How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Can't beat the AI? Is it too tame? Discuss the best strategies!
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Alien Valkyrie
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

I'm not sure if transforming Mountains into Hills is always that good. If you want to make your cities grow, then of course, but if you want to defend, mountains are better (x3 defense bonus).
~ AVL
clawsoon
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by clawsoon »

Caedo wrote:I'm not sure if transforming Mountains into Hills is always that good. If you want to make your cities grow, then of course, but if you want to defend, mountains are better (x3 defense bonus).
Agreed. I just put Mountains in the list for completeness. :-)
Jim-11
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by Jim-11 »

clawsoon wrote: First you have to transform them to Grassland. You can transform anything to Hills, it just takes more turns. I usually build a couple of transports to move Engineers from the easy Grassland cities to the harder Tundra/Swamp/etc. cities once the Grassland cities are transformed.

How to make anything into Hills:

Glacier->Tundra->Desert->Plains->Grassland->Hills

Ocean->Swamp->Grassland->Hills

(Forest|Jungle)->Grassland->Hills

Mountains->Hills

Some of the steps require Transformation, and some of them require Irrigation. Oh, and mine the hills once you're done transforming, of course. It's a waste not to.
Thanks! i did not discover this before because I always put my cities on plains or forests or hills for greater production. Using grassland instead (for faster growth) is much more attractive now that I can transform the grassland into hills.
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JTN
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by JTN »

Jim-11 wrote:
clawsoon wrote:You can transform anything to Hills, it just takes more turns.
Thanks! i did not discover this before because I always put my cities on plains or forests or hills for greater production. Using grassland instead (for faster growth) is much more attractive now that I can transform the grassland into hills.
Doesn't every Freeciv player end up sketching a version of this picture sooner or later? ;)
Sarilho1
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by Sarilho1 »

clawsoon wrote:Sorry to respond to myself again: One more advantage of transforming your city centers into hills is that they're impervious to global warming. With habours (seafaring), offshore platforms (miniaturization) and city center hills, it's actually to your advantage to cause as much global warming as possible. Global warming becomes a weapon you can use rather than something to fear.

Once everything that's not a hill or mountain has been flooded:

- there are a lot more ocean squares, making celebration growth much easier and giving higher trade numbers because of the +3 trade per ocean square, which leads to faster research and more money.

- the number of landing points for attacking troops (howitzers, etc.) is reduced.

- many of your cities become disconnected, so attackers have to make a fresh landing for each city they want to take over. Each landing they have to do gives you a chance to counter-attack before they can attack you.

Once you want to start attacking, you'll have the same problems as a result of everything getting flooded. I avoid that problem by using bombers and paratroopers.
That is a perverse strategy that works. It shouldn't. That's why I would like that global warming flooded coastal cities and destroy it (maybe it could survive if built in hills or mountains). Until worst effects of global warming are added, I need to say: congratulations for your strategy, it really seems to work.
Last edited by Sarilho1 on Sun Jan 26, 2014 2:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
clawsoon
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by clawsoon »

Sarilho1 wrote: That is a perverse strategy that works. It shouldn't. That's why I would like that global warming flooded coastal cities and destroy it (maybe it could survive if built in hills or mountains). Until worst effects of global warming were added, I need to say: conflagrations for your strategy, it really seems to work.
Destroying non-hill coastal cities would actually help my strategy, because the first thing I do after getting Explosives is transform all my city centers to hills. :-)

If Ocean squares could be polluted, the strategy wouldn't work nearly as well. My cities depend on offshore platforms that never have oils spills and huge amounts of pollution that never kill fish.
rainbowrobin
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Re: How to defend against battleships and howitzers

Post by rainbowrobin »

Jim-11 wrote: Thanks! i did not discover this before because I always put my cities on plains or forests or hills for greater production. Using grassland instead (for faster growth) is much more attractive now that I can transform the grassland into hills.
I'm pretty sure grassland is optimal for city placement in general. With default rules, city tiles have to produce at least one food (after applying the irrigation effect bonus, if any) and one shield.

grassland: 2/0/0
plains: 1/1/0

as Despotism city:
grassland: 2/1/1 (irrigation bonus lost to Despotism penalty; free shield; free road)
plains: 2/1/1 (free irrigation and road)
as Monarchy city:
grassland: 3/1/1
plains: 2/1/1

So they're equal under Despotism, and grassland is superior as a city site otherwise. When placing early cities, I'm often looking for grassland surrounded by plains that can be built up into 2/1/1 tiles and a lot of production.

City hills are 2/1/0, or 1/3/0 if you mine them. Hill with river gives trade bonus and becomes a nice city city location (hill with wine even better.)
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