c176# DO OTHER PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS TRICK?

MarkG · July 7, 2001, 23:31

176# DO OTHER PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS TRICK?

Search and you shall find

by TINOMan

MarkG · July 7, 2001, 23:54

Hello!

Yes, I've heard about the "airbase"-trick. It was at Apolyton where I've heard it. I never used it though. I think it would look ugly on the landscape, like railroads all over the city radius. What I do instead, is looking for the pattern of special recources (3 up, one right; or one down, 3 right; etc. Look for it with "grid on" < CTRL-g > and the "show hidden terrain" function < t >). When I find a spot where there could be a special, but there is grassland, I send my engineers to work on the place. 2 or 3 engineers can build a hill with coal or wine in a reasonable time, out of grassland. Think of that bonus!

I sometimes do a little cheat about this "specials". Not all of the time I get the special I was looking for. I save my current game, toggle the cheat menu, and search for grassland that could be a special. I change the terrain from grassland (no specials possible) to forest or hills (possibly specials). Now I can easily see whether I should send there my engineers or not. I quit the game, restart it, and know for sure where to send my workers. How's that for a cheat? :-)

Bye,
Dirk Zelwis
"Dirks and Daggers"

Father Beast · July 8, 2001, 04:01

Yes, I knew about this trick. I first found it at the scrolls of ancient wisdom site (anyone got the URL?). Further, this trick is casually mentioned in Paul's OCC guide, and many people here consider it common knowledge. kind of like micromanaging your science for the boost you get when a caravan arrives.

Basically, an airbase counts as railroad and farmland and fortifications in addition to the plane landing ability. why this is, I don't know. so there really isn't any reason to build roads and rails in that tile, just build the airbase and mine it. In fact, after I discover radio, I quit building rails or farmland, just build airbases. a spare unit runs around pillaging the rails and irrigation so I can see the terrain better (and it looks nicer that way). it takes 2 turns to build an airbase by an engineer, same as it does for railroad, and you get farming and fortifications thrown in for free!
I'm not worried about the planes. I generally have them stationed on the coast or the border, so getting them out is never a problem.

The only disadvantage to airbases, is that although you get the defense bonus and only lose one unit at a time of fortresses, it doesn't count as fortress for unhappiness under a democracy or republic. And you can't build an airbase in a space with a fortress.

Scouse Gits · July 8, 2001, 07:38

Yup - I think its fairly well known in Apolyton - so much so that it is expressly forbidden in the Paulicy for OCC - we had a thread a month or so ago where I tried to argue that it was a pseudo-engineer upgrade showing advanced tech capabilities - but I was overruled ...

Six Thousand Year Old Man · July 8, 2001, 11:39

I had heard about this too, but never used it beyond some experiements. I imagine it would be a big help in OCC - which is why it was banned, I guess!

Father Beast - I didn't know that airfields acted as fortresses. I gather that you only lose one unit at a time in an airfield, but do units also get the defense bonus?

I don't think this trick works in ToT - can anyone confirm what versions of CivII this works with?

STYOM

Scouse Gits · July 8, 2001, 12:54

This link gives the Airbase trick in full detail along with other information.

http://stefan.winkler.net/civ2.html

Some of the details in these Scrolls are useful and interesting - and at times wrong!

---------------------

SG(2)

Father Beast · July 8, 2001, 12:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man

Father Beast - I didn't know that airfields acted as fortresses. I gather that you only lose one unit at a time in an airfield, but do units also get the defense bonus?

STYOM

I'm not completely sure. I thought that the defense bonus was there too, but I'm not sure. it seems that my units defend better in airbases, but I don't know how to confirm this since it's a thing mixed up with the random number generation that occurs during combat.

Oh, and Tinoman, why do you have them mine it twice?

Six Thousand Year Old Man · July 8, 2001, 14:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Father Beast

I'm not completely sure. I thought that the defense bonus was there too, but I'm not sure. it seems that my units defend better in airbases, but I don't know how to confirm this since it's a thing mixed up with the random number generation that occurs during combat.

I wondered, just because the site that SG2 mentioned (which I had seen before and cribbed from) indicates that you can't build a fortress with an airbase there - but if the airbase give fortress benefits, why would this be an issue?

I guess that's one of the 'wrong' details there...

STYOM

Provost Harrison · July 8, 2001, 19:14

I knew about this trick, but I always considered it to be a bit of a cheat. The AI didn't do it and couldn't do it, so it wasn't really a fair way to get extra food. Anyway, by that stage in the game, you should be overflowing in food if you have managed things well...

Starlite · July 8, 2001, 22:46

I've been experimenting with terrain conversions, trying to build up a unified view of how it all works (I guess I'm still catching up with most of you). But when I read about this attribute of Airbases, I immediately thought of what happens to terrain under a city.

I reckon, an Airbase provides exactly the same benefits as a city square.

Hence, automatic Rail and Farmland, coupled with Food on squares that don't usually produce Food. This last seems to be a consequence of the need for every city to be able to maintain itself. I haven't investigated it too closely, but my understanding is that every city square gets at least one Food, and that Grassland always gets a Shield as well.

The test would be to try and Mine a square with an Airbase. My guess is it won't work (unless Mining converts the terrain). Also, do all Grassland squares with an airbase get a Shield? From the picture at "Scrolls of Ancient Wisdom," the answer is no, so perhaps Airbases adopt every benefit of a city square except that one.

On a related note, I've never used an Airbase in any of my games. So how do people use them in their own games? Surely, if you can get a Settler/Engineer into enemy territory, it's easy enough to build a city instead; there's no need to build them inside your own borders, as you can use cities instead; so the only useful Airbases are those build by the enemy, and I'm yet to see that happen (about to start my first Emperor game).

Father Beast · July 8, 2001, 23:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man

I wondered, just because the site that SG2 mentioned (which I had seen before and cribbed from) indicates that you can't build a fortress with an airbase there - but if the airbase give fortress benefits, why would this be an issue?

I guess that's one of the 'wrong' details there...

STYOM

Well, the one thing they don't do that a fortress does is cancel the unhappiness for units away from city in representative government. a unit in a fortress within 3 squares of a city doesn't generate unhappiness. A unit in an airbase, wherever situate, does.

I am certain that you lose only one unit at a time in an airbase. I've seen it demonstarted any number of times.
I'm not sure about the effects in TOT. got to try it sometime...

Starlite, that's an excellent rationale for the effects of airbases. However, I know very well that you can mine an airbase square without regard to whether it is airbased. if that means growing forests, then you have an airbase in a forest.
One of my favorite tricks is to build a city in a highly forested area, airbase all the city squares, then irrigate and watch the population BOOM!

about using airbases. I have no use for them except the tile bonuses discussed here. I'm not much of a strategist, though

Six Thousand Year Old Man · July 8, 2001, 23:57

I almost never use airbases (for their intended purpose - as a base for planes!) either. The scenario "East Wind, Rain" has a lot of airbases on Pacific islands where a 1-square city might not make as much sense. Naturally the AI doesn't use them at all well...

The only time I really use them is on large and giga-maps when I need to ferry planes a long way (like across the Atlantic or Pacific) and I don't want to deal with trying to build a 1-square city in AI territory just yet. Which isn't too often.

Also, even though I never play MP, it occurs to me that unlike a city, an airfield can't be bribed. Maybe that's one use for them. I've never seen the AI use a nuke or cruise missiles on an airbase, but whenever I get a carrier within range of the AI shore (again, talking Atlantic ocean crossing) it gets nailed by cruise missiles, and on rare occasions I have had small cities nuked by the AI. Possibly the airbase lets you avoid these hassles?

Nah... on further review, I still build an airbase maybe every 5 or 6 games.

STYOM

Scouse Gits · July 9, 2001, 05:24

Starlite - you might find DaveV's table of benefits gained by building a city : http://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk/wittgenst...#39;%20Squares helpful ...

EOL · July 9, 2001, 14:08

Knew about the trick, I always presumed tha it was something to with the fact that they want to save memory. have an 8-bit number instead of a 16-bit number to describe terrain 'features'.
If you have features such as road, rail, irrigation, farmland, airbase, fort, mine, pollution, hut which would have on/off flags then you'd need 9 flags for each square. You could half the memory needed by representing the airbase as a combination of others - giving all the benefits as a side effect.

EOL

Edit: This combination is made unique - ie. can't normally be achieved without building an airbase - because you can't irrigate and mine the same square without losing the benefits of one of them.

Father Beast · July 9, 2001, 21:06

Starlite-

By the way, you can mine your city square. just have a settler start mining and have another build on top of him while the first one is still mining.

Mercator · July 11, 2001, 15:28

Quote:

By the way, you can mine your city square. just have a settler start mining and have another build on top of him while the first one is still mining.

You can mine your city square only if mining means transforming the terrain (e.g. Forest to Plains, not like Hills to Hills with mines).

Quote:

Knew about the trick, I always presumed tha it was something to with the fact that they want to save memory. have an 8-bit number instead of a 16-bit number to describe terrain 'features'.
If you have features such as road, rail, irrigation, farmland, airbase, fort, mine, pollution, hut which would have on/off flags then you'd need 9 flags for each square. You could half the memory needed by representing the airbase as a combination of others - giving all the benefits as a side effect.

EOL

Edit: This combination is made unique - ie. can't normally be achieved without building an airbase - because you can't irrigate and mine the same square without losing the benefits of one of them.

You hit the nail on the head! To be precise an airbase is a combination of the "city present" and fortress codes, see this for more: http://gene.wins.uva.nl/~jvermeir/savmaps.htm

Hmmm, I´ve been posting this link quite often lately, but it IS quite usefull/interesting isn´t it?
This "city present" code causes the additional food on Hills... By the way, as I saw in DaveV´s table, city squares give all kinds of bonuses,

I can´t remember reading anything about airbases giving the exact same bonuses as cities, though, just the bonus on hills???
Not only does this "city present" code induce this bonus, it also causes the "act as railroad" thing (just like cities), and it also causes the fact that irrigation and mining can´t coexist with airbases, which should have been possible, considering that the airbase code does not include either the irrigation or mining code.

Looks like MicroProse found a nice way of using 1 byte in stead of 2, but forgot to prevent the "city present" side effects.

Paul · July 11, 2001, 16:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Mercator
You can mine your city square only if mining means transforming the terrain (e.g. Forest to Plains, not like Hills to Hills with mines).

Father Beast is trying to say that you can build a mine on a city square if one settler starts mining and another settler builds a city on that square before the first one has finished the mine.

Mercator · July 11, 2001, 18:31

Oh, I see

Father Beast · July 13, 2001, 13:00

I have done this mining the city square trick any number of times. set a settler to mine the square, then (usually the same turn) have another settler build a city on the same square. if the mine is finished when you build the city, the mine is wiped out when the city is built. and you can't mine hills a city is built on once the city is built. but I've done it this way any number of times to enjoy the added production from the city square.