Civ 3--Reviews, assessments & spoilers REQUESTED

Cafe Society
61

Well, I’ve been playing exclusively on the Emperor setting for awhile and are considering moving up to Deity. Monarch or less just isn’t a challenge anymore.

At the highest levels its best to stick your science rate to 0% and buy the techs off the AI. Your starting position will also be a big factor on how rough it’ll be–preferably your capital will be by a river, with cows or wheat nearby. Its still possible to win even if you’re stuck on a frozen wasteland, but be prepared for much frustration and tedium.

I find warmongering to be the surest route to survival. Build a few cities in the beginning, build barracks and crank out the archers/horsemen/swordmen. Enslave enemy workers and expand your territory with their cities. When they sue for peace demand all of their techs, gold, and maps. Keep up the pressure, prevent expansion, deny them their resources, and you’ll be able to crush the nearest civs fairly quickly.

By nature of the unique units and civilization attributes some civs are easier to play than others. If you’re having trouble, try playing as one of these:

  1. Persians. Industrious and scientific, and their unique unit, the Immortal, is a souped-up swordsmen who can make short work of every defending unit up to pikemen. If you start next to them, keep iron out of their hands and try to eliminate them quickly, as they’ll grow powerful if not kept in check.

  2. Chinese. Industrious and military, so they have fast workers and cheap barracks to pump out units. Their UI, the Rider, is a 3-movement knight that’s well suited for blitzkrieg strikes.

  3. Ottomans. Also Industrious and Scientific, their Sipahi unit will let you take out entrenched riflemen long after cavalry becomes obsolete.

  4. Babylonians. Religious and Scientific, meaning cheap temples and libraries, and mucho culture. If you’re going for the culture win this civ is almost required.

5-6. Aztecs and Iroquois. Their UI has extra movement, the better to raid enemy AIs or sack cities with minimal casualties. I once conquered half of a small pangea map by cranking out enless hordes of Mounted Warriors.

The thing about playing against the AI is that they’re like sharks, constantly sniffing for blood or any sign of weakness. Watch to see who they gang up against and join the winning side, even if it means backstabbing an ally. If your military is weak its best to give in to their demands for now; just buy your time until you can launch an offensive. If you’re missing a resource and are unable to trade for then you’ll have to take by force.

62

Seraphim, thanks for the tips.

63

Even pre-PTW versions of Civ-3 include a scenario editor (at least my 1.29f does). The interface is a bit ackward but you have, if anything more options than you had in Civ-2. In addition to making historic scenarios I set up a group of rules and units modifications saved as a scenario that lets me play the game with less coruption/polution and makes combat a little closer to my idea of realistic. Cruise missiles for example are now a bit stronger, more mobile and can be transported by airlift, I did however raise the prerequisite tech from rocketry to smart weapons.

As to premade scenario files, I’d search over at the Civ Fan or Apolyton forums.

OK, now a question. When the cursor is on a unit making it the active unit you can press “G” and click on a map square and that unit will move to the square you clicked. Is there any way to make the next unit activated go to the same square without scrolling the map to display the square and repeating the same press G click square sequence, shift G would be an obvious choice but that is the change government shortcut.

I have a current game on the standard sized earth map and am playing the Germans (I set it up so that all 8 civs started in more or less “realistic” starting positions). I have all of Europe and Africa and after kicking the Indians off the Eurasian content I am contending with the Chinese. I let most of my cavalry die off against the Indians in spite of the fact they just started fielding infantry because I wanted to time the golden age my newly discovered panzer units would give me to coincide with my attack on China. Now I have panzers and mech inf streaming in from almost every city in Europe and a few in Africa and the Mideast as well, the railroads get them to the front more or less instantly (railroads are, as pointed out already, overpowered) but scrolling the map back and forth for each new unit is more than a bit tedious. It would greatly help if a keyboard shortcut like Shift/G/Enter would send a unit to the last square a unit arrived at using the “G” command. If there is any such function I would be greatly cheered to learn of it, if there isn’t there needs to be one.

64

In the Play the World expansion you can set rally points for all your city to a certain square, then use the stack movement button to send them where you want. Unfortunately, you’ll have to manually set the rally for each city. The next expansion, Civilization: Conquests, will let you rally all your units to a square with a single click.

You can find a preview of Conquests here:

65

I find war mongering to be very useful if you’ve designed your society to support science and heavy industrial output. Don’t use the mobilization economy, stockpile units near your weakest enemy, and don’t leave your other borders too weak. Wipe out your target completely. Don’t attack until you can crush them, then build cultural improvements in your newly captured cities for a while before going back to creating a war economy. Try not to fight more than one culture at a time, if you can avoid it (duh!), but if you get in a two-front war, concentrate on one at a time.

I like Korea’s rocket artillery cultural unit. I crank out the powerful and inexpensive bombardment units in massive quantities, and storm city after city in short blitzkrieg assaults. This does the least amount of damage to the infrastructure.

66

This thread prompted me to start playing a new game, Regent difficulty, huge map (of Earth) with 15 opponents. I took the Persians, who I promptly renamed the Canadians.

I managed to get a diplomatic victory around 1862 or so by giving the Japanese a truly ridiculous amount of stuff to get Fission. My most productive city (150+ per turn) had been cranking out a Palace for a few turns so I switched it to the U.N., mainly because I thought someone else would get it shortly and I’d lose for sure. Surprisingly, I got ten votes at the first meeting and the game ended rather abruptly.

My bloodlust unslaked, I kept playing. I had a reasonably firm grip on the Amazon region of South America, with Iroqouis to the south and Babylonians to the north. I’d have taken one or the other out long before, but they kept forming mutual protection pacts, and I couldn’t handle both at once. So I bided my time and cranked out the Modern Armor. When I had about 190 units, I set up mutual protection with Babylon and the Aztecs (way up in North America) just to keep them out of the way while I used my right of passage with the Iroquois to place about 13 Modern Armor units outside of each of their cities, telling my guys to wait. Then I cut loose and smoked the Iroquois in one turn (right of passage combined with railroad is just too tempting for backstabbers like myself).

Then something strange happened. The Japanese had mutual protection with the now-devastated Iroquois, so they declared war on me, which made the Babylonians and Aztecs declare on the Japanese, which made the English declare on them which made the Zulu declare on everybody, which made the French declare on… well, it got very complicated very fast, including a few “triangular” wars in which three nations are all fighting each other.

The dust is still settling (i.e. I haven’t got sick of it yet), and I’ve taken out the Zulu, giving me the lower two-thirds of South America and the western half of North America.

The Babylonains don’t know it yet, but they’re next. Then the Aztecs. And then I’ll rename “North and South America” with the more respectable “North and South Canadiana”. Then, I think, the time will be ripe to light up Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia with nuclear flame.

heh-heh-heh…

67

Wow -you guys are good at this. I have problems at anything other than princely difficulty. The techs just come too slow for me and the AI gets the edge over me on wonders etc.

What are the steps you go through to build your infastructure? What sort of basic thigs do you do on every game?

I used to be really bad at civ2, until I started to copy the AI to some extent (after I read in the manual that the civ2AI had be programmed after looking at how the best players of civ1 played) and i really went to town with irrigation and roads etc.

Some in depth stratergies would be great thanks, if anyone has the time to post them!

68

The details on the brand new Civ III expansion pack:

http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=16062

Lots of new units, Civs and such. Click the link to check it out Civ fans.

:slight_smile:

69

There are more fun ways to play dirty. Having a good network of spies and not being squemish is the key for the true blitzkrieg bop.

  1. Built a gazillion modern armor (ma). You’re gonna need a lot of them.
  2. Get a spy into the capital of the country you want to smash.
  3. Negotiate a right of passage
  4. Steel the troop plans, letting you know exactly where all the AIs guys are.
  5. Movie in with (ma) and radar artillery, stacking them up outside every city and every troop.
    Declare war, wipe out other civ in one turn. No problem with cultural conversion or having to garrison 15 infantry in enemy city to keep it passive. Also, if you do this after building the great wonder ‘Internet’, it’ll put a science lab in every city, cranking out culture points, so you won’t have to start by building a temple to expand the city radius.

Things that can go wrong:
The other country has one friggin’ settler on a boat somewhere. Be sure to use F3 frequently so you know where all the troops are. If not the AI will cheat and the settler will set up a tiny village in some remote location, which will take you ten turns to reach and making your new conquests vulnerable to cultural conversion.
If the AI has a lot of ships, you might consider going after them with ISBMs. I know it’s swatting flies with a brick, but you want to completely kill of the other civ in one turn, minimizing all effects of mutual protection pacts and other nasty things.

The interesting thing is that the AI is so stupid, that when you’re done and all the dust has settled, it will let you negotiate a new ‘right of passage’ for next civ, letting you smash that. I’ve conquered the world in ten turns, using this method.

As others have noted - don’t show any weaknesses. If you let another move troops or workers across your territory, that’ll invite hostility. Throw them out and if they declare war, smash a few cities to let them know you mean business.

70

Here are my tips for playing on Regent/Monarch level. I don’t know if it will be the least bit useful for higher difficulties, but who knows…

  1. The old standby, save and reload, is your friend. Don’t like the outcome of a battle or what you find in a minor tribe? Save beforehand and reload. Obviously turning off “preserve random seed” is necessary.

  2. I’m using the “Play the World” expansion pack, which lets you play with a new type of game victory condition: Regicide. In Regicide, each civ given a King unit, which, when killed, causes the instant destruction of that civ. There’s also a Mass Regicide, which is like Regicide except that everyone is given seven King units. The King units make the best early explorers: they have an attack/defense of 1/1 and a movement of two. I use my Kings to explore my continent, and I can usually score most of the minor tribes before the other civs. Doing this I can usually get nearly all of the ‘Ancient’ civilization advances. It’s hard to find any beyond that, but it gives you a huge technological advantage.

  3. You can get a look at the world and where the opposing civs are by retiring (Ctr+R). Just make sure you save your game first! Retiring is essentially quitting the game, so it will show you your final score and that turn by turn event map. This way you can see what kind of continent you are on, and where the other civs are. I usually go for a moderately-sized continent with at least one other civ, prefferably far away. I’ve noticed in Play the World that you get crap for resources/luxuries if you don’t share the continent. I tend to play with 5-6 total civs, so this is probably less of a problem if you play with more, I don’t know.

  4. When you invade another continent, show them that you mean it. I usually have a main invasion force of about 100 units, depending on the era. Calvalry and Tanks (or Modern Armor) are the bulk of my army, and then I usually have some support Infantry. If I’m invading with Calvalry and they have Infantry, a large group of Artillery will usually soften a city up enough so the Calvalry can take it. I otherwise never bother with artillery units.

When I invade I usually make speed my main concern. It seems to catch them pretty off guard when they’re losing a handful of cities a turn. Many people lament when the enemy has railroads, but I welcome it as a way to push on through and take as many cities as I can, then try to get a peace treaty and restore order. I keep the cultural conversion off, as it’s just too much of a pain in the ass.

Other tips:
5) Build cities close together (at most three space apart). This will keep corruption low, especially in a large civ.

  1. Play as an civ with an “Industrious” attribute. This will let your workers work much faster, which I find to be critical in the early game. I also recommend a Religious civ (like the Egyptians), which let you build templs and cathergrals for half the price, which is very helpful in a large (30+ cities) civ, where corruption can be a huge problem.
71

I’ve played every Civ and Play the World is close to the best balanced game yet. I’d certainly recommend that anyone who loved the original and even Civ2 go to this version. The first Civ3 was a little weird in some of its conventions; but by now everything that was infuriating all along has been fixed. No more gigantic advantages like the automatic upgrade of every unit. And while it’s infuriating that chariots are now totally useless, it’s probably more accurate in the scope of things.

I’ve actually been far far behind and ended up winning the Space Race. The computer has its advantages; like building more faster. And give up on getting very many wonders on any level of Regent or above.

Early war can be necessary. The AI seems to want to make sure you don’t back down. It’s also the only way, it seems, to keep the AI from demanding more value on every trade. Plus, you gotta keep a contiguous map.

Late game expansion is also interesting. Once two civs go after each other, you can really pick up both territory and population by squatting in the vacant space they leave destroying each other.

Don’t ever attack unless you’ve got better units. And while a long bowman might occassionally pick of a musketeer, an infantry is going to run through it.

72

Conquest featuers list @ civ3.com

73

Thanks for the tips, but im still amazed you can get an attack force of at least 100 units Triton. I’ve got 121 units total, with all but about 5 protecting my cities. Is it better to start a game with an actual plan in mind, such as “I will win this game through conquest” and ignore most of the techs apart from ones that give you a military advantage, or is it better to just see how things develop? Again, thanks.

74

Crivens. I got inspired by this thread and started a game for the first time in months. I play as ‘American’, mostly b/c the workers work faster and I get a free scout to start the game with. That means a guy chasing goodie huts and getting free techs.
It’s now 2019 A.D. and I’ve just crushed the Mongols in three turns. I always figure I’m gonna lose a bunch of troops, so I overbuild, putting the ratio at about 3(offensive):1(defensive). It really sucks when you go up against a city, spend four or five troops and notwin. Damaged troops are easily picked up by the enemy and you’re back at square one. Most ofg the times, the AI will put 3-4 definsive units in a city, putting more in, the bigger the city is. The computer doesn’t upgrade the troops (I always upgrade), which means the city will be defended by two mech.infantry, one pikeman and one musketeer. To beat that, I throw in 12-15 (ma), depending on how many mech.inf the enemy has.
So I just lost 60 (ma), which isn’t that big a problem as my cities are churning out 25 new every turn.
I just checked what kind of troops I have:
40 workers (have gotten rid of many, b/c everything is built, so these are just to clean up pollution)
70 (ma)
296 mech.inf
18 artillery (I never build those, I end up capturing them)
11 cruise m.

I guess I’m close to 100 cities now, but I can’t be bothered to count them just for this.

And to answer your question - yes, you need to have a clear goal. Which map to pick and what civ will determine your best way. I like railroads and despise ships, so I go for a big map, with everything connected. Railroads make everything so much easier, since you can move troops within your empire w/o movement points. Should some stupid enemy walk inside my borders, my 70 modern armor are gonna come chase him out in no time, no matter where they currently are.
This also means I never bother with things having to do with the water - no wonders in connection to nautical exploits, no ships, no harbors. I never build a city adjacent to water either, but try to build them so an enemy can’t hurt my cities with all those infernal ironclads that are as annoying as fruit flies.

This is not meant to be me telling you how to play or that my way is the best. I think the beauty of Civ, is that there are as many ways to play the game, as there are players, and we all pour our own personalities in each game. The things I wrote above was more to be seen as an indication that, yes, you do need to decide early on what road to take.

75

I NEED an answer. I’m playing Civ3. It’s patched. I have the Apollo Program. I have all the resources and advances necessary to start building my shuttle. I have my most productive cities just sitting around, waiting to be assigned shuttle components. But all components “cannot be built by any city.” WHY?

76

Sattua: Odds are, you’re missing a necessary strategic resource. Probably aluminum.

77

Arraaaghhhh. But I’m not. I’m telling you, I have everything it’s telling me I need.

78

Everytime I’ve had that problem, it’s been because I’d just lost a resource and hadn’t realized it. Trade agreement ran out, resource got used up, border shifted. Something like that. If that doesn’t work, the only other thing I can think of is that you might not be able to build spacecraft parts in cities without airports. But I could be wrong about that.

Oh, are you sure you turned “Space Race Victory” on at the beginning of the game?

79

Pt pt pt… you know… I might not have Space Race Victory turned on. And it may indeed be about airports. I am just learning the game, so I’m playing on Pangaea with no opponents. Still, it’s silly of them to even let me access the spaceship screens if I can’t build a spaceship, right? So, there’s my criticism of the game.

80

Ah, if you’re playing against no opponents, that might explain it. Being the only player left on the map makes you the winner by default, and probably deactivates the other ways of winning the game. You should try building the U.N, and see if it lets you hold elections for Secretary General. If it won’t, that’s probably the answer.