Tonight I started a game on the Warlord difficulty level as the Iroquoi. I’m doing pretty good using all I have learned on the earlier games, and I think I’m going to win this one too. Again, I have no source of saltpeter, but the Persians do, and I’ve whupped them before in my one war so far so I think I’ll be able to get it. My special unit, the Mounted Warrior (3.1.2) was really useful, triggered a golden age during my war with the Persians.
Finished my tutorial game with the mandatory retirement in 2050. I think I could have won by building the United Nations but this would have required about another thirty years. I was doing great toward a cultural victory until around 1500AD but somthing went terribly wrong and I started losing culture points at about half the rate as I had been gaining previously. My Romas were quite proserous, even with luxeries at 20%, our econemy was gaining at a rate of 50 per turn. My scientists gained The Republic early on via one of my political connections. I did have one thing wrong earlier, there wasn’t separate continents. Everyone started off on a giant Pangea-type continent.
Sua, one of the discoveries (Electricity, IIRC) will allow you to irrigate from any water source. Also, make sure that any resources discovered are connected with your cities via a road. If there is a resource you need but it’s on an island, you’ll need to build a coastal city near the resource, connect with a road, then build a harbor in the city. The resource will then be shared between the city and any other city with a harbor. The same can be done with airports when they become available. I had this problem with my tutorial game; around 1960 I checked the Civliopedia to see why my workers couldn’t build railroads. I had coal but no iron available. Then I realized that an island I had recently established a pair of cities on had two sources of the resources. I connected the iron to those cities via a road then built a harbor in one. I had already build harbors in some of my mainland cities and built roads to coal deposits. Then, with the iron ore from the island combined with the coal from the mainland, I could finally build railroads!
OK, new bitch. Puffs of smoke keep appearing on squares around one or two of my cities. I thought it may be pollution, but when I send a worker to clean it up, they don’t do anything, leading me to think it isn’t inflation. What the hell is it?!
Sua
Paging Dr. Freud. What deep dark neurosis made me type “inflation” instead of “pollution”?
Jeff, yah, I’m aware of the new irrigation rules that come with Electricity, and I’m eagerly awaiting it. I’m just bitching, is all.
Sua
Those puffs of smoke are appearing above cities, yes? If so, they’re the result of the “We love the (king)” celebration fireworks being set off in that city. Took me awhile to figure that out, too.
Also, something I forgot to add to my previous post: Civ3 has AYB! You have to reach the mandatory retirement in 2050 without winning in order to see it, it’s one of the random “neener-neener” statments your opponents say.
Pretty good game. Seems a lot harder to dominate, and early expansion is very important. Here are a few random tips:
War weariness is a real problem with democracy, but not with communism. You can wage 300 year wars without a lot of trouble. Just make sure to station four troops in each city (each unit makes one happy citizen.)
Bombardment isn’t that impressive until you get bombers. Those things are nasty. You can target a city and destroy half of it’s improvements and population in a few turns. This is good because they heal slower without barracks, and when their population drops around six or seven, their defensive bonus is reduced as well.
Air superiority missions do not work for anyone except the ai. This means they can bomb the living crap out of you, but the second you send a plane into their territory it gets shot down. Big, stupid, nasty bug. Build a SAM defense in each city and wait for the patch.
Coastal fortresses are also broken.
You can’t see strategic resources until the advance is discovered. Sometimes enemy troops will cut a path to some resource you’re sitting on, but are not aware of. If you have the advance, but they do not, they will not be able to trade it with you. Give them the advance and you might be able to trade for it (I haven’t tried this yet, but it makes sense.)
If you’re about to destroy someone who has technology you want, trade for it. When your troops are massing outside their last city, they will give you just about anything. I’ve received five or six techs in a round this way.
I started a new game Wednesday night just before I went to bed. Coincidently, like Badtz, I’m playing as the Iroquois this time. This is because I have just a bit of Native American in me. I opted for large continents this time and am sharing mine with Aztecs. I’m currently in the mid-16th Century and just discovered Gunpowder before going to bed last night, only to find no sources of saltpeter anywhere within my territory or the Aztecs. The British have some on their continent and some of it is even outside their borders. I decided I didn’t want to bother because there is another source on an uninhabited island. I established one town on the island’s west shore and need to build a colony to harvest the saltpeter. I’m looking forward to attacking those Aztecs with musketeers so I can expand my territory more!
Call me old fashioned, but I think a war should be a simple matter of Country A and its allies against country B and its allies. Axis vs Allies. Eastern Bloc vs. Nato and all that. But for some reason all my games turn into a clusterfuck of world War.
Currently, I(France) am allied with the Indians against the English, the Russians against the Germans and the Greeks, unallied war against the Japanese, And neutral to the Romans. But the English are also at war with the Germans but allied to the Greeks against the Romans. The Indians are allied to the Romans against the Russians and to the Japanese against the Greeks. I believe the Romans and the Japanese are also fighting.
I first played Civilization on the Super NES and I played Civ II ad nauseum until I couldn’t stand the sight of it any more. I picked up Civ III the other day and have been wasting my life away on it ever since. My wife is furious. At least with Diablo II and Age of Empires II I would only play an hour or two daily. Civ III has been keeping me busy from dawn to midnight. Anyway, my experiences…
I started a few games on the second level of difficulty but was not getting any wonders of the world so I started one on the easiest level. As in Civ II, if you start the game in the middle of the desert you’re not going to go far, so you have to be prepared to ditch a game and start a new one if you get dealt a bad hand. On the easiest level I chose standard rules, biggest map screen possible, large continents, five random opponents, and played the USA.
I got lucky and ended up on a huge continent by myself with the other civs on another big continental mass. I grew and spread as fast as I could, got almost all the wonders, and didn’t have to deal with anyone else on my continent. Eventually I expanded to a third smaller land mass and citified it. By the time other civs started intruding on my territory I was strong enough to slaughter them mercilessly for their audacity. I am now around year 1930 and in an invasion of the other continent, which I intend to cut in half, linking my civ in a solid belt around the world. Once I have tanks I’ll then sweep north and south and hopefully conquer the planet.
Notes:
- I got a great leader. During a battle in 1886 one of my cavalry turned into George Washington and I now have a little pedestrian George. I hate to use him up so I just keep him (well protected) near the front of my forces in their war of aggression. I may turn him into an army when I get tanks.
- I like the way the cavalry units automatically retreat from a fight when they get down to their last life point.
- the swordsmen are tough little fighters I really like and are very good at dealing with barbarians. Barbarians keep colonizing outer areas and coming in to pillage. The only way to stop them is to get all land citified and under your sphere of influence.
- I of course have hoards of workers for pollution clean up teams, and road and rail building crews. With enough workers you can build railways over long distances super fast. My fighting army is followed by a railway that keeps up with them and reinforcements are constantly being fed to the front. I’m unstoppable at this point. When it’s a unit’s turn to move I just go to where I want the unit to go (on the main or the little index screen) type “G” and click on the destination. If they’re connected by rail it’s an instananeous transport. My pollution clean up teams are lightning fast all over the map.
- When I capture cities I now have the option to raze them. Also when I capture cities I usually get some workers, more workers if I raze the city. My invading force has dozens of captured workers slaving away to its rear. If a captured city is rebellious I just create entertainers and starve them down to a manageable mood.
- I like the colonies feature…find a resource, connect it by road to your civ network, put a colony on it, defend it, and your wealth increases. I’m leaving a trail of colonies behind my invading force. Resources get used up and new resources pop up from time to time. Cavalry is a great unit and I’ve been trying to use up my horses resources before tanks come along.
- Artillary is useless. I’ve tried putting dozens of them on the same square as a defensive unit beside a city and bombarding turn after turn with very little effect. A barrage might kill a civilian or destroy a library but there are better ways to take a city. An artillary barrage from a dozen guns couldn’t even kill a spearman out in the open. Basically, I’ll never waste effort building another artillary unit or catapult again.
MPSIMS
Americans, Chieftain level. Built the United Nations in 2037 and was elected UN Chair the next year. This was the fourth game I started and the second I completed. Finally figured out what I had been doing wrong. 
Took an unprotected Persian capital early and easily won a peace treaty. Made them pay me for the trouble. Didn’t have many resources around. What few resources I did find, I made sure that I didn’t leave any gaps in my territory to assure I’d always have a route to them. Finally found a coal deposit circa 1960 after clearing some jungle. Set up a saltpeter trade route with the Zulu until they opted not to renew. Found some unclaimed saltpeter surrounded by Zulu and Aztecs and built a settlement there, which later grew large enough to assimilate an Aztec town. Except for my early disagreement with the Persians, we Americans weren’t at war with anyone other than barbarians.
I’m sure I’ll keep playing later to see exactly how far we can expand. We were #1 in both population and territory size. My score was in the mid-600’s but I ended up as “Lincoln the Foolish.”
I actually like artillery, it’s got some uses. It’s good for attacking a city with a lot of units in it because it damages each unit every turn, and sometimes a barrage will do more than one hit of damage on some of the units (I’ve only seen this with Artillery, though, not the Catapult or Cannon). It’s not a way to wipe out the enemy, but it can come in handy to soften the enemy up before invading. When attacking a well-defended city I’ll usually get some artillery and a defensive unit next to it and bombard it for several turns while I’m waiting for my offensive units to get there, which is often several turns, By the time I attack usually the strongest unit will be yellow and I can take the city in a couple of turns at most. Lately I have been experimenting with using artillery (and bombardment from off-shore) to destroy the improvements near a besieged city. By starving off the citizens, you can reduce the cities size while waiting for your army to form, and the smaller the city the harder it is to defend.
My game on Warlord was going well, but then I decided to try and fight the Aztecs. Their army was bigger than mine, though mine was somewhat more advanced, and all I wanted was their one city that had saltpeter. I couldn’t take the city and they messed up my improvements a lot - I’ve quickly learned that making sure your cities are well defended isn’t enough in this game, you HAVE to be able to quickly respond to raiding armies in the outlying areas or they will destroy your distribution networks and bring you to your knees - never fight a protracted war if you don’t have fast units in your empire. I went back to an earlier save and decided to wait for when I can culturally assimilate that city - I’ll get it eventually, I was just impatient.
Ya you rite, Badtz, I’ve been using fleets of artillery to soften up bigger cities before I take em. I now have a railway encircling the globe (with boat connections between continents) splitting the planet into north and south halves. It’s 1950 and my first tanks’ll be rolling off the assembly line in another turn. This bloodthirsty strategy of mine makes me nervous…my citizens are not too happy. I’ve got a sneaky feeling the French are getting ahead in leaps and bounds (I caught a peek at one of their cities and the fireworks were turned on so they are a happy culture, therefore productive) and I may be in for some serious opposition soon. Oh well, you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber, everybody hates me because of my warlike nature, so I’ve got to keep up the good fight.
The artificial intelligence finds your weak points and, again you’re right, you have to defend everywhere. I keep everything linked with railroads built very fast by my hoards of workers so I can move a fighting force to any weak point. The Aztecs rush in and stack up outside any city I leave weakly defended, but as soon as I rush in a force they take off. That’s an advantage of the new feature where you can move past squares held by enemy units.
Ok, you guys have convinced me. I’m on a tight budget now, but I’ll ask my parents for it at Christmas. It certainly sounds like they’ve added a ton of new features. Considering how much of my life has been wasted on I and II, it will probably lead to me failing a few courses next semester, but so it goes.
Badtz, I don’t know if you fixed the black screen problem, but I had the same issue under Windows 2000 Pro. I went out to Infogrames support website, and found that the problem was Windows didn’t know exactly what kind of monitor I have. The article indicates that if you have your monitor defined in the device manager as default monitor or plug and play monitor, then you’ll get this behavior in the game. The fix is to go into the device manager and either select your monitor in the list, or install an INF file to tell Windows what kind of monitor you have. I did this on mine, and then it started running perfectly.
I love the game, but the way. I’ve been playing it constantly for two weeks.
Perhaps I’m missing the obvious way, but I’ve only played for a few hours, and haven’t completed a game yet.
How can I determine what technologies a competing civilization has? In Civ and Civ2, I could establish an embassy and Check Intelligence, which would then give me some handy details, most useful of which was a breakdown of all the techs that civ has. As things stand in one of my games, I think I have technological superiority over those cheese-eating French, but I’m not quite sure. If I try to offer them techs in negotiations, only two or three appear as options, yet I thought I’d have a greater lead than that.
So: how can I get a list of what techs the other civs have?
Where the FUCK is the coal?!!!
Arghhhhhhh …
Sua
I beat the game the first time i played it. I was the romans and was playing on a tiny map. i only had 2 other civs and i wated them before the birth of Christ. I forget how many points i got but my ranking was the highest it could get.
I went the entire last game w/o any wars, none. Talk about boring. Montezuma didn’t attack anyone, Ceasear didn’t, Cleopatara didn’t. Ugh, it was horrible, 5 battleships, 4 destroyers, countless mech inf, and tanks, even 7 ICBMs. All for naught.
You’ll need to build an Intelligence Agency to send out spies.
Yeah, they should have made coal eaiser to see. It’s hardly noticible unless it’s within your line of sight and even then it still can be easy to miss depending on the terrain. Like in my last game, I had no idea I had access to coal until I cleared that jungle.
I need a break from playing… I’m in 1958 and its been non-stop war for a few hundred years. I’m fighting four civs and only the French evade my wrath. I take back everything I said about artillery. Hordes of knights keep attacking my forward (captured) cities and, if I have a rail route into the city open, I just load in artillery by the dozens and reduce all the knights down to their last little red hit point. My home cities pour out the tanks now, and I’ve started producing marines. Tanks are great but I’ve lost a few to one stinking enemy cavalryman, so they’re not so tough. My home cities are starving and miserable but I give em lots of entertainers and they keep pumping out the machinery of war. I never had problems with resources but I’m playing the huge map and have a lot of territory. I also move my forces to take resources from my enemies. I may have to go communist to continue this war. I’ve been getting a few terrain changes here and there from global warming but I clean up pollution as fast as I can.
An amazingly addictive game, each turn/year takes me about half an hour now, and I’m afraid to stop in case I forget a dire situation somewhere on my map.