I don’t get all the hate for CTP. The only bad thing about that vs the other Civ games was lack of aggressive opponent AI. Then again, I also hate games where the opponents gang up on me self-destructively, causing me to spend half the game defeating them even though they are much more weaker than me, causing me to not be able to undertake the strategy I was trying to try out AND unsuspending my disbelief that I am going against rational opponents :rolleyes:.
(Total War, I’m looking at you. I can spend the entire game fighting against people that pick fights against me. If I owned half the continent, would you pick a fight with me if you only had 2 or 3 territories?
Which is not to say that M2:TW isn’t tied for the best game ever.)
Regarding jungle for Civ III, if you’re industrious you can change those to railroaded grassland in one move with 6 workers after Democracy. (4 to clear the jungle, 1 to build the road, 1 to build the railroad.) Some of my best mid-to-late-game cities have been built on former jungle.
The first software I bought for my new MacBook was Civ IV. I played it for a while, but eventually had to buy Civ III, which was my first introduction to the game. To me, Civ IV is an entirely different game. I don’t play it any more, but I’ve got a friend who has it, so maybe I’ll try a multiplayer game.
I think you need Replaceable Parts, too, to pull that off. But it’s still at least two turns. You forgot about the turn you need to spend moving the workers onto the jungle. More efficient to move the workers onto six different jungle tiles at once, then let them each clear their own jungle and build the road. Oh, and you probably also want to build a mine or irrigation on the square, too, for another worker-turn. But yeah, in the long run, jungles can eventually become good land (just not for your first cities).
Oh, and concerning the Great Library, it’s really only useful if you’re designing your strategy around getting it. The way I play, I’m usually the first to get technologies on my own, anyway, so the Great Library wouldn’t do any good.
I didn’t forget; I meant just one turn once you’ve arrived on the tile. But yeah, you’re right about RP. I did forget that.
I usually have more than a hundred workers, and I put them to work in taskforces. Some teams will work on mountains, some on jungle, some on hills, and some (teams of 2) on plain land (grassland and plains).
My main gazz is establishing redundant rail networks, so I usually leave the irrigation for another stage. I don’t do any mining after the early game. By then I have enough funds to buy just about anything I need. Wonder producing cities are usually exceptions, though.
Maybe I should explain why I use so many workers. Using workers in battle is a big help for my style. What I do is, when I take a city, there’s usually a road to it (unless it’s a really really backward civ). So I move workers in to railroad from the point at which I launched the attack, to the city, and at least one square beyond (if there’s already a road). This often allows me to take a whole civ in one turn, especially people like France who typically have really vast road networks. If a civ is of any decent size, it can take scores of workers to prepare the way because sometimes over a hill or mountain is the only way to go that already has a road. I do have to keep the workers protected, of course, especially if I can’t quite reach those last one or two cities on the outskirts until the next turn.
ETA:
I always play on huge Pangea too, so that makes a difference.
Just a few general rules on my playstyle and maybe that can help you. I generally try to initially get a land-grab going whilst avoiding conflicts with my neighbors. That means doing whatever possible to get a good chunk of the map claimed ASAP. Then once I have those settled. I’ll build loads of workers and focus on getting the territory developed as soon as possible. Now if you don’t have enough military units, you’ll start getting loads of demands from your neighbors, regardless of how much further you are than your neighbors. They’ll pick on you if you don’t have some units, so you can usually keep them at bay with cheap units rather than what you’d like to use.
This is also why I hate CivIV, but it can really punish this type of play-style at times. CivII was the most realistic about it (Paratroopers and Stealth Fighters! That could clear out any enemy) but in Civ IV I was pissed the first time I played it when I took a unit against a much older one and still lost. A bunch of guys with muskets against Modern Armor? Come on!
Civ III still does okay in this respect though. An easy way to win is to rush to Modern Armor, and simply fill the up with transport, and park outside of your target’s territory and simply pummel them. But it gets harder to race out in front this way in the beginning. The computer always tries to fight with it’s current weapons though.
In real life, it would be highly unlikely for a bunch of guys with muskets to beat Modern Armor. In any of the Civ games, it’s also highly unlikely. But in real life and Civ alike, it does happen occasionally. You just notice it more often in Civ, because you’ve probably played more fictional histories of the world than there have been real ones. Remember, something that happens about once per game, is something that should only have happened once in all of history.
And I’ll disagree about your “easy way to win”. Once you have Modern Armor, it’s easy to win. The hard part is surviving the ancient and medieval eras to get there.
Actually, I see it happen pretty regularly. The AI has the odd habit of cheating its way to supporting vastly more units than it normally can, then rushing them at me. I’ve regularly quit games in disgust when the AI flooded me with ridiculously large numbers of units (far more than they can actually support). I have no chance, since cost for cost my units are actually less effective than their floods. And I can’t go back in technology to counter-flood them with horsemen.
It seems to happen most often when I’ve conquered a whole continent or two. The AI then flips out and buyilds up ridiculous forces to kill me, only I never get to encounter them since I took all easily-grabbed lands. So it builds and builds.
Instead of giving up playing the game, find a strategy that overcomes the built-in AI advantages. That’s why it’s called a STRATEGY game.
Yeah, the AI’s advantages (especially at higher levels) suck. I was outraged in Civ II when I found out that the AI could build things for a ridiculously low percentage of the cost charged to me at the highest level. CHEATERS!!! I fumed. Then I simply figured out how to beat the cheating bastards and that was the end of that.
The same is true of every iteration of the game. It was true of *Europa Universalis * as well. And of Age of Empires. And of ALL games where the method of the programmers to allow the AI to be competitive is to endow it with abilities you can’t have. :eek:
OK, so do you have any specific suggestions? Right now, when I start a game, I build a couple of the best warriors I can (usually just generic warriors) and then a worker. Warriors explore, while the worker builds roads. Repeat for a couple of cycles, then spring for a settler. I tend to plant my cities fairly close together, so that I can defend them more easily. On the other hand, if I can block off part of a continent from my neighbor(s) with careful city placement, I’ll certainly do that, too.
I play with gridlines on the map, and I swear I’m seeing diagonal line afterimages almost constantlly.
I have wasted countless years of my life on every Civilisation game since they were introduced. Lyn, I hope you have upgraded to Warlords by now- it is far superior to Civ IV.
The bad news is that there is an even better upgrade (allegedly) called Beyond the Sword, due for release in July.
For a land grab strategy I use scout units* rather than warriors for exploration. Scouts are much quicker at exposing tiles. They are no use if they uncover barbarians, but it’s easy to lose a warrior here too…
*I haven’t played vanilla Civ III for ages, but I’m sure there is a scout unit, and that expansionist civs start off with one.
Out of curiosity, do you bother to read what you quote before you offer a counterexample? :rolleyes:
I said “And of ALL games where the method of the programmers to allow the AI to be competitive is to endow it with abilities you can’t have.” If Galactic Civ has a good AI, then this statement is still true, is it not, because it isn’t applicable to Galactic Civ. Duh.
And contrary to your blunt assertion, the Civ games are strategy games, and always were.
I almost always go Warrior-Warrior-Settler or Warrior-Warrior-Granary-Settler. You need to start the land grab sooner. I tend to have the second city make my second worker straight away, if possible, or if not, the second city goes warrior-worker or barracks-worker.
I OCCASIONALLY place my second city 3 tiles from capital, but USUALLY only 2. 2 tiles away means that a 1-movement-point unit, on a road can get from city to city in one turn. I try to keep 2 tiles between all cities, until I get to the boonies of my civ, when I place them only 1 tile apart to make science factories.
It IS a good idea to block off any choke points, either with a city or some temporary units - anything to keep the AI out of area you want to colonize.
I also play with gridlines. It makes the game so much smoother, IME.
The problem with scouts in Civ III is that, unless you’re expanionist, they don’t even appear until waaaaaay late in the game, after the bulk of the world is discovered and almost all borders are touching.
I usually play America for that reason. I like to see what’s out there early on. I haven’t played the basic game for ages though, I usually play the Bigger Better Worlds or Rise and Rule mods. I like huge empires!
Heh GalCiv does cheat on the highest few difficulty levels and the bonuses they get are laid out if you care to look for them…but Galciv is the only strategy game to horribly kick my ass without cheating. From what I could gather the developers for years looked at save games and strategies that the players used and piece by piece implemented them into the game code. Upping the difficulty actually ups the AI by enabling these threads instead of just making the AI cheat harder (aside from the aforementioned top couple of difficulty levels)
Great series and you have to love a developer that combats piracy by having no copy protection at all (not even a CD check) but then offers great free content through registering the game.
