In Civ 2, I use Diplomats for scouting.
You get em early, no upkeep cost, they can scout, establish Embassies, steal tech, or bribe Barbarian units for cheap military expansion. (Barbarian units are always cheaper to bribe than they would be to build.)
With all versions of Civ, I’ve had a few initial failures, then ‘got the hang of it’ and played increasingly difficult levels successfully.
You may like to read the manual :eek: , because there’s good advice in there.
When you’re looking through the websites (I think Apolyton has the actual strategy I’m about to suggest) look up REX. It stands for Rapid Expansion. In Civ III (with the patch, but corruption and waste are still bad), you have to REX your way to victory.
Supposedly, REX doesn’t work in Civ IV, but I’m destroying the game on it. I’m so far ahead by gunpowder, it’s laughable. I’m trying to see if I can get a UN victory by 1600 AD. I don’t think I’m going to make it.
I really missed the Diplomats when I switched to Civ III. Truly the all-purpose tool.
You’ve got to remember to change your style to match the type of government you’ve chosen. You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you try to force the wrong style of government or play against the strengths that are basic to that country. It’s a mistake that’s easy to make, and easier to overlook when trying to find what the problem is, but can screw you up within just a few centuries.
I loved Europa Universalis for the fact that you can play the game without the CD. Would that more game publishers went to sensible strategies for handling issues that any semi-competent hack can overcome easily anyway. 
AI programming is difficult; rare is a game where the developers actually take the time to work on an actually intelligent AI. Mind you, they’ve been working on an “AI” for chess for decades now, and still haven’t perfected one, and the AI for chess has a very limited amount of decisions to make by comparison. But the concept of toughening the AI simply by allowing it to cheat always made me think that the developers were being a bit, er, cheap.
I usually start with scout-unit, worker, scout-unit, and then either Granary and a bunch of settlers, or just a bunch of settlers. The scout-unit is a scout, if I’m playing an expansionist Civ (lately, I’ve been fond of Russia), or a Warrior otherwise. I never use more expensive units (like spears or archers) for exploration even if I have them, because they’re twice the cost, and they don’t explore any better.
Scouts can never uncover barbarians. Only expansionist nations can build scouts, and one of the advantages of expansionist is that goody huts are never angry. Combined with the fact that you move faster (so you can reach more goody huts), an expansionist civ can usually get most of the ancient techs for free.
One other thing to keep in mind for the very early game is placement of your capital. Move your scout (if you have one) and your worker before founding your city on the first turn, to see if there’s a better spot somewhere. You don’t want to delay too much, of course, but if there’s a much better location one or maybe two moves away, go there. You might, for instance, want to move next to a river or to the coast, or bring juicy bonuses like cattle or wheat into range.
I find that this more than makes up for America having a pretty useless special unit - the F-15 which has little advantage in the endgame.
My mistake. You did in fact write a pointless, meaningless tautology instead of an blindingly erroneous statement.
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And contrary to your blunt assertion, the Civ games are strategy games, and always were.
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Actually, had you bothered to read what you quoted, ylou would have noticed that I was objecting to your statement as to why it was a strategy game.
Just a small correction: other civs can get them; they just have to wait for whatever tech it is.
No, other civs can get Explorers, which is what Scouts upgrade into, with the tech Navigation. Explorers, like Scouts, have no (direct[sup]*[/sup]) combat ability and have two moves per turn, but they also treat all terrain as roads, so they can cross six squares of jungles or mountains or whatnot in a single turn. Unfortunately, they also treat railroads as roads, so you can’t move them instantly from one side of your empire to the other. Incidentally also, if an explorer pops a goody hut, he also never gets angry barbarians (even if he’s not expansionist). If you can still find a goody hut anywhere on the map that late, of course. The third and final way to guarantee no barbarians from a hut is to pop it with your borders instead of with a unit. Borders expanding also eliminates a hostile barbarian camp, though not the unit(s) sitting on it.
*Although they can’t fight, they do have military value. They can pillage improvements. So you could, for instance, move one five spaces into enemy territory and cut off one of their resources on the first turn of a war.
I used to think this was true, but it is not. I have popped barbs from expanding borders at least 2 or 3 times. FWIW, I play CIII Complete, if it makes a difference.
Joe
Lynn Bodoni, I’ve got the Civ3 ultimate edition, with play the world and the other expansion packs. They’re free to you (or the first Doper that wants it). PM me an address and they’re out to you before the post office closes.
Shecky, the Civ4 addict.
Just had a refresher game of Civ 3 in my class:
I played the Arabs (on Chieftain level / Pangea / Standard size).
They are Expansionist, which gets you a Scout at the start and the right to build more. As Chronos said, hitting huts is now safe - and usually profitable.
Their other ability is Religious, which speeds up Government changes and allows half-price Temples.
I researched Bronze Working (for the best early defensive unit = Spearmen), built a second Scout (hit those huts!), then a couple of Warriors, then a Settler.
My worker built roads to special resource squares and improved the terrain around my Capital.
After a while, I had a Spearman and an Archer in each city, all connected by roads, with a Temple and a luxury or two keeping everyone happy.
My Capital was building Wonders (no corruption, so no loss of shields), the city nearest a food resource (Wheat) was building Settlers + Workers and my other cities were building military units (all these builds interspersed with Temples and Libraries).
The scouts had hit many huts and also mapped places for each city. They were on the lookout for special resources, especially Horses (the Arabs special unit of Ansar Warriors needs them).
I had the largest population, was ahead on scientific research and had the most units.
Personally I build cities about 5 squares apart, so all the terrain can be used.
But bear in mind that Civ is a flexible game and feel free to develop your own style…
Sigh
I’d just gotten into this game again, and was about to squash the Byzantines like the pathetic bugs they are. (Hey, I was ready to build my air force but my half of the planet had no oil! So I’m taking everyone else’s.)
I set up an invasion with matching numbers of units, ecept mine were twice as potent on the offense as they were on the defense. City walls were obsolete and they can’t build the advanced defenses. And they had Riflemen. Easy picking’s right? WRONG!
I got creamed. I managed to take on city out of, oh, six assaults. I’m managing it now, but only after I grabbed the oil and started building Modern Armor. I was very irritated that their Civil-War era riflemen shot the pants off my machine-gunning Marines. And that their Cavalry kept kill off my TOW infantry. OK, not often, but often enough that it more or less stopped my invasion cold intil I force-fed my mighty economy down their throats with airlifts.
I’m finally reading the board again. I COULD NOT stop playing Civ. I won my first game (Persian, chieftain) this morning, thanks to everyone’s help. This is one heck of an addiction.
Of course, I’ve started a new game, and cranked it up a bit harder.
I think part of my problem is that I dn’t think in terms of the game. I keep thinking that I have all these advanced untis and stuff, but I don’t disassociate the numbers and all from actual history and all.
And yes, It’s very fun. Eventually, I may get irritated and quite again.
Hardly surprising. Marines have a base attack of 8, compared to the Rifleman’s base defense of 6. Then add in that the Riflemen are in a city, plus whatever the terrain defense bonus is, plus they’re almost certainly fortified. So the Riflemen, in that situation, actually have more combat strength than the Marines. Really, the only good use for Marines (rather than Cavalry or Tanks) is their special attack-from-the-sea ability, and that only after all defenders have been bombarded down to one HP. Your best bet in that situation would have been either to buy some oil to build tanks etc., or to fight using Artillery and Cavalry (Cavalry, despite having only 6 attack compared to the Marine’s 8, can also withdraw from combat, and move much faster, which overall makes them a better attacker). Or, if you insisted on using Marines, you should have used a lot more of them, to make up for the enemy’s advantage.
Actually, the Marines have attack twelve now. Or at least that’s what my civilopedia says. The enemy has two riflemen and a spearman per city (one more rifleman in the big ones), so I didn’t expect to win everything right off the get-go. I was attacking smaller cities, too, which I don’t believe got any defense bonus at size 4 (they weren’t very useful to me, but I wanted to cut their empire in half). And I did put in six units into the big cities, instead of three. I wanted to soften them up with a bombardment, but my ships aren’t strong enugh (Frigates? NO WAY!) and unloading the artillery would have cost me a turn for them to rally their cavalry hordes.
I’m getting mildly annoyed at the resource model, which is rather short-supplied.
Anyone have tips for playing as the [strikethrough]Vikings[/strikethrough] Scandinavians? I keep getting squashed five minutes into the game, when my civ seems to have no useful bonuses. Seafaring takes a while and Militaristic is useful but hard to use until I can buy up some military units.
I was trying to power through to Great Library and then let science go hang while I build a mass of military power. Didn’t work very well.
Thanks, Shecky. If I’m never seen on this board again, it’s all his fault! 