Discovering The Lost Tribe

dexters · June 14, 2003, 20:46

I am currently playing a pangea map and is having a lot of fun. One thing I found especially interesting was that I knew fairly early on, one of the Civs (I played 16 civ huge map) was isolated. I had made contact and traded maps within the first 60 turns and knew I had 15 civs accounted for with one missing. (no, I didn't used the spaceship thing to see who it was. It was better to not know)

When I found this lost civilization in 1435 AD, the top Civs on the Pangea map were well in the Industrial age and the Aztecs were still stuck in the Ancient Age! And very early Ancient age at that.

I goes to show the living market system of trades that Firaxis has managed to create in Civ 3. It's a lot like some of those artificial life games where you throw a bunch of stuff into a place and see how they interact. In this case, the system is such that isolation creates these lost Civilizations.

The scene in my game was right of the colonial past of Europe. In my case though, I was playing the Koreans (love those cheap libraries). Great stuff.

statusperfect · June 15, 2003, 04:44

Happens all the time on real world maps since ammerica is so underpopulated.

cheers

cookieman · June 15, 2003, 10:24

its so fun to actually use those lost civs to your advantage. if you are the only one within their contact you can sell them worthless tech for a fair price also you can go to your rich neighbors and sell them contact rights for a very very pretty penny. good luck havin fun with you lost civ.

HAND · June 15, 2003, 12:25

I don't think they have much chance of winning the space race now! Or just winning in fact. Its fun finding those lost civs...makes me feel like Christopher Columbus

bobbo008 · June 15, 2003, 12:58

taking it over and having a forbidden palace there... oooo...

when i'm on continent maps, with roughly half the civs each on one of two continents (or group of continents), i love to be the one to get to the "new world" first, then find who's the richest and sell them the contacts first, so then, once you get down to the poor countries, the contacts are only worth like 10 gold... (i once had a nation pay 2400 for contact with 10 civs...)

Inverse Icarus · June 15, 2003, 15:09

Quote:

Originally posted by cookieman
its so fun to actually use those lost civs to your advantage. if you are the only one within their contact you can sell them worthless tech for a fair price also you can go to your rich neighbors and sell them contact rights for a very very pretty penny. good luck havin fun with you lost civ.

also note they would still buy horses while you're building tanks.

dexters · June 15, 2003, 16:11

Yep. I decided to wipe them out because they had a monopoly on spices and I wanted to control that luxury.

The whole island is mine now.

pedrojedi · June 15, 2003, 17:04

That's another interesting thing: those lost civ always get to have the one luxury that no one else has. So, make them good allies or just make them your rotting living slaves.

Kuciwalker · June 15, 2003, 17:07

You should be able to buy several of the same luxury, and then sell it to other people. Being a middleman could be highly profitable

dexters · June 15, 2003, 18:37

Quote:

Originally posted by pedrojedi
That's another interesting thing: those lost civ always get to have the one luxury that no one else has. So, make them good allies or just make them your rotting living slaves.

I think it is intentional and more of a gameplay feature. I assume the map engine was built this way to create these island empires that have a monopoly on one resource (think of the colonization phase in European history and why they wanted to colonize to begin with).

I assume Firaxis thought that players who find themselves in this situation would either quit or take it as a challenge.

If you do the former, you will RUN into AI controlled Civs who are the lost tribe and you can either make them your friends or take them out and control the entire resource. If you go the latter and take is a challenge, then... it is probably a heck of a challenge.

bobbo008 · June 16, 2003, 04:01

...has anyone ever BEEN the lost tribe?

dexters · June 16, 2003, 04:18

I was thinking of starting another thread on that.

Thank's for bringing it up bobbo. With so many good players out there, I'd assume someone must have gave it a shot.

I haven't seen any AAR on these type of games though. I know I've been stuck in islands before, but everytime, I draw a poor shithole without 1 damn luxury. I'm not that brave... so I restart.

BulMaster · June 16, 2003, 05:52

I was once on a panagea wasn't really alone we were too. I always believed we had a good pace of dev since we were two but when we discovered the civilized ppl from the continent well i left the game

CerberusIV · June 16, 2003, 07:38

Quote:

Originally posted by bobbo008
...has anyone ever BEEN the lost tribe?

Yes. I recently had a game (monarch level, eight civs, standard map, continents, 60% water) where 7 AI's were on a big continent and I had a smaller (23 cities) one to myself and no contact until they got navigation.

I didn't get the Great Library so I was way behind on tech when they contacted me. I refused to buy tech and relied on a small (low cost) military and researching like crazy. I think I did every medieval tech in 4 turns each. I actually caught up enough to grab Hoover and then fell behind a little but was level for tech in the middle of the modern era.

I didn't get any rubber at all! I was planning to trade for rubber, build MA and start an invasion of the other continent but decided to drop it and start another game. It would have been possible to get a domination win (I turn spaceship off).

I did relatively well because I had enough space to build a large, powerful city base. Also I was playing as Carthage so low corruption and hordes of industrious workers slapped down roads, irrigation, mines and eventually RR's.

Interesting, but if you get stranded on an isolated continent with only room for 7 or 8 cities you are as good as dead.

cookieman · June 16, 2003, 08:27

I was the lost tribe also once, i didnt have a single luxury however. i was playing a huge map on continents 16 civs. i was "discovered" by russia as i was researching my last ancient tech. they had to be very close to industrialization because they had frigates but werent industrialized. so after that i said screw this and restarted. i dont mind playing catch up but when no catchin up is in sight im outta there.

An interesting thing however, my younger brother LOVES being the lost tribe. I dont understand it, he plays a huge map 16 civs on archipelago. hes always in last too, when i question him why he plays he says "i love reliving imperialism". im still wondering if he means getting imperialized or being the imperializer. but oh well

IMO lost tribes are worthy of a restart

mimi · June 16, 2003, 09:16

Was once - thought it would be kinda fun to play it out but when I was finally contacted by the "foreigners" they were more than a full era ahead of me in tech and I didn't have the patience (or the money) to play the game out from there with any hope of winning.