building roads, lots of them. If you put an inhabitant of a city on a road square you will get gold from it.
building a marketplace in each city
changing to Monarchy as soon as you can, and then to Republic?
well, by trading with your neighbors it will be in their interests NOT to attack you. You could also ally with a strong neighbor against a weaker one.
There are resources distributed all over the map. You shouldn’t have trouble actually finding them. Wherever you found your first city, there will be resources close by. Usually several of the same resource.
You will never have ALL the resources you need, though, and you must trade in order to get the ones you need. For example, you may have three Ivory resources, but no horses. An opponent has spare horses but no ivory. You can make a trade.
you can also trade your surplus resources for technology or gold.
You have figured out that that the little pictures on the map are the resources, haven’t you? For example, a little picture of a horse is the horses resource.
In order to get a resource, the resource icon must be in the territory you control, and connected by road to your cities.
I had no idea how people felt about Civ III. I had assumed it was the best one, because it was the only one I had ever played. Sadly my current computer cannot accomodate Civ IV. (Would you beleive my laptop is only 1.5 byears old? Next time I’m going for all the wistles and bells at the begining.) Anyway, I like Civ III, but I suck at it. I am only successful on the Warlord level sometimes. I play to win, so I never go any higher than that.
My biggest problem with Civ III is the unfair trades civilizations expect you to do just to get a resource. I try to prevent corruption by aquiring as many happy things as I can. Later in the game, when going to war, I stay democratic as long as I can buy an airport on the continent I am invading and flood that city with troops. Then I go communist. It’s the only way to survive the war corruption.
I wish I could play Civ III in a separate window, so I could surf the straightdope at the same time.
really, this works huh. I have a feeling I’m about to start a game. What type of game should it be? Archipeligo? Old? Wet? Dry? Should I be German? I’ve never been German or Russian. I really don’t know what these things do.
Monarchy/Republic depends mostly on your playstyle. Monarchy is better for war; Republic is better for peace. There’s almost never a good reason to use both.
The value of a luxury resource in trading depends on how many happy faces it’ll give. So if you already have six luxuries, and marketplaces in most of your cities, then luxury #7 will give you four happy faces per city. If the other civ you’re trading with has the same number of cities as you, but only one luxury, an additional luxury will only give them one face per city. So they’ll want four of your luxury items in exchange for the one they’re giving you. Of course, you can also make this work to your advantage: Find a civ that already has 6 or 7 luxuries, and sell your surpluss to them. They’ll be willing to pay exhorbitant prices.
And there’s no such thing as war corruption. There’s war weariness (which causes unhappiness), but there are ways to minimize that (I often go for an entire war, sometimes even completely conquering my foe, without any weariness at all). And even if you do end up with war weariness, you’ll almost always have more net profit by staying in Democracy and cranking up entertainment spending than switching to Communism (which has the worst corruption of any government in the game, worse even than Despotism). If you absolutely must switch governments (too much war weariness will topple a Democracy), go to Monarchy.
I disagree with the Apolyton endorsements - I really can’t stand the site.
I went from a Chieftain-level player to an Emperor-level player in about 3 months by absorbing as much info as possible from Civfanatics. It’s the best resource available, IMO
And Civ IV is really a different game from Civ III. I really dislike 4, and love 3. I like having the gigantic, planet-spanning empires of 3…
Playing Conquests (Civ 3 extension) on Warlord level; on the first turn I can get Ceremonial Burial in 12 turns, Bronze Working + Warrior Code in 18, The Wheel in 24 and Alphabet in 30.
I wish to report that I’ve started a new game, and I’ve got the Romans over a barrel (I’m Alexander this time). I also got really lucky in the resources department on this world. I have access to silks, iron, gold, cattle, horses…all sorts of stuff.
Thanks. I’m bookmarking this thread, and rereading it now and then.
I like Civ III (with the Play The World extension) better than Civ IV. I like the Ottomans, who are industrious and scientific. The industrious attribute makes workers twice as fast, and workers are a big part of my military attacks. I don’t go on general world conquest until after I have railroads, and the workers build them under the feet of my units, and ahead of them after each battle, connecting each new city that I conquer to my overall network. This allows me to reinforce units instantly. The scientific attribute gives me free advances with each era, and helps propel me quickly toward Democracy. I always bypass Republic, and keep it for a science to research later when I can put practically all my production toward gold and still get Republic in four turns (the minimum required for all advancements). I do the same with Chivalry because the Ottomans have a special unit that functions as an extra powerful knight that moves like a modern armor (three spaces). By waiting a bit to start my conquests, I’m able to build up my treasury, so that by the time I have Democracy, I can buy almost every improvement I need. I can usually take the world over before the modern era begins. I like to leave one helpless enemy city on an iceberg or in a jungle, so that I can continue to play the game until I’m bored with it. My scores are usually pretty high.
If you can time it right, wait until the civ has a settler in the field, put a unit on it, and wipe out the civ’s cities. Technically, due to the settler, the civ still exists, but it will not build a city when a unit is next to it. Just keep harrying the poor guy all around the map.
If you’ve got Civ III Complete (which is the only version worth buying these days), make sure you’ve got all three discs installed. Also, make sure you’ve got the latest patches. These two things help fix some of the things that break the game in earlier versions–the crippling corruption rates, for instance.
I got SMAC at Costco in Spring of '99. I was finishing my first year of grad school and refused to even open the package for feat that I would, literally, flunk out of grad school because that game. I still keep it loaded onto every computer I have (along with CIV II).
Map size might be an issue. On smaller maps, techs are cheaper, to make up for the fact that you won’t be able to have as many cities researching. But for the first few techs, you’re only going to have one or two cities anyway, regardless of map size, so the early techs all take 40 turns on a huge map. I usually can’t get them any faster until my third or fourth tech.
On resource distribution, luxury resources are usually clumped, so typically, each civilization will have one luxury on which they have a near-monopoly. So you might have 6 or 7 of the 8 silks on the map, and someone else will have most of the ivory, and someone else yet will have most of the gems. I think the purpose of this is to encourage trade. Strategic resources like horses and iron, meanwhile, are scattered, so typically each civilization will have approximately one of each (though it’s not uncommon to have a surplus, or to lack something you need). If you have a surplus of a resource that someone else needs and has a use for, you can sell it for truly exhorbitant prices (I’ve gotten over 200 gold per turn for iron, in the industrial age). Bonus resources like cows and gold aren’t tradeable, and are found all over the place. They (especially cows) make a site much more appealing for a city, but aren’t necessary for anything.
Personally, my strategy rests heavily on trade, so I do whatever I can to peacefully claim as many resources as possible. Ideally, I like to control at least one of everything, and if I can, to hoard something. For instance, if you can snatch up all of the iron sources before your opponents can, they’ll be unable to produce decent military units until the end of the medieval era (which makes it a lot easier for you, whether you’re playing peacefully or aggressively). To this end, whenever I see an unclaimed resource, I always plunk a city down on or next to it, and sometimes I’ll even build cities right next to a border to squeeze a resource away (this takes a lot of culture to pull off). And when I do get into a war, I make it my top priority (well, after surviving, at least) to grab as many of my enemy’s resources as I can.
My daughter works at a used book store, and she got the plain vanilla Civ III. I believe that she paid four bucks for it. She got it for herself, but I installed it on my computer, too. I think that we’ve received value for her money.
Oh, and one more note about finding resources: Bonus and luxury resources are always visible on the map, but strategic resources only appear when you research certain techs (iron working for iron, gunpowder for saltpeter, etc.). So you can’t always be sure you’re going to have the mid and late game resources. To give yourself the best odds, though, you want to claim as much land as you can, of many different varieties, including the “junk” lands like desert, tundra, and jungle. As soon as you get a tech which allows a new resource, first check your trade advisor (F2) to see if you have any already. Then, check to see whether there’s any already in your borders but not hooked up, if there’s any on unclaimed land, and what other countries have it, to buy or steal it from (note that they can’t sell it to you if they don’t have the tech, too). This search can be easier if you turn off map overlays (basically, anything man-made); I believe the command for this is control-shift-M.
