help-won first game

[tomdy2k]

hi

i won my first ac game as dierdre but i had to destroy miriam because she was such a diehard. i had to worry about me having 35 bases when i was done so that i was in such a hurry to wipe her out i let most bases keep on producing so any hints on plain old micro-management will be appreciated.

ps.

is miriam always such a diehard pain in the ass.

Tom

[Chowlett]

quote: Originally posted by tomdy2k on 01-02-2001 03:40 PM is miriam always such a diehard pain in the ass.

Oh yes.

As for micromanagement tips, really you can only find your own style. There's at least one other thread on this topic around here, but for some general tips...

1. Never let your governers build. Ever. No, really.
2. Move all units by hand all the time. The only exception I find are long distance GO's, which are usually all right, and sea-formers, which can terraform correctly quite often.
3. Get Vel's strategy guide (see the sticky threads), and understand it. Then use it, and occasionally break it.

The other guys will add some thoughts, I'm sure, but mainly it comes with practice and experience - you'll develop with time, my child

[Wiglaf]

quote: i had to worry about me having 35 bases when i was done so that i was in such a hurry to wipe her out i let most bases keep on producing

I hate it when this happens to me, too. I don't agree with Chowlett about the governors, though. Even though they are really, really dumb they can sometimes keep a base moving instead of you producing the same thing over and over and over. It depends (of course) on if you want to keep producing something constantly.
To maximize automation you could just set everything to auto in a test game - cities, terraformers, everything. This will ruin you totally, so throughout the game just remove what you can handle and keep what you want the comp to do. Then play a normal game with those modified settings. And Chow's right, get Vel's guide - it's a life saver.
Oh, Miriam is indeed quite persistant

[Goit]

My best suggestion for managing the tedium of building in captured bases (in the early endgame, when you are dominant and are sweeping through an AI territory) is to create a build queue in the first base you capture. Then you can save the template build queue (right-click on the queue) and just load in it in each time you capture a base.

Usually I include a rover-former in the queue and as they pop out, set it to auto-improve home base. Yes, I know automating formers produces less than optimal results - but by tweaking the automation options in preferences you can get fairly sensible results (but not that sensible, unfortunately).

Needless to say, this is only appropriate when the game is pretty much won and you just want to transcend as quickly as possible. Using such techniques earlier on is a sure path to defeat.

[Wiglaf]

Tom, you might want to check out your accidental post in the civ2 forums, someone posted a response there.

[JAMiAM]

A nice tactic for dealing with Miriam is to let her go to vendetta with you. Then take out the majority of her empire. Shortly after grabbing her HQ, go Fundamentalist and take a few more bases. Rebuff her attempts to secure a truce. Eventually, she'll surrender, and then you can force her to become your submissive pact mate. Then, give her a few years and start granting her all of your techs. She'll go on a rampage against your enemies.

This works especially well against Zak. Especially if you have built the HSA.

Also, your own economy will benefit from her trade.

Of course, maintain a lead in the power graph against her, and keep a noble reputation, so that she remains submissive.

[Kirnwaffen]

My two cents on micro management: Every 20 or 30 turns, I open up the base screen and just use the "next base" arrows to scroll through all of my bases to see what each one is doing, and what it will be doing. This saves a lot of valuable production in that you will frequently spot mistakes made by you or the computer. I always use qeues to minimize the orders that I have to give each turn. I generally let my governors organize citizens, though they seem to be relatively inept when it comes to drone riots (they will frequently make a necessary change for only one turn rather than actually keep the fix, causing a serious loss of production in some cases). In terms of using governors for production, there are ups and downs. For instance (by the way, is this considered a cheat?) a governor can and will change production to a garrison unit immediately (I mean before your upkeep) if your garrison is destroyed in that city. This can, in some instances cause the garrison to be built at the start of your turn, whereas you would not have been able to build it until the turn after. On the other hand, governors will waste production on useless units if left to operate without a qeue. Hope this helps.
[This message has been edited by Kirnwaffen (edited January 02, 2001).]