Civ3 - I need help!

Cafe Society
1

When Civilization III (Civ3) came out, I purchased it. Played for a while, then got burned out. Since then, I did a lot of the FPS type games. Well, I’ve burned out on those, and after reading a few Civ3 threads on here, I decided to reinstall the game and have a go again. I downloaded the latest patch, and off I went.

Well, I don’t remember if it’s a problem with the game, or just that I can’t find my manual, but I am completely confused about:

Air Units (planes, bombers, helecopters, etc.)
Leaders

I finally figured out that I couldn’t move the air units by dragging them like I usually do with other units, but had to use their “option” buttons at the bottom of the screen. Still, I never saw them do anything other then perhaps relocate to a new city. Maybe if the other civs had air units?

Leaders…I was totally lost on those.

So…can someone help me out on how to use these units properly? Especially how to use planes with carriers…

Thanks!

2

Helicopters are entirely useless. I have NEVER seen the AI build them. They can be used to transport ground units.

You can use bombers to bombard targets in their range. Choose the bombard button, then select a target (enemy unit or civ) in their range. Fighters can be used for a recon mission (press the recon button then choose a square that appears on the map) or they can attack units or they can come up and fight any bombers that try to attack where they are based. Fighters and bombers can be put on a carrier- press the rebase button then click on the carrier unit.

Great leaders are, well GREAT. You can do one of two things: Get it to a city pronto and rush-build anything in one turn or form an army. I generally will form an army with my first GL (most games I don’t get any) because once he army wins a battle, you can build the Heroic Epic which will increase the chance of getting another GL. Plus, with the right tech, you can build the military academy and later the pentagon to build armies and bigger armies without GL. Sometimes, if your first GL appears and your civ is spread far and wide, you can use the GL to rush build a Forbidden Palace far away from your capital. This greatly reduces corruption near the FP and makes those cities much more productive.

3

Are you playing regular Civ3 or do you have the Conquest Expansion? The ablities of Great Leaders changed quite a bit with the new expansion pack.

In regular Civ3, Great Leaders are very powerful - you can use them to rush build anything in a city; basically they can provide free Great Wonders. They can also be used to build armies, which you load multiple units to form one super unit. Move the GL into a city, and then select either the "Rush City Production"or “Create Army” buttons. If you make an Army, then move other units into the same square as the Army unit, and hit the “Load” button to get them to join the Army. Note, once a unit joins an Army, it can’t be removed.

Armies are VERY powerful - a single one can often turn the tide of a war. 2 or 3 knight or calvery armies followed by defensive units can usually take out a mid-size civilization. And later in the game, a single defensive riflemen or infantry army is vital to protect the horde of artillery you need to take on the AI at higher levels. More on that later.

In Conquest, military GL are somewhat weaker - they can no longer rush Great Wonders(They can still rush small wonders, palace, FP, other units + buildings), but the Armies they form get an extra movement point. Conquest also introduces the Scientific Great Leader, which you have a chance of getting if you are the first to a tech. Scientific GLs can rush anything (including Great Wonders) or speed up science production in a city. Scientific GLs are easier to get with Civs that have the Scientific trait.

There is a chance of military Great Leaders popping up everytime one of your elite units wins a fight. (BobLibDem mentioned the Heroic Epic small wonder, which increases this chance.) Note that once an elite unit creates a Great Leader, that unit can’t create another Great Leader, and will be marked with an Asterix.

BobLibDem covered Air units pretty well - if you want a fighter/jet fighter to defend the area around the city it is in from enemy aircraft, make sure to press the “Air Superority misson” button for that unit.

And for some more, valuable advice - when you start out, DON’T irrigate regular grassland. In Despotism, due to the food/production penalities, it won’t due a thing. The general rule is to mine green, irrigate brown, plant forest on tundra, and cut it down elsewhere.

Also, make sure to build lots of artillery units. This will let you take enemy cities with a minimum of casualties. As a rule of thumb, at least 1/4 of your units for any attack should be artillery units in the ancient and medieval eras, and 1/3-1/2 in the industrial & modern ages.

4

Another question. Is it possible to destroy a city using bombers? I have tried but I always need to send in ground troops to totally destroy it.

5

They can destroy improvements but only ground troops can destroy the city itself.

6

I’m just playing regular Civ3. I haven’t decided if I’ll get any of the expansion packs yet.

I have been automating my workers. I get the impression this is not the best thing to do. I don’t recall seeing the option to plant forest though. Is that a “Conquest” change, or is that possible in the regular version of Civ3?

I’ve only been playing the easy level, so maybe that’s why, but I haven’t been using artillery and have had few problems so far.

Thanks for the great advice everyone so far…

7

Yes artillery units are great. Soften up those defenses before the troops risk their next. And always where possible attack from higher ground than your opponent. If their city has a mountain next to it, fortify solid defenders on it, move in your bombard units (build a road if you have to) and fire away. Civ 3 is, in my opinion, the most well designed and continually interesting game to play that there is.

8

Automated workers suck. They pretty much do everything that I wouldn’t do. Forests can be planted in CIV III after the engineering tech is researched - the ‘N’ key does it IIRC.

9

One thing you might want to do is go into the Preferences, and turn on the “Show advanced unit actions” - workers have a lot of things they can do, and this is easier than remembering the keyboard shortcuts.

10

Just uninstall the game.
It’s your only hope.

11

For some bizarre reason, automating workers (and I know because a friend of mine, unless there is a resource or pollution square in sight, does this) will result in every. bloody. square. being irrigated. If possible, anyway (nobody can irrigate a mountain). In despotism, this is worse than useless; it’s a waste of resources.

Helicopters are almost utterly useless, and fighters aren’t much better. For that matter, the F-15 (I think; I have so rarely used it that I don’t remember the number) is pretty well only a marginal improvement on a unit that already doesn’t get used much. For the production going into any aircraft I can get a ground unit that will do a hell of a lot more. I only make a lot of aircraft (if I make any aircraft) if I’m going to be passing through ugly terrain (ie two full screens of marsh or mountain) and I don’t want to be slowed down more than absolutely necessary. Also, you can’t get a GL from an air (or sea) victory, so it’s wasteful to give aircraft the potential to get kills you can give to elite units; use vets to wear 'em down - or even kill - but use an elite if you have something slivered. That way you have a 3% chance of generating a GL, and a 4% chance (1/32 to 1/24) if you have the Heroic Epic. Of course, if you have a military academy (which you will want to build either in your city of highest prod. or your city of second highest prod, as it takes a lot of shields to make an Army; I have a city with prod. of 88 and it takes 5 turns. Other hand, makes a great wonder pre-build) this is not quite as much of an issue.

Since you haven’t gotten the expansion yet, there’s a bug I think you can still exploit. Once you get to engineering, pile your workers on one square and have them deforest and reforest. Each sequence (really, the cutting down of the wood) gives you ten shields. Do that ten times (a lot before railroad, but not so bad once your entire land is covered in the stuff) and you have a marketplace. It’s a relatively cheap way to generate culture and cut cost for buying improvements. This isn’t possible in the expansion, but then we don’t all make fifteen tanks per turn just to listen to them hum;)

Some other stuff: make sure you have a good (or even great, if you can swing it) starting position each game. Start over if you’re surrounded by crap land, such as marsh, mountain or desert. Sometimes the game will decide that flood plain is diseased; sometimes it won’t. If you can, eliminate one or more of your nearby rivals ASAP; there are good civs to use to do this. I’d suggest either the Americans (who, despite not being militaristic, start out with and can make scouts, and who are alsy industrious, which means faster roads to your future new cities) or a civ that’s Militaristic and Expansionist. I haven’t looked at the mods for individual civs lately, so I can’t tell you which one that is, if any. Last tip: expand like crazy for the first 2K years or so. You should not find yourself running out of things to build in a city until AD, if that early. I’ve said it many times before, but IMO it bears repeating: a size 6 city produces less trade than 3 size 2 cities, all other things being equal (i.e. no abundance of grapes/colossus/etc).

12

Download the Double your Pleasure variant.

13

Under advanced actions are options to specify exactly what the workers do while automated.


| Automate, Without Altering      | Shift + A               |
|  Pre-existing Improvements      |                         |
| Automate, This City Only        | Shift + I               |
| Automate, Clean Pollution Only  | Shift + P               |
| Automate, Clear Forests Only    | Shift + F               |
| Automate, Clear Jungle Only     | Shift + J               |
| Irrigate To Nearest City        | Ctrl + I                |

I like using Automate, This City Only. Easier to keep track of what they’re doing.

14

Contrary to iampunha’s experience, I find maintaing a strong airforce to be pretty important. Focus on bombers more than fighters, though. Fighters are essentially defensive units to protect your cities from enemy bombers. They become less important once you discover rocketry and start building SAM launchers, and the new Flak Cannon and Mobile SAM Batteries in the Conquests expansion marginalize them even further, but they’re still very valuable for basing in forward cities where you haven’t had time to build up sufficient defences and can’t get ground-based AA into position fast enough.

Bombers, however, are one of the best units in the game. They’re basically super-long range artillery that can actually kill units, not just wound them. Build a huge bomber force coupled with lots and lots of modern armor, and you can conquer an entire continent in three or four turns by bombing every city in range until they’re empty, taking them with a three-move-point modern armor blitzkrieg, then rebasing your bombers into a conquered city and using it as a base for bombing runs on the next section of enemy territory.

I’d also add that, if you’re playing as an Agricultural civilization (one of the new traits in the Conquests expansion), desert is as good as grassland once you’ve irrigated it. This can be a huge advantage, because you can make size twenty cities in terrain where other civs would be lucky to get much past size ten. It vastly opens up your choice of viable starting locations, and makes all those flyspeck towns you had to stick in a desert to get that vital oil or incense resource into a viable city.

15

Ah, but you make the mistake of letting the AI get that far:D The result of most of my games (since a crappy start is as hard as it is boring) is that the AI is left in the dust; by the time I get to cavalry, if the AI are lucky they have gotten to Knights Templar. In my most recent game I was damn near Modern Armor by the time the AI built KT (which I felt to be a waste of shields). I control it now, but only for the culture.

16

Heh. Yeah, usually I can stomp the AI pretty well. Last game I played, I was so far advanced over most of my neighbors I was still using Ancient Cavalry to good effect along side the Modern Armor. I think I built one fighter in that game. But that was on Warlord level. Anything above that, and I’ve got to really work at it to pull that far ahead.

I did have one great moment when my distant gem-mining city, defended by a single infantry man, was suddenly faced by over twenty cavalry units swarming over the mountains. By the time they were close enough to attack the city, though, I’d rebased every bomber I owned there, and sent out wave after wave of B-12s. When the smoke cleared, there were only two of them left, each with a single hit point, and they turned and ran. Never had the chance to fire a single shot. The country that sent them, which was the second largest in the game (second only to me, natch) was completely wiped out in five turns.

God, Civilization is such a great game!

17

Some general tips:

Try to get a landmass that’s as continous as possible. I know some people like the naval aspect, but too many wonders only work for cities on the same continent:
Pyramids
Sun-Tzu’s art of war
J.S. Bach’s Cathedral
The Internet
and possibly a few others.
The time saved by not having to build barracks or granaries can be put to producing units.

Railroads are essential. No movement points means you can send your troups wherever they’re needed. I normally fortify with only one defensive unit per city, except on borders. Should the AI get to far, I can just move units to the spot needed.

Workers win the game. The more you have, the better off you are. Keep cranking them out. Before you have sanitation, many cities will be styuck at size 12 for a long time. Make a worker every now and then, because the city pops back to 12 in no time. In the game I’m playing now, I have 100 odd workers, meaning I can convert any terrain in basically one turn.

The AI tends to stack loads of units in central cities, on the theory that the capital needs defending. Rubbish. Due to the palace, there is little need for troops to keep population in check, and face it, should an enemy reach your capital, you’re toast anyway. Stack those defensive units on the border.

If waging war when under democratic rule, you need to be done in about 3-4 turns, after that, civil unrest will make it impossible to get anything done. So, you need to have a very big edge before going to war. I also save at the end of every turn. Should another civ start a war, and then refuse to negotiate for peace, it can hamper your progress enormously. And I don’t want to re-do everything I did in a turn, so I save at the end. That way, I can reload trhe game, should some stupid civ start a war. Always go to war on your own terms.

18

I needed to rant a little too.
With every expansion pack I keep thinking ‘this is how the game is supposed to be’. I don’t know if it’s an evil plan, trying to squeeze out as much as possible from the fans, but I do wish the game makers could come up with a good, working version right from the start.

19

Game I referenced was on Regent level. I stopped playing it because it got boring, though I will very possibly pick it up again at some point. I can’t get 4-turn discoveries (the quickest possible), but I was pulling them in for a while there. Last I checked I was going one discovery every 5-6 turns. Oh, and killing the aztec, portugese, celts and someone else, I think. I don’t take to threats well, especially when I have 20 modern armor sitting around doing nothing and the enemy is still going with pikemen or musketmen. I played a game one slot below regent once where I was at war from about 1500 on to the end of the game (past 1700) and war weariness didn’t visibly affect me. That was in Republic, too. My strategy is to burn any non-essential city (i.e. not containing a resource or wonder) and just keep going. I’ll usually lose one unit per enemy’s 10-15, depending on how far ahead I am and how much I want that one city now rather than next turn (I’m bloody impatient:D).

Re: maps, the only time when I have heard that it is wise to play archipelago is when trying to keep the AI from soaring ahead in the tech race at Sid level. I’m not nearly insane enough to try that kind of difficulty, especially given that the AI have standing forces of several hundred in any such game.

20

I hate to bump this incredibly old thread, but I just picked up Conquests…

any new advice on tactics?

I prefer playing on the Earth map, and right now I’m using Calvary and Infantry to crush my Russian neighbor, but I’m just about half a step behind the tech leader (America).

And they’re HUGE.