Cleansing of the Intellectuals!

Alinestra Covelia · July 19, 2003, 21:23

This came up in a recent game I was playing, where I had a very strong infrastructure and was massing my troops to go over the border. I tried an invasion with full out deployment of generals, spies, troops, dirty tricks - you name it.

The invasion succeeded in capturing the city, but after a long war of attrition effort, the defenders regrouped and wiped out my attacking force. I decided that I didn't have enough units and went around finding out which citizens and civilians I could kill to free up some populace. Having slaughtered all intellectuals and razed all my universities to the ground, I discovered that I was able to afford many more military units and storm my way to victory hurrah hurrah hurrah.

Has anybody else had to resort such Khmer Rouge-like tactics in order to get their military into shape? I'm not sure that's what Big Huge Games had in mind when they put in the population limit.

Mr. President · July 19, 2003, 21:31

Reminds me of the old Age of Empires days.

trickey · July 19, 2003, 21:36

Meh..brains, who needs 'em?

Signa · July 19, 2003, 23:09

The Barbarians always win in the end...

MattH · July 19, 2003, 23:13

Near the end (after endgame techs), I've been know to click a citizen, press home, and then hit ctrl-delete

Then the infinite que's go to work

Skanky Burns · July 20, 2003, 01:02

/me is glad Poly people do not run the world.

MattH · July 20, 2003, 10:40

Yeah, from the oval office:

[MattH touches staffer, presses home]

Staffer: Nooooooooo!!!

MattH: Yes.

[MattH presses ctrl-delete]

[big explosion]

Defense minister: we now can create 30 BILLION tanks at once *raises pinky to mouth*

iamlod · July 20, 2003, 18:48

Quote:

[SIZE=1]

Defense minister: we now can create 30 BILLION tanks at once *raises pinky to mouth*

Who needs tanks when you have laser-enhanced seabass?

tetley · July 21, 2003, 11:12

Haven't done it myself, but would you do better to Call To Arms everybody? You can Call To Arms scholars. It's like staging your own Ragnarok in AoM.

Nice idea, though. In AoM nothing was more fun than Ragnarok.

iamlod · July 21, 2003, 21:45

It is more valuable to have the population spaces then civilians in arms. Partisians and the like don't fight nearly as well as the military units you could make in their place.
...plus its's fun to kill stuff...

Q Classic · July 22, 2003, 10:18

can't say i have, ali.

i'm glad you got ron to work, though.

in my case, i usually go straight for the jugular. forget everything else, unless it's directly in the way--and even then i don't always strike.

Alinestra Covelia · July 22, 2003, 23:30

I'm playing as the Chinese at the moment, so Citizens are pretty much a must have, and in overwhelming quantities.

I took over Japan in the Conquer the World campaign, and found that having a horde of citizens behind your army doing mop-ups can be very useful. They can construct a few buildings so your exhausted troops can garrison and heal even as you assimilate the city. Then they can get to repairing the city to aid in the next attack.

I find it strange that the Chinese were denied having a larger population, on grounds that it's an unfair advantage, but the Bantu have one that's 100% larger than anybody else's. Does anybody find this weird?

tetley · July 23, 2003, 00:00

Man, cleansing intellectuals works great on CTW pre-Information Age. I'd still rather Call to Arms them, but nice heads up.

That's also so true about having citizens behind you, especially if you're Turks. When you're up there playing on Toughest, you're in continuous combat. You really need all the Towers you can get on your perimeter, while your artillery shells away behind their cover. Towers effectively add to your pop cap.

Sirotnikov · July 27, 2003, 19:26

I found that I do it often as well.

Though usually I opt for picking out a farm or a woodcutter's camp and deleteing it and everyone working there...

and making sure I'm still topping the production max.

Alinestra Covelia · July 28, 2003, 09:25

My big problem is that the game tells you if you're making more than the maximum, but it doesn't tell you how much more than the maximum you're making. Thus, I am very leery of killing off my workers because I don't know if I'll drop below production.

Alinestra Covelia · July 28, 2003, 09:26

I realize that the above post makes me sound like the very worst of capitalistic taskmistresses, or perhaps even the very worst of communistic taskmistresses, but in both cases it's not that far off the real money so I leave it for now.

Skanky Burns · July 29, 2003, 02:38

What you can do to test is move one worker away from his/her workplace. If you are still above production, tell your worker their services are no-longer necessary.

Repeat until your production does actually drop down below the maximum for that particular resource. Now, simply return the worker to work and all is well. You have only killed as many as is "necessary", and are still producing at the maximum rate.

buizzz · July 30, 2003, 11:46

either that or you just hold your mouse pointer on the production number that is flashing in red and you will get an efficiency percentage. That'll tell you whether you have just crossed the max (efficiency 95-99%) or whether you are way over.

tetleytea · July 30, 2003, 12:13

Question: I understand why you would kill citizens/intellectuals, but, why are you razing Universities/Woodcutter camps? What's the benefit of that?

Hermann the Lombard · July 30, 2003, 15:35

Quote:

Originally posted by tetleytea
Question: I understand why you would kill citizens/intellectuals, but, why are you razing Universities/Woodcutter camps? What's the benefit of that?

The benefit (I suppose) is recycling some resources, but that's about the point where you end up swimming in resources anyway...unless building a lot of new units to replace the slaughtered civilians, which I suppose is the point. Maybe you could squeeze the dead civilians between rocks for a million years, then use the oil...

Skanky Burns · July 30, 2003, 19:55

The map looks cleaner too...

Alinestra Covelia · July 30, 2003, 22:24

By that time I had maxed out on citizen pop limit, and on tech that could be researched. (The game was limited to a certain age advance so it was at that point still a contest of conventional, not nuclear, weapons.)

The universities were doing absolutely nothing useful and I thought the resources to be gained from their razing was more important.

This was so because I was preparing to set all my military facilities to infinite queue, with rally points deep in the heart of enemy territory. So once my army encountered resistance, they would have enough backup to keep the momentum going.

tetleytea · July 31, 2003, 13:22

Empty universities still make your cities a little larger and give it a little defense bonus.

Skanky Burns · August 1, 2003, 05:07

Who needs a defence bonus when the fighting occurs in the enemy's territory?

Alinestra Covelia · August 2, 2003, 22:07

Oh, I just realized that universities are extremely useful in the information age, as nuclear weapons require large amounts of Research to build.

Just thought I should throw that out even though it doesn't apply immediately to the above scenario.

#Edit: put in the rather important noun "nuclear weapons" in the above post.

Hermann the Lombard · August 7, 2003, 17:44

Quote:

Originally posted by tetleytea
Empty universities still make your cities a little larger and give it a little defense bonus.

Well, that's what we read, but is that really true, or are their just a series of plateaus each time city size increases? Dunno...and it's tedious to test that.

tetleytea · August 7, 2003, 18:40

I was always under the impression it plateaus, but it also soaks up some dumb AI attacks. All-in-all the benefit is very marginal, but compared to the even more marginal benefit of razing them...I'll be keeping them.

Hermann the Lombard · August 11, 2003, 15:35

I occasionally tear down one or two of my earliest forts to make a new front-line fort more affordable. Ditto my first airbase, once its planes can no longer reach the front. Of course that's a LOT safer against the AI!!

WRangler Rhymer · August 12, 2003, 04:47

Yes this strategy is good, but I dont build any more then 4 in each university in the first place, but i do kill off excess citizens.

Out4Blood · August 12, 2003, 15:58

Quote:

Originally posted by WRangler Rhymer
Yes this strategy is good, but I dont build any more then 4 in each university in the first place, but i do kill off excess citizens.

Don't know what you're thinking here, but you should always max out your scholars. Knowledge is the most critical resource because you cannot get it anywhere else.