Let's suppose I have an army that contains 4 knights and 3 catapults. I move it up to an enemy city, and I want to bombard it.

It looks like I have to open the list of units in the army window and actually select one of the catapults, and only then I get the "bombard" action. Is there a quicker way to get there?

Then, the catapult I selected did its job, and now the whole army is out of action points. That means that when I select a different catapult, it does NOT bombard this turn?!? This looks like a bug, doesn't it? Do I have to move all bombarding units in separate stacks if I want each of them to have a shot at the enemy?

Speaking of 'o', what good is the 'n' key, which is also a cycle-thru units? Seems useless to me.

I use the numpad to navigate, usually. Unfortunately, CTP2 appears to "save" my numpad presses, and if I accidently hit '4' too many times and the unit has used up its movement, it will try to move west on the next turn as soon as it is selected. Anyone know a way to avoid this? This once caused a unit passing by an ally unit to instead attack it and send me to war. Very Annoying.

Which brings me to antoher point. Any way to get a warning before you attack someone you are at peace/allied with?

Another question, I once had a trade route going to a friendly French city. I tried to get a trade pact with them, but they wouldn't sign it no matter what I did. I offered huge sums of gold (3,000) among other things and they would never accept a trade treaty. However, they immediately accepted military and research treaties. France had no trade routes going to one of my cities. Anyone know why the AI player resisted a trade treaty so much?

On a related note, I never saw computers create trade routes. Oh wait, I dont' think they ever got the trade advance. Heh, I need to play some more...

On another related note, I noticed some routes require more caravans than others. Is distance the only reason for this? If I build a road between two cities, will trade between them require less caravans? on a similar note, will trade over a (roadless) mountain range require more caravans?

Related to this, if I have a pre-existing trade route between two cities and later build a road between them, will the route adjust itself to the road and give me caravans back? Or do I have to break it and reform it?

Is it ever possible to safely pass through another nations territory without angering them? How about in an alliance? Peace/military treaties dont' appear to cut it. I think that if you get through "unseen" then it doesn't bother them. Maybe.

However, there are a few things that I'm confused about, and haven't been able to clear up by reading the manual, readme file, the message boards here, etc.

First, what are "Crossover Technologies" as they are listed in the Tech Tree? For example, Geometry is listed with a +3 Ballistics. Does this mean that learning geometry will give a head start on learning ballistics? Usually ballistics will be learned before geometry, so I'm not sure if that makes sense.

Second, several questions about piracy. When an opponent pirates one of my trade routes, is the piracy only occurring while the enemy unit is parked on the trade route? Several times my trade route is marked as pirated, but the offending unit has already returned back to it's own territory.

Even more confusing, how do I tell when I've successfully pirated somebody elses trade route? There is no indication in any of the summary screens (that I could find) of extra income due to piracy. And again, is piracy done every turn, or do I only have to do it once and then it continues? The manual is very unclear about this.

Thanks!

Does CTP II run under WinME too?

One would assume that seizing the fort would transfer the territory being ruled by the fort to your control. Unfortunately, this is not the case. You can sit in that seized fort until hell freezes over and the territory will stay Persian.

I don't know if this happens in the random-map games or not [I haven't come across an AI-generated fortress yet.]

Two questions:

1. Is this a bug? Is taking over a fortress SUPPOSED to transfer territorial control? If it is, it ain't working in the scenario.

2. If this is NOT a bug, is there a way to change this? Taking over the fortress should give you control of the terrain. If we had a map with "Gibraltar" on it, taking the fortress should MEAN something! Is this a "SLIC" issue or a .txt file issue?

First question is - how can I use maps I created in a new game? What directory do they have to be saved under for me to use my own maps?

Second question - how can I correctly place civilizations on my created maps? For instance, when I tried placing Americans on a starting location, for some reason, the program places Persians down!

Third question - how can I delete a starting civilization from my created maps once I change my mind?

Fourth question - where did Activision staff learn their basic geography? I still have no idea what they were thinking when they created the poorly done Earth map. Sid Meier's Civilization II Earth map was much better.

and most important of all...
6-where is the option to sell my city improvements???

Thanks

1) If you finish researching a technology and the game crashes on that turn when you load the autosave you loose the technology and research starts completely over. I've had this happen twice in my current game with no saves recent enough to undo the damage.

2) Occasionally the game will finish processing all players turns and give you control but the processing turns bar is still set to an enemy color, not at 100% and the end turn button will stay grayed out. The only work around I've found is to save then reload.

3) The game hard locks quite often on my system. Never had a problem untill around the late 1800's early 1900's I think. Never had any problems at all with my system (Athlon 800, 256mb pc133, Geforce2, SCSI, Win2k (all patches), DirectX 8, SB Live and nothing overclocked). It gets worse and worse as I progress where now I can't go more than a few turns without reseting (currently around 2150 now I believe).

The lockup and research bugs are so annoying I can't continue playing.

1. Can you center the map on the active unit?

quote: Originally posted by DLuke on 11-19-2000 02:53 PM First, what are "Crossover Technologies" as they are listed in the Tech Tree? For example, Geometry is listed with a +3 Ballistics. Does this mean that learning geometry will give a head start on learning ballistics? Usually ballistics will be learned before geometry, so I'm not sure if that makes sense.

These are requirements for a tech. The number is merely an abstract "tech level" or "era" of the required tech. In you example, Ballistics is a tier 3 technology which is required to research Geometry. They are called "Crossover Technologies" because they are are found in completely different areas of the tech tree. For example, Geometry is probably in the physics or applied sciences group, whereas ballistics is probably a military technology.

Sorry, but I'm not real sure on the piracy issues.

quote: Originally posted by Yohan on 11-20-2000 12:09 PM So I started looking through the Great Library and checking out all the Wonders. Am I right in noting that there are a whole bunch of Wonders that don't become obsolete? I'm not talking 2 or 3 more compared to CTP1, rather more like the vast majority of Wonders don't ever become obsolete. Anybody else have a take on this?

you are corect,

unles you sell, lose to bombardment, lose to capture, fold, staple, tear, burn, mutilate, or spill coffee on your Wonder Of The World, most will never, EVER go obsolte!