What do I consider more important than a caravan? First priority is expanding to the number of cities allowed by government, up to eight or ten max for me. Second priority is adequate defense: a phalanx in each city, plus two mobile units and one or two dips to cover the entire set of eight or ten cities. After that, I build pretty much nothing but caravans. Improvements can be purchased; wonders are built from caravans; spaceship built using wonders as placeholders plus spending the money you accumulated.

I only use food caravans to grow my Super Science City.

New strategies? Working on using caravans to manipulate the commodities individual cities supply and demand, but not quite there yet.

All of these comments apply to games against the AI. My impression is that most MP games dont get continued long enough to build too many caravans.

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Old posters never die, they just f.a.d.e..a..w..a..y . . .

I modify this as needed on a city by city basis depending on what the urgency is for some particular item in that city.

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

There is a "magic number" for each type of government. After you exceed 1x that number of cities, you will start having cities whose first citizen is unhappy. After you exceed 2x that number of cities, you will start having cities whose first citizen is very unhappy (which cities, and how many, appears to be semi-random). The magic numbers at Deity level are:

Despotism/Anarchy: 4
Monarchy: 6
Communism/Fundamentalism: infinity
Republic: 8?
Democracy: 10?

All of my comments relate to playing against the AI. I'm reasonably sure it's single production. A grassland square yields either 0 or 1 shield so you be the judge.

I usually build 20 to 30 cities on my own. Cities and settlers that come from tipping huts add a few more. I will build cities on islands off the coast of AI continents. Cities that come from bribes and warfare add some more. Since I am not warlike until late in the game and I play on maps with 10,000 squares, by the end of the game I will have 100 or so cites.

As soon as I can afford to do so I buy city improvements or at least most of the shields. For example, suppose I want to build a bank and the city produces 20 shields. I will play one turn as normal, switch to a colluseum and buy it for 160 gold, then switch back to the bank for one more turn.

Once I get radio I build airports as fast as possible and then fly freight units half way around the world. Once I can afford to do so I purchase enough shields so that each freight unit requires but one turn to build.

Back to your questions. Suppose the city has a defender, a settler for improvement, and, if it is on a hostile continent, a diplomat. Then I will build caravans unless I need a happiness improvement, an aquaduct, a sewer, or an airport. If I think my city would go into We Love The President Day with a market place, bank, or stock exchange, then I will build them. Libraries and universities are rather low priorities for me. I count on the trade bonus from caravans for most of my science. The obvious exception is the science city.

At the beginning of the game I build food caravans for Wonder building. That is how I distinguish caravans I want to use for Wonders from caravans I want to use for trade. This is the only way I can keep things straight.

The only thing I am doing differently from, say, five months ago is building far more caravans.

SG - I've been accused of many things, but never of being a Cart.

Tell me, do you ever fight over control of the handle?

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

Max Cities = Riot Factor - ((difficulty levelx2) x ((government divided by 2) + 2))/2)

Where:

the default value of Riot Factor = 14

difficulty level = a range from 0 (Chieftan) through to 5 (Deity)

government = 0 (Anarchy), 1 (Despotism), 2 (Monarchy), 3 (Communism), 4 (Fundy), 5 (Republic), 6 (Democ)

I have a headache.

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

LL

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

Thanks for the figures. Is there a similar set of magic numbers which suddenly stop cities from celebrating for no apparent reason? (Usually in fundy or monarchy)
My question applies to when the overall number of cities remains the same.

The key to keeping lots of cities happy with HG lies in exploiting a bug discovered by Matthew. Two cups (or HG) will convert an unhappy citizen to content, but they will convert a very unhappy citizen to happpy! So when you strip troops and lessen martial law, HG produces a happy instead of a content citizen.

Sorry, but the formula you cite is bogus. I ran the numbers for Deity, and got:

Anarchy/Despotism: 4
Monarchy: -1
Republic: -6
Democracy: -11

IT'S NOT A BUG !!!!

I'll check.

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

Guess he got it wrong. Pity. Well, more than a pity, it's bad. If I were more of a mathematician, I'd have a go at doing the calculation myself.

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

Here's my guess:

Max cities = Riot Factor - difficulty factor*2 + (INT(government/2))*2

For non-programmers, the INT(government/2) part means you divide by two and discard the remainder.

Thanks, I think that it should be it. The fact that I had to move some troops out of my cities didn't bother me much, hehe...I got the game done pretty early and I was satisfied. However, if it is a bug reckognized by the players as a cheat, I will avoid it.

Matthew

I play TOT:Original game, so I posted a question about this in the TOT forum. I got no replay yet.
And as for "strange things"...
I noticed that my rioting cities under republic had no production but science as normal! (I had gunpowder 1.A.D) I posted about it and got official replay that this was NOT a bug, but a "matter of gameplay balance" or something...

Max Cities = [Riot Factor - (difficulty levelx2)] x [((government divided by 2)+2)/2]

Deity Republic:

[14 - (5x2)] x [((5/2)+2)/2]
[14 - 10] x [(2.5 + 2)/2]
[4] x [(4.5)/2]
[4] x [2.25]
9

Deity Monarchy:

[14 - (5x2)] x [((2/2)+2)/2]
[14 - 10] x [(1+2)/2]
4 x [3/2]
4 x 1.5
6

King Monarchy:

I think you've got it, except I still think the (goverment divided by 2) term is truncated to an integer. So I would perform the Deity Republic calculation as follows:

Deity Republic:

There *is* a riot factor in Democracy, although most people probably don't notice it. If you have at least two cups per city, extra cities will actually increase your happiness (see above discussion of very unhappy to happy conversion).

I have not played CIV2 for about a year now (I'm playing SMAC now - if you love CIV2 you will love this game too), but from what I can remember, I did not realise the importance of caravans until late in my CIV2 'career'.

I normally build one caravan at a time for each city (after having built a defending unit) and do not normally build another for that city until the preceding caravan has reached its destination, allowing me to concentrate the city on building other useful stuff (and also not reducing shield output too much from support costs).

If there is a race to build a wonder, then of course I will make surrounding cities near the city building the wonder churn out caravans to rush-build the wonder. By doing this (and by having a city 'build' a wonder which has already been built and simply switching production to a new wonder as soon as another one can be built), there is rarely a game in which a rival civilisation can build a wonder before me.

The usefullness of caravans has already been pretty much covered in this post, but a later game trick with caravans (freight) and airports is to find a high population city which supplies a really valuable commodity such as oil or uranium. Make sure this city has an airport and find another city as far away as possible which also has an airport. If this city demands the commodity, then so much the better. Each turn you can produce a freight unit (by this time in the game, the city should only take 1 turn to build this unit), and fly it instantly to the target city for a huge instant trade boon. Even if the target city does not demand the commodity, you will make a fortune in instant cash. You can keep making the freight and reset the trade route each turn just for the cash windfall. In one game, I was making 2000 (gold?) each turn just from the single freight unit alone. This method also works if two cities are linked by rail.

HG can make a content citizen or a double-unhappy to happy, but can only make a unhappy to content.

Suppose a size 2 city has two double-unhappy citizens, and there are two units in the city. Each unit makes a double-unhappy into unhappy, then the HG makes one of them content. The city will be in disorder (1 content and 1 unhappy). Move one unit out of the city then you have one unhappy and one double-unhappy. HG makes the double-unhappy happy, so the city is ok (1 happy and 1 unhappy).

I defend them towns with Raging Hordes around. Especially when the coffer's are full of capitalistic money. Those tolls get steep! Not to mention the destructive nature of the barbarians.