Paging Vel, Pagin Vel...

[Capt Dizle]

I have a couple of things I need definitive answers on.

1. I suspect an increase chance of getting a leader in two cases

A. elimination of a civ with an elite unit attack
B. elimination of any city with an elite unit attack

Of course I think the first case would be more likely. I have gotten a leader twice in circumstance A, twice with B..

2. Captured workers appear to always work at half speed of native workers and cost no support. Others dispute this.

3. Upgrading elite units appear to downgrade them to veteran. Is this an across the board rule.

4. Can a city with a palace be assimilated. Can a city with a forbidden palace be assimilated. Clear tactical impact.

5. Is there a difference in trading with the AI on the different difficulty levels outside of the obvious fact that on harder levels you will have less to trade?

6. How much of your strategy will you have to rewrite with the patch?

[Dis]

I would agree with B

I have never got a leader attacking a city that still had other defenders in it. I got it after defeating the last unit and moving into the city.

so a tip. save your elites for the last defender (your guess is as good as mine how many defenders they have). I soften them up with mobile vets usually and then use my elites.

and both 2 and 3 are correct.

I would say no on #4. esp. with the palace. but I doubt even a city with FP can be assimilated. Not 100% sure though.

not sure on #5

hope my answer helps until Vel decides to quit playing that damned game and post here at regular intervals

[Capt Dizle]

I have to ask this one too.

7. Why in the world do captured wonders not generate culture?

ACK!

[eMarkM]

1) most of my leaders have come on taking over a city w/ elite unit. Ocassionally from attacking unit on open field. Never from defending.

2) I agree, if your industrious your slave labor will work at a "normal" worker rate.

3) Yes

4) I highly doubt a capitol can be absorbed by culture, or it just have to be overwhelming. Have no idea about FP, but also tough I'd imagine.

5) The AI is generally more mean at higher levels, so they drive harder bargains.

6) I'll leave that to Vel, but we'll have to wait to it actually comes out and test them. I don't think too much. Can't IFE is pretty big and we have to see how the changes to culture and corruption really are when the patch is released.

e

[Dis]

also I've been wondering about palace cost affecting strategy. If you have a small empire, your palace will be really cheap (not sure how much though). You won't be able to use it to pre-build wonders. Another smack in the face for those small empire guys. Luckily I like my empires big. 25 to 30 cities. but it could be good for culture capture strategy although I never move palaces around for that.

[Velociryx]

Hiya JT! Just finished playing to 50AD on my "Yahoo!" game, which is gonna make an interesting story, I can already tell it....anyway, was on my way to bed when I saw your post, and I"m glad I stopped in!

As to those questions....

1) Not 100% sure here, but I too, have noticed a greater liklihood. Also seems to be a greater liklihood the closer the battle is....of course, that may all be in my head, and it's just a 12/16% flat chance each time an elite fights, but it certainly seems to be as you described just by observing my own combats with elite troops.

2) Yep....some folks on the Strat. thread did some testing, and you're absolutely right. Whatever speed your workers are, any you capture operate at half speed (GREAT for Industrious Civs, since they'll have a whole wad of "normal speed" workers that require no upkeep costs!)

3) I've noted a "one category" drop anytime I upgrade a unit, stopping at "regular" (that is to say, a regular spearman upgrades to a regular pike, a veteran will upgrade to a regular (tho this seems to be tech-dependent....I HAVE seen mid/late game vets upgrade to vet...very odd...and all my elites upgrade to vet, seemingly regardless of any tech.

4) I've never seen a city with a Palace become assimilated, and I don't believe it to be possible (note that when you do diplomacy and pull down the list of cities, the capitol city for you and the civ you're in communication with does not appear on the pick list). Probably, the same would apply for the city with the FP in it, but I have no information on that either way (but remember that any time you capture a city with a minor wonder in it, it is distroyed, so except for spending WADS of cash on spying, I'm not sure how we could verify that one.... )

5) Seems like the higher the difficulty level, the worse the mood of the AI, and the worse their mood, the stingier they are (an annoyed civ will still trade with you, but you won't get as good a deal as you would from a gracious civ). That, coupled with, as you say, having less to work with in general, seems to be the only real difference (making luxury items heinously more important on Monarch and above.,....one "patch" of 5-6 of a given luxury and you've got all the raw materials you need to keep tech parity!)

6) Not sure yet on how much revision will be needed. I'd not gotten to the point of writing about using fighters yet anyway, and according to Soren, the Coastal Fortresses have been working all along (tho I've never built them since my very first game when I didn't note that they netted me all that much benefit for my per turn upkeep). I suspect tho, that the fundamentals will remain intact. They did away with IFE (which was a footnote to the strat page anyway), but also reduced corruption, so I suspect that'll more or less be a push. Won't be as easy to get your pick of wonders now, since you can't have multiple cities "building the palace"...OTOH, there are a ton of minor wonders that could be divided up similarly to accomplish the same effect, at the price of delaying building your own minor wonders....I can see the nonessential ones getting delayed indefinitely to allow at least two of your cities being able to "pre-build" toward a project.

But I can't wait to give the patch a whirl....

-=Vel=-

[Dis]

did they do away with the palace pre-build feature of wonders? I didn't see that in the patch fixes. I may have missed it. That will suck indeed. It's hard enough gettin wonders. Even when I play on regent. I should be even or above the ai right? Yet I still can't get any wonders for a long time. The ai seems to have he ability to quickly build wonders even in the middle difficulty level where the human should be equal. maybe they are using leaders at the last minute, I don't know.

[Capt Dizle]

I am testing that FP trick by sending a leader in with my invasion force to wrest away the enemy capital. Rush the FP. Working like a charm so far.

[Illyrien]

Have a patch been released yet? I cant find any info about it

Somebody meanthined that it would
1) stop IFE
2) reduce corruption

So I was wondering if it had been released yet

[Arrian]

Elite units -> veteran, but veterans stay veterans (and regulars stay regulars).

I think the others have covered the rest.

-Arrian

[G.A]

Originally posted by Velociryx

2) Yep....some folks on the Strat. thread did some testing, and you're absolutely right. Whatever speed your workers are, any you capture operate at half speed (GREAT for Industrious Civs, since they'll have a whole wad of "normal speed" workers that require no upkeep costs!)

That`s logic, as those people with the whips, who force them to do stuff are industrious!

[henry296]

Originally posted by Illyrien
Have a patch been released yet? I cant find any info about it

Somebody meanthined that it would
1) stop IFE
2) reduce corruption

So I was wondering if it had been released yet

It has not been released. A post by Jeff Morris of Firaxis indicates, if all goes well, it would out either tomorrow or Saturday USA time.

A list of patch fixes/changes/adds is in the general forum.

Todd