How the F*CK do you turn an elite troop into a leader? Yeah. I know what the book and the Civlopedia says: “When an elite troop goes into battle, there’s a chance they’ll become a Great Leader”. :rolleyes: What’s the chance? A billion to one?
I have played three games through to the 1700s or so, I’ve started meaningless wars, just so my elite troops could fight against someone…in my current game, I’ve got one single elite troop that’s doing most of my fighting. I’ve got the bastard running hither and yon over the continent fighting barbarians and Egyptians…I’ve thrown him into 43 battles AS AN ELITE TROOP–I’ve kept count-- and I still haven’t produced a leader, which means [ul]
[li]no armies[/li][li]no military academies[/li][li]no help with Wonder production[/li][li]I’m getting PISSED OFF![/li][/ul]
Anyone know the trick to producing a leader?
[sub]Other than that, I quite like the game![/sub]
Sorry to sidestep here, but if anybody comes up with a good way to battle corruption, let me know.
I’ve played two games and I’m crippled by the rampant corruption. It makes any city a good distance from my capital almost worthless. They may be producing 10 shields, but I’m only getting one from the waste. And this is when my government is Democracy and there’s a courthouse built. I’d like to build a Forbidden Palace, but the towns I’d like to build it in are only getting one shield and I can’t wait 300 turns to build it.
Seriously, did they mean to make corruption so rampant? I like to expand quickly, but theses deadweight cities are only good for their military value. Infuriating.
I hear the odds are about 1 in 16 if the elite unit is attacking and it’s your civilization’s special unit, less if you don’t meet both these conditions. I’ve only gotten one, though it was on my first game that I played past the 1600s.
Fenris: Same problem . I haven’t played into the 1700’s yet, but still I’ve gotten only ONE ( Kublai Khan, playing as the Chinese ) so far. Either it’s a bug, it’s supposed to be incredibly rare, or I just suck . Probably the last, as I haven’t perused the rules too thoroughly. Might be time to head back to Europa Universalis for awhile.
If anyone has an obvious answer ( that will save me from reading the manual ), I’ll be indebted.
Re: corruption, this is one of the biggest gripes on various Civ3 messageboards. It makes sense to me, though - when in history has anyone been able to establish a world empire? Corruption, in it’s various forms, WILL take a big chunk out of what can be made in overseas colonies, regardless of your government type. About the only times one will be worth having far from your starting point are when you want a presence in the area for military reasons, or when the colony is providing a vital resource or luxury, and this seems to fit in with the real-life utility of colonies.
The game is different from it’s predecessors and a lot of old strategies won’t work on it. I think this is a good thing, though.
As to the catch-22 with the Hidden Palace wonder, here’s a great way around it…generally your capital will be at one side or the other of the continent you are occupying. Start building your Hidden Palace wonder near your capital when your empire is beginning to stretch thin and the corruption is making remote cities slow to grow. Then, before it’s finished, build a new capital on the other side of the continent, it’s not nearly as expensive as the Hidden Palace and you can hurry it.
Oh, here’s another thing or two about corruption that you may not know - corruption is also increased by the number of cities you have, as well as distance - so it’s better to have less cities that are more productive than to squeeze them in so tight that every square can be worked. Use of colonies can reduce the drawbacks to this play style, and you will get a lot less corruption. Corruption also seems to be reduced by a high cultural level and a good transportation network, so build lots of roads and cultural improvements. The distance factor in corruption is also increased greatly on smaller map sizes - on a huge map you can have cities 30 or 40 map squares away from your capital still have less than 50% corruption, on a tiny map cities 10 squares away from your capital will have problems. Finally, if you absolutely have to have a huge wide-spanning empire, research Communism as soon as possible, as it divides corruption equally between all your cities.
Ok…then I have my first official complaint with Civ III: Armies, once a certain tech-level is reached shouldn’t be all that rare: A good tweak would be that (for example) once you build 5 tanks, you can build a military academy.
Poking around on the board that Asylum recommended (Civfanatic), I found the same 16:1 statistic (which my personal experience contradicts) and the suggestion that the reason leaders are so rare is that they can hurry wonders. The obvious solution is to simply say that the Military Academy can only produce military leaders: they can form armies, but not hurry wonders.
I want a cultural win. I play cheiftan with one rival. I cover more land, have more culture am more advanced technologically. I have libraries, coliseums, banks and universities. I have all the Great Wonders.
I do have less cities and a smaller (although much more advanced) military. And yet I keep losing. Why?
Well…I don’t have much to say about producing leaders, as my men are currently being ruthlessly slaughtered by those godless egyptions. I have horseback riders getting mercilessly bludgened and brought to death by freak’n egyption warriors. These were good men, who did not deserve to die. The damned queen won’t sign a peaceagreement without extorting some ridiculous demands. I’m not too far into the game, but is it possible to assassinate her and install a puppet government? She’s really getting on my nerves and UNLIKE some OTHER egyption queens she’s not hip to my sexual advances. Is there any quick way to get an overwhelming army or advance in military so that I can thwart the evil egyptions? Or should my empire, which I’ve worked SO hard for, eventually crumble to dust??
Well…I don’t have much to say about producing leaders, as my men are currently being ruthlessly slaughtered by those godless egyptions. I have horseback riders getting mercilessly bludgened and brought to death by freak’n egyption warriors. These were good men, who did not deserve to die. The damned queen won’t sign a peace agreement without extorting some ridiculous demands. I’m not too far into the game, but is it possible to assassinate her and install a puppet government? She’s really getting on my nerves and UNLIKE some OTHER egyption queens she’s not hip to my sexual advances. Is there any quick way to get an overwhelming army or advance in military so that I can thwart the evil egyptions? Or should my empire, which I’ve worked SO hard for, eventually crumble to dust??
My first win was a cultural victory on Chieftan, in 2006. Not sure why it didn’t work for you, possibly because you only had one opponent. Did you take any cities through culture? I got about 10 that way in my game, because I spaced my cities out and the enemy kept building them inbetween mine.
No you can’t: a palace is treated like a wonder, which means the only way you can rush one is by sacrificing a leader.
As for getting one, you need to start more wars :D. In my latest game I’m playing on a Pangea-type map as the Chinese, and thanks to six millenia of internecine warfare I’ve gotten a whopping three leaders by 1911.
Don’t waste them on building an army. I’ve found having three (or four, if you get the Pentagon small wonder)seperate units is more powerful than they are bunched in an army, since you can attack multiple times. Save them for the really good wonders, like Leonardo’s Workshop or Theory of Evolution.
It’s only happened to me once, in 1788. That said, it was one of only two major wars I’ve ever fought.
A few other hints from a guy who’s on a hell of a winning streak:
IF you want to reduce corruption, play on a large map. Corruption range is directly proportional to map size. Small maps have ridiculously short corruption ranges. Corruption also depends on the civilization you lead.
Expand FAST.
To make a ton of money in a huge hurry, sell your old technologies. If you can get a large technological lead, you can sell outdated technologies to other civilizations for huge chunks of change. I’ve had civs offer me 30 gold a turn for 20 turns plus a fat signing bonus for crappy advances like Music Theory.
Avoid war at almost all costs. In Civ II war was your best expansion strategy; in Civ III war will absolutely kill you. Fight only to ensure your territorial integrity or when you’re in a position where you can definitely crush a neighbour. Even pass on strategic resources if you can get away with it. Just keep your head low, plug away, grow your culture and economy, and let cultural takeovers get you the odd enemy city.
I found another great strategy - in the early-to-middle section of the game, don’t allocate more than 10% of your funds to research once you make contact with other civilizations, get a big positive cash flow and build up your coffers. Then, every turn or two, contact the other civilizations and buy technologies from them - add a tech to the bargaining table that you don’t have and ask the computer what it would want for it - quite frequently they will ask for your world map and less than a hundred gold, even if you just gave them your world map two turns ago. I’ve gotten advances like Monarchy or The Republic for my world map and 20 gold before. They stop selling advances later, but for quite some time you can easily afford five or six advances every few turns. This doesn’t help them very much either as you can’t use money to hurry production until you are using the Republic as your government.
Later they aren’t as willing to trade advances for money, but you can still trade your advances for theirs. Whenever you get a new one that doesn’t provide a huge advantage, contact every civilization that turn and trade it for whatever they have that you don’t. You can get several technologies for giving up one. There’s no reason not to trade it to all civilizations you have contact with because once you give it to one everyone is going to end up with it in a few turns anyway.
Always trade luxuries for different luxuries with other civs whenever possible - the more different luxuries you have, the more happy your citizens are - having 6 sources of silk is no better than having 1, but if you are trading the excess 5 with various civilizations for dyes, spices, furs, incense, whatever, your citizens will be so happy that you won’t need your temples and other happiness-improving improvements. You still want to build them to build up your culture and in case your trade gets cut off. Another benefit to all this trading is that you can get another civilization dependent on yours - the AI doesn’t build many temples and other cultural improvements so their cities tend not to get very big, but if you are providing luxuries their cities will get bigger than what they could keep under control without the luxuries. If you later need to cripple their production just cut off the luxuries, and all their bigger cities will go into unrest and stop producing shields, while yours are able to stay under control because you have all your temples and collosseums to keep them happy.
Thanks for the tips (btw: are we sure that Leaders can’t emerge from battles with Barbarians?), and I’ve got another question…
I’m annoyed by the “breed like rats” strategy that the AI uses. Every Civ I’ve fought has pulled this: when the continent fills up, they start building useless cities everywhere. I can easily culturally assimilate them, but it’s pointless to do so, given that they’re like 2 squares from my next city. Since the only way to get rid of the city is to go to war, I’m constantly fighting.
It’s annoying. The AI needs to learn a new strategy. Any way to teach it one?
I’ve noticed this too. My empire by the end-game had about 10 cities that I had culturally assimilated simply because the computer built them in areas where they were surrounded on most (or all) sides by my own cities. This is one of the few flaws with the AI, and it’s an annoying one. It wouldn’t be such an annoyance if it wasn’t for the fact that the more cities you have the higher your corruption - otherwise, I wouldn’t mind having some extra cities that would never be able to develop to their full potential, as they still have some uses. I end up with more cities than I want, with no easy way to get rid of them. Oh yeah, this also makes the computer send units running all over within your borders going from one isolated city to another, even when they would otherwise do a good job of respecting your borders.
. I haven’t played into the 1700’s yet, but still I’ve gotten only ONE ( Kublai Khan, playing as the Chinese ) so far. Either it’s a bug, it’s supposed to be incredibly rare, or I just suck 
. Probably the last, as I haven’t perused the rules too thoroughly. Might be time to head back to Europa Universalis for awhile.