Something wierd happening in the tutorial

[sboog]

I am still playing the tutorial. Hoping for the lights to come on, I guess.

But something wierd is happening. It has happened twice.

After I get my Horseman, I get unlimited turns. I never have to press "enter" again.

I can land on Old Sitting Bull, and all the treaty things work. But I just never have to press enter anymore. My units are always blinking.

What is going on?

I am playing on a Dell Inspiron8000 laptop with Windows ME.

Any thoughts?

sboog

[KrazyHorse]

It's not that you get unlimited turns; it's that the computer auto-presses "Enter" for you when you have a unit moving. If you look at the date, you'll see that it's still advancing. To turn off the auto-turn-ending, go to the Game Options menu and toggle the box that says "always wait at the end of turn".

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

KrazyHorse is right. In any turn that you have at least one unit to move (working settlers, fortified or sleeping units don't count), the turn ends automatically when all units are out of movement points. "Game Options" can change this, as KH says.

sboog, still no luck finding the knack of Civ?

STYOM

[rwprice]

Sboog, I see you're still at it. I too have been playing Civ games exclusively for almost 5 months now. My trouble is that I usually only get to put in about 30 minutes to an hour at a time. I'm not sure if that's enough time for these games. In another thread, people talked about playing a single game for anywhere from 1 hour to 6 months or more!

At this point, I'm just not sure if I'm going to continue. Perhaps I just need to take a break and come back. Although I can see why everyone loves this game so much, I'm just not sure if I will. After a while, it seems so tedious just moving units around the screen, often with no real sense of an overall plan. Maybe the scope of the game is just too broad for me, or maybe I need to stay with it and try to gain more knowledge of the tech tree and all the other stuff.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not dissing the game. I would like nothing better than to say I'm totally addicted to it. But honestly, I have no trouble walking away and coming back later. I just don't share the "one more turn" addiction that so many seem to have.

Maybe on my next "round" something will click. By the way, it's not just Civ2, but other grand strategy games as well. Perhaps one of these days...

[Scouse Gits]

Originally posted by rwprice
After a while, it seems so tedious just moving units around the screen, often with no real sense of an overall plan...

You have just discovered your problem - NO PLAN!

Every turn must have a short term plan, every few moves must fit into a medium turn plan which eventually all come together for the goal of conquest or AC.

Try being single minded. Make the most of every year you play ensuring that every trade arrow, shield and sheaf of food is working to further your goal.

Another way to improve your play is to re-start a game. Play the first 100 turns to 1AD (Deity time scale). Then have another go and see how you can make better progress. Learning from your mistakes the first time round is your first plan.

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

SG(2)

[EOL]

When you start off playing I think its important that you can notice a real improvement in the state of your civilization during the course of a session. If you can start it with pikemen and size 6 cities and finish with tanks and size 21 cities the future is bright.

I agree with the SG as far as having a plan goes and his suggestions for improving your game , but if the problem is just that you're finding the game is taking too long to progress through the ages I would suggest the following.

(i) Build fewer cities - whether you're micromanaging or not it takes a long time to go through many more than 20 cities. You can win comfortably with 10 or fewer on any size map and your science tends to be dominated by a few well developed cities anyway (SSC).

(ii) Build fewer units or have more of them fortified/sleeping. You always need a few exploring and having a few active around your borders means the screen will automatically move there so you can check to see approaching enemy units (without having to click around to see it), but you don't really need any military units in your heartland to be active. If you're fighting a big war forget this.

(iii) Don't get bogged down in long drawn out wars early. Either try and stay peaceful, just do enough to hold them off with a couple well placed fortresses or quickly build up enough force to crush them and then get on with it. Unless you have a reasonable tech lead, or a nice pile of cash, wars can quickly eat up a lot of time. On a large map it can be quicker to blast to howitzers, battleships and then attack, rather than grinding out a victory with crusaders (in an earlier game year). It may be rude to miss out on the ironclad vs phalanx/archer opportunity though as I'm sure the SG's would agree . Try and win before the AI gets communism - I'm sure there will be more debate about this but in my experience guerilla's start appearing when you take a city from somebody who has communism (maybe having the SOL counts too). If the length of the AI turns ever becomes a factor you're in trouble.

(iv) AC victories are always quicker than conquering unless you go for, and get, a BC bloodlust victory, since there are not hundreds of units to manipulate.

(v) Use the goto command. Sure it sucks but if it works the first time you use it on a particular route it probably will on subsequent occasions (new roads can change whether it works or not), you can always use goto to an intermediary location and then again to its final destination if it can't cope with doing it all in one go. Moving a unit one/two squares to a junction before selecting goto can have a positive effect. Goto is particularly useful for aircraft where only cities within range are given as options and having a plane taking a mountain route instead of a road isn't a worry.

(vi) Remember/write down where your caravans are headed if not using goto so you don't have to repeatedly check the commodities screen.

(vii) If a foreign leader keeps coming out with the same stuff just send him away, or ignore them after the initial treaty unless you want to trade tech or something. You can ignore them completely if you want.

A few more suggestions which may/will hurt your game a bit.

(viii) If you find that the demands of a city have changed when your caravan arrives, maybe click on a couple nearby cities but otherwise, just deliver it anyway.

(ix) Don't micromanage. You may want your cities to be producing a nice round number of shields (5,10,20 etc..) and having enough food to grow is nice, but losing a couple arrows isn't going to kill you in SP. Switching production before delivering caravans, and back again afterwards ,will eat up hours.

(x) Don't play with the tax-sci-lux rate all the time. Use enough luxuries to keep the people happy - I would suggest 0% in monarchy (they don't make enough arrows to get any effect), 10-20% in rep/demo (higher if you want to grow by celebrating), 0% or enough to celebrate in fundy/commie. Then either set tax to around the break-even mark (or below, money from caravans should keep funds coming in) or later in the game choose how regular you want your discoveries to come and minimize your science rate while still keeping that research time.

(xi) Cut down on the incremental rush-buying. If you need a wonder quick, are desperate to get a couple trade routes down, need a quick military unit or want to speed up early settlers then fair enough. Keep buying up any improvements you are building though.

(xii) Hold off on the factories until you've built/are building Hoover's or you'll just be clearing up pollution for the next x no. of turns.

Trying to focus on research while being a bit blase about the details may seem a little bizarre but makes for quick games. Small maps have faster research (less cost, find civs to trade with earlier => shorter game) but tend to involve more conflict (longer turns as you need more units) than larger maps.
I find games on continental maps are quicker than those on archipelago and such-like, less ships running around etc.... Cutting out advisors and customizing which pop-ups you get can speeds stuff up too. I would leave the 'always wait at end of turn flag' on as it only takes a second to hit enter but it takes longer to retake a city when you forgot to unfortify a unit and attack. Know the shortcut keys and tech paths.

These suggestions are intended to cut down actual game time rather than enable you to win in an earlier year. In a couple hours playing time on a small map you can probably get as far as steel (maybe only industrialization on a large map).

If you're intent on developing an enormous civ with an overwhelming military patrolling land, sea and air, squeezing every drop of science/production from each turn and regularly taunting all the foreign leaders (on a large map), you're stuck with weeks/months of reloading similar saves.

EOL

[rwprice]

EOL,
Thanks for some great pointers! Those are the kind of practical tips that can make a real difference. I'll try them and hopefully it will bring a great deal more enjoyment to my games. Thanks!

[sboog]

And thanks from me, too!

I'm printing your suggestions out and going to try to follow.

Even though I have a hard time getting the gameplay down, I keep coming back to Civ2. It just won't leave me alone!

I really want to get with it because there is something about this game that keeps calling to me ... even though the lights have not come all the way on yet.

sboog

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Maybe having somebody send you a game that's 3/4 over would help you see where you can go. Say, 1700 on the clock to 2000. That way you could see the effects of wonders, trade, how expansion has been done, etc, after it has been done. You would still need to learn to get from you lonely settler in 4000bc to there, but it might give you ideas of what to try.

[sboog]

A great idea. I would like that. How about you, rwprice? Maybe it would help us both.

Since my email address is not available here, could those who send the games send them to the list as a zip file? Would that work?

sboog

[rwprice]

Sure, I'd be willing to give that a shot. I think it's possible to download files from here, isn't it?

[rwprice]

sboog, I must agree with you that something about Civ2 keeps calling me back. Even though, as you said, the light hasn't come on for me yet, I still get drawn back into this game. Maybe that's part of the magic.

[EOL]

Originally posted by sboog
A great idea. I would like that. How about you, rwprice? Maybe it would help us both.

Since my email address is not available here, could those who send the games send them to the list as a zip file? Would that work?

sboog

I have some regular saves from a large world map bloodlust game that I could attach if you like (2.42 version). Large empire with minimal micromanagement made for a game which took me around 12 hours while watching The Ashes . Each city I founded has the game time and year as its name and I added the year of conquest to all captured AI cities so its easy to follow my expansion etc...

[sboog]

Yes. Send it please, and I hope I can get it into the right folder so I can see it.

Thanks.

sboog

[EOL]

OK, here is a collection - I didn't push very hard on science since I had a large lead from near the start and the game was set to bloodlust. The starting location isn't great for perfectionist playing - couldn't irrigate my capital until about the middle of the 15th century. Also, if I'd switched to full military production at the end when swicthing to fundie it would have taken only another 10 or so turns to end it, but the pefectionist in me wanted tl keep developing my cities while warring. You should be able to try out a few different things form each save position if you want to try out different strategies.

saves.zip

hope these are useful. (deity,raging,7 civs, restarts on, bloodlust).
if the happiness is a problem you can load from after Mike's is built.

[sboog]

EOL,

All I can say is WOW!

I've never gotten that far. I put your latest one (1500ad or so) in my Civ2 folder, and it came up fine.

I hope others will view this too. I don't have the experience to really appreciate all that went into this.

But thank you for sending it to us. It surely makes me aware of the scope and size of this game.

Will try to play it and see what happens.

Thanks again.

sboog (I only put the latest one into my folder. But I will add others later.)

[EOL]

No problem, I figured naming the cities like that would help me improve my expansion and stuff and go some way to replacing the old animation of civ1 where you get to see how the size of your civ changed during the game. Just zoom out and you can see it all in one go.

[rwprice]

EOL, I loaded your scenarios (very neat idea, by the way), and I noticed something odd. When I load the last scenario (1800 A.D., I think) I noticed that the AI takes forever to finish it's turn. I get a lot of "We love the High Priest" messages, and the turn takes several minutes to complete. Is this normal? Is there a way to speed it up? If not, that's pretty annoying. I'm hoping that it's not normal for the game to take longer and longer the further you get. Thanks again for your help.

[EOL]

Originally posted by rwprice
EOL, I loaded your scenarios (very neat idea, by the way), and I noticed something odd. When I load the last scenario (1800 A.D., I think) I noticed that the AI takes forever to finish it's turn. I get a lot of "We love the High Priest" messages, and the turn takes several minutes to complete. Is this normal? Is there a way to speed it up? If not, that's pretty annoying. I'm hoping that it's not normal for the game to take longer and longer the further you get. Thanks again for your help.

You just need to open the game as an old saved game (its not a scenario). I expect that all the WLTHD messages will only come up for the first turn after you load the save just as a reminder, you can turn these messages off in one of the in-game options screen during a game, which should stop them in future games too unless change the option again. In the very last save 1810AD the world is conquered and ending the turn should finish the game.

The AI turns shouldn't take any time - in 1800AD the only AI left is the Babs who have only a handful of cities/units. There are a fair number of barbs in the northern part of Canada but you should be able to see them moving if they are causing the problem. In fact the AI turns shouldn't take a noticeable amount of time at the point of any of the saves (barring loads of pop-ups).

Playing bloodlust the turns can get dramatically longer as the game progresses, but in these saves I've not really started building many units until about 1770 so as to keep turn length down, so turns should be short for saves before then (no more than 5 mins, if you're not having to familiarize yourself with the state of affairs having just opened it up). The 1800AD save may take 20mins or more for you to move your units and sort out city production etc...