Settle trick

Genghis Al · December 26, 1999, 17:58

I moved a settler into a city to make hills. But I pushed "b" instead os "o". and this message cam up. "Settle/Engeneer units cannot raise the size of a city past 8" so a settle will recontribute it's people to a city as one more head. I never knew this. If somone finds a good use for this I would be happy to know

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Ah man! Ghandi! New game.

-Genghis Al

Aurelius · December 26, 1999, 18:42

Hey Ghengis,

I seem to be posting at the same time as you. Let me try and answer that question about adding to a city via the settler or engineer. To do this, one can also bring the settler to the city and then through the city box, activate the unit and then in the orders menu, choose 'Join city'.

As you now know, you can't do this beyond size 8. What good is this? Sometimes you have a city of size two that can't grow during a 'Presidents Day Celebration'. So if you add to the population via the 'join' command, the city can utilize the growth spurt enjoyed by other cities....it can be very efficient to 'join'--but not always.

Another instance of good 'joining' is when a city that is both food challenged and supporting a settler/engineer needs to get rid of the food liability. So you can either support the settler from another city or join a city or found a new city. The decision must be made based on circumstances.

But as usual, ol' chit chat is gettin' verbose.

Oh, good luck in your one city challenge.

Aurelius.

rah · December 26, 1999, 19:08

There is one real good use for joining to the city. In MP games that you get no happiness wonders in, expanding quickly runs into the difficulty where the first citizen is not happy even with martial law. If you are building cities near your opponents, you can't afford to wait for the temple to be built or the city to grow to size two. Using two settlers to start a city allows you to use one citizen as an elvis and put the second one into production right away to build the temple or extra defenders.

RAH

VetLegion · December 26, 1999, 20:02

And you could do it up to size 10 in old civ1. It was great because if you had a few really good food citys of size 1 under communism, you could build settlers every three or four turns and add them to other cities you want to grow.
And water was animated...
And there were no strange advances like "leadership"...(it actually has prerequisites in civ2, what is next? xenolinguistics?

)

Ahh, the good old days with civ1.

December 27, 1999, 22:20

And if you want to unfound cities, you can actually move the whole population.
Also, move newly conquered and badly located populations into your own small towns.

War4ever · December 27, 1999, 23:30

personally i think the 8 person civ2 and 10 person civ1 max for city joining is silly and unrealistic.... ok we don't have to have the realism debate but honestly..... bigger cities attract more people so..........whats the problem... plus ala the caravan trick, its another way to grow the city quickly

Genghis Al · December 28, 1999, 00:58

Speaking of the caravan trick. Can somone spell that out for me?

I am sure Aurelius will be all over this one. He has been tailing me since I got here

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Ah man! Ghandi! New game.

-Genghis Al

SandMonkey · December 28, 1999, 01:15

Genghis Al -

I think the "caravan trick" War4ever was referring to was just sending food caravans to a city to get it to grow quickly. I think landing like 2 a turn everyturn wikll allow the city to grow 1 pop. every turn. I could also be utterly and completely wrong.

The only other caravan triack i know is the re-homing trick. But that doesn't make sense right here, does it?

Ming · December 28, 1999, 02:48

The only other caravan trick is when you trade them in MP and you get an instant trade route...

The food caravan trick I think they are refering too is build population trick.
The first food caravan fills the food box, the next one provides a new pop... If they come from the same city, the oriiginal city only has one food route, no mater how many caravans it sends to the SAME city. With a lot of imagination, you build many cities quickly, without much loss overall.

Aurelius · December 28, 1999, 06:40

Hey Genghis,

I haven't been around here very long either. I think we live in the same time zones or somethin'. So we post at similar times. I like this place. Besides, none of my friends can understand my obsession with this game. So if I can't write about it at this site I'm lost

Looks like we both learned about the 'caravan trick' with ming and sandmonkey posting. I have never use this trick. Is it allowed by the ethics commission? (who ever they are

)

Just won another OCC game ( but no one will care since it was 2007!)

Well, time for bed...unless I dare start a game at 2 am my time....

Aurelius the Cruel!

FreeChina · December 28, 1999, 15:58

The caravan trick can be really abusive when used in waves of three or more a turn. Once you get the first one in, each one after that is new population. Can be useful in establishing a "War factory" on an enemy beachhead- put down a city, and roll in food caravans, defensive troops. Within a turn you can have a city with double digit population cranking out a unit a turn.

Genghis Al · December 28, 1999, 16:29

So let me get this strait, Kiev builds 2 food caravans and sends them both to Moscow in the same turn. Moscow goes up 1 pop? Repeat with all my cities, Moscow really goes up?

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Ah man! Ghandi! New game.

-Genghis Al

Xin Yu · December 28, 1999, 16:47

Case 1: city has food surplus, no granary. 2 food caravans same turn=1 pop increase;

Case 2: city has food surplus, has granary. 1 food caravan=1 pop increase;

Case 3: city has food deficit, has granary. 2 food caravans same turn=1 pop increase (grow a city to size 127);

Case 4: city has food deficit, no granary. 3 caravans same turn=1 pop increase (must do it every turn).
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited December 28, 1999).]

Aurelius · December 28, 1999, 17:39

Dat food trick gotta be a Cheat!

City size 50+ should be forbidden. What is the 'natural' limit on a city size? 16 wheat double irrigated under democracy is 96. But I doubt this could happen by chance in the unedited version of Civ.

So what is the rule of competition?

Aurelius.

Dominikos · January 3, 2000, 01:28

It's interesting to look back on how people discover things for the first time, especially when you have discovered these things ages ago.

Dominikos · January 21, 2002, 00:21

Another Blast from the Past!

Courtesy of Dominikos!

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~Emperor Dominik~

Scouse Gits · January 24, 2002, 11:14

The truly fiendish food caravan trick is to build FCs in A send to B to grow city B; meanwhilst, city B grows FCs which it sends to C to grow city C - and guess what? Yep, city C builds FCs to send to city A!
All three cities grow for the loss of one trade route each - and you get many grey hairs from the strain of micromanagement.
This one is down to Ming/Rah/Xin I forget which and I believe has been disallowed by the ethics committee.

Although there are several posters who don't like using FCs, they are still wholly legitimate except in closed loop situations. The normal pro argument is that it allows great city growth in non-representative governments - Rep & Demo have WLPD, Fundy & Commie have FCs

Enjoy..

LDiCesare · January 28, 2002, 11:23

On joining settlers:
They can be useful in cases where you've got many useless settlers. For instance in a scenario (namely Seeds Of Greatness by Kull), when you kill a settler (farmer), you capture them instead, thus getting a fresh settler near your capital. Since you have around 50 other settlers and half that many engineers by the end of the game, and you don't need new little cities (they'd be far away from the scenes of operations and smallish enough to be useless), you just have them join some small city and grow it to size 8 so it can produce a few chariots or legions steadily.

Thoddy · January 29, 2002, 04:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
The truly fiendish food caravan trick is to build FCs in A send to B to grow city B; meanwhilst, city B grows FCs which it sends to C to grow city C - and guess what? Yep, city C builds FCs to send to city A!
All three cities grow for the loss of one trade route each - and you get many grey hairs from the strain of micromanagement.
Enjoy..

The loss of trade routes should be solved by joining the FCs to the destination city.

Straybow · May 6, 2002, 17:23

No, you only have 3 trade routes for a city. When you create a food trade route it takes up one of the slots. A food trade route is supposed to cancel automatically when the source city goes into food deficit, but I've not been able to het that to work.

Thoddy · May 8, 2002, 06:35

The food box of source city must be empty. If there is a food deficit, the food route will be cancelled next turn.

Straybow · May 9, 2002, 11:51

I recall making a city starve down 2 sizes and the food caravan didn't cancel. Or maybe I was fatigued from a marathon I've-got-the-day-off game and didn't know my donkey from a camel…

Thoddy · May 10, 2002, 01:47

Maybe an exception.
I remember that foodroutes to foreign cities never expire, when I play the scen
colonies. The city of Palma had a foodroute to another spanish city. Playing as french it was impossible to cancel this damn route. Starving city does not help.
I solved this problem by rushbuilding settlers until size 0. Dont ask me why.

Straybow · May 10, 2002, 02:51

My recollection is from a game long ago when I wanted to grow my main production city faster under Monarchy. No food to foreign cities.

I guess you should have conquered the other Spanish city instead. Cancel the food trade, then offer the city back in the peace negotiations.

There really should be a way to cut any trade route. It is a little silly to have mega trade routes with enemy cities when you're engaged in an all-out nuclear war.