From: s30683v@taltta.hut.fi (Timo Johannes Talasmaa)
Subject: Re: CIV: air units and navy
Keywords: air units and navy, civilisation
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 21:09:39 GMT

In article <1992Jul20.211440.7461@beaver.cs.washington.edu> louns@cs.washington.edu (Michael Lounsbery) writes:
>

>Are barracks worth it?  I can usually get veteran status for my ships
>cheaply (see above), and they do go obsolete so often.

I think they are worth it as they cost less than an Armor unit. And
as you mention, you can always sell them before they become obsolete.

And about other things to sell: 
According to the manual, Mfg.Plant makes a Factory obsolete. You can sell
that. I checked the shields with F1 before Factory sale and after and they
stayed the same.

>I generally save my caravans for either building wonders, or for the really
>big payoff routes.  I'm not sure mine is a great strategy, though.

I too have been spending my money on rushing jobs. Now I've noticed that
it is not such a good strategy. A lots of money really helps. I usually keep about 1500 in cash when playing at king or prince level. If you use money to
buy every improvement, then you are kind of ignoring the shields the
city is producing.

>With most of my taxes going into tech, and frequent investing into city
>projects that are 2-3 turns from completion, I usually don't have enough
>money to do this against a strong opponent.  How do you manage?

Hmm. I have banks & marketplaces & republic or democracy. You must also
have the trade routes from all your cities. Do not keep the science rate
so high.

>getting a knowledge of their cities isn't worth much at this time, since a
>few spy plane flights from a carrier can find me their capital anyway.
>
>>- always push and try to contain the others so they cannot grow in power
>
>This sounds like a good overall strategy in any game.

Yes, but in Civ it is so important. If you do not visit the others, they
will surely visit you. Even if you lose a war on their continent, you are
fighting the war on their turf and on their cities. MUCH better than fighting
in you own cities.

>
>I have a long-term strategy question.  I have problems finding the proper
>balance between war and development on the King level.  I can research to
>railroads faster than anyone, but once the other civs find me, I have to
>commit more and more resources to war, and fall behind.  

On the King level, the time I won that level I had many wars but all of
them were very short. I alternated between buying out enemy cities and
attacking them. Do not fight a multi-front war! 

Get the United Nations Wonder so everybody makes peace when you meet
their king. I think that without the UN I could not have won the King level.

Avoiding the multi-front war is very important since everyone is out to get you.
I kept diplomats near my enemies cities. Every time the enemy sneak attacked,
I sent my diplomat to one of their cities to meet the king and he would 
always ask for peace. I even used settlers to make roads and railroads to
enemy cities so my diplomat could get there fast. This way I was able to
handle one civilization at the time. I had also captured an enemy city
containing the Womens Suffrage which helped a lot, too. That makes
fighting wars under republic very easy. If you are winning, the others
will do sneak attacks continuously. If you want to continue the war,
just refuse to see their embassadors so the Senate does not force you
to sign the treaty.

>Maybe I don't have enough cities.  In these games, I had a screenful of
>cities in the City Report or Attitude Report screen, but rarely more than
>that.  Should I have had more cities before taking them on?  (But each of
>the enemy civs still seemed to have even fewer cities than me.)

I had about 1 screenfull of cities when I started fighting the others,
about 1 and half when I was in the midst of fighting and a little more
when my spaceship arrived at Alpha Centauri. That was at king level.
I think that it really helped. The 2 strongest enemies required so much
hardware to put down (mainly bombers and artillery).

>
>This is SUCH a great game, with endless strategy complexities and
>possibilities.
>

I agree. I am now working at Emperor level and finally seem to be getting
the hang of it, thanks to someone who replied to my first article.

Larry, if you read this, post your chariot-strategy and other hints.
I think they would be very helpful to others too.

Timo

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