can be customized if you want, with various strengths and weaknesses that affect the game and playstyle massively. What I'm trying to say, it's got a huge number of knobs to turn, numbers to analyze, and things to try. I dare say it's also an even worse time sink than any Civ game, at least hours just disappeared into nothingness even faster than I remember with Civ, last I played Stars.
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Sep 27, 2015 14:55
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nielsm posted:Two pages back, some were talking about upgrade costs... what was that about? Civ2 doesn't have any kind of upgrades, except for those given by Leonardo's Workshop. And since switching production between two types of units doesn't incur any loss of shields, automatic production upgrades caused by a new tech should be free as well. In Civ games after 3 you can upgrade existing obsolete units with gold (e.g. pikemen into musketmen). I guess they introduced it into Alpha Centauri if it's not in 2.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:13
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Omobono posted:In Civ games after 3 you can upgrade existing obsolete units with gold (e.g. pikemen into musketmen). I guess they introduced it into Alpha Centauri if it's not in 2. Yes, SMAC is where voluntary for-pay upgrades were introduced.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:16
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Thank you for the textbook on "textbook celebration strategy". So many things are coming back to me now.
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Sep 27, 2015 16:02
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Is multiplayer Civ2 at the level Melth is playing viable, or does the lack of balance through things like diplomats buying cities kind of ruin it? I've never done a serious multiplayer game of any civ game myself (just comp stomps with friends), but apparently 4 can be quite deep. I read this writeup of a Civ4 game where they played a turn a day over several months, and the kind of planning and analysis good players go through when they have that much time to think about the perfect moves is rather interesting.
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Sep 27, 2015 17:14
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I personally would love to see you do a let's play of a game that you've NEVER played before and apply your strategic thinking to a game that's new to you. I nominate either civ 4 (vanilla or any combination of expansions) or alpha centauri. It boggles my mind that you haven't played AC. Given your love of diplomats, I would love to see you play as the Morganites and just try to buy your way into dominating Planet.
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Sep 27, 2015 22:45
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-B1sink-nY The party is over, but I’m now in position to win. With almost all of my Aqueducts sold and Adam Smith’s Trading Company covering the costs of nearly everything else, I can now make a tidy profit at 10% Taxes. With a single Entertainer now and then to cover military unhappiness when I send out a ship from a city, I can keep every city content at 10% Luxuries. This is basically the classic, endgame Democracy setup. At this rate- plus the increases I could get by making trade routes and Libraries and making a few more cities and maybe having one more round of celebration- it would be easy to begin work on a spaceship by 1800 or so. But there’s not much point in doing that. In fact, there’s pretty much never a reason to tech even as far as Mobile Warfare (unlocking Tanks). You only need to be 1-2 unit tiers above an enemy to win a war against them handily. 3 or so and you can crush them. Right now my best unit is the Crusader and that’s already better than anything anyone else can field. Within 10 turns I should have a tech advantage so huge that I can run the whole world over. Oh and to address one misconception people might have: whether my Science is 50, 60, 70, or 80% I will be listed as getting a discovery every 2 turns. However, one really does get discoveries faster with higher Science levels. At 80% I get a new tech every turn and a half or so.  So I’m beginning the great tech buildup and construction on another wonder or two. Meanwhile I’ve finally just about cleared the pesky jungle occupying the last good city spot on the Persian peninsula. At this point I started looking around the map for which enemy cities to seize first. I want to be pretty fast, so I need to be ready to attack multiple civilizations and continents in multiple sites at once. With any serious enemy civilization, there will be some easy cities and some hard cities to take. Once you’ve got the easy cities on a given continent, the enemy is usually crippled and it’s relatively simple to crank out some land units from the captured cities to take the rest. What makes a city easy to take? Well no City Walls, not being on strong defensive terrain, being next to or very near the coast, and small size often helps too. The most important thing is for it too have strong defensive terrain next to it. The best strongest units in Civ 2 are generally ones like Catapults, Cannons, Artillery, etc. that have 1 move and therefore must start off next to the city to attack it. You’ll need a big stack of them to take most cities, but they all have 1 defense and therefore can be effortlessly wiped out en masse as they approach. The solution is to find a strong defensive terrain tile next to the enemy city, park a single unit with actual good defense on that, fortify, and THEN pile in your giant attacking force once you know it’s safe. The marked space near Corinth is just perfect. It’s near the ocean, so I can unload troops directly into it. And it’s a Mountain, so it gives an insurmountable defensive bonus. Because of those terrain features and the lack of City Walls, Corinth is an easy target.  This area isn’t as great since it’s only a Hill and the city has City Walls, but it's still good.  I haven’t found any coastal Sioux cities yet, so I’ll need to keep exploring their beaches and also start a push into their interior by the land routes. That starts here with seizing Japan. Kyoto and Satsuma both have hills nearby that will make them vulnerable. However, Kyoto has a fairly hard outer ring of defenders I’d need to break through first.  So I’ve picked my targets. But I’m not actually at war with either Japan or Greece. As a Democracy, I lack the 2 best tools for starting wars (demanding tribute for my patience and just breaking the darned treaty and attacking).  When you play as a Democracy, your own senate is your greatest enemy and you must be ruthless and clever in dealing with them to play effectively. Right now the best move is to overthrow my own government. It’s right before an OEDO turn, so I should be able to change it right back almost immediately.  Now that I’m an Anarchy, I can phone up the Japanese…  And demand tribute for my patience. Either they’ll cave in and give me money or they’ll defy me and probably go to war. Both are wins for me. And if they either give me the money or refuse but don’t start a war immediately, their attitude toward me will drop enough that a few more demands like this should make them declare war. Failing that I’ll just break the treaty right before switching back to Democracy.  Cha-ching!  Now it’s the Greeks’ turn.  Uh… looks like they had the same idea.  Darned right.  Alright, my turn.  Alexander here has been a crazy warmonger with a hair-trigger temper all game. It’s finally about to come back to bite him.  I’m already at war with the Sioux but there’s no harm in calling them and demanding money anyway. They might just pay up.  At least these guys know how rich I am. It was insulting what a paltry sum the Greeks asked for.  We’re already AT war! Well I didn’t get a chance to demand tribute, but no harm done.  So next turn I can choose my government freely. And I can change it any number of times I want without penalty. Therefore I can go Despotism or Monarchy for a few seconds in order to demand tribute again and then can switch to Democracy.  Alright, my plan worked perfectly. I even got some cash besides starting the wars I needed. Now I can switch back to Democracy and there was basically no penalty.  My caravel valorously slaughters a whole stack of helpless Sioux diplomats.  I don’t want to deal with trying to kill this guy in his fortress on a River. He’s probably a veteran too and I don’t have any good units here yet. Note though that my Legions did arrive exactly on time. I’m pretty good at estimating whether I’m 20 or 30 turns from being ready to go to war.  There’s not much else for Diplomats to do since I’m not going to buy any cities, so I had him do industrial sabotage. That either negates all shields toward the current thing the city is building or destroys a city improvement at random. Either way the Diplomat is consumed.  My war preparations are mostly complete. I have a Caravel waiting in Jaromir Ovechkin and I’ve been funneling in military units to load into it. Now I’ve got 3, a full cargo bay.  The first setback is running into a Trireme on the way, but it’s easily dispatched.  The second setback is that a Pikeman is now standing on the hill I wanted. I settle for dumping my Knight and first Crusader on this Forest instead. It’s almost as good and is a bit safer since it’s not right next to the city anyway. Most likely the Greeks will pull the Pikeman back and I can then fortify on the Hill.  I’m back to Democracy, so In Omni Paratus is unhappy that I’m sending out multiple military units to take Satsuma. A few Entertainers for a couple of turns will keep a lid on the problem. When you really get going and have all the techs you want and a bunch of military units from every city running around, just crank up the Luxury rate a bit and you’ll be good to go.  The science advisor gives amazingly awful advice. First of all, Gunpowder is a game-changer. I want it 10 turns ago. Second, Astronomy is worthless. The Sioux already even built Copernicus’s Observatory already. Third, the Sioux have had it forever and are allies with the Greeks and Japanese who could discover the primitive tech on their own or trade for it at any time. It’s weird that I don’t already have it courtesy of the Great Library.  I’m moving in around Kyoto. When there is no one good terrain spot to protect your troops while you set up- or when you think the enemy has a single, very strong attacker in their city that you could still lose your whole stack to- it’s often best to instead pile 1 or more offensive troops into every available tile nearby that gives any kind of defense bonus. That way he can kill just 1 of them, and then you can attack on your turn and hopefully wipe him out. Satsuma should be easier to take. For one thing it’s not on a River. For another, I have a Catapult in the area. My Phalanx should be free to safely fortify on the Hill this turn, then the Catapult can move in and start bombarding.  As expected, the AI compulsion to move all units has given me free access to this Hill I wanted. If he’d just fortified there I would have had a hard time dislodging him due to Pikemen being great against Knights and Crusaders + fortify bonus + Hill bonus.  Alright, I’ve got Gunpowder! Now I have some very nice war tech choices. Leadership will unlock Dragoons, a slightly more advanced sort of cavalry than Crusaders. Metallurgy will give me Cannons to replace Catapults. The upgrade to Cannon is a bigger one- and I think I’m going to need all the firepower available- so I’ll go with that first.  Here’s the last one of the 7 hills of Rome.  And in 1650 the war to end all wars begins. My units are in position on 4 fronts and both the Japanese and the Greeks are about to fortify themselves dangerously (I really do NOT want that Legion getting into Kyoto).  Nice. He might have stood a chance if that Legion had attacked my Phalanx straight off instead of letting me move in and bombard it on the defensive.  And I sacked Kyoto! It cost me a Legion since the defenders were pretty tough, but I did manage to take it just barely intact. You’ll note that even when taking the capital of a side with a big treasury and only 1 other city, I still don’t get much money.  The Japanese Legion was a Kyoto unit, so he’s now disbanded and I’ve got total control of the area. Unfortunately, this is emissary is very bad news. The AI loves to make peace every time you take one of their cities and the Senate always stupidly goes along with it. Now granted the Japanese can be counted on to treacherously sneak attack and break the treaty within a turn or two, but it still slows me down a lot to need to wait for them to do that every single time I take a city. Particularly since if the Senate agrees to a peace treaty, all my units carefully set up around Satsuma will be sent home and have to be set up again.  This is a terrible deal. I gain nothing from it. I am 1 turn from wiping these guys out as long as I don’t have to withdraw my troops.  Darn it, guys!  These people don’t know the meaning of the word “secret”. So everyone is now in an alliance against me… but they’re all still totally willing to make separate peaces. This is the most botched anti-player teamup I’ve ever seen.  More war techs.  Well it’s still war on the Greek front and I’ve hauled in enough veteran Catapults (9 Attack) and Crusaders (7.5) that I should be able to flatten any units he has in there. The best he could possibly have would have 9 Defense if it was a veteran. More likely he’s got 6 or so on 2-3 non-veteran defenders.  Also, I was able to seize Corinth from my perch with only 2 units. In retrospect it was stupid to attack that city first because…  No! It’s still MY turn! You can’t interrupt me with peace talks during MY turn just before I take your capital too!   Ugh.  This is the breaking point. It was not logistically easy to get that giant pile of troops transported across the ocean and safely ensconced in attack range. If the Senate makes me sign this, I WILL collapse my government into Anarchy rather than obey the treaty.  I wouldn’t do it for 100,000; I have infinite money already and I’m 1 turn from seizing their capital…  Phew. Alright, the senate get to live for today.  Uh… no? That was the whole point of rejecting your treaty.  Ok, here’s another big military tech. This one comes right on the heels of Gunpowder, which unlocked Musketeers, and now replaces them with Riflemen. Riflemen are your only primary infantry unit for the whole rest of the game for some reason. You get lots of other specialty infantry, but the generic Rifleman will still be the "main" one 1000 years from now, even though cavalry and artillery units still have 2-3 replacements left each.  Alright, so the situation is bad. The Greeks are about to pull a whole column of tough units up into the City Walls and there’s a ceasefire. Meanwhile, I’m about to have to withdraw my troops from Satsuma according to the treaty. Well first things first, I’ll finally get an embassy with these guys.  I’ve been working on the Statue of Liberty, a very underrated wonder, and now speed-build it.  So at the end of my turn either the government will collapse if I try to disobey the treaty or my troops will be sent home. And, as I mentioned, things are about to get much more problematic on the Greek front too.  Time to march in my new Riflemen and shoot the whole Senate because they’re clearly conspiring with the enemy.  So I broke the ceasefire and began attacking. All is going smoothly, as expected.  Ha! Got their capital. It had a wonder in it, so now the wonder belongs to me.  I’ll sell off their junk improvements for free money. Since I have Sun Tzu’s War Academy I have very little use for Barracks.  Ooh, let’s see what the guy who just lost his capital has to say.  Treacherous? I’m not the one who murdered a Diplomat during first contact and signs secret alliances.  What? No, you don’t get to make threats; I’m the one winning the war!  Guess I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing.  And I’ll break this peace treaty too.  Breaking 2 treaties drops my reputation from spotless down to despicable. And that can never be repaired. This is why it’s so important to not break treaties lightly in the early game. Do it once, and no one will ever like you or give you easy tribute or anything ever again. At this point I finally have more to gain from treachery than honesty, courtesy of my Senate’s wacky hijinks.  The Statue of Liberty is great and severely underrated. It unlocks with Democracy and has 2 effects: first of all, it lets the player choose any government. Even ones I haven’t discovered like Fundamentalism and Communism. Since both of those are several tech levels higher than Democracy, this is the earliest available way to get either of those governments. It’s also the only way to get Communism without shooting yourself in the foot with the eternal unhappiness penalty that comes from just unlocking Communism. Not that the government is ever worth using anyway. The other, even better effect is that you can more or less freely switch your governments. Every turn counts like an OEDO year for you, so if you have a revolution at the end of the turn then you suffer Anarchy for 10 seconds and can then switch. This is perfect for Democracies. Just collapse your government as often as you like breaking peace treaties and whatnot and then get Democracy right back. It does hurt a little bit, but it’s much better than having to go along with the mad dictates of the Senate or only time your defiance for OEDO turns or facing 1-4 turns of crippling Anarchy every time.  The Corinth crew is transported to a similarly good location outside Delphi.  And Satsuma is destroyed.  Another civilization wiped out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p13yZAjhU0M  So I started pushing through in hopes of finding the Sioux and found them under circumstances I don’t like.  At long last I’ve annihilated an enemy civ but taken their capital intact. I finally have a suitable ruin to name Carthage as requested!  Darn. The attack on Delphi went badly. They turned out to have 2 Catapults in the city, so my Knight was wiped out before it could fortify. Now my Crusader is kind of stranded, but I think I’ll stay here and do as much damage as I can.  … what? No. Alright, the rules just got broken there. See, in a Democracy your government collapses into Anarchy if you ever leave civil disorder untreated in a city for 1 whole turn. So you get the civil disorder message and you must then fix things before you press “enter” to end your turn. If you don’t, you get Anarchy. In this case, this city somehow collapsed my government immediately. It was never in civil disorder prior to this. In fact, I had JUST checked the entire list of cities in the attitude adviser to make sure absolutely none of them were in civil disorder before ending my turn. One had been, and I’d fixed it. This is cheating. Or a bug. At least I have the Statue of Liberty to fix things.  I had to make a brief retreat, but fighting continues as I try to lure the Catapults into areas where I can kill them safely.  Doesn’t really change anything.  Right. I’ve had enough of this Democracy thing. I have all the techs I need to wreck the enemy and while I could easily circumvent my senate, I do NOT want to put up with random Anarchy-induced starvation when my government collapses without cause.  So here’s the new initial setup. It’s actually much better than this, but half my cities are still considered in disorder till next turn and thus their gold and science contributions aren't being counted.  In Athens, I ordered my Catapults to sentry so they’d notify me when they’re healed. I forgot I did that though and moved out my Caravel, so the Catapults went with it. They really should have made a separate load command from the sentry one.  Making progress. I got my Archer into their Mountain fort, which makes it one of the toughest units in the whole world right now, injured or not.  And I choose my next tech. This is the big one militarily. It unlocks the best cavalry unit in the game (pre-tanks) and the best all-around infantry ever. Furthermore, it is the prereq for Amphibious Warfare (which gives the unique Marine unit) and Machine Tools (which gives the ultimate artillery for a long time) and for Mobile Warfare (which gives Tanks).  As you can see, the real picture is a lot rosier now that I don’t have half my cities in disorder. My Science rate is still respectable overall since I don’t have to spend any of the economy on Luxuries or anything. And I can make vast amounts of money with a low Tax rate (though a higher Tax rate doesn’t bring in much more cash).  Finally.  Ugh, more barbarians right in the middle of a bunch of my cities. Oh well, at least I have some military units around now. I can stop them pretty easily.  So although I’ve unlocked better units, I’m still using the primitive ones. One of the biggest problems with high-tech wars in this game is that you have to use obsolete units for dozens of turns before the new ones arrive. Or you can build Leonardo’s Workshop. I’m working on that wonder right now.  And it’s finished.  So this wonder is supposed to immediately replace all obsolete units with the higher-tech versions I’ve unlocked. Thus all my Phalanxes, Archers, Legions, Musketeers, etc. should now become Riflemen. All my Horsemen, Crusaders, and Knights should become Dragoons. Actually it’s kind of buggy though and it may leave you with only some units upgraded until you develop another tech.  Now unlocking Musketeers is a gigantic game-changer. Up until Musketeers, every defensive unit in the game has at most 2 Defense. There are attackers with up to 6 Attack, or more. The Musketeer not only has 3 Defense, but it also has 20 Hitpoints instead of 10. So it’s actually close to 3 times tougher than all previous defensive units. This puts an immediate, hard end to the era of easy Crusader conquests. Never, ever let the enemy get this tech if you’re going for an early win. Riflemen have 1 more Defense and the same Hitpoints, so they’re marginally tougher but not revolutionary.  With these guys in my cities, I should be impervious to any weapons anyone else has.  This is just a selection of all the upgrades. I also get my Triremes turned into Caravels and whatnot.  But as you can see, I still have some Musketeers left. All Musketeers were converted to Riflemen and THEN my Pikemen were converted into Musketeers. This is a significant screwup on the part of the designers, particularly since it’s so easily noticed and causes such major penalties for such a noticeably long time.  Over here that’s kind of a problem. These should all be Riflemen, which would be a much needed upgrade in their attack stat. It’s less of a problem than finding a Diplomat here. I’m not a Democracy anymore, so my units aren’t bribe-proof. My only defense is that my units probably cost truckloads of money that the enemy doesn’t have.  I think this is the biggest remaining Greek city and I’m moving in. Notice that their sloppily and randomly built Roads and fortresses help me, not them. This is one of many reasons I never really build fortresses. They’re almost always much more useful for enemies in your territory than for you; you should just build City Walls.  This is going to go nowhere.   This is a pittance. I’ve racked up thousands and thousands of gold by now.  We’re already at war, man. I’ve killed dozens of your units.  Still no upgrades here. I’ll have to hope I finally get them when I unlock Tactics in a turn or two.  I did have a city by this name before, but it didn’t really fit, so I changed it. Having a city in Greek turf built by Greek city-produced settlers seems like a more reasonable place for a Byzantium. Anyway, once again I’ve set up a tough defensive unit (the Musketeer) in good terrain by an enemy city. Now I’ll move in my giant stack of attack units onto the Musketeer's tile and let him defend them as they get ready to attack.  I’m still having trouble bringing the fight to the Sioux. Those Mountains between Japan and Sioux territory are a huge slog to get through. I’ll start dropping random scouts around their continent to find where their cities are.  The uber stack was defended successfully.  Finally! My Musketeers are upgraded too. Cavalry are actually strictly better than Cannons at this point, so I’m going to switch entirely to building them. Alpine Troops are strictly better than Riflemen, so I’m going to build those instead too.  The view hidden terrain button is VERY handy. It’s very hard to tell what kind of terrain is under some enemy cities, but it makes a very big difference for whether you can safely attack them or not. This one turns out to be nice and vulnerable.  So a massive battle begins, but it’s totally one-sided.  Whee!  And I charged through and wrecked everything else too. Once again, his forts will help me crush his next city.  But that’s a battle for another time. I’ve made good progress. I should be able to run over the Greeks shortly. The Sioux will be a bigger challenge though. They have at least 13 cities, some of them very large, and all of them in unknown territory. Beating them efficiently will be tricky. Melth fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Nov 24, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 23:41
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I know you said there's never any benefit in refusing to see enemy emissaries, but couldn't that let you keep your wars going without the Senate ending them prematurely? Just send 'em away. Unless the Senate can override that, too, and force an audience...
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Sep 28, 2015 02:38
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The senate will "meet behind your back" and force a treaty. If you test with saving and reloading, you'll find that if granting an audience will result in a forced treaty, sending the emissaries away will always do the same anyways. So it's better off to meet and see if you can extort them or something. Also if you're warmongering, there's a chance that meeting will only net you a cease fire and not a full peace treaty, which will enables you to return to war faster, and also makes it easier to provoke them into war (blockading their units, extortion, etc) which protects your reputation. I may be wrong but I believe when the senate meets behind your back, it always defaults to peace treaty.
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Sep 28, 2015 03:05
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EggsAisle posted:I know you said there's never any benefit in refusing to see enemy emissaries, but couldn't that let you keep your wars going without the Senate ending them prematurely? Just send 'em away. Unless the Senate can override that, too, and force an audience... That actually worked in Civ 1 and was a standard strategy I used. As a Democracy you could start and war and then refuse to talk to them again. Civ 2 added the senate going behind your back to prevent people from abusing Democracy. The attempt in Civ 2 was to also remove the polar extreme governments. In Civ 1 the best choice for government was either despotism or democracy depending on what you were doing.
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Sep 28, 2015 05:49
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Carbolic Smokeball posted:The senate will "meet behind your back" and force a treaty. If you test with saving and reloading, you'll find that if granting an audience will result in a forced treaty, sending the emissaries away will always do the same anyways. So it's better off to meet and see if you can extort them or something. Exactly correct. If you try to refuse to see them, the Senate will just automatically create a peace treaty. If you agree to see them, you may be able to keep it to a ceasefire and you might also be able to get some gold.
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Sep 28, 2015 08:36
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Communism gives unhappiness when it gets researched? That's dumb.
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Sep 28, 2015 09:03
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Communism gives unhappiness when it gets researched? That's dumb. It makes Cathedrals less effective at damming unhappiness. I think the intention with that, and also wonder-expiry, is that the effect happens as soon as anyone in the world researches that tech. So if your enemy researches Communism it would also cause your cathedrals to worsen, and you inventing Railroad would cause their Hanging Gardens to stop working. At least that's what I've always read the manual like, but it seems that isn't actually the case.
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Sep 28, 2015 09:08
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Communism gives unhappiness when it gets researched? That's dumb. nielsm posted:It makes Cathedrals less effective at damming unhappiness. And since Michaelangelo's Chapel, the critical wonder you should always have, counts as a Cathedral in every city, this is the same as +1 unhappiness in every city. Forever. There are basically no other techs in the game which directly hurt you when you learn them. Sure, some of them might expire a wonder if you have it, but Communism just hurts you and offers no real benefit (other than a terrible government). Edit: Just won the game. I'll post the final update in a day or two. Edit edit: Holy cow, the starting position for the win by 1500 AD attempt is even more amazing than it looked. I can hardly wait to see how well I can do in that game. Melth fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 10:33
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This has been a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable read so far. I started playing Civ in my mid teens and never really stopped, through every version and all the spinoffs. Was even playing a co-op game of Civ V yesterday with my wife, as she's recently been acquiring a taste for world conquest. Looking forward to the denouement.
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Sep 28, 2015 15:44
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It's weird when you compare to Civ 1 Communism. Nothing special except it evened out corruption empire-wide. Republics had reduced, Democracy had none. Why would you add a negative?
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Sep 28, 2015 18:23
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You start to wonder about the Senators that keep going behind their president's back to sign treaties after what happened to all the other Senators who did that. "The last time the Senate did this a bunch of armed men stormed the building and killed everyone! Hah, bet it's fine this time." *gunfire*
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Sep 28, 2015 18:32
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This LP prompted me to re-install CiV and bump up the difficulty. It's... not as hard as I remembered. Internal trade routes are pretty nuts in that one though, and the AI doesn't seem to abuse them much.
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Sep 29, 2015 00:13
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Marathoned the LP today, really enjoyed it. Can't wait to see your 1500AD run, but would love to see you go into a newer 4X blind and attempt to break it over your knee. I suggest Endless Legend or Age of Wonders 3. Actually AoW3 might be especially interesting if you haven't looked at it yet as modding has just opened up, there are plans for one final balance patch for some time, and a developer is a regular forums poster. Patiently waiting for the next update!
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Sep 29, 2015 03:45
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While we're suggesting games for you to do blind, I'd like to suggest Master of Orion 2. It's pretty old, but it has a lot of decision points, and I'd love to see the decisions you make.
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Sep 29, 2015 04:16
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I humbly request Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Distant Worlds, or Endless Legend... And also volunteer as a co-commentator if you'll have me, particularly for the Advance Wars or Fire Emblem series.
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Sep 29, 2015 04:21
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cheetah7071 posted:While we're suggesting games for you to do blind, I'd like to suggest Master of Orion 2. It's pretty old, but it has a lot of decision points, and I'd love to see the decisions you make. I'm not necessarily saying no to the idea of a blind LP of a 4X game, but I do think I'm a bit leery of doing blind LPs. My Binding Blade LP was a miserable grind to write because I hated the game. I'd kind of let myself get talked into something I was pretty sure was a bad idea and which turned out to be a bad idea. That negatively impacted the quality of my writing. Now granted, any game people are actually recommending has got to be a lot better than FE6, but still. I haven't decided on what to do after this. I'd like to try my hand at video LPs, but I don't really have the technical know-how and haven't been able to figure out how to do it well from the tech support fort page and experimenting. If someone could help me figure out how to do that competently, it would open my options considerably. I'd really love to do a WC3 LP. That's one of the best games ever made if you ask me and I know tons and tons of great stuff the campaign, ladder, and loads of custom maps and custom campaigns. I've even made a few interesting ones. Failing that, I might do either an Advance Wars 2 all 300-point S rank run or an Advance Wars: Days of Ruin S-Rank run or make up my own max-ranking goals for Fire Emblem: the Sacred Stones and try that.
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Sep 29, 2015 04:32
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Bloodly posted:It's weird when you compare to Civ 1 Communism. Nothing special except it evened out corruption empire-wide. Republics had reduced, Democracy had none. The falloff from cathedrals makes sense from a historical standpoint. In the modern age religion is less of a unifying factor. Later Civs had similar drop offs but they were better compensated for. All you can do in this game is curse Nietzsche for killing God. At lower difficulty levels losing the Cathedral is not a big deal. On the highest levels where your people are all anarchists out to destroy your civilization it is devastating. I am guessing they put the change in without fully considering the consequences and figured the invention of communism is about the time religious fervor started to die off, at least as an adjunct to loyalty and patriotism to your government. Republics and Democracies in Civ 1 found it almost impossible to keep the enemy out if there were any on the same continent. The enemy would march to your closest city and fortify right next to it. As a Republic or Democracy having any army units outside the city caused severe happiness penalties so you could not form a wall of units to keep them out. The multiplayer version of Civilization released later gave the diplomatic option to ask the AI to honor the peace treaty and withdraw. Half the time they would declare war and the other half their troops were warped back to their cities and then promptly drove right back up and fortified around your city again. I remember teenage me nuking anyone who sent their troops to surround my city out of pure adolescent petulance.
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Sep 29, 2015 04:33
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Melth posted:I'm not necessarily saying no to the idea of a blind LP of a 4X game, but I do think I'm a bit leery of doing blind LPs. Hmm. Well, you could record your first playthrough, and then either turn it into an LP if you had fun, or bin it if you didn't. MOO2 is really good, and the tactical combat parts add a wrinkle to the macro game. Master of Magic is great too, but like with a lot of games, there's never been a fan patch that didn't fix the remaining bugs that didn't also ruin other parts of the game the modder didn't like.  I'd be willing to help walk you through the basics of recording and editing sometime (at least if you're planning on using something like Vegas or Premiere; don't have any experience with the command-line stuff). Since neither of us has Plat you could e-mail "broopgamers" at Gmail (my brother's and my shared account for YouTube and Twitch and all that) and I can e-mail you from there. Played a ton of WC3 back in the early Oughts too, ended up with a pretty similar record despite opposite strengths (I was solid at micro but terrible at multitasking, heh), so that's definitely an LP I'd watch.
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Sep 29, 2015 05:03
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This has been pretty entertaining. A Civ 4 run would be nifty, but so would Sacred Stones.
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Sep 29, 2015 05:06
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TravelLog posted:I humbly request Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Distant Worlds, or Endless Legend... Yeah, I was just thinking about Days of Ruin or AW2 or Sacred Stones. I'm really passionate about Days of Ruin in particular. I think I'd say that's the second-best overall handheld title I ever played (after Fire Emblem 7 of course). The designers courageously took a whole bunch of risks with it, majorly changing a lot of the basic gameplay mechanics as well as the fundamental balance of things. Plus they got rid of all the old characters and the old world and the old cartoonishness even. And the result was an epic success on all fronts. A story that wasn't just acceptable but masterfully well-told in a series that had had no plots or dull, repetitive excuse plots. Characters you could actually get attached to in a series where characters had been sets of stats with icons. Gameplay that was much more tactical in many ways and produced a much more interesting metagame in both singleplayer and multiplayer. Just great. On the other hand, it does have some flaws I could talk about- one of the biggest being a lack of CO variety. Oh and being way too easy with no hard campaign. Plus removing a lot of good modes and features. Advance Wars 2 was sort of the opposite. They completely stripped out even the rudimentary story and character arcs of the previous game and just made things totally episodic and all about the gameplay. But wow did they make a great game. That's by far the best campaign in the series in terms of challenge level for both new and experienced players and the hard campaign is also the best done one. DS's was such a catastrophic failure that it was easier than the normal one, and AW1 went too far and became outright pure luck on many missions. Oh and it was definitely the height of CO interestingness if you ask me. COs were actually different from one another, with stuff like Drake having +Def and +Move on ships instead of every single CO just having a generic attack bonus and attack minus on some unit categories. I've had a lot of fun playing for perfect 300 S-rank runs in both campaigns in that game, plus the war room. And then there's Fire Emblem. I've heard that (for reasons I'm unaware of) it's really hard to do LPs of 3DS games, so maybe Awakening isn't feasible. That's unfortunate because I'd really like to talk about it and how to approach a lunatic/lunatic+ no grinding, no children, no assorted bonus items or other such nonsense run. So many aspects of that game are great, and so many are just horrible. Unlike FE6 though, it's typically awful in a way that's fun to talk about. The other one I'm really considering is Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, to finish the GBA trio. Sacred Stones was really an important game for me since I'd fallen head over heels for FE7 and could hardly imagine how wonderful Sacred Stones would be. And then it wasn't. But it's definitely a heck of a lot better than most people say. Probably the second-best story in the series imo. Second-best characters too. Fun postgame content. And a great soundtrack of course. But then the color scheme is hideous for no reason and it's way too easy. I'm intrigued by the idea of a co-commentator and think it could be cool to have one, though I'm concerned that it might not mesh with my massively wordy style and tendency to explain absolutely everything in the first place. What sort of commentary did you have in mind? One thing that strikes me as possibly cool to have would be a second opinion when I start talking about games as art and such, which I'd go back to doing a lot if I did DoR or Sacred Stones. Or Awakening, but in a totally different way. Wayne posted:
Thanks, I'll send you an e-mail. I'm so inept that I don't even know what Vegas and Premiere are though.
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Sep 29, 2015 05:12
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Melth posted:And then there's Fire Emblem. I've heard that (for reasons I'm unaware of) it's really hard to do LPs of 3DS games, so maybe Awakening isn't feasible. That's unfortunate because I'd really like to talk about it and how to approach a lunatic/lunatic+ no grinding, no children, no assorted bonus items or other such nonsense run. So many aspects of that game are great, and so many are just horrible. Unlike FE6 though, it's typically awful in a way that's fun to talk about. There was a great Awakening LP a year or two ago that went through the campaign and about half the DLC before the OP disappeared, so it definitely can be done.
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Sep 29, 2015 05:16
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Melth posted:I'm intrigued by the idea of a co-commentator and think it could be cool to have one, though I'm concerned that it might not mesh with my massively wordy style and tendency to explain absolutely everything in the first place. What sort of commentary did you have in mind? One thing that strikes me as possibly cool to have would be a second opinion when I start talking about games as art and such, which I'd go back to doing a lot if I did DoR or Sacred Stones. Or Awakening, but in a totally different way. Hey, I'd be down for co-commentating as well. As you may know, I'm also doing a Max Rank run of a Fire Emblem game, so, I might be able to provide some good commentary I'm thinking.
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Sep 29, 2015 07:04
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I'd love to see you round out the trio with Sacred Stones. (Also FE4/5 just to see your thoughts on the mechanics there.)
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Sep 29, 2015 08:17
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CountFosco posted:I personally would love to see you do a let's play of a game that you've NEVER played before and apply your strategic thinking to a game that's new to you. I nominate either civ 4 (vanilla or any combination of expansions) or alpha centauri. It boggles my mind that you haven't played AC. Given your love of diplomats, I would love to see you play as the Morganites and just try to buy your way into dominating Planet. Civ 4 Fall from Heaven. No faqs, no nothing.
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Sep 29, 2015 08:48
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Melth posted:I'm not necessarily saying no to the idea of a blind LP of a 4X game, but I do think I'm a bit leery of doing blind LPs. My Binding Blade LP was a miserable grind to write because I hated the game. I'd kind of let myself get talked into something I was pretty sure was a bad idea and which turned out to be a bad idea. That negatively impacted the quality of my writing. Now granted, any game people are actually recommending has got to be a lot better than FE6, but still. yesssssssss I would also totally be down for more of your story critique. Still, just post in here if/when you start up a new LP because I'd love to see anything you produce.
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Sep 29, 2015 10:43
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Cat Army 
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sebmojo posted:Civ 4 Fall from Heaven. No faqs, no nothing. Do you mean the Fall From Heaven that comes with Beyond the Sword because I don't remember there being much to that. Or Fall From Heaven 2? There was an LP of the scenarios on that the author stopped for a summer break......11 months ago. Come to think of it, FFH1 is the only game of civ I've played to completion in the past decade that wasn't on the lowest difficulty, cheating like a motherfucker, or playing the ridiculously broken Infernals on deity in FFH2. I should really get the lead out.
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Sep 29, 2015 10:45
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BREAKING NEWS: I spent a while experimenting and checking things to figure out some weird results I got from city trade in my last few turns and I've just discovered some MAJOR weirdness with the mechanics of Fundamentalism. The game lied to us in a big way and omitted some really important info. Maybe this stuff is already known, but I can't find any mention of it anywhere. It'll all be in the next update. Melth fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 11:14
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Melth posted:Yeah, I was just thinking about Days of Ruin or AW2 or Sacred Stones. My commentary would be more in the way of "the layman's view" insofar as strategy is concerned, then more bantery commentary about level, unit, and character design along with an analysis of the story. If you give me your email, I'll get you the platinum upgrade and we can discuss it over message. Call it a thanks for how much I've enjoyed your LPs. I love all of the games you mentioned. Sacred Stones has a special place in my heart as the first Fire Emblem game I played where I was old enough to actually strategize, and Days of Ruin was a wonderful game in its own right that had some great design and story changes but that I think suffered from being such a drastic departure from previous AW games that it should almost have been an independent game. It definitely took way too long to be able to use COs in battle though. TravelLog fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 12:27
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Melth posted:Advance Wars 2 was sort of the opposite. They completely stripped out even the rudimentary story and character arcs of the previous game and just made things totally episodic and all about the gameplay. But wow did they make a great game. That's by far the best campaign in the series in terms of challenge level for both new and experienced players and the hard campaign is also the best done one. DS's was such a catastrophic failure that it was easier than the normal one, and AW1 went too far and became outright pure luck on many missions. Oh and it was definitely the height of CO interestingness if you ask me. COs were actually different from one another, with stuff like Drake having +Def and +Move on ships instead of every single CO just having a generic attack bonus and attack minus on some unit categories. And yeah, my favourite campaign mechanically, too (mostly because I enjoy being given bases to produce my own armies, which makes up a good chunk of 2).
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Sep 29, 2015 12:50
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TravelLog posted:
But what an AWESOME moment it was when it finally came! That section was one of the best parts in the whole story. TravelLog posted:
MattHartman42@gmail.com Paul.Power posted:Yeah, as odd as it was that they dropped a lot of the character development from AW1, I still thought that the episodic format worked well and gave us some nice character moments. Besides, I'll always like AW2's story for being the only story of the three Wars World games to acknowledge the troops and consider their welfare. Yeah AW 2 was definitely the most serious one in the series before DoR despite having no story since they spent a lot of time talking about the troops and morale and beating themselves up over having casualties and such. Eagle's predeployed air battle against Hawke was the height of that of course, but even people like Colin got into it. Sonja's battle vs Lash also really critiqued the whole war as a game or a sport attitude most of the COs displayed in the other games. And of course if you compare the ending of AW2 with DS Hawke just kills Sturm in cold blood in AW2 for petty revenge, but in DS you outright CAN'T choose to kill Von Bolt when doing so is actually important and even Hawke won't really do it. One of the worst parts of AW1 in my opinion was how rarely you could actually produce troops. Predeployed/mostly predeployed maps can be great as special puzzles now and then, but they're usually too easy/boring. Only 2 had many good ones. Melth fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 13:47
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The thing is, Alpha Centauri wouldn't be quite a "blind" run as so much of it is based off of civ 2, but different. It'd be interesting to see how you respond to the differences.
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Sep 29, 2015 13:48
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I'd like an LP of Days of Ruin in particular, because I've only played the European version, and the script for Dark Conflict is... different.
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Sep 29, 2015 14:01
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Melth posted:Done and done. Enjoy! Kajeesus posted:I'd like an LP of Days of Ruin in particular, because I've only played the European version, and the script for Dark Conflict is... different. This is one of those things that was baffling then and is baffling now. I mean, it's certainly entertaining, but the changes seem so strange and all over the place.
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Sep 29, 2015 14:14
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