Due to injury, I will be home all day long today and I’ll be able to stay up as late as I want since my appoint tomorrow is not until late afternoon, so. . …
I wanna build a rocket ship. What Civ should I be? Should I have only one opponent? None (I noticed that if you have no opponents, you get less resources. Is this observation true or am I crazy)? What special strategies should I use?
And, as a side note, how do you turn off all that tedious animation?
Best advice I can give is to build the Hoover Dam. That’ll allow you to outproduce other Civs. Then, get to the point where you’re big enough and heavily armed enough so that other nations leave you pretty much alone. Then pour enough research dollars into getting the necessary techs.
(Try to get the UN, too, so no other nation can short circuit the game by being elected Secretary General.)
It’s been a while since I kicked the Civ 3 habit by mainlining a combination of cocaine, heroin, and pistachios, but I did the rocket gig. Maybe I can help.
The Germans were the ones that worked for me–they seem to have a good tech affinity. I went for a large continental mass with a lot of opponents, and quickly built up a tight little ellipse-shaped empire with my main city at one focus and my forbidden palace at the other. There is a definite distance from your “control” cities where new construction fails to be anything other than self-sustaining, so I stopped building new cities and concentrated on improvement. I traded for advancements a lot more than I normally did as the Zulu, because I could crank out the important buildings faster.
The computer of course unloads on you at some point, but usually by the time it does your troops have a good technological edge. I recall one particularly galling opponent with cavalry required a visit by half a dozen city-razing modern tanks. If they start it and you finish it, you can extract some truly embarassing terms from your enemies.
By building on a hexagonal pattern around your control cities, you should have around fourteen high-production cities with which to simultaneously defend and research. That was about all I really needed, though I probably had three times that number of cities creating revenue.
Thanks for the advice so far.
So, it looks like I’ve already made mistake #1-- spreading out all over my continent. That’s always been my strategy in the beginning of the game-- spread out far and wide and then fill in the gaps with time, allowing me to control a huge chunk of land.
I also narrowed down the allowed victories to just Space Race and Cultural. Does number of opponents make a difference? I’ve got but one since I hate to be interrupted by those other annoying civs who always want to fight with me. Anyways-- I’m off to control-shift-Q
On another Civ3 note, am I the only one who’s noticed that you can have some truly unrealistic losses, even when playing on chieftan? I mean, a modern armour losing to a tank, I can handle that. Maybe even losing to an infantry. But to a LONGBOWMAN? I’ve also had losses when attacking Cavalry, and once, a spearman. What’s up with this?
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How are the graphics in this game? I got RCT2 recently, and I realized that I’ve been really spoiled by ZT’s graphics(and Simcity 3000’s to an extent), so I’d been expecting the newer game’s to be on par. And they’re not nearly; iIt looks almost exactly like RTC which I wasn’t expecting. ZT look like this if you’re unfamiliar, just click the thumbnails to see big pictures http://www.microsoft.com/games/zootycoon/visuals.asp
If I got Civ3 would I be disappointed by it visually too, or are the graphics of a decent quality?
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I was disappointed in Civ III’s graphics – not, I think because they weren’t state o’ the art, but because they looked too much like Alpha Centauri graphics rather than Civ II. Much too drab, and I can never tell what will be under a city’s control when I build.
The little animated settlers and units are pretty amusing, particularly when ships sink or planes crash.
As for unrealistic victories – they don’t happen nearly as often as in earlier Civ games and you can always convince yourself that some neolithic unit got really, really lucky. After all, if a tank got mired in the mud or experienced some extreme mechanical failure, that would still count as a win for the primitive unit. And in the field, it’s possible that a bunch of tankers might stop for a pee and a bit of a smoke and find themselves ambushed by longbowmen.
Okay, if you want to build the rocket, the most important thing is tech. Choose a civilization that has the Scientific trait. This lets you build research buildings cheaper and gives you a free tech advance whenever you get to a new age. Don’t play as the Germans if you aren’t planning on going to war: their other trait is Militaristic, and will be wasted. Pick someone who is eitehr Scientific/Industrial or Scientific/Commercial. If they have Alphabet as their starting tech, so much the better (I think the Greeks or the Persians meet these criteria, but I’m not 100% sure.)
Now, when you start off, research Alphabet (if you don’t already have it), Writing, and then Literature. This’ll let you build Libraries, which increase your research, and the Great Library wonder, which gives you any tech owned by two other civs for free. I’ve gotten as many as eight free techs from building the Great Library. In later ages, make sure to build Copernicus’ Observatory, Newton’s College, and the SETI Program. All in the same city, if possible. Probably the single most important Wonder is Darwin’s Voyage, which gives you two free Industrial age techs. Building as many of these Wonders as possible will give you a big boost in getting to the techs you need to build the rocket.
Lastly, I’ve usually found that competing against too few rival civs is more of a hinderance. Rival civilizations give you the opportunity to trade for more techs. Instead of having to research every advance personally, you can get by with only researching a few and trading them for other advances. Plus, if you play your cards right, you can get massive amounts of gold. By the mid to late industrial age, I usually have so much money from selling technology that I can max out my research funding and still earn as much as five hundred gold a turn.
elfkin: The graphics in Civ3 aren’t phenomenal, but they’re decent. Certainly the best looking Civ game to date, although that’s not saying much. Unlike Finagle, I seldom have problems figuring out what’ll be in my radius when I’m building a new city. I like the unit animations, too, although you can turn them off from the options menu, if they’re bothering you.
quote:"As for unrealistic victories – they don’t happen nearly as often as in earlier Civ games "
Nah, I think Civ3 took a step back from Civ2. Civ 2 seemed relatively unbiased as far as computer vs human was concerned. However, in Civ3 the computer’s older units routinely trounce my modern units far more than is statistically normal. I don’t mind if the computer’s spearman gets lucky occaisionally, but the frequency of its luck is what is frustrating.
Case in point…my most recent game (regent level) ended in disgust as the computer’s group of 5 longbowmen (attack 4, defense 1) defeated my walled city filled with 5 musketmen (defense 4) without a single loss. I counter attacked (after losing the city) with my own longbowmen against the computers longbowmen. I lost 3 units in a row, then gave the computer the finger and went to bed grumpy.
Have I got a site for you! It’s called civfanatics, and it’s a wonderful place to get addicted.
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Actually, I would probably take the longbowmen in a RL fight over the muskets. Longer range, much more rapid fire, much greater manuverability, (not that this would matter defending a city). The musket is an inferior weapon to the longbow, but has the advantage of being easy to use.
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I’m not the original poster, but thanks for the tips in this thread! I bought the game as soon as it came out, I bought the expansion pack not long after it came out, I’ve played several times, and I had never finished a game. Not just never won, I’d always been soundly trounced by the Industrial Age and just given up.
Last night I managed to do the rocketship victory with the Ottomans! Whoo hoo! Granted, it was only the second difficulty level, and I was losing to the Aztecs until I managed to finally build the rocket, and I didn’t get above “the Strong” on the power meter at the end. But I finished! And won! Technically.
One of my “things I must do before I die” is off the list. Now I never have to play again!
(Although after seeing all the cool units you get to build in the modern age, I’m somewhat tempted to try for a military victory. Maybe with the Japanese…?)