I know we’ve done these before, but here’s another one…
10% of the people take 90% of the work. There’s a certain percentage of the population that will whine, no matter what you do. You’ll spend most of your time placating the two idiots that can’t work happily, not the 8 happy morons. Moral: Friggin’ morons!
If you don’t line your borders with troops, the computer will spend half the fricking game trying to go tromping across half your civilization to build a city in the one spot that’s not actually within your borders. It will start wars if you don’t let it go tromping along. Moral: Border Patrol funding is good.
Despite #1, no one cares if you conquer a city, convert the friendlies to entertainers, and starve the rabble-rousers. Moral: Entertainers are the opiate of the masses.
Speaking of the computer provoking wars, it will do so even when tactically suicidal. Fondly do I remember the three allies ganging up on me, their mighty army of Swordsmen swarming across my borders. And then my Mech Infantry, roused from their slumber, set loose to wreak ter’ible vengeance upon mine foe. All I could do was gape and wonder if they were that stupid. Moral: Don’t be stupid.
I’ve found this actually is convenient. Sometimes (esp. if you set AI aggression high) if you say “get the hell off my land or declare war!”, they will declare war. Your people are happier being waged against (esp. if it’s a previously-encountered foe) than waging against. As long as you keep a reasonable supply of superior troops for the purpose of dealing with foreign rabble, you’re set.
Absolutely starve down the city to 1, and if you can get a few foerign (and thus free) workers out of the deal, so be it. Starving a city down is mostly so they can’t get pissed off at you if you sue for peace, then in the future decide you still don’t like the Ottomans (or whoever) and want them gone. I’ve wondered why there isn’t a penalty for doing this, but … eh.
Mech Inf? They can only fight one unit per turn! Tanks can get at two, Modern Armor can get at 3, and Armies can get up to 4. Tell me you hadn’t gotten Rocketry (among other things) yet.
You don’t need to have a lot garrisoned in your central cities. In the game I just finished, I had … a regular warrior stationed in DC. I figured the AI would have to go halfway across the map to even GET to DC. Given that the best AI units I encountered were Cavalry, and that’s when I was kicking ass, I figured I was pretty safe.
Workers. Lots of 'em. Last game, I had close to 200. It’s mighty useful to be able to deal with pollution and railroading to and through newly-conquered cities and still having workers left over for whatever (especially if that whatever is cleaning up a city that got blasted by an ICBM).
If you’re the strongest civ on the map (by more than a warrior), and you feel like it, there really isn’t much to stop you from using tactical nukes and ICBMs.
There’s a lot to be said for troop readiness (diff b/w vet and regular units, and elite vs. vet); not only in terms of HP but you can get great leaders (I guess “inspirational stories” and future politicians would be the RL aspect) from elite units fighting.
Sometimes you can only afford to wage war for a few turns before your people really start to turn on you (especially in higher levels; in the Chieftain game I just finished, I was at war for at least 40 consecutive turns) even if you have a temple, colosseum, cathedral, JS Bach’s, Universal Suffrage, Cure for Cancer and luxuries.
The computer thinks of borders as more of a “suggestion” than a rule, at least when they’re your own borders that are in question. I always warms my heart to see them going on about violations of their soverignty due to my forces entering their borders, yet apparently completely oblivious to all that infantry fortified within MY borders. “Borders are for other people”. Or in this case “Borders are for people.”
Of course, this won’t stop them from, despite being perfectly happy, moreso than they’d ever been, deciding they want to be Babylonians again. This leads one to the temptation to simply conscript the city as units or worker gangs, and then let the Babylonians have a miserable and angry city. Of course, in that case you might get it back.
My own contribution – Any problem can be solved by simply throwing enough Jaguar Warriors at it.
This is one I’m learning. I picked up the “line the borders with units” strategy from somewhere, and now it just makes sense to keep most of my troops out and about, rather than in my cities. Especially once I get Steam Power. And if they’ve taken my capitol, I’m in a world of hurt that a little garrison probably won’t stop for long.
And I love ICBMs. It warms the cockles of my little black heart to scurry ahead, get ICBMs, and then nuke, nuke, nuke!
I agree on the Lots O’ Workers strategy. I love seeing them all come running out once Steam Power goes through and rail lines springing up everywhere.
I’ll also add to this that the AI seems to know where resources are ahead of time, so cities in apparently bizzare areas, such as giant stretches of tundra, might be worth keeping if you get them (I stupidly gave a city to India to make them like me, only to find out later it had coal), and also worth seeing if you can culture flip. One way to tell is if the AI seems to overvalue that city during peace negotiations, that’s a fairly good indicator it has something special you can’t see yet.
That reminds me of a game I played in the original Civ where I was having trouble making progress in a war against the Germans. So I simultaneously nuked five of their biggest cities. I waited a little longer than I wanted because it took a while to sneak a transport to their shores so that I could occupy the nuked cities.
The power graph at the end of the game was funny to look at – Germany’s line sinks like a STONE right about 1935 or so.
That was the same game where I got a little sloppy eradicating the Babylonians; this medieval-era civilization recaptured a city I had captured and suddenly had armored units running around. I do like the fact that, in Civ III, you can’t steal technology which is completely out of proportion to your own base of knowledge.
I haven’t played Civ 3 in a while - I should dedicate like 5 days in a row to that soon. Anyway I love the addition of cultural victory - it proves that Baywatch is as potent as bombing.
I’m also a fan of technological leads. I don’t really like fighting but I like having the tech lead so that I don’t have to negotiate with other nations, mostly because negotiating with soulless programs annoys me.
The lesson? Develop nifty gadgets, enthrall the youth and refuse to talk to other leaders because they aren’t real and the world is yours!
Nah, develop nifty gadgets and sell the secrets to other nations (initiate the conversation; otherwise, one nation will buy the tech from you, then sell it to everyone else) once you’ve gotten the wonder from it, if any exists. The more marketplaces, banks and hospitals another civ has, the more money they can give you for not wiping their pathetic civs from the map.
Until you attack again.
Another strategy I’ve used is to get a civ down to 2-3 cities (sometimes just 2, sometimes as many as 4), then sue for peace and get the non-capitol cities in exchange for peace. If I do it right, I have enough units ready to take the capitol that turn, so I sue for peace, get the cities that are too far for me to get to in that turn, then take the capitol. It also has the useful effect of ending a turn in peace (assuming you’re only fighting one civ) if you don’t attack anyone until your next turn, so war weariness resets.
Of course, not all civs will be willing to give you anything for peace. In my most recent game, I’d used more than a few ICBMs, and nobody was willing to give me anything for peace, so I had to go through and take every city (I was playing with “domination” not an option for victory). Final city count was somewhere near 260. Turns took for EVER. I finally just said “hell with cultural victory (I was at 133K culture and getting close to 2K culture or so per turn), I’ll finish the space ship.”
After spending the last two days goofing off trying to get Cleopatra in space, I was going to start this thread:[ul][li]Cities in modern, industrialized nations frequently defect and join other countries[/li][li]Cities can only build one building at a time[/li][li]Proof of the value of progress: in ancient times, it took workers fifty years to move a mile[/li][li]The United States of America began as an indigenous culture in North America prior to European contact, passing through a feudal period before industrializing[/li][li]Governments build and maintain religious structures (I always thought there should be a “separation of church and state” small wonder that paid for the maintenace of these things – prerequisite: democracy)[/li][li]It is absolutely necessary to build a temple to a polytheistic religion before one can build a cathedral, mosque, or Buddhist temple[/li][li]No modern Western nation can be described as “miltaristic” except Germany, even the ones who built empires.[/li][li]Ghana has won a diplomatic victory (or maybe the United Kingdom, because they provided the first Secretary General of the UN)[/li][li]All courthouses, in every country and since Antiquity, have always resembled small American courthouses built in the early Twentieth Century. Meanwhile, nice-looking brick-building universities are regularly bulldozed by countries entering a post-industrial period, when they are replaced with concrete monstrosities that are mostly football fields[/li][li]Radio has no non-military use[/li][li]There have been no cultural developments since the beginning of Industrialization. None, that is, except for the research lab. There have been no literary developments since the invention of literature in Antiquity. Any paintings, films, or TV shows you happen to see are purely figments of your fevered imagination. [/li][li]The first public libraries date to shortly after human beings first settled down in towns[/li][li]Horses stay in one place, always. Human beings canot move them from place to place. Same thing for cows.[/li][li]The leaders of most countries are immortal.[/li][li]Contrary to popular belief, the citizens of a democracy cannot vote out their leader. They can only express their displeasure by burning their city to the ground. This does not happen as often in Communist countries or Despotisms, where it is presumably illegal.[/li][li]When you are finished with a worker or military unit, don’t simply fire them. Send them to a town where they can be carved up and partially recycled as new military units or buildings.[/li][li]It is common for a city’s militia to include a bear-skin warrior, stone-axe-wielding warrior.[/li][li]The world ends in 2050[/ul][/li]
Gad. There are so many. I could go on forever. Next time Sid Meier wants to put one of these things together, he better call me
I’ve discovered the “Make em give me their last few cities, then kill em anyway” plan and try to do it as often as possible. It saves time AND troops.
[ul]
[li]Troops couldn’t pile on a Frigate or Ironclad or any kind of ship but those explicitly labeled Transport.[/li][li]Planes have a set distance they can TRAVEL, but they have no problem orbiting a city with no airport indefinitely.[/li][li]Helicopters have no useful military application.[/li][li]Galleys can easily defeat everything up to and including ironclads, with a little luck.[/li][li]3 guys with swords will beat 6 guys with muskets entrenched in a walled town. As long as they’re controlled by the computer.[/li][li]No matter how well you train and equip them, your troops will mysteriously disappear if a city flips. Even if it’s a city you just captured. Rather than crushing the rebel scum, they’ll say “Welp, may as well disappear into thin air.”[/li][/ul]
Are you hoping for the ability to discover the “Reality TV” advance? That’s not a bad idea … with that advance, you could build the Survivor Wonder. This Wonder, a perfect symbol of America’s ability to export dreck around the world, would enhance one’s ability to win a cultural victory, although whether or not that culture would be something you’d want to win with is another story!
The only lessonn I learned from Civ3 was that I liked Civ2 better I tried and tried but it just seemed like a tech race to me, it was too hard to capture enemy cities that were even inferior to my units, even if I had 3X more.
I’m not as advanced as most of you… (thanks for the starve conquered cities tip… ) but i agree about the massive #s of workers. If you keep your workers in pairs, one on top of the other, they work faster. With two workers, in one turn you can build a road, move next turn, build a road next turn. Of course it takes longer thru forest or jungle and such, or to clear said foliage, but in pairs they seem to work faster overall.
I learned that yes, Sid Meier is as much a dick as any other developer.
Word up, Civ 3 is a godless abomination. It’s a step backward from SMAC, no doubt, and definitely no better than Civ2, simply because for all the new features the AI and implementation is so bad that there’s no point in them. At least Civ2 was easy to mod. You need a degree to make new Civ3 units, and the scenario editor omits features Civ2’s little Scenario Menu had.
I tried and tried but it just seemed like a tech race to me, it was too hard to capture enemy cities that were even inferior to my units, even if I had 3X more.