Share your tips for Civilization III

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been playing a lot of the new Civilization III Gold edition lately and I’m curious to hear what sort of strategies are out there. Four in particular are:

1.) What sort of things to you start building at the very beginning of the game?

2.) What techology to you go for first?

3.) What do you build in new cities that you start late in the game.

4.) What do you do with Helicopters? I’ve struggled to figure out how they’re useful and just can’t. I see no point in building then when paratroopers do the same thing without getting shot down.

2

You should get the Conquests expansion, which isn’t included in the Gold Edition. My favorite civ is now the Portugese with their Carrack unit, which allows them to explore oceans while everyone else is still stuck near shore. You also get a Scientific Great Leader at some point in the game, which is quite useful to hurry the production of your Forbidden Palace. Communist countries get to build a Secret Police HQ, which acts like a second Forbidden Palace as long as the country is Communist.

Now to answer your questions: [list=#][]Exploration units.[]The Wheel (the better to explore with).A few defensive units then temples to build up culture, unless I’ve built the Temple of Artemis (available in Conquests), which automatically places a temple in each city until its effects expire. While the Temple of Artemis is in effect, my first city improvement is a library.[/list]

3

So much of it depends on the civilization you’re playing. If you’re playing a civ with a strong commercial base and a strong military base, then exploit those two things. If you’re playing the Americans, OTOH, who are industrious and expansionist, take advantage of that by expanding as far as you can defend.

New cities and what to make therein depend largely on how you get them and where they are. If you’ve just captured a city militarily, you’ll want to get culture in there ASAP, but only if you have the military strength to ensure that you won’t be building a temple one turn and a library the next turn only to find that the city gets re-captured. If, OTOH, you’re making cities just to fill out the land you’ve acquired, then just make sure you do what needs to be done; not every city needs a SAM battery, and not every costal city needs a Coastal Fortress.

Fight, if you can afford to do so, early on in the game. This increases your odds of getting a Hero. The important thing is not making the best army from the hero but that you can, when you get Military Tradition, make some wonders such that you can manufacture your own heroes. I’ve gotten 4 or 5 heroes in one game from military conquest, but in terms of the expense of fighting vs. the expense of making them, there’s no contest.

I like to go for Construction early in the game, though I often find that the vast bulk of my civ. advances come from huts. In civ2, the game would reload so quickly that it was possible to just keep getting the same hut until you got what you wanted. In civ3, this requires considerably more patience, so unless you really need something that bad, just keep going.

Also:

Don’t be afraid to just pick up and start a new game. If you find yourself surrounded by marshland, start over. If you find that you don’t have horses or iron or much in the way of luxuries, start over. You should know by about 2000 BC, maybe 1000, how good a chance you stand of winning, or at least holding your own.

4

Try and build the Collossus early. It’s the most important Wonder in the early game, IMO. Don’t be afraid to stick mines in grasslands at the start; you’ll gain a shield where irrigating gives you nothing and you can always switch them over when you need to.

5

I am extremely non-aggressive and end up not getting any, or very few, leaders. I try and run a science game. Basically, my building priorities run happiness (and hence culture), science, money, though the latter two are linked (more money means more science, too) and I tend to go back and forth on whether to build a bank or university first, depending on the terrain around the city. If it is by a river, for example, I’ll build the trade improvements first.

I expand pretty aggressively and into areas that are likely to nab me resources. Usually I try to form a circle around things like deserts and jungles rather than hoping to fill them in and catch something. This way I can keep the number of cities down while still stopping the AI from nabbing territory that might grant them resources.

If you understand how corruption works (and there are some excellent resources on the web explaining it) this really helps in terms of how to build your empire. Knowing the Optimal City Number also helps you know how you should grow… once you exceed this number, corruption becomes a huge nusiance. The Forbidden Palace is necessary, but if you wait too long to build it you’ll probably not get it built without a leader. Big deal if you’re aggressive, but for me I can’t count on leaders since barbarians don’t create them, and I’m usually advanced enough to keep the AI off my back.

Wonders: I shoot for the Pyramids, but on higher difficulty levels this is pretty much impossible since the AI’s production bonuses enable them to build it really quickly. So I shoot for the Collosus which lasts a loooong time (flight). JS Bach’s Cathedral and Michaelangelo’s Chapel are musts for me, because I try to keep luxury rates at 10% or even 0 if I can manage it, and these wonders help that a lot. Add to this the science wonders like Newton and Copernicus. This keeps me busy. Let them have the other wonders. Even the Great Library isn’t so great in this; by the time anyone builds it I’m one or two steps away from Education which renders it obsolete anyway. It is good for culture, though, no question.

General strategies:

– Wealth is useless. Better to build a unit and disband it in a city than to earn money to hurry production.

– Planting and chopping forests is great for free shields towards anything but wonders, though in later patches they reduced your ability to do this some. On early versions you could just stack a bunch of workers and plant and chop a few forests each turn. Still, ten shields never hurts. Give your workers something to do: you’re paying for them.

– Pay attention to corruption. After a certain point, you’ll not be able to eliminate it at all. These furthest cities will only ever produce one shield and one gold. Don’t bother with courthouses or police stations, nothing but a small wonder will help these. Just build them some temples and cathedrals and forget it. Marketplaces help if you have access to a lot of luxury resources, too, but otherwise don’t bother. Corruption depends on three things. 1) Distance “as the crow flies” to Palace/Forbidden Palace, 2) the total number of cities in your empire, and 3) the number of cities closer to the P/FP than this city.

– If you plan to utilize culture or science at all on your own, I rush to learn literature first and rely on goody huts for filling in some of the other stuff in the meantime. Then I head for construction, then the republic.

– DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR MAP. If you can possibly help it, do everything you can to get the AI’s map without giving up your own, and get their world map, not their territory map. Giving the AI your map is pretty much begging them to develop in territory you probably plan to grow into yourself. Hold them off as long as you can.

– Buy tech. The AI trades with other AI civs a lot, so they tend to be pretty balanced technology-wise and will shut you out if you don’t do the same. Luxury resources and gold will help you. I’d advise against giving them techs if you can help it, they’ll only build the wonders you thought you’d have first because of the lead in technology. That lead disappears pretty quickly when you give tech up.

– Avoid early irrigation of grasslands (you can irrigate plains, though). It is a waste of a worker’s turn since, under despotism, irrigation won’t grant you any additional food anyway.

– Finally: micromanage. Automating anything sucks. Workers will not properly utilize the land, and what you want any city to build can change from turn to turn depending on the situation. If you can’t grow past 6 yet, build a settler or worker when the city is at or near 6. Same thing when you hit the 12 ceiling.

I’ve had the best luck with industrious civs. I usually go industrious/religious or industrious/commercial, but America for some reason does really well for me, too. Might be that the early goody huts really make a difference for expansionist civs. Either way, I don’t preserve random seed and cheat my way to good goody huts anyway. If the AI is going to cheat, so will I. :smiley:

6

As has been mentioned, a lot of your strategy is going to depend on what nation you’re playing. I always play as someone with the scientific ability: those freed techs can be game breakers in the modern and industrial periods. On a big map, expansionist can be very powerful early in the game: spread out with your scouts as quickly as possible, and grab as many villages as you can: because of your special ability, you’ll never generate barbarians, and you have a much better chances of getting a settler or a tech advance than normal. With a little luck, you can get almost all the first age research just by exploring villages. On a smaller map, industrialist is usually pretty good: your workers will complete their jobs much faster.

If the city is size three or better, always build a settler. If it’s size two, build another worker. If it’s size one, build a granary so it’s expand faster and allow you to build more settlers.

I always set research to 100% and make a bee-line for Literature. The Great Library is the best wonder in the early game. It should net you at least five free researches before it becomes obsolete in the medieval age, and will guarantee that you’ll be in the top three, technologically speaking. While you’ve got the Library, always go for the most difficult research. The other nations will waste time on the easy stuff, which will default to you as soon as they share it with anyone else.

Depends on the location. If they’re deep inside my own borders, I pretty much ignore them. Doesn’t matter what you build. If they border enemy territory, build all the culture producing structures as fast as you can. Buy them outright, if you’ve got the money. This will help prevent them from converting to an enemy, and put cultural pressure on neighboring cities, increasing the chance that they’ll convert, or at least making it easier to hold once you’ve conquered them. If the city is far from my capital or my Forbidden Palace, build a courthouse as quickly as possible. This will dramatically cut down on build times for other structures.

I don’t think helicopters have ever been much use in any of the Civ games.

The most important advice I can give someone in Civ III is, don’t be afraid to sell your technology. Research is the most valuable commodity in the game. Especially by the mid-to-late Industrial Age, when you should be able to routinely get offers of 60-100 gold a turn for cutting edge tech. Use the money from the sales to finance more tech research. By the end of that age, you should be able to max out your tech slider and still be pulling in two to three hundred gold a turn. Your profits should only increase as you get closer to the end of the tech tree, and you’ll always be one step ahead of the competition, who has beggared itself by buying your tech and can’t afford to keep up its own research efforts.

7

Wow, great sujestions!

But I’m still curious about helicopters.

That was an interesting point about automating things. I’ve been using the gov. to manage citizen’s moods, is that a good idea? I find it just takes way too much to deal with all those cities.

8

Early in the game, the most important thing to do is get lots of 2 movement military units. Explorers are OK, but you really need a military unit so you can pop huts without worrying. And even if you get barbarians it is still a bonus, since your units get experience for killing them. Barbarian camps are a great source of gold, I always play on max barbarians, crank my science up to 100% and get all my money from barbarians and trading tech.

2 move units are much more efficient militarily, since they have a chance to retreat. A horseman and a swordsman cost the same, but the horseman is a much better deal, they are much more survivable, and you are much more likely to get them to elite, which you need to get your first leader. A swarm of horsemen roaming the empty lands popping huts, looting camps, and fighting barbs for experience is what you want. Note that you have to win against another player with an elite to get your leader, so an early war is a good idea once you have several elite horsemen. If you have early unique units with 2 movement use them instead of horsemen for exploration. Jaguar Warriors give the Aztecs a huge early game boost in hut popping.

It is very very important to manage tech trading early on. If you have your horseman swarm out, you should be able to contact all the other players early on, but they won’t know much about each other. Use this to your advantage. Once they know about each other they will ruthlessly trade techs with each other to keep you behind, but you have a golden window to get ahead when you know them and they don’t know each other and can’t trade amongst themselves. NEVER trade away a tech when a player contacts you on his turn…he will trade it to all the other civs before your turn starts. Always wait until your turn when you can trade it to every civilization, and get the most for it from everyone. And give the tech away to broke or weak civilizations, it never hurts to make them happy although it probably won’t do you much good it certainly can’t hurt, since they will get the tech from another civ soon anyway.

Pay close attention to treaties and protection pacts. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting attacked by some wimpy civ, and the minute you step onto his territory to retaliate everyone declares war on you. Be very careful signing those pacts, you will invariably be drawn into war when your ally does something stupid.

Temples are the most important building. You’ve got to have temples in every city or else they are going to riot. A temple is the first thing to build in a captured city. And without temples you’ll find your cities flipping and deserting to high-culture enemies. Embarrassing.

Once you get to to the rifleman era, artillery becomes critical. There’s no way you can crack cities stuffed with drafted riflemen with your cavalry unless you pound them to oblivion with artillery first, and even then expect to lose a lot of units. Once you get tanks you can go back to smashing cities directly, but until then defense is much stronger.

Oh, and roads everywhere. Every square should have a road. Roads before mines or irrigation, so you can easily move more workers in and gang-build. Oh, and once you start polluting you’ll want to set your workers to autocleanup, otherwise it becomes a micromanaging nightmare. If you lose a few to poaching, so be it.

9

And for those wondering sujestion is the Canadian spelling of suggestion, eh.

I feel like such a fool right now, I waste so much time with corrupt cities. And I had never thought to sell technology that way.

Okay, on a different tack, do any of you make use of your spies?

10

Seems it’s not even possible in Conquests to trade maps prior to the Industrial Era.

Automating workers is much more useful in Conquests with the expanded menu enabled. Units can be told where to automate (only within the current city radius or not) and what to do (build roads until they reach a certain point, connect all resources within your territory, build a road to a resource outside of your territory then build a colony, irrigate to the nearest city, clear forests, clear pollution, clear wetlands, or do everything except terrain changes).

11

Miller, I’m amazed you can get the great library built up and getting techs from it that fast without killing yourself with education. It seems like far too many shields that are better put to more settlers/workers generating more trade/science. I’m surprised about trading away techs, too. Any time I’ve tried to use my tech advantage for bartering the AI usually builds wonders I’d rather have from production bonuses.

Lemur, so long as you don’t attack first, there’s a way to do good with alliances. If you see that one civ has a mutual protection pact with civ B, form one with civ B as well. When war is declared, civ B will attack whoever attacks first, not who declares war. I usually will throw a worker to the dogs, the AI loves to steal workers. Putting one close to their territory pretty much guarantees they’ll attack right away.

12

Interesting. I don’t have Conquests, just II/PTW.

Yeah, those options are available in PTW, too. Apart from telling them to “Build road to” different areas, I’m still a sucker for micromanagement. :smiley:

13

Man, I haven’t even thought of this. I usually trade tech-for-tech, or tech-for-tech+gold, but just outright demanding lots of gold per turn really would screw them. I’ll have to try this on my next campaign.

14

I forgot to mention a little micromanaging tip I’ve been using since I figured it out back in the early days of Civ3. When you have one turn left to discover a tech, often you can set your science rate back a few tens of percentage points. So while in one turn you’ll gain 0 gold, you often don’t need all the science output to get there. This turn, for example, I’m gaining 284 gold and still getting banking in 1365 (this game isn’t going too well). Next turn I’ll set the rate back up to about 70% and possibly lose some gold each turn. However, I’ll make it back ten or twentyfold when it gets back down to one turn to discover, since my rate these days is less than ten turns per discovery. I’ve gotten up to 1K+ gold in one of these “free money” turns, and they can be invaluable for when you need to buy a few colosseums or universities a turn or two early.

15

If I get the Great Library, I avoid researching anything that leads to Education. Let the other civs spend their time on that branch, I’ll pick it up as soon as they start sharing it. Plus, you always get Education right before it makes your Library obsolete. Meanwhile, I’ve usually researched all the way to Chemistry, which is usually at least one tech further than anyone else has gotten.

As for selling techs, I usually hold off on putting any techs on the market unless I’ve got the associated wonder almost finished. Early in the game, I’ll usually have a city start work on a palace ten or so turns before the current research is completed, then swap to the wonder as soon as I can build it. Gives me a big head start on the cheaper wonders, but doesn’t work so well once the wonders start getting significantly more expensive than a new palace. Still, I sometimes find it worthwhile to sacrifice a wonder to another Civ, and use the money I get to jump a head a couple techs. I might sell, say, Astronomy, knowing that someone will beat me to Copernicus’s Observatory, because I know that down the line, the money will help ensure that I’ll be building Darwin’s Voyage while the rest of 'em are still trying to scrape together enough money to buy Electricty from me.

16

My advice: keep out of war.

I play for cultural victories, mostly, so I build temples and libraries right away. I build up enough of a military that no one’s likely to attack me, but I don’t go overboard with it. It’s useful to build your temples right away, because they double in cultural value every 1000 years. Of course, so do the wonders.

No it’s not, and stop that.

17

Do you select AI based on their tendency to attack, or do you set the aggression level low, or do you do something else? Unless I pick and choose every little thing (as I did with my current game), I find that out of 8 or more civs, at least one will just up and attack, which can be rather annoying.

18

I prefer to keep civs random, though sometimes in first expansion, I ask it to place related cultures together.

No, what I do is avoid all mutual protection pacts, while at the same time making myself indispensible to the others. I set up embassies with everyone I meet, I offer trade deals on favourable terms, and later in the game – when everyone has a map anyway – I offer my map for free, every time I communicate with someone. Even though they don’t need it by that point, it puts them on nicer terms with you.

One good thing to do, if caught between a couple of warring countries, is to make sure you have a right of passage with both of them. They wouldn’t think of going to war with you if they have to cross their territory. Also try to make sure that your teritory intercepts all land trade routes, so they’ll need that right of passage, at least early in the game when water routes are difficult and harbours are few.

My strategy is to be huge – I create lots of settlers. A small garrison in dozens of towns registers the same on their radar as a huge garrison in a few towns.

In the unlikely event someone does attack me, I sign whatever wartime deals I can with everyone else, if I can help it. The offending culture is usually wiped off the map :wink:

19

Thought they might be and I never turned them on but I wasn’t sure.

20

At the beginning I set my science/cash rate to 20% – once I get two or three cities I set it back to 10%. This results in learning new techs only every 40 turns, but that’s OK – you are earning so much cash you can buy them from the others.

Along with this strategy, I extensively search for goody huts – starting the game building 4 or 5 warriors just to do this. I save before busting each hut, and reload if I don’t get a tech or a settler (once I got an army from a hut, really weird…). I have a fast system so it only takes a few moments to reload early in the game. Be sure to change the options so you can get different results.

I set my learning path straight to Monarchy, and by the time I’m learning it, I can usually set my science rate to 90% or 100% – and learn it in a few turns. The advantages in buying things vs dealing with unrest are too valuable, and corruption goes down immediately. I use Monarchy right through to Democracy. I only use Communism if I’m in a protracted war later on.

I like Religious civs, because you can build Temples and Cathedrals so fast. Japan is my favorite, love that Samurai! I tend to win by Space Race – so lately I turn off Space Race as a victory option, and often now I win by Culture. I concentrate on turning over other civs cities with culture.

Be very careful siting cities. Think about your cultural footprint – and maximize resources. Rivers and luxuries are the keys to success – if you have both of those you are sure to win. If you have neither, quit and start over.

BTW, helicopters are only good for reconnaissance.