Your method of winning-´´

[BloodCrusader]

What is your method? Early conquest? Economical warfare? Blitzkrieg perhaps? Isolate and AC? Expansionist + science?

If you have some longer ideas or perhaps a timeline, send it to address: Pantomimehorse@freemail.kayd.com

I will add it to my new civ2 homepage! (It's nothing special yet, still under construction)


home.talkcity.com/HeadBangersHwy/rulerofsword/page2.html

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[Sínclair]

I prefer most the economic conquest. I build a lot of cities, then when I get espionage I turn the taxes high, change to fund. or comm. and bribe 'em all!

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I agree with Sinclair.

expansionist to death during the first part of the game, no big wars to stop my expansionism.
when i raech democracy, i switch and start working on a 'great wall'.
building fortresses with one or two musketeers and one cannon. i use crusaders/dragoons to capture any city inside 'my' territory
later in the game, as soon as i get cavalry, i start massing up forces and attack full scale to my nearest civilization when i get tanks.
if there are overseas civilizations, i pack up plenty of subs with missiles and a big bunch of transports filled with howys and marines.
lately, i've turned bloodlust off to prevent myself of reaching AC.


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Alien Infiltrate

[geofelt]

I am in a bit of a rut. I expand early, by building as many cities as possible. Not ICS type, but cities that can grow to 12. I build temples, mkts, mikes, jsb, and SOL. I switch to fundamentalism and bribe away. It does not take too long to become dominant, and I lose interest in mopping up.

[Steve Clark]

I'm with geofelt 100%. In my limited experience, that is the one strategy that will work everytime. I'm in a rut too, for that reason, which is probably why I will be playing more of the scenarios for awhile. Not good enough to try the OCC yet

[bpayne1]

I build 40 to 50 cities as quick as possible. Then only fight back when I'm attacked. I will nomarly win with my spaceship landing around 1920.
When I play OCC I will land around the same time. Can someone tell me why my science isn't that much better with all thoose extra cities?

[cavebear]

bpayne1 - It's probably because you're not spending so much resource and time building all the needed infrastructure (temples, markets, etc) for all those extra cities.

In fact, I'm kind of wondering why I couldn't do well in a regular game with a sort of "3 OCC" approach...
[This message has been edited by cavebear (edited November 11, 1999).]

[bpayne1]

Cavebear – Thanks for the reply. I’m a science nut when I play. Every city must have at lest 2 trade routes, a library, and a temple before the city gets to size 5. In a normal game I build the Pyramid’s, because I can tell how much time I have before each city will reach size 5. I’ve noticed that when I play an OCC game my city will be producing about 1500 arrows for science later in the game, where a normal game I’ll have around 3 to 4K. But both games will give me a new tech. every two turns. The only difference between the games is OCC is on a small map and I play huge maps on normal games. Can the map size make that much difference? I would also like to know if anyone else can get to AC that much faster on a normal game then OCC.

[valmont]

For one thing, the more cities you build the more your trade is eaten up by corruption. Plus, the more cities you build the more unhappiness you have to worry about.

In OCC neither of these problems is a factor.
The success of the one-city game is paradoxical. I think it has to do with the fact that some things in Civ2 are addressed at the city level, and some are addressed at the national level. Take unhappiness. This is addressed at the city level. But its remedy, the luxury rate, is addressed at the national level.

Consider the effect of Shakespeare's Theatre. In one city, you will never have unhappiness. But the more cities you control, the less benefit you gain from ST. You need to keep all your cities content, so you need some luxuries. But these luxuries are wasted in the ST city.

With science you face a similar paradox. Let's say the number of flasks required to reach your next advance is 1500. Your science city can easily produce 500 flasks, giving you 3 turns to reach the advance. In order to reach the advance faster, the total flasks produced by all your other cities would have to equal 250.

Note that adjustments to the science rate will have a dramatic effect on the flask output of your science city, but not so much on your other cities. It will take plenty of fussing to get that 500/250 balance. This is a micromanagement nightmare! With only one city, you can make small adjustments by adding or subtracting Einsteins. Try doing that 40 times in one turn, for a few hundred turns! Ay ay ay!

[Sten Sture]

bpayne1 - there is a thread from Casear the Great titled "A list of Data" where the number of beakers for different map sizes was discussed. Size matters!

[bpayne1]

By reading the replies so far, I think I can safely assume that I’m not the only one that is perplexed by the fact I can do almost as well with one city as I can with 30. Now if I could only manage that one city as well as Paul does.

[geofelt]

In Occ, the science wonders multiply science many times, compared to the other cities. Normally, you need to allocate some % for happiness, perhaps 20% which is not needed with shakespeares. When you get tribute, the whole sum can be spent on one city, vs many normally. For one city, you can afford to micromanage pollution with two settlers, but normally we divert resources to hoovers and mass transit.

[Comrade Dan]

Is this a thread about luxuries and unhappiness or about favourite strategies?

For me, howitzers and nukes all the way. Those capitilist American bastards in Washington D.C. will feel the hammer and sickle slash and bash through the U.S.

LONG LIVE THE SOVIETS (and I suppose Cuba as well...)

[Carolus Rex]

Ah, a true comrade!

Don't let people talk about the things they want (or think about). It could be dangerous to the state...

Back on-topic.

I build 10 to 15 cities in regular games against the AI and go for AC as early as possible. Deity, normal map and raging hordes.

Also play OCC, fast and fun. Finally MP. Slow and extremely fun. Strategy? Trying to stay alive!

Carolus

[This message has been edited by Carolus Rex (edited November 12, 1999).]

[Comrade Dan]

To Carolus Rex.

How did you get bold lettering?

Nice to get some recognition for my work.

Another favourite strategy of mine is to have a massive bombing raid on a enemy city. I surround a city's eight tiles ajacent to the city to starve them out, then switch the 'stale' bombers with 'fresh' bombers.

Great fun invading the Nazi Ruhrland as France in the WWII scenario supplied with the game

LONG LIVE THE SOVIETS (and a Europe divided).

[Carolus Rex]

From the Ministry of Truth,

To get bold letters, write ["b"]X[/"b"] where X is the word you want to be in bold style. The " should be left out.

Carolus

[Comrade Dan]

Ah, King Carolus, I see you're a George Orwell fan.

Personally, I prefer Animal Farm myself, but that's probably because I have a soft spot for Stalin. 1984 is still a favourite of mine, though.

LONG LIVE THE SOVIETS

[Caesar the Great]

I have one strategy which I swear by. Kick *** and chew bubble gum. I make sure I don't buy any bubble gum . Trust me it works

[Carolus Rex]

1984 is my favourite, but I like Animal Farm too. Got a great copy of it, a "big book" (don't know the correct english word) with beautiful illustrations!

Carolus

[Sínclair]

Carolus: Did anyone talk about Comrades? A song of the most famous Finnish progressive rock band, Wigwam, just popped in to my mind:

With communism, we rule the world...
And be the most powerful nation in the world...
Comrades, let us conquer!

So before the Civ2 was released, the Wigwam know all ready the winning method!

Coooooommmrrraaaaaaadessss!!!!!!!


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[Matthew]

Another big advantage of OCC is that you can almost always research just about any tech you want when you're low on the power graph, instead of having to research something you either don't need at all or something you don't need yet. My flow chart isn't handy, but there are a few thinfs, like Monotheism, theology, fundamentalism, and Genetic engineering, espionage, and I believe communism and labor union, and perhaps a couple more, that are totally unnecessary for building your space ship, can be bypassed all together. Even at 1 discovery every 2 turns that's another 14 turns. And since the research costs for the last few techs can get so high, being able to skip unnecessary techs can make an even bigger difference.

Another important factor is being able to get a tech you want earlier in the research tree. If you can streamline your research to be able to get the automobile as tech number 60 instead of tech number 70, those other 10 techs can come a whole lot faster.

less animosity from the AI's that usually comes from being lower on the power graph doesn't hurt either.

[johnmcd]

Is your big book of Animal Farm the one illustrated by Ralph Steadman? Its a beaut.

[Carolus Rex]

I can't remember and I'm at the office now, but I'll have a look when I get home.

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

Yup, that's the one!

Carolus