I work for a national news service that "competes" with Fox. There is an understanding that if you work for Murdoch, you have sold out any attempt at integrity for cash.
And of course you wouldn't have any reason to be biased would you?
I took a course in the History of Science/Tech in college and I was left with a slightly different account. FWIR, it was the romans who really used slave labor to overcome engineering challenges in lieu of making technological advancements. The greeks on the other hand valued abstract intellectual accomplishment over practical application of knowledge. In fact, the greek scientists of the day tended to avoid knowledge that had practical applications as that was seen as pedestrian or below them. For instance, Archimedes himself, who had made so many practical accomplishments, chose for his own epitaph to simply be the equation relating the area and volumes of a sphere to that of its circumscribed cylinder.
wow...so far I got a "troll" and a "redundant". Another great example of the moderators supressing contrary viewpoints instead of an honest assessment of the content.
When asked about the possible ecological effects on marine life the military had no comment.
Well, as a Naval Officer who has spent much of my career on ships, I can tell you that I wouldn't give a damn about the "possible ecological effects on marine life" if a torpedo was heading at my ship. Would you put your life at risk to swerve while driving to miss a squirrel? Does that make you a hypocrite?
I haven't tried Diety yet but I think I am ready to try it. I have had some good blow-outs on Emperor and I have heard that the jump from Emperor to Deity is not as hard as the jump from Monarch to Emperor.
I don't usually get to building any culture until much later on, don't you find you get run over by the AI without a large early military? Do you play on islands maybe?
Complete opposite here. My initial military is virtually non-existant. I usually have 2-3 warriors or scouts exploring, and have one defending unit in about 2/3 of my cities, the rest are usually empty. Instead my production goes into culture/settlers/workers. I survive by basicly being a wimp and caving in to every demand. Hopefully I see the demand coming and initiate a trade before they make a demand, this way I actually get something out of the deal as well. By mid game, everyone is polite toward me, I have virtually no military but don't feel threatened. My culture flips any of their cities that they placed between my cities and probably a few more on their edges. I probably flip 5-15 cities in a typical game (at the endgame, cities never flip). Everyone is in awe of my culture - don't know if that helps keep them civil or not but it might. Once there is no more grey land, I find that the AI gets a little more aggressive looking to expand so that is a good time to start building defending units and making sure there is at least one in each city. Until the end game, I never have more than one unit in a city.
Somewhat unconventional but it seems to have worked for me.
I usually don't fight a single battle until I have tanks or at least cavalry. Usually I get to those first and take advantage of the tech upper-hand. I will occasionally fight early on, but usually only if I think I can quickly capture a key city or two and sue for peace. I have found that trying to fight a prolonged war to completely wipe out an enemy early yields diminishing returns as all the other AI countries are benefiting from your distraction. Just a couple cities (or key resources) early though can easily tip the balance by midgame.
I'll fight for iron, coal and saltpeter but not much else.
Oh, and I almost always completely neglect my navy (which is ironic because I am actually IN the navy) unless the map is an archipeligo.
As for science, I have to disagree. I actually keep my science pegged at the most I can get away with and stay in the black with my people happy (usually its at 50-70% depending on my govt) The last turn or two before a tech I will turn it down so I don't waste "excess" beakers, turing that into cache to hurry something or let me go into science research debt later. I make money through trades, and trade heavily in resources. By emphasizing trade and knowledge in my cities, by the end game I getting a new tech every 4 turns (the min) with only 40% science or so with the rest going to the treasury.
Excellent points. Regarding build order, I was talking about improvements. For my first cities, I usually build a warrior first, then either a worker or settler depending on how prolific my main settler producing city is. I then start with culture. I rarely build graneries or barracks - at least not until I have built a library and cathedral. For younger cities farther from my capital I usually start with culture and just move my inner city defenders outward and replacing the vacancies with milary units built in my industrial core.
Excellent point on artillery. A couple stacks of 20-30 artillery with some more for defense can be devastating! On the other hand, arty wars can be rather boring... I hope they automate this in Civ 4.
I never have employed the rings of cities technique although I have read about it. Where do you build the FP to get the best bang during the rings strategy? At the center or in one of the rings?
Why would you want to keep your cities small? I have always used CxxxxCxxxxC spacing.
Concur with all on specialists. I only recently discovered how useful they can be in getting your corrupt cities to have useful production when your civ gets huge.
Civ 3 is significantly more difficult than Civ 2. In my opinion, the game is much more balanced so previous strategies of focusing on just one thing (war machine, science, etc) simply do not work. These resources are invaluable.
I usually play on Emperor level and probably win 1/10 games although most of the games I know within 10-20 turns if I have any shot at all. Some suggestions:
Sadly, you need a good start. You simply must start at a good location - preferrably with flood plains or bonus food nearby.
Expansion. A good fast-growing start allows you to expand quickly (although never as fast as the AI). Once all the land is "claimed" the only way you can expect your boundaries to shift is through miltary or cultural superiority. You need to maximize your area so that...
Control of resources. Resources. Resources. Resources. They keep your people happy, let you build (or deny the opponents) cool things. Most importantly they are critical for diplomacy
Keep your opponents happy with you so that their superior militaries don't steamroll you. This is achived through continuous trades of resources and techs. When you do trade a tech, always trade it to EVERYONE the same turn or else the computer will simply turn around and sell it to those you missed. Always trade dead-end techs but never trade techs that lead to important wonders or units (unless you are very near completion of the wonder).
Avoid alliances as they will drag you into wars. On the other hand, there is nothing like having the AI waste resources fighting itself while you stay neutral and progress in peace. There are ways to encourage the AI to fight. For instance, if you acquire an enemy city that is not very useful to you, offer it in a trade to an opponent of the original owner. They will often start a war to reclaim their city. Oh, and when they do fight, always try to help the underdog. You want this fight to drag out as long as possible. Have settlers ready to move in to the unclaimed territory immediately as one civilization sweeps across another leaving "unclaimed" territory.
Emphasize cultural production. The first things built in every city should be a temple and library. In my opinion, if you planned your cities very well, then they will grow so fast that they will hit a population limit rather fast in which case the granary isn't doing anything for you. (The exception is slow growing cities) Culture on the other hand is cumulative so it is imperative you build them as early as possible. Having superior culture may be the only way to expand your borders in the mid-game where you likely will still have an insufficient military.
Prebuild. When a new tech looms on the horizon, start building a dummy improvement early so you can switch to the new wonder/improvement as soon as it is available.
Use workers to pump up cities. When you run out of expansion room, you may still have some cities that are at max capacity but still have excess food. Use them to make workers which you then assimilate into your smaller cities to make them grow faster.
Don't try to build every wonder or acquire every tech first. Be tactical. Make a break for philosophy first. If you get it first, you get a free tech. Use it to get to Republic first and change your government. Culture, growth and production will explode! Try to build the Great Library which will keep you on par with your peers in science through the early mid-game while you investigate paths they are ignoring. Make sure you get railroads and are ready with dozens of waiting workers to start building immediately. Switch to democracy at first opportunity and hold off on communism/fascism untill the end game when corruption is out of control.
Save and re-try. I know it is cheesy but the best way to learn from your mistakes is to play though several different possibilites and find what works best for you.
You will always lag behind the AI's technology in the beginning, but by the mid-game you should be pretty even and in good shape for a late game explosion.
Re:What has Civ IV to offer?
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Shame you didn't press on... I think that culture was the single greatest addition to Civ III. It adds a whole new dimension to the game and is now my preferred method of conquest (via cultural expansion).
Perhaps I should have just focused on the ice and coffee sales which is what really tickled me. I mean, come-on, no commerce unless you are talking about creature comforts like your morning joe or ice for your mixed drink.
Ok, I'll admit it: although I had heard of Burning Man, I was only vaguely aware that it was some sort of festival. So of course I looked it up at wikipedia.
Seemed like a pretty straight-forward hippie festival; I'm cool with that. Then I get to this part:
Commerce Free Event.
No cash transactions are allowed at Burning Man... The only commerce that has been allowed are sales of coffee and ice at Center Camp, which benefit the local Gerlach-Empire school system...Besides this, participants must buy tickets to attend the event. Tickets are sold through the Burning Man ticket website.
At this point my irony meter pegs and I giggle incessantly through the remainder of the article.
So does this mean that US nuclear doctrine is moving closer to the French nuclear doctrine?
France has consistently rejected the adoption of a "no first-use" posture. Paris sees nuclear retaliation as consistent with the right to self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. It also asserts that countries that do not respect their own non-proliferation commitments should not expect negative security assurances (granted in 1995 by nuclear weapons states to non-nuclear members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty) to apply to them, thus implicitly subscribing to the norms of "belligerent reprisals" that also underpin U.S. and British nuclear doctrines.
I know this is off topic but I thought that instead of using my mod points I was about to allocate, I'd respond to you instead. While I wish you and your wife the best of luck, I just wanted to throw out there another option. I personally never would have thought of it and I understand why it never crosses others' minds, but I happened to marry a woman who herself was adopted and I am very, very grateful that her biological mother had put her up for adoption a few days after she was born.
My wife had a wonderful childhood and has unquestionably been given a much better life than what she would have experienced had she not been adopted into a loving family. While we were fortunate and did not have any difficulty conceiving our first child, we are in the middle of an international adoption for our second and I am sure we will adopt more or become foster parents later in life. I've met many people that didn't think they could love an adopted child as much as their "natural" child - but they typically look like I just hit them with a sack of bricks when asked if they would still love their biological child if they suddenly discovered it wasn't theirs. I don't want this to be misconstrued as a guilt trip, but there are many many children throughout the US and the world that are in need of loving families. Good luck to you and your family.
But Republicans apparently believe that the environment is nothing more than an infinitely exploitable resource, so while 153 countries do their part, the world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 25% of the world's CO2.
You can go ahead and try to blame republicans on this one... but the only time this has come up before the Senate (the only body of the US government that can ratify a treaty) the senate passed a resolution effectively demanding that the treaty not be ratified until developing countries are held to the same standards as the US. The vote was 95-0 and I am pretty sure there weren't 95 republicans in the senate at the time. In fact, 40 democrats voted for the resolution and there were 65 co-sponsors of the resolution.
Yup, we got to the moon (and will go further) using simple two-body equations... most of which are not-too-distantly related to the equations you used in high school physics. This is done by breaking the mission into smaller segments, the dynamics of which are governed using the assumption that only the body that has the greatest gravitational affect on the vehicle is currently active. This is called a patched conic approach
Let's consider an Earth-moon tranfer, for the launch, the gravitational effects of the moon are miniscule and ignored. The vehicle is propagated outward from the Earth along an ellipse (or parabola) with the Earth at one focus. The laucnh dates and launch headings are adjusted such that this outbound orbit gets "close" to the moon. Now if you follow this orbit outwards, at some point it will get so close to the moon that the moon's gravity will dominate the Earth's effects. At this point you resolve the vehicle's state into the moon's (non-inertial) coordinate system in which frame that arrival orbit probably looks like a hyperbola. Now you follow that conic in to the periapsis (closest point of approach) and subtract just enough energy to result in a closed orbit about the moon. Voila! You are now in lunar orbit and never solved a three-body problem (at least not analytically). Of course, the devil is in the details, in this case, splinig the conics together.
Actually I intended to cover that in the disclaimer (last bullet) when I mentioned gravity assists... I should have loosened that up a bit to just say multi-body effects... without which there are no constant energy manifolds of any consequence.
Overall - nice post. Unfortunately, IAARS and need to clarify a few minor details:
It's a Hohmann Transfer, not a Holman
Hohmann transfers are not always the minimum orbit energy orbit. If the ratio of the circular orbit radii is greater than 12 or so, then a bi-elliptic trajectory (three-burn) is optimal.
Actually, Celestial Mechanics is the study of the orbits of celestial bodies (naturally occurring) - man-made vehicles bring forth the distinction of Astrodynamics.
Mars' minimum energy transfers occur slightly more than every two years, not 26.
Oh, and I probably should be much more careful when using the work "optimal". Hohmann tranfers are only "optimal" if they are co-planar, the burns are considered impulses, and the effects of gravity assists, continuous thrust or any other non-conservative forces are ignored. In reality, we need to take advantage at least one of the above to even get to the outer planets on any type of reasonable time-line.
Actually, I did some graduate research invovling code to generate arrival trajectories for interplanetary missions. While unclassified, the code was was explort controlled by ITAR because the fidelity we were working with absolutely was of military value. And yes, for exactly the reasons you mention - it could be applied to ballistic missile trajectory design and guidance. Oh, and this was before 9/11 so this had nothing to do with the current administration (actually, I was continuing someone else's research that had begun several years earlier).
I know you think you are being witty with your remark, but I personally would feel pretty crappy if I knew that my code had been used to help one nation lob a WMD at another.
I did some graduate research/internship at JPL. They still use the porkchop plots which are published in volumes spanning the next decade or two. The "bible" at JPL (as far as I could tell) was The Interplanetary Mission Design Handbook Vol 1, Part 2. This is the document that I carry around with me to work or on travel if I think I am going to do a little research on the side (unfortunately my paying job has nothing to do with astrodynamics.) It covers pretty much all of the relevant equations for the various phases of an interplanetary mission (launch, transfer, arrival) as well as some other stuff. This is 35 pages of raw meat - little explanation, no derivations. Just the facts. I think the actual pork chop plots are in either other volumes or other parts of this volume (my paper copy had them right after this section).
Anyway, without at least some education in orbital mechanics/astrodynamics, the above ref will probably be a little overwhelming. To get up to speed I recommend the following:
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bate, Mueller & While. Undergrad text, should be no problem if you have had calculus.
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications by Vallado. (This is usually referred to as "Vallado" - in fact I never even knew its title until I just looked it up!) This one is much more in-depth and is certainly found on the desk of anyone who does research in this field. Most of the stuff from the JPL handbook is in here, plus lots and lots of other stuff
For example, it was discovered that due to a math error, running diagonally was approximately 41% faster than merely running forward;
Interesting,...I guess saying that you running diagonally was sqrt(2) faster doesn't sound as good but it is a little more telling as to the "math error"
Slashdot Mirror
And of course you wouldn't have any reason to be biased would you?
Translation: "I'm lazy, poor and can't get laid."
I took a course in the History of Science/Tech in college and I was left with a slightly different account. FWIR, it was the romans who really used slave labor to overcome engineering challenges in lieu of making technological advancements. The greeks on the other hand valued abstract intellectual accomplishment over practical application of knowledge. In fact, the greek scientists of the day tended to avoid knowledge that had practical applications as that was seen as pedestrian or below them. For instance, Archimedes himself, who had made so many practical accomplishments, chose for his own epitaph to simply be the equation relating the area and volumes of a sphere to that of its circumscribed cylinder.
of course not, but nobody said it was.
wow...so far I got a "troll" and a "redundant". Another great example of the moderators supressing contrary viewpoints instead of an honest assessment of the content.
Well, as a Naval Officer who has spent much of my career on ships, I can tell you that I wouldn't give a damn about the "possible ecological effects on marine life" if a torpedo was heading at my ship. Would you put your life at risk to swerve while driving to miss a squirrel? Does that make you a hypocrite?
I don't usually get to building any culture until much later on, don't you find you get run over by the AI without a large early military? Do you play on islands maybe?
Complete opposite here. My initial military is virtually non-existant. I usually have 2-3 warriors or scouts exploring, and have one defending unit in about 2/3 of my cities, the rest are usually empty. Instead my production goes into culture/settlers/workers. I survive by basicly being a wimp and caving in to every demand. Hopefully I see the demand coming and initiate a trade before they make a demand, this way I actually get something out of the deal as well. By mid game, everyone is polite toward me, I have virtually no military but don't feel threatened. My culture flips any of their cities that they placed between my cities and probably a few more on their edges. I probably flip 5-15 cities in a typical game (at the endgame, cities never flip). Everyone is in awe of my culture - don't know if that helps keep them civil or not but it might. Once there is no more grey land, I find that the AI gets a little more aggressive looking to expand so that is a good time to start building defending units and making sure there is at least one in each city. Until the end game, I never have more than one unit in a city.
Somewhat unconventional but it seems to have worked for me.
I'll fight for iron, coal and saltpeter but not much else.
Oh, and I almost always completely neglect my navy (which is ironic because I am actually IN the navy) unless the map is an archipeligo.
As for science, I have to disagree. I actually keep my science pegged at the most I can get away with and stay in the black with my people happy (usually its at 50-70% depending on my govt) The last turn or two before a tech I will turn it down so I don't waste "excess" beakers, turing that into cache to hurry something or let me go into science research debt later. I make money through trades, and trade heavily in resources. By emphasizing trade and knowledge in my cities, by the end game I getting a new tech every 4 turns (the min) with only 40% science or so with the rest going to the treasury.
Excellent point on artillery. A couple stacks of 20-30 artillery with some more for defense can be devastating! On the other hand, arty wars can be rather boring... I hope they automate this in Civ 4.
I never have employed the rings of cities technique although I have read about it. Where do you build the FP to get the best bang during the rings strategy? At the center or in one of the rings?
Why would you want to keep your cities small? I have always used CxxxxCxxxxC spacing.
Concur with all on specialists. I only recently discovered how useful they can be in getting your corrupt cities to have useful production when your civ gets huge.
I usually play on Emperor level and probably win 1/10 games although most of the games I know within 10-20 turns if I have any shot at all. Some suggestions:
- Sadly, you need a good start. You simply must start at a good location - preferrably with flood plains or bonus food nearby.
- Expansion. A good fast-growing start allows you to expand quickly (although never as fast as the AI). Once all the land is "claimed" the only way you can expect your boundaries to shift is through miltary or cultural superiority. You need to maximize your area so that...
- Control of resources. Resources. Resources. Resources. They keep your people happy, let you build (or deny the opponents) cool things. Most importantly they are critical for diplomacy
- Keep your opponents happy with you so that their superior militaries don't steamroll you. This is achived through continuous trades of resources and techs. When you do trade a tech, always trade it to EVERYONE the same turn or else the computer will simply turn around and sell it to those you missed. Always trade dead-end techs but never trade techs that lead to important wonders or units (unless you are very near completion of the wonder).
- Avoid alliances as they will drag you into wars. On the other hand, there is nothing like having the AI waste resources fighting itself while you stay neutral and progress in peace. There are ways to encourage the AI to fight. For instance, if you acquire an enemy city that is not very useful to you, offer it in a trade to an opponent of the original owner. They will often start a war to reclaim their city. Oh, and when they do fight, always try to help the underdog. You want this fight to drag out as long as possible. Have settlers ready to move in to the unclaimed territory immediately as one civilization sweeps across another leaving "unclaimed" territory.
- Emphasize cultural production. The first things built in every city should be a temple and library. In my opinion, if you planned your cities very well, then they will grow so fast that they will hit a population limit rather fast in which case the granary isn't doing anything for you. (The exception is slow growing cities) Culture on the other hand is cumulative so it is imperative you build them as early as possible. Having superior culture may be the only way to expand your borders in the mid-game where you likely will still have an insufficient military.
- Prebuild. When a new tech looms on the horizon, start building a dummy improvement early so you can switch to the new wonder/improvement as soon as it is available.
- Use workers to pump up cities. When you run out of expansion room, you may still have some cities that are at max capacity but still have excess food. Use them to make workers which you then assimilate into your smaller cities to make them grow faster.
- Don't try to build every wonder or acquire every tech first. Be tactical. Make a break for philosophy first. If you get it first, you get a free tech. Use it to get to Republic first and change your government. Culture, growth and production will explode! Try to build the Great Library which will keep you on par with your peers in science through the early mid-game while you investigate paths they are ignoring. Make sure you get railroads and are ready with dozens of waiting workers to start building immediately. Switch to democracy at first opportunity and hold off on communism/fascism untill the end game when corruption is out of control.
- Save and re-try. I know it is cheesy but the best way to learn from your mistakes is to play though several different possibilites and find what works best for you.
You will always lag behind the AI's technology in the beginning, but by the mid-game you should be pretty even and in good shape for a late game explosion.I'm trying to picture where a whale's neck is...
Shame you didn't press on... I think that culture was the single greatest addition to Civ III. It adds a whole new dimension to the game and is now my preferred method of conquest (via cultural expansion).
Perhaps I should have just focused on the ice and coffee sales which is what really tickled me. I mean, come-on, no commerce unless you are talking about creature comforts like your morning joe or ice for your mixed drink.
Seemed like a pretty straight-forward hippie festival; I'm cool with that. Then I get to this part:
At this point my irony meter pegs and I giggle incessantly through the remainder of the article.
Yes, they were both Wright.
My wife had a wonderful childhood and has unquestionably been given a much better life than what she would have experienced had she not been adopted into a loving family. While we were fortunate and did not have any difficulty conceiving our first child, we are in the middle of an international adoption for our second and I am sure we will adopt more or become foster parents later in life. I've met many people that didn't think they could love an adopted child as much as their "natural" child - but they typically look like I just hit them with a sack of bricks when asked if they would still love their biological child if they suddenly discovered it wasn't theirs. I don't want this to be misconstrued as a guilt trip, but there are many many children throughout the US and the world that are in need of loving families. Good luck to you and your family.
You can go ahead and try to blame republicans on this one... but the only time this has come up before the Senate (the only body of the US government that can ratify a treaty) the senate passed a resolution effectively demanding that the treaty not be ratified until developing countries are held to the same standards as the US. The vote was 95-0 and I am pretty sure there weren't 95 republicans in the senate at the time. In fact, 40 democrats voted for the resolution and there were 65 co-sponsors of the resolution.
Let's consider an Earth-moon tranfer, for the launch, the gravitational effects of the moon are miniscule and ignored. The vehicle is propagated outward from the Earth along an ellipse (or parabola) with the Earth at one focus. The laucnh dates and launch headings are adjusted such that this outbound orbit gets "close" to the moon. Now if you follow this orbit outwards, at some point it will get so close to the moon that the moon's gravity will dominate the Earth's effects. At this point you resolve the vehicle's state into the moon's (non-inertial) coordinate system in which frame that arrival orbit probably looks like a hyperbola. Now you follow that conic in to the periapsis (closest point of approach) and subtract just enough energy to result in a closed orbit about the moon. Voila! You are now in lunar orbit and never solved a three-body problem (at least not analytically). Of course, the devil is in the details, in this case, splinig the conics together.
Actually I intended to cover that in the disclaimer (last bullet) when I mentioned gravity assists... I should have loosened that up a bit to just say multi-body effects... without which there are no constant energy manifolds of any consequence.
How do you know if an astrodynamicist is an extrovert?
He looks at your feet when he talks to you!
I know you think you are being witty with your remark, but I personally would feel pretty crappy if I knew that my code had been used to help one nation lob a WMD at another.
Anyway, without at least some education in orbital mechanics/astrodynamics, the above ref will probably be a little overwhelming. To get up to speed I recommend the following:
Interesting,...I guess saying that you running diagonally was sqrt(2) faster doesn't sound as good but it is a little more telling as to the "math error"