All right, so in Civ III, when I start a new game, the first screen allows, but does not require, me to enter a seed number. Frankly, I just tend to mash several keys on the number row for that number. However, I’d like to know if there’s a more scientific way to do this. Does anyone know what the seed does? Maybe sets up the geography and opponents? I’d dearly love to get a table or link to a table which would tell me what to enter, and what not to enter.
FTR, I generally play Ottomans, because I lurrrrves me some Sipahi, and I also love the Scientific and Industrious traits. Persia has the same traits, but has Immortals as the Unique Unit, which I just never could summon up the love for. Sipahi are fast and strong, and can be used to great effect even when the civ has advanced to getting other fast units.
If you don’t fully understand the map generation algorithm (which you almost surely don’t, unless you’ve put considerable effort into decompiling or reverse-engineering the code) then any method of choosing a seed number is as good as any other: You could use seed 000001 for your first game, 000002 for your second, and so on, and your gameplay would not suffer for it. It only ever becomes relevant if you know what a particular exact seed number will give you (such as from having played it before, or from looking it up online). Neither will similar numbers produce similar maps, if their pseudo-random number generator is even remotely halfway decent. And, of course, you might want to know what the random numbers will give you, if you want to play a predictable game. It being a single-player game, the only object is for you to have fun, and you know best what makes it fun for you.
I’ve tried CivFan, and they have a utility which will extract the seed number from a game, but that’s not what I want. CivFan was my first guess, too. Oh, and I’ve tried Googling for the info, but either my fu is weak or nobody has put out the info I want.
That is WAY beyond my abilities, thanks for thinking that I could do it, though.
What I want to do is make sure that my tribe starts off close to iron, saltpeter (because I can’t make sipahi without saltpeter), horses, and uranium. Having luxury resources would be great, but it’s not essential for the way I play. I don’t know how many times I’ve started a game, learned Iron Working, and found out that I don’t have any iron deposits reasonably close to my tribe. I mean, I’ve been in worlds that didn’t have iron any place that I could expand to, either! I MUST have iron.
Of course, in Civ IV, I just go into cheater’s…er, world builder mode and put resources wherever I want them. And sometimes rearrange the landscape. OK, sometimes I add some units when I really, really need them.
Wait, so you place a high priority on being able to use your cavalry-equivalent units, so presumably you’re using them, and yet you occasionally find yourself unable to get a uranium source? How do you manage to fight cavalry wars without ending up in control of at least a quarter or a third of the planet?
I’m really not much of a warmonger. I prefer to win by launching the ship. The Sipahi give me a nice sense of security, but I won’t retire from a game if I don’t have horses easily available to me. In other words, it’s not that I want to use them, it’s that I love to have them available to me. Even when I get Tanks and such, I have Sipahi as fast units available to me. If I do find myself with a nice game going, and I’m ready to start building my ship, but don’t have uranium, then yes, I will start a war. This is about the only time I do start wars. When I get the resource I want, I might offer a peace treaty, or I might wipe the scum off the planet, depending on how much of a nuisance the other tribe has been during that game. Usually I will eliminate my opponent.
In most of my games, I am never involved in a war at all, even if other tribes battle each other. Yes, I know I’m strange, but that’s one of the best things about Civ, each player can choose whatever style fits the player’s personality.
If you like launching the Spaceship and want security, I would choose the Arabs.
Their special building is an improvement on the Library and their special unit (Camel Archer) needs no resources.
Wow. Thats pretty blatant cheat-ery! Why not set the difficulty down to settler or something, if you find yourself needing to give yourself resources or units or whatever. Granted it wont change what resources are nearby - but it’ll help you tech faster than the AI, to the point where you can declare war on them and easily take over desired resource. Part of the fun of Civ (at least for me) is figuring out how to manage with the cards you are dealt.
Huh, I never start wars, either, but I always seem to get involved in them anyway. Usually, I can use my tech edge to bribe some other country to go mercenary for me, and keep my enemies at arm’s reach until I have cossacks and railroads (at which point it basically becomes impossible to lose a war), but I’m always at least officially at war with someone or another.
And while I don’t start a fight, I always finish it. If I find myself at war, then I’ll check what wonders and resources the other nation has, and will not make peace until I can get at least something for it. Ideally, I like to end up with at least one each of all sixteen resources, plus have anyone who’s ever declared on me denied access to whatever the strategic resource du jour is (usually rubber, by the time my wars finish), so they can’t become a threat again.
I don’t LIKE to declare war. I prefer cheating to declaring war, though I prefer not to cheat in the first place. Usually I’ll trade for resources or luxury goods, if I can. However, my opponents might not be advanced enough to know that they have 4 coal, for example. And I am NOT going to give or sell the Railroad tech to anyone, I want to keep it for myself! I think that it is a great advantage, and won’t willingly give it up. I will go to war for coal and uranium.
Sure, talk about anything related to Civ III or IV in this thread, I don’t care, and will probably enjoy it.
I was wrong, by the way. Civ III Complete/Gold DOES have Arabs in it, though it doesn’t have special buildings for anyone. The Unique Buildings are part of Civ IV.
In Civ IV you can create a custom game and turn on “always peace”, I’m pretty sure you can do the same thing in Civ III, but I haven’t played III in years so I don’t remember.
I admit I hardly ever start wars in Civ, I always feel a bit of a scumbag picking on the poor AIs. But if they attack me, well they had it coming, didn’t they? I always like it when the neighbor I couldn’t quite get mean enough to attack decides to attack me. Then I can subjugate and conquer to my heart’s content.
You can also deselect victory conditions so that you can only win via spaceship, or only win via diplomacy, or only by culture. Winning by culture is pretty easy if you have the spaceship victory turned off, you just need three legendary cities. If you’re industrious so much the better.
I will declare war if they had a resource I wanted, they had demanded tribute earlier (the moment they do that to me, I then spend the entire game trying to wipe them off the planet), or if they had the audacity to want to live.
But I love it when they declare war on me a couple of turns before I would them. Those wars are usually over fairly quickly.
I think that I have cultural and diplomatic victory turned off, I almost always do.
And if an opponent demands tribute, he’s toast. Maybe not right at that turn, but I make sure to wipe him off the planet, no matter what else I might do in that game.
I don’t allow opponent units in my territory, either, unless they’re workers who are building a road. In that case, I figure that I’ll be using the road. I don’t want settlers crossing my land and starting a city on the other side of me, that’s MY tactic!
Incidentally, note that if another nation declares unprovoked war on you (provocation is a failed spy mission, a treaty with someone else, or you using a nuke on anyone), then you’ll actually get negative war weariness: As long as you don’t accumulate too much war weariness, your cities will all get 25% happiness for free. Since it scales with the size of the city, this is one of the most efficient ways of getting happiness in the game. So if someone on the other side of the globe who can only reach you via suicide galleys declares war on you, that’s actually a good thing, and if you want to be at war with someone, it’s better if they declare on you rather than vice-versa.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a real problem with war weariness, except for the first few games. I tend to build improvements and wonders that will help with happiness, such as temples and colosseums and Hanging Gardens. I learned that I needed these things in peacetime as well as wartime, as my cities kept switching allegiance to my opponents.
Because of this thread, I started a new game with Aztecs, which are militaristic and something else. France WOULD NOT stay out of my territory, so I wiped them out. Same things with the Romans. Then I thought, why not just make this game a military conquest? So I’m doing that. The Egyptians have one city left, and it’s hard to get to, so maybe I’ll pick on another civ. Unfortunately, the remaining civs have all signed mutual protection agreements with each other, but I’ve finished the Manhattan Project, and yes, I have uranium, several sources of it in fact. The remaining countries have very few military units (I’ve spent some money on espionage) and they won’t be able to withstand my forces.
They’re gonna be sorry they didn’t offer ME a MPA. Of course, my world will glow in the dark, but it’ll be MINE, all MINE! <evil cackle>
Never played Civ IV, but I started playing Alpha Centauri again… damn that game was good. Anyway, I’m pretty pacifist too (after all, building armies slows down my building of labs, banks and labs) with two exceptions :
early game. If you’re on my expansion turf before I’ve founded 6 cities in perfect locations, your ass is toast. Sorry buddy, but that’s my land you’re living on.
special landmarks. Some are very, very good in AC. The Monsoon Jungle (+1 food on every square), Uranium Flats (+1 commerce on every square) and Mt. Chiron (+1 production AND +1 commerce on every square) in particular. Yup, these are mine, you can’t have any. Didn’t you get the memo ? Eat some plasma laser, you damn squatter.
Oh, and there’s a third exception, but that’s really the AI bringing it on itself. Why oh why would you build a Wonder ? Now I have to take that city, you idiot !
Oh, and I’ve tried Googling for the info, but either my fu is weak or nobody has put out the info I want.
