Your strategies for Civ III - the first few turns

The Game Room
1

So it seems to me that the very beginning of a Civilization III game is vital to your success. If you can get ahead of all your competitors, it’s not too hard to stay ahead of them. Plus, of course, you then have the best military around. And yet, lately, it seems like every game, by the time I run into other civilizations, I’m already light-years behind!

There are so many conflicting priorities early on. You have to build cities as fast as you can, so that you’re grabbing territory - and resources - like crazy. But your cities also need to grow, so that they’re producing more, faster. You also need to research as much as you can. You need lots of workers to help your cities out and grab aforementioned resources for you. How do you balance all these?

When I start a game, I typically build my first city wherever I start - I never move the settler more than one square to get a better spot. If you don’t have a city, you’re not really playing, and you’re just getting behind. From then on, I make settlers as fast as I can, without disbanding the city. Maybe one military unit for exploration. Once I get a few cities going, I’ll start including an occasional improvement or worker. But, as I said, I still end up behind.

So I turn to you, O Teeming Millions. Give me advice. I must rule. I must conquer. I must dominate!!! Help meeeee!!!

2

Here’s what I do. Build a city very close to where the first settler is, then I get (thru building or given) worker, warrior, warrior, settler. I use the second warrior to scope out a good spot, fortify him in that spot, then send the settler out to him. The first city is busy making military types, then settlers for the first hundred years or so. I repeat the scoping out, then settling process.

I always make a worker first for every city I build. That way I have at least one worker per city. What I build next in the other cities depends on what I want to do in the game.

3

This is my srategy. Build you first city wherever you think is suitable. Set your research to literature ASAP, so you can get libraries. Then build two warriors (or scouts if you’re an expansionist civ) and scout out the area. The after you get those guys going, start pumping out settlers. The main thing to do is advance your territory as fast as possible. Build little outposts around what you want the edge of your border to be… you can always back build later. They don’t even have to be near your capital. Make them like 10 or 15 squares away from the capital. devote one settle to connecting all your cities right away, and pick up any luxeries along the route that you will need. That way you can keep your people in your remote villages happy. Then, once you get your perimeter set up with your cities, you should about hae literature. The start making libraries to get more culture to expand your borders. That way the comps won’t venture through your territory. By this time you should be slightly behind in the tech curve, but once you start back-building towards your capital you should be able to have about 15 cities (no small civ), and you will catch up rapidly, and be way ahead by the mid middle ages. Then once you get to the modern age, you can proceed with the modern tanks to attack their musketmen. tried and true.

If you need me to clarify anything, just ask. I’m not sure how much sense this makes (nearly 1 AM), so ask if I’m incoherany)

4

In the early game, check the slider that controls research every turn, as you can usually adjust it lower without increasing the amount of time to get the next advance.

Expand, expand, expand. I build a Warrior and then a Settler immediately after. Try to have a Settler almost ready every time a cities population hits 3 at the beginning of the game. Don’t worry about defending your new cities, as the AI hardly ever attacks them in the early game, even if they are undefended. Instead build temples, rush build them as soon as your population hits 2 and you have 20 shields or less to go on completing them (this is while you are still a Despotism). When you encounter another civilization, send settlers to his borders to plop cities down next to them, to prevent them from expanding towards you. This may leave large gaps inside your empire, and the AI will build cities there, but since they will be surrounded on at least two sides by cities with temples, they will be assimilated eventually.

If you see barbarians heading towards one of your undefended cities, contact whatever civs you know and see what you can buy from them with whatever is in your treasury.

Never trade tech for tech in the early game, as most ancient techs can be had cheaply. You should have plenty of money by monitoring your science spending frequently. Also, never let the enemy have your world map until you have established all your border cities, because the computer will frequently come in and build cities where you were planning to.

If a civilization threatens you early on it’s usually best to buy them off - they only do this when they know they can take some of your cities, and giving them a tech and some money is usually cheaper than losing territory. You can get them back later.

Recently I have been experimenting with waging early war, as opposed to the strategy I outlined above. I found that by population-rushing archers early on it’s not hard to destroy the first civilization you encounter and snatch a city or two from the second, but after doing this I was behind my neighbors in technology, so I’m not sure how well this will work out in the long-run.

5

Here’s Flyp’s method, but I’m not much on waging wars so this is a peaceful, cultural route (and I really dig the new ways to win)-

Look at the terrain your guys start out in. If more than three squares are jungle, tundra or desert, then there’s a really quick three-key command that will greatly increase your enjoyment of the game. Ctrl-Shft-Q. Otherwise, I’d go with your original point of building within the first 2 turns-too often, searching for a better site will put you too far behind.

So, first city built, you’ll probably want to build a Warrior to do some scouting (unless, of course, you’re playing an expansionist civ, in which case your godsend scout will do fine). After he’s built, I’d go with Spearmen (or where the Greeks REALLY shine, Hoplites) for defense. Normally I build two defenders and fortify them. This usually works well enough to keep attackers out of the city in the early game. Once pop 3 rolls around (or a few turns before, if your production’s good enough to get 2 defenders out before pop 3), go to Settler. After first Settler, go to Temple, so that your culture will expand faster. I used to build Barracks as the first improvement each and every time, but with the new culture mechanic, Temples are the first to go up. Usually you’re back to pop 3 by the time the Temple’s finished, so I go with another Settler. After that one’s done, I usually go for a Wonder and get those culture points up, or if I’m close to another civ, Barracks and then a Wonder. Pyramids is usually first. I generally follow these same steps with each new city.

Some points:

  1. I have learned that Ceremonial Burial and Construction are the two techs early civs can benefit from the most. Temples are necessary for keeping your folks happy, and expanding culture borders in your early cities. And there’s nothing more annoying than staring at about 5 yellow 6s in your city title bars as you wait for the ability to build Aqueducts.

  2. One of the best times for expansion is while you’re waiting for Construction to be discovered. You should probably have at least 2 or 3 cities stuck at 6 while you’re waiting, so build Settlers and/or Workers. If the city’s bursting at the seams with another pop level in the wings, it equates to a free Worker or a Settler that only costs one pop level, since the city’ll just grow again the next turn.

  3. Jungles suck. No two ways about it. However, when cleared, they will many times produce an upgraded Grassland (one with a shield in it). If you’re stuck with a Huge Jungle tract near you, try to ring it with cities (build them so that they have four or five squares of farmable land). Then, when your Workers have upgraded your other cities, set them to clearing out the Jungle squares; I usually fine that the lull before Steam Power is when my Workers have the best opportunity to do this. This land usually provides the best opportunity for new cities to grow in the mid to late game after the borders are firmly established.

I haven’t been to civfanatics yet, but maybe we could keep this thread afloat for awhile for hints, strategies and updates for us Dopers who play.

6

Decide before the game begins what kind of victory you’re going to try for, and play with that in mind.

These strategies are some that work for me; I do not intend to claim that these are the best way to play for anyone else.

Cultural Victory:
For a cultural victory, the best civ is the Babylonians; their religious and scientific advantages give you libraries, universities, research labs, temples and catherals at a reduced cost.

Avoid war at all costs until you have a big advantage in military tech. Build warrior to explore. Build a temple first in every other city; hurry production when you have a pop of 2 and it costs only one. Build a settler second in every city. Build your second and third cities as close to your neighbors as possible, to limit their expansion. If you have a free section of continent, build one city at the far end. Fill in from the borders, and out from the capital. Build all improvements that produce culture in all of your cities as soon as you get them, hurry production when it costs only 1 pop. You’ll be behind in military strength until well into AD, but by that time your production will be so great that you can build a big army fast.

Getting a culture of 100,000 plus isn’t difficult, it’s the twice your nearest competitor part that causes problems. Pick out the civ with more than half your culture, make nice with all the others, and go to war with your superior weapons. Amass an army and focus on cities near the borders. Take out one or two cities that are a little inside the edges and raze them, then conquer the edge city and make it yours set up a defense, cuz they’ll come after you. This avoids the “conquer it one turn, have it defect the next.” Buy a temple first, then a cathedral, library, university, and colleseum last, but build these before other things. Your borders will expand twice in about 15 turns. Expand inward and voila, a cultural victory.
For a milatary strategy early in the game, play as the Romans; you can get those legionaries pretty quickly, and that extra point on defense make them a dominant force for a long time. For a “rush” game, it can be fun to build nothing but military units in your capital. Build a temple, barracks, then military only in each subsequent city.

Start by building a barracks, then nuthin but archers as you research toward iron working. Once you get iron working, connect to a source and start cranking out legionaries. Send them out in groups of four to smite (I love that word) your foes. Build no new cities on your own, let those despicable (civ x)'s do it for you. By the time the tech gets beyond legionaries, you’ve wiped out an opponent or two weakened others, and grabbed 8-10 cities, and you’ll have plenty of room to start making settlers with those cities that have been making legionaries for you, and thus growing rapidly.

If you want to build up a little before going blitzkrieg, the Japanese Samurai and Chinese riders kick some major league ass in the middle ages, and the Samurai has lesser requirements than other civ’s horse units.

7

Also, use those barbarian villages early in the game as training camp, don’t destroy them. Find the village and park a defensive unit two squares away. Bring each offensive unit you make around and park it with your defensive unit. When the village spawns a barbarian, attack. You can build up to Elite pretty quickly. Attacking with elite warriors is a big advantage.

8

Thanks, guys. It’s interesting to see how everyone has their own pet strategies. Keep them coming.

9

There’s probably a number of methods that work. I have one that works every time at Chieftan difficulty. Keep restarting your game until your 8 tiles surrounding your capital city can be irrigated. Alternately build worriors and workers until you have 3 of each. Send warriors exploring. This shows you where some resources are, makes you technologically advanced and makes money. You could be lucky enough to have a settler who wants to join you. Build a settler and build your second city. I find researching masonry first so you can build the Pyramids extremely useful. I hope this helps. One further piece of advice. DONT build the Temple of Artemis. It needs a huge number of shields to build and becomes obselete relatively quickly meaning you have to build temples. Itd better to build them individually.

Sent from my SM-G360G using Tapatalk

10

My strategy was to reinstall Civ2.

11

A few years back I attempted to install some of my favorite games of yore (Railroad Tycoon 2 and Sim City 4 (Rush Hour?) that I hadn’t played in years on a newer multi-core Win7 machine, and both were crash-city. Searching I found instructions on how to get them to work on Win7 (let alone Win10), but they were both a) rather annoying and fiddly instructions and b) they really didn’t work. Yeah, I could get City Skylines (I think that one was the suggested replacement game when EA decided to shoot itself in the foot with Sim City 2013 (aka Sim City V)), but haven’t really felt the need.

So, I gave up the effort for those games, and will also not attempt to install Civ III (which I did pretty well with back in the day).

12

try getting them from GOG.com they have them fixed for modern machines for 9.99 or less

didn’t civ 3 have a feature that the speed of your civs growth was based on how your pc was ?

I know there was something tied to your pc speed …

but yeah when 1ts the 1700s and your in the renaissance and the other civs are building ironclads somethings up

13

I like this strategy.

14

As it happens, I’ve just been playing Civ3 myself (vanilla, not expansion). Some tips I’ve found:

As long as you’re producing at least one beaker a turn, it’ll never take longer than 40 turns to get a tech. In the early game, it’s almost impossible to beat that, so try to stay at exactly one beaker a turn for the first two or three techs, to save money (which you can later use to buy techs from other civilizations). Set your research slider to either 20% or 10%, and if you have a city that needs a specialist for morale reasons, make the specialist a scientist and set research to 0%.

If you’re an expansionist civ, start by researching the techs which are least useful to you. When barbarian huts give you a tech, it’s never the one you’re currently researching, unless that’s literally the last tech of the ancient age. With 2-3 scouts out looking for goodie huts, and the expansionist improvement in hut outcomes, you’ll usually end up getting your valuable techs quicker by hutting than by research. Likewise, if you’ve contacted any other civs, try to get as many techs from them as you can right before popping a hut, so you don’t get one that you could just trade for.

I may be a bit unusual in this, but I put my military on dead last priority: If a city has a choice between making something peaceful and something military, I always go for the peaceful improvement. I mostly get through early wars by using my tech/economy advantage to bribe every other nation on the map to fight my enemy for me.

That said, however, temples are not a big early priority, unless you’re Religious and can get them for cheap. Under Despotism or Monarchy, you can use up to two Warriors per city to improve morale, and they’re a lot cheaper than temples. By the time you’ve got The Republic and can’t use military police any more, you’ve probably got a lot of temples built anyway, multiple luxuries, and (if needed) the cash to spare on a little entertainment spending.

Contrary to what Youngmade said, don’t look for irrigatable squares for your first cities. Under Despotism, if a tile would produce three or more of something, it’ll produce one less. So a grassland is worth two food, and an irrigated grassland is still only two. It’s only worth it to irrigate if you’ve got a cow, wheat, or floodplain (so you’re losing that one anyway), or if it’s a plains. Mostly, the best tiles you can get in Despotism will be grass-with-rock, which you can mine for 2-2. So try to find locations with bonuses or grass with rock.

Mind your early trades. If someone can’t give you fair value for a tech, then don’t sell it. They’ll have more later; you can sell it then. Also, world maps are a lot more valuable in the early game than they are later, when they get tossed in for free on top of nearly every trade: Don’t sell your world map for the first time until you can get something really good for it (but then sell it to everyone for whatever you can get, because they’ll all trade it between themselves anyway).

If you want an early wonder, it’s absolutely essential to pre-build it: As soon as you have a city with good shield output, start building a palace in it, or whatever wonder’s available, even if it’s not one you’re interested in. By the time it finishes, you’ll have had a chance to switch it to what you really want. Don’t bother with the Great Wall or the Oracle at all; get the Colossus if and only if you think you’re likely to be able to get Copernicus and Newton in that same city; and get the Great Library only if you’re basing your whole early strategy around it. The Pyramids, Lighthouse, and Hanging Gardens are usually good.

And the speed of your computer makes absolutely no difference. If you’re still using medieval tech when everyone else is industrial, that’s your fault, not your computer’s.

15

My strategy is to target the zombies first, and make sure they’re good and dead.

16

A couple months back I got Alpha Centauri from GoG. I mean, I have the disks on my shelf, but the last time I tried to install it on a modern machine it was a pain in the butt. So $5 for a clean version that works on new machines and doesn’t require a disk in the drive.

I mostly just wanted to hear the flavor text again. “It is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people…”