Settler/Engineer file questions

[Gastrifitis]

I'm trying to get together a single Settler/Engineer file for the GL. It's going to be modeled loosely on the Info: Diplomats/Spies file, which means it's going to take everything from the basic to the new. In order to make sure the information is accurate, I've started testing again, and a few things didn't work out.

1. In Xin Yu's original point about the multiple Engineer trick, it was stated that you could use as many Engineers as you want in a single turn. To get to the bottom of the stack, you would go to the home cities of the top Engineers and tell them to Return to City from the city menu. I'd never actually tested that, so I tried it. The top Engineers on the list did get the Goto command on their shield, but they stayed at the top of the list and didn't move, so it doesn't help. If I have to wait until next turn before they move, I can do it without the Return to City command. Am I missing something?

2. One of the cheat lists states that you can build a city on a hill and get the benefit of the mine if you start digging the mine and then build the city. I tried every combination of this I could think of: building the city while someone else was mining the square, at various stages of completion; starting the mine, then stopping the mine, then building the city next turn; starting the mine, waiting one turn, then waking the worker right away and immediately starting the city. I never got the mine bonus. Again, am I missing something?

Some of this may have to do with game versions. I'm using FW. If the settler's abilities change with the game version, I need to know that too. Anyway, that's all the questions I have for now. I'll probably think of more later. I didn't know if this topic should go in the General/Help forum instead, but I thought people here might be more likely to know.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Your problem 2 might be a version issue. In MGE, at any point before the completion of the mine, a second settler can build a city on that square and get the mine, too. Once the mine is finished, building a city on the mine eliminates it.

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"There is no fortress impregnable to an ass laden with gold."
-Philip of Macedon

[East Street Trader]

Gastrifitis

The mine doesn't appear at the moment you build the city. The settler/engineer has to finish his work in the usual way. So if you look in the city screen after founding there he is with his shield showing an "M". You wait a move or two and then the settler starts winking at you from the city, ready to be given a new task and, lo and behold, the city square is producing the extra shields from the completed mine.
[This message has been edited by East Street Trader (edited May 10, 2001).]

[Xin Yu]

For your first question: You need to clear the working order for the (n-1)th engineer before the (n+1)th engineer starts working. The 'back to home city' command replaces (thus clears) the working order for the engineer. The engineer has already finished his turn so he cannot move, but his working 'charge' has already been passed to the next engineer.

[Mixam]

Also Reply to #2. It works in 2.42 also. Any time after the mine starts and b4 it finishes build a city on that square and when it is done you will get the benefit. It is basically like mining and building an airbase cause you get the mine and irrigation/farmland. I will actually build most of my border cities on hills using this. Extra d good food and lots of shields to get city walls and units and maybe even barracks quickly.

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"I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with"
Plato

[towigg]

Does this city/mine cheat work in ToT? I tried it, but could not get it to work, but I might not be doing it right.


Also: HELP ANYONE??? I need a little help here, and this is the only way I can get the message through is by editing an existing post:

When I try to start a new thread, or reply to an existing thread, I get the message "No thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the webmaster". However, a thread is specified by the form my browser is using. If anyone can help, please help. I can only edit my existing posts now, but can't add any new posts. BTW, I am using Internet Explorer version 5. And I did email the link provided to the webmaster, but haven't gotten any replies yet.

This problem started when the forums were updated to their current form.

Any help is greatly appreciated

[Scouse Gits]

towigg -[list=1][*]I don't think it's a cheat - and I believe my feeling is shared by most here[*]Yes it works in ToT (I just loaded it here and tried it out in the 'Original Game' successfully[*]To try it yourself - start a game at Deity (you get two Settlers) move both to the nearest hill - on the next turn give the first the command 'm' then give the second the command 'b' to found your capital - some ?20? turns later your first settler becomes available again and your city is now on a mined hill - until the mine is completed the city is on an unmined hill of course ...[/list=a]Hope this helps ...

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library has been built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[Gastrifitis]

1. Thanks, Xin Yu! Another slap-your-forehead Eureka moment!

2. Thanks to everyone else, too. Now that I've got these things cleared up, I hope the file will near completion soon. I just realized that I've never tested the Automate settler to get irrigation where there's no water move, but I'm not anticipating problems getting that one to work. Back to experimenting, then to the file.

[debeest]

The automate-settler-for-irrigation-without-water cheat is highly undependable; an automated settler is about as likely to move onto a nearby mountain as to do something useful. Don't be surprised when you test it and it fails a lot. In fact, if you want to do some real testing, maybe you can figure out under what conditions the automated settler will do the right cheat.

[Gastrifitis]

Yeah, why is it that the things I've never tested before always work out to be more complicated than I imagined. I did learn a few points, though.

[Mixam]

I think the automated settler is given a random number between 1 and 8 and that is the direction he moves All joking aside has anyone actually tried to figure out the automated settler? I don't think I have even seen mention of it in a string b4.

[Jay Bee]

quote: Originally posted by Scouse Gits on 05-11-2001 11:37 AM I don't think it's a cheat - and I believe my feeling is shared by most here

Not by me, and believe me, I used to have one of the highest reps in Civ2 fair play

Would you care to explain in layman's terms why do you think it's not a cheat? I just can't seem to understand it. The AI can't do it. Ergo it should be a cheat.

[Scouse Gits]

JayBee
First off, I was not implying that anyone who had an alternative view was either wrong or dishonest - far from it. I merely stated my own view and my honestly held opinion that most here would agree with me - perhaps this latter is wrong.
Secondly, although the stance that 'the AI can't do it therefore it is a cheat' although tenable does not (for me) hold water. The AI does not ship chain, the AI does not launch concerted attacks, the AI does not know how to use a Howitzer or a Navy or .... - but human players do know how and can do these things - subject to (in multiplayer or competitive games) the common consensus. I cannot use military units to bribe or any of the other AI 'cheats'. I fear your argument is unable to convince me.
Why should I think this is not a cheat - have you never heard of mining towns established for the sole purpose of housing, feeding and exploiting both the mine and the miners? Surely this is the Civ equivalent.
Perhaps we should have a poll on this matter to formally determine the Apolyton consensus - although it is so rarelky beneficial to do this that it is hardly a major issue ...

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library has been built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[Marquis de Sodaq]

I agree with SG1 that it is acceptable, primarily because of the mining towns he mentions. While the AI cannot do this, it has plenty of cheats of its own. The trade-off is that the mining town's growth is dependent on productive food squares nearby. Large cities, in reality, produce almost no food whatsoever, but massive amounts of materials. Yet in the game, they produce food as if they are the richest farmland. So there is a sort of give and take...

Perhaps this has become an informal poll, after all...

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"There is no fortress impregnable to an ass laden with gold."
-Philip of Macedon

[Edward]

I agree with East Street Trader that the ability to mine a city square was not intended by the developers.

I also agree with Scouse Gits that, right or wrong, it's a commonly accepted practice by (I'd dare say the majority of) Apolyton readers.

It think that the developers SHOULD have made mining a city square legal and doable at any time ('though they didn't). In fact, if players were forced to irrigate, mine, and road city squares by hand (instead of getting roads and sometimes irrigation automatically) that would help remove some of the power of ICS.

[East Street Trader]

It seems reasonably clear that the developers did not want a player to be able to mine the square as the game does not allow you to do so once the city is established.

But I still do it and I am puzzled at why the developers took that attitude anyway. You can build on grass/plains and then forest and vice versa so why not mine a hill? In fact, I wouldn't be very surprised if there had not, at some time, been an intention for you to get a free mine when establishing on a hill in the same way you get free irrigation and the terrain benefit of a road when you found on flatland. It's not as though they are demonstrably keen that better defence should be a trade off with some loss, because a city built on a river gets the defence bonus but still gets the benefit of a bridge too.

I don't use the airstrip quirk so I guess I'm inconsistent. But that one just seems too divorced from any reality.

[Jay Bee]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
First off, I was not implying that anyone who had an alternative view was either wrong or dishonest - far from it.

I did not mean to imply otherwise. Sorry for the confusion. I also merely stated my opinion on the issue. We have already had this discussion in the more-or-less distant past. One was in the dawn of this forum, and the other was when Paul was setting up the rules for the OCC.

Let me explain again the meaning of the sentence "the AI can't do it". As somebody else picked up, it only means that the designers did not intend this as a feature (and that's why the AI can't do it). So, it is a design flaw. Taking advantage of a design flaw is cheating imho. That the AI does not do any of the things SG referred to it's only because of weak programing, not because they were not intended. I believe there is a slight difference.

At this point I would still like to hear any further reasoning you guys may have, not just the classic line "well, the AI cheats in so many ways..". Please note that I am not saying it shouldn't be done. You can do anything you want -- this is a game. Maybe I am just looking for a justification to start using this 'feature'...

Bottomline, I completely agree that this is a very minor issue, but hey, I think it's important to sometimes discuss about the "player's code of honor"

[Scouse Gits]

JayBee - love your avatar -- and absolutely agree with your final point - it is always in order to discuss one's Code of Honour -- however we may choose to spell it

[Blaupanzer]

The English have been known to have some interesting definitions for "honour."

However, doing the "right" thing would seem to be pretty important in MP. The mine thing is clearly a programming glitch. The settler founding the city automatically irrigates and the city square provides at least one shield in addition, so other, mutually exclusive, improvements would not be possible, as on a non-city square. You can either mine or irrigate hills, not both.

Why the programmers permit the transformation of city squares is beyond me. Undertaking the raising, lowering, or reforestation of cities while the population works unimpeded is completely beyond modern technology. Can anyone think of an example?

[East Street Trader]

Hmmm.

Well, now you point it out, Blaupanzer, I see that the hill city does already get some benefit from an improved city square. I guess that just one wheatsheaf and one shield looks such a skinny alocation of resources that I have been overlooking the fact that without the effect of the city you wouldn't even get that.

I don't think I'll stop using this though. I have quite a lot of self denying ordinances. They are purely selfish things, mainly concerned with keeping the difficulty level of the game at a decent level and cutting down on techniques that increase the mechanical aspect.

So, to take an example recently discussed, I don't re-home caravans not because I give any great importance to the fact that the developers did not intend it but rather because it is just too effective a technique and too easy to do.

In the case of the mined city hill I am equally unwilling to give the developers intentions the last word - and in this instance I don't think the process is either too easy or too mechanical.

You have to tie up your settler for just as long mining the city's hill as any other hill and you have to take a modicum of care in what you are doing. And what you finish up with is no nuclear weapon.

The balance seems to fall a bit like this - you finish up with a city which has excellent defence and with a city square which is roughly comparable in productiveness to one built on flatlands. But you have had to tie up a settler the time it takes to create the mine plus, in all likelihood, do a modicum of advance planning so as to free up two settlers and get them where needed at about the same time. I am reminded that there is a little skill involved by an incident in my last game when I was mining with an engineer not a settler and I misjudged it not once but twice, getting the mine built too soon each time and having to manoevre a military unit into place to get rid of my own damn mine before I could, finally, get it right.

I'm not sure I'm worried that the A1 can't do this - apart from anything else I'm not sure I've ever seen an A1 city on a hill or mountain (or forest come to that). They get the benefit which flows from an "always found on flatlands" strategy so can take the downside of that policy.

Needless to say if playing MP and the majority did not want to agree this device, I'd fall in. But initially I'd say, lets all be able to do this if we like. Now, if I would want to agree it with others for MP I certainly see no reason not to indulge myself with it when I have no one else's preferences than my own to consider.

[Scouse Gits]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
The English have been known to have some interesting definitions for "honour."

Pistols at dawn, I think Sir!