This is my first game with the Iroquois. I thought I had a good start when it all went downhill. This is my game and i'm looking to regain the histograph lead and improve my science rate. So please any help would be appreciated. And one more thing. This is my first time without an industrious civ. Any tups to improve would also be welcome.

Your cities look good, nice infrastructure. Research queued to Military Tradition, but I would've probably grabbed Chivalry first - you've got iron, but you might not have saltpeter once Gunpowder is discovered. You can always change. Regaining the histograph lead means WAR! There is no other way to lead on points without land. You can sit where you are and win by spacerace or diplomacy, whilst prepared for defensive wars, or strike out against the Americans or Japanese. Japan has the samuari (4-4-2) which is currently viable while the Americans have only the basic units atm (long time b4 the F-15 appears and it's not effective). But, I don't believe Japan has an iron source.

The Americans have more to offer: another iron resource at your doorstep and furs. And, after distinguishing of them, you might have a GL to rush the FP in Washington. You're a builder at heart, like me. War is fun, but there is a preference for civility, diplomacy. With the American cities under control, you'd be set for winning the game in a number of ways. Although, it's too late for a culture win.

After a quick look at your game, I can tell you this...

First of ALL! You need more cities, lots more... that mean war... Think of it this way. If you want to be a builder, you need cities to build your stuff in... so the more cities = the more building. Since there's no more space you'll have to go to war. To do that you'll have to stop building stuff and start on a real army. I won't go into details here but the Americans are defenetly your first target. But I think they're going to be tuff since you obviously didn't do any early preventing strike... so you'll need a really good army before you declare war. With the Iroquois one would have expected early wars with the mounted wariors, they're real good, but now is to late. Anyway...

Second, you'll need to adjust your science and luxury rate. I think you don't know that luxury is usefull... If you put 10% on luxury you'll be able to put back to work some entertainers and you'll gain more work out of it than what you spend... It will permit you to gain 1 turn early the actual tech you research without losing money. BTW I don't know why you keep that much money in bank. It sure can be usefull, but I think it's better to spend it on science. If you do, you'll probably catch up technologicaly with other civs. And if you don't know it yet... check your science and luxury rate every turn or so... It can change a lot of things if you adjust it to the most effecient settings for each turn. Believe me...

Now there is the question of space between cities. You can do whatever you want, but your current way of doing things is really far from being effecient. More space between cities basicly means more corruption. I know that you placed your cities so that they wouldn't take the space of one another, but it's only usefull at the end of the game. I suggest a more dense aproach... leave only two squares between each city, that way they'll have enough space for level 8 for each city and since cities are rarely growing at the same speed, they'll adjust so that bigger cities can grow more and smaller cities will take only the space they need. When I started doing that it made a big difference on my performance. It will pump your score up...

Third, you need more workers... and I mean LOTS MORE WORKERS!!!

And finally forth, change your government before the war... with a religious civ it won't make a big difference for your production, but it will releave you of war worryness. Monarchy is they way of the winners!

And I forgot... Get chivalry first, otherwise you'll lose the war...

A little reply on how things are going would be nice. ;)

IMHO what you did wrong:
you spaced your cities far too far from each other; read the rcp articles and try spacing at e.g. 4 and 7 next time
you built the wrong improvements;e.g. your capital never ever needs a courthouse, it has lowest corruption by default; Tonawanda is low growth, no fresh water - it does not need a market but should have built a worker to help connecting to Japan
you need more workers
your workers did/do the wrong thing;e.g don't change mine to irrigation in Salamanca, but chop forest and irrigate; don't change irrigation to mine at Alleghenny, mine the bonus grass land; you should have done this in the beginning; etc.
you lack a harbor; now when you go to war, your trade routes will break, you loose your reputation and your luxuries
you failed to trade for luxuries; e.g. China is willing to give you gems, 11g, wm for ivory, tm; this will improve happiness and thus means more money and production
you are already researching gunpowder and are just building libraries; far too late
you have no Forbidden Palace; change Cattaraugus immediately; it is more centrally located than Salamanca and you can move your Palace later with a Great leader to conquered capital (which then will never flip back and has good production)
micromanage your cities better; after you traded for luxuries
you should have at least 2 cities with barracks building vet mounted warriors; then start a war, get a Great Leader, and hurry Leonardo's for cheap upgrades
and don't change government before you go to war; republic is fine for quite a lot of fighting

You automated you workers. This is a stupid deadly sin. At least <shift> automate them, that is just a deadly sin. ;)

After taking in tao's tips, I am confused about the city placement. I also read the Ring city placement to no prevail. So I am wondering whats the best tile spacing to place a city. Some people say 2 tiles while others say more. So please, just a general statement that sums this up quickly. Thanls in advance. Also i am a builder if that has anything to do with it.

The way you have placed your cities results in zero overlap when they are all working at pop 20, and some tiles are never worked. Since you only get to pop 20 after you have sanitation and hospitals, late in the game, this is a very inefficient use of the tiles. Before that you will be working less than 50% of the tiles avaiable to you. It also means that settlers take a long time to get to their destinations early in the game, and your workers have to work hard just to build connecting roads. You also need to build a lot of cultural buildings to connect up your cultural borders.

I'm not a builder, I play for fast military finishes (one day I'll achieve it :hmm: ), so my comments may not be relevant, but I don't think it matters which you are in the early game - you need fast early development, and that means cities with no more than two or three clear tiles between them - sometimes just one along the horizontal or vertical directions. You can always thin them out later when you do reach sanitation.

You have to learn about corruption. RCP is useful, but Civ was played for years before that was discovered. More important is getting a second core going, and that usually means going to war with a neighbour, taking over his core and using a leader to build a new Palace or Forbidden Palace in his capital.

You said it all AlanH... even for a builder it is important to not crowl under corruption. So I would recommend a much more tight approach.

Thank you for the quick replies, but doesnt putting them two tiles away result in lots of overlaped tiles. And arnt alot of overlaped tiles just unusable tiles?

In a layout with two clear tiles between cities in a square pattern you get 9 tiles per city. None of your cities are above pop 6 in the save you posted, so they could all be two tiles apart and still not be fighting for tiles. You have eight cities in 750 AD. A typical GOTM competition player will have built at least ten and maybe 15 or 20 by 1000 BC, 100 turns earlier. More cities means more gold, more shields, more culture if you want, more unit support, more of everything.

Overlapped tiles are only an issue when you get above pop 12. By then you are well into the Industrial Age. If you did a good job before then the game is in your pocket. If you didn't it'll be no fun anyway. During the first critcal 100 - 150 turns overlap is an opportunity not a problem, as cities can be micromanaged to share high yield tiles for optimum growth and efficient production.

All I can suggest is you have a look at some QSC saves. Quick Start Challenge is a mini-game within GOTM to compare the progress during the first 80 turns. The top players in GOTM are not stoopid. A lot of them play PtW and you won't be able to load up one of their games, but there are plenty of good Civ3 games in there. The QSC results and downloads are posted here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/results/qsc_results.php).

Here are links for some of the saves you can look at, and compare their progress at 1000 BC with what you usually achieve. I haven't checked them out, but I'd be surprised if any are using a low density city build style.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/qsc35/tao_QSC35_MAC129_01.SAV

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/qsc35/AlanH_QSC35_MAC129_01.SAV

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/qsc32/pnp_dredd_CIV129.SAV

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/qsc32/CdB_CIV129.SAV

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/qsc30/Capt_Buttkick_CIV129.SAV

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/qsc28/Adel_CIV129.SAV

Ok i started a new game and here it is. I think i am doing pretty good and any suggestions would be appreciated. And thank you guys for the fast and helpful replies. I guess i should update this as i couldnt help myself and played. So i think youll all agree a military conquests is best suited for this game?

Hi

That's certainly looking a stronger position. I'd still argue with your city placement, of course, and some of your city improvements look suspect to me.

For example, you have Sun Tzu and you are building Leonardo's, but you say you are a builder. These are military wonders.

You have three cities at distance 4.5 from Salamanca. These are at corruption rank 1, so they'll never need courthouses. Using RCP you needed to build more cities at 4.0 or 4.5, as every other city is now at corruption rank 4 or more, having 4 cities closer to the palace.

You have a single galley, and it's asleep, yet there are two civs ou there that you haven't met yet. They represent trading opportunities. You should be sending out suicide galleys to reach those civs.

I never, ever build defenders. Defence is best achieved using attacking units, as they are far more flexible. A pike has an attack strength of 1 - no better than a warrior. All he can do is stand there and hope. If the AI gets to attack your cities you have already failed.

Cathedrals are only of value if you are planning a cultural victory, or when you have cities above pop 12, much later in the game. Meanwhile they are costing you 2gpt that could be spent elsewhere. Even temples are of questionable value unless you have severe happiness issues. Speaking of which, you need more luxuries to make your markets work. Since there appear to be none for sale, you need to get out there and acquire them by force. Salamanca is your unhappy city, requiring yuo to set your lux slider to 10%. You need more happy pills in Salamanca to allow it to grow.

You also have several non-productive citizens - entertainers do nothing for you unless your cities are rioting. Either put them to work to grow the city and/or to create wealth and shields, or in a corrupt city that can't grow any more, make them into taxmen to boost your revenues.

I guess the main question I have is what victory target do you have? If military then you don't need all those temples and pikes. You need knights. If cultural then you have already missed the boat, as the AI has all the major cultural wonders. Diplo or space are the other options. I have little experience of these, so I'll leave others to comment, but fast victories in either case rely on fast research. If this is where you are going you should be researching at maximum speed.

Hope these pointers are helpful ... you did ask !

This question is still on city placement but is a little off from what was just discussed. I was wondering if there was a large Earth map that has accurate start(City) placement for all civs? Seems that I start the large earth map that came with the game, and I use China or any other nation and get placed in lower South America every time. help

I merged two threads that were both about mcsniper's games. The title was inherited from the second thread. I've changed it back to that of the original thread.

Your question is not about city placement, but about start point placement - subtly different, although I doubt if the AI ever moves its settler before building its first city.

You will need to look for a world map scenario created for version 1.29. The last official Mac release, version 1.21, didn't allow start locations to be built into scenarios. I don't know if there is such a map, but it seems likely, so the best place to look is in the Creation and Customisation forum - look in completed maps or completed scenarios.

Thanks Alan H, I will see if I can find a scenario that fits my description.
Thx for the help. I might see whats up every now and then.

Ok i started a new game and here it is. I think i am doing pretty good and any suggestions would be appreciated. And thank you guys for the fast and helpful replies. I guess i should update this as i couldnt help myself and played. So i think youll all agree a military conquests is best suited for this game?let me quote myself: You automated you workers. This is a stupid deadly sin.Your gameplay will not improve, until you stop doing this. Having learned steam, you are at the point where good railroading (building a backbone connecting the parts of your realm, pushing wonder building cities) makes a huge difference. You have many workers tied up uselessly clearing jungle.

As AlanH said, you seam to not have a clear idea why you build which city improvement.

You failed to establish embassies.

You should trade for the Roman luxuries to trigger wltkd and reduce shield loss to waste.

You need much more workers.

etc.

let me quote myself: Your gameplay will not improve, until you stop doing this.


I agree completely. Automating workers is grossly inefficient. Manually ordering workers allows you to exploit workable tiles ASAP.

I agree completely. Automating workers is grossly inefficient. Manually ordering workers allows you to exploit workable tiles ASAP.

This is so much true that I think another person telling it might help you understand how much it is important... do not automate your workers...

Thanks for the replies and here is my game once again. I think i did well with my workers. EXCEPT, that the americans took over about 1/2 of my workforce b/c of a RoP.

I agree never automate your workers and I always have at least two workers per city and sometimes even more depending upon terrain. I always at least let my city's overlap two tiles maybe more...again depending upon terrain. I think having a couple of defensive units is good, but I would rather post some offensive units in fortresses around my borders and then just take "pot-shots" or attack incoming AIs. A really cheap and somewhat horrible way to keep people away from you is to build a ton of warriors and place one at every square in front of ocean,sea, coast that way no one can land until marines come...which is a long time away. You can build up a huge army and a huge navy and then go kill off AIs left and right. Fun stuff!

Im back again. Here is one of my games i just started. After dominating the Zulu and Bablyon, I sent out suicide gallies. And so i discovered the other is land. They are all kicking my butt. So, i would again like some tips to improve. I am not so sure why my cities to the south of my capital are so unproductive. I am building/buillt courthouses in all of them and still a simple building takes 80 turns. So please any help would be appreciated. And to Alan, Lets get that training game started. As you can see, I need the help!

Your southern cities are unproductiv because they are corrupt. They are corrupt because they are further away from your capital and the Forbidden Palace than the (Optimum City Number for the map) nearer cities.

To create two low corruption cores around your Palace and Forbidden Palace you have three options:

- Hand-build the FP near the palace and then rebuild the Palace somewhere further away using a Great Leader

- Build the FP distant from the Palace using a Great Leader.

- You can hand-build the FP at a distance, but it will take a long time as you will be doing it in a corrupt city.

There is a fourth option to use the "Free Palace Jump". I don't like it myself, but feel free to try it if you want - it's your game.

You built your Forbidden Palace close to your Capital and then didn't move your Capital, so you still only have one effective core. Building a Courthouse in a totally corrupt city is a waste of time. In those cities where you get one extra spt from the courthouse it will still take 100 turns to repay the shields you used for it. In even more corrupt cities you don't improve production at all and so the courthouse is a dead loss, and costs you cash in upkeep.

You are still employing entertainers. They just eat food and return zilch to your exchequer or to your productivity. Fire the clowns and put them to work.

You still have far too few workers. You are about to learn steam. At that point you should be ready to rail up your productive cities to increase shields dramatically. You have less than one worker per city, and they are all working on improving tiles in your corrupt south. Wasted worker turns, unless you are going to move a palace down there.

In spite of the above, you're not doing too badly. I'm not sure why you feel the AI are kicking your butt. You are at tech parity except for some optional MA techs. You seem to be average in power. You have top billing in F8. Your histograph doesn't look too bad. You are at peace with everyone.

You have no ships an a rather small military, so I assume you don't plan to go to war in the near future. What are your objectives and therefore what do you want to do better? I asked this for your previous game, but didn't see a reply.

Oh my iriquois game i had beaten by a conquest win, unexpectedly i might add. This game is one that I hope to win by spaceship or diplomatic win. And i was wondering where you would think the best place for my palace would be. I have never tried to move my palace and i dont think ill be capable of taking on a civ and easily win.

I'd say you need to improve your economy to ensure yuo are dominant in teh tech race. For a diplo win you need to be confident of getting to Fission and building the UN, otherwise you have to capture the UN after it's built. For a space win you also need to be in the tech lead. So you need all your low corruption cities to have libraries and universities, and you need to prebuild the Theory of Evolution to complete soon after you research Scientific Method. This gets you two expensive techs for free - typically Atomic Theory and Electronics and should sling shot you to a lead the others can't beat.

Have you had your Golden Age yet? That can be a very critical 20 turns during which you can build lots of improvements and a big gold reserve. If you haven't, then think about how you can trigger it.

Here is my game once again. i just built the Un and i declined the vote!. Im not sure how to hold it again so please anyhelp!

The vote is offered every 11 turns, so count turns from when you were last offered it.

You, as UN owner, plus up to 2 players with more than 25% of world pop will be candidates, if I recall correctly. I'm guessing Rome will be your first competitor. I don't know if there will be a third candidate. You need three votes - yours plus two others. The other candidate(s) won't vote for you, of course. If there are three candidates you can't get an overall majority as Germany won't be a candidate and won't vote for you as it is today. If there are two candidates Joan and Cathy look as if they'll vote for you, so you may win unless they love Caesar as well. Bribes would help if you haven't already done that. Declaring war on Caesar just before the vote, and allying with the other civs against him may also help. You may need lots of cash to buy the alliances.

Looking at the general state of the nation, you've been busy :thumbsup: However, a couple of points:

- You've let a lot of core cities riot, and now there seem to be lots of clowns - far too many. Your net income was at -40 gpt in your save. I ran through your F1 screen and either put clowns back to work or turned them into taxmen, depending on corruption levels, and your income turns into +10 gpt.

- You are building a hospital in one core ity that's only at pop 7. Why? A hospital only helps when a city reaches pop 12.

- Your core cities are working far too many half-improved tiles. You have rails all over tiles that have no irrigation or mine. Rails only increase production by doubling the effect of a mine or irrigation. They do nothing for you on unimproved tiles except increase mobility, which only requires one link per town.

- If you want to increase your research rate you should be building SETI in a core city. If you don't want to increase research then you should have turned science off and stopped building research labs. There should be no half-way house. Either research as fast as you can, and build all the improvements and wonders you need to maximise it, or switch it off and amass gold to bribe other civs, to buy alliances, to rush other improvements or just to make your citizens happy and increase your score with the entertainment slider.

Hope this helps.

Well, I played this game before your response, and i held the elections. i received three votes just like you said, and i think one was even from rome! Thanks for the pointers. Now i think a training game would be nice, especially for monarch. So please, if you can find the spare time, host a training game. Thanks

I'm very surprised Rome wasn't an opponent in the vote! Who was?

We don't have a quorum for a training game yet, and I'm beginning to think we won't. We may have to try to start a cross-platform one for vanilla civ in the SG forum, or you could try joining a team in the next SGOTM. Succession games are a great learning experience. There are several Mac players involved in the SGOTMs, including Demiurge, tao, me, AdrianE, zwingli ....

I have downloaded a demo game, as AlanH suggested but it came in symbols and neither Stuffit nor Zip would make it usable. How do I convert it to a usable form for a mac, please?

I have downloaded a demo game, as AlanH suggested but it came in symbols and neither Stuffit nor Zip would make it usable. How do I convert it to a usable form for a mac, please?

Right click (control click) the link and save to desktop.