Hm? So, since when does the number of units on the board matter?

If you lose your -entire- Empire, you're not out completely (next civil war, you get to annex a piece of another faction), and even then, it's a sign of both monumentally bad luck and poor play. Normally, losing about half your empire is expected, and it's not a major problem. It's a setback and you're supposed to take your lumps and get back to advancing...remember, Tools once gained are never lost.

Yes, there's luck, skill's just as important, or more so, however.

The following is based on the assumption that in important respects, the computer game mirrors the boardgame on which it is based.

Tax revolts are not random. You have a number of tokens that can either be tokens in stock, money in your treasury, or population counters on the board. You either have a total limit of 47 or 55. management of your tokens is one of the most important aspects of the game. The first step in a round is to move two tokens from stock to the treasury for each city that a civilization has on the map. If you run out of tokens before all taxes are paid, remaining cities undergo a tax revolt. Tokens in the treasury are not available for population growth, which comes next.

The Coinage advance allows you to vary your taxation rate.

The civilization that first benefits from the tax revolt is the one with the most tokens in stock (unbuilt cities count as five), with at least one free city. That civilization collects the taxes and replaces the city marker with one of its own colour. This process is repeated, until all taxes have been collected or no other civilization can collect the taxes.

Movement order is in decreasing order of poputlation, largest first, smallest last. Unless you are in a massive rebuilding phase, you try to keep your population as low as possible. You also want to keep
your treasury as low as possible, unless you can actually spend the money.

If someone gets the civil war disaster, the beneficiary of the civil war is also the one with the most stock. So small can be beautiful.

Units on the board matter because if you don't have any you can't place any new ones; and you need twice as many units on the board as you have cities or else your cities get reduced. Further more you need units on the board to build new cities. So that is why units on the board are important.

There is a definite skill factor, but that is unfortunately far overshadowed by the luck factor. Here is an example. I was playing Babylon against a normal AI. Once the bronze age began and calamities began happening I had at least one calamity every turn, and if you count the secondary effects of other civs calamities such as famine and epidemic it was two per turn. Asia, on the other hand, did not suffer a single calamity whatsoever in 16 turns of play. I would build two cities and lose three; build three and lose two, build one and lose four etcetera. . . all due to calamities

This essentially turns the game into "luck of the draw". It would be fine if calamities were balanced out somehow, but they are not. There seem to be three or four civs each that get hit with most of the calamities.

Granted, if you lose your -entire- empire you are not "out". But neither can you do anything except wait around for a civilwar to happen someplace, and in that time you have gone so far back that you have no hope of finishing anywhere near the top.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Cris @ Jul 6 2005, 02:21 AM) [snapback]128108[/snapback]</div>I've got the same problem .... :crybaby: :wallbash: :sos:

Thank's for every help

Go get DosBox, dude.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(the_fifth_horseman @ Jul 7 2006, 12:36 PM) [snapback]242106[/snapback]</div>Shipbuilding takes forever. Is there some sort of way to speed this up?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(A2CivGuy @ Jul 12 2006, 03:00 PM) [snapback]242864[/snapback]</div>Shipbuilding takes forever. Is there some sort of way to speed this up?
[/b][/quote]

I get better results if I don't run with Dosbox.
In XP, I set the Compatibility mode on AC_MAIN.EXE to Win 95 and turn on all the compatibility checkboxes.
The game still crashes now and then, but it autosaves so frequently that you lose little progress.

And shipbuilding for the other countries is no longer slow.

A couple of trading questions:

Is there any way to guess which cards the computer nations are lying about?

Do the computer countries remember everything you claimed to have in the other rounds of trading for the next round?

And, is trading private? So, if I offer Oil, Iron and Salt, but then do a private trade with Crete and give them Grain, Cloth and Hides, do the other countries know that I have changed?
Presumably they know afterwards cos the list of traded cards is public.

Can somebody tell me how to get this game to work? I am not very computer savvy so I need a complete walk through! For example i have no idea where to adjust the compatability level. I cant even find a launch file.. AC Main, Start and the icon doesn't do anything......

I found the answer to my own question HERE -->
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewforum.php?f=39


Now can anyone tell me how to get the game into full screen?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Jul 29 2006, 11:41 PM) [snapback]245804[/snapback]</div>

SIMPLE: ALT+ENTER