@ WarGameNewbie: Pleased to be of service, but I'm afraid I gave you a bum steer about legendary and succession games (since deleted). They're really more for experienced or advanced players. Sorry about that.
Besides Puppeteer's tutorials you can Google "let's play civ3 [complete or conquests]" and you'll get a bunch of selections from youtube. They're of varying quality but you might find them useful.
I started watching a couple of civ3 vids on youtube, but I didn't find either helpful. One mixed game audio with the presenter's voice, with game audio being so loud that I could barely understand what the presenter was saying.
I'd consider Civ3 more strategy or empire-building than war games, although there's certainly a war element to it. My understanding is that Civ3 would be considered lightweight by traditional war gamers, but I haven't really dealt into what I'd consider war games (see AGEOD as an example) myself.
That said, my advice would be (1) don't start on too high of a difficulty. Regardless of the differences between strategy and war games, if you're new to the genre, start on Chieftain, the easiest difficulty. I was somewhat new to the genre myself when first playing Civ3 back in 2003, and lost my first game on Chieftain. By the second game, I'd picked up enough (largely from comparing the later-game AI empires to my own) to win the game on Chieftain.
Posts 10 and 13 have some good advice to get you up and running, without getting too deep into details and strategy. Initially, the goal is to be good enough that you aren't steamrolled, and thus are having fun.
Unfortunately, as you've discovered, the in-game tutorial is not any good. I think the original manual (the printed one from 2001) did have a slightly-better tutorial in there, but that probably isn't available now. The in-game tutorial is really targeted at people buying the expansion pack (Conquests), not the base game, which the printed manual covered.
On a different forum I asked for recommendations for a beginner war game, and one of the suggestions was Civilization. So, I bought it. I don't mind that it's not a pure war game.
I definitely agree with what Quintillus (and the others who responded here so far) said: Civ3 is not really a "war game". It's a very complex strategic game, where you constantly have to "balance" conflicting interests. Food/population, commerce/research and "shields" for building things (military units as well as civilian infrastructure like marketplaces/libraries) are all important, but they conflict with each other. And similar on a bigger picture: leading wars for expansion and at the same time setting up good trade relations with other nations are both important for building a powerful empire and advancing faster than one could just on his own. But of course these two goals severely conflict with each other... And if you are going for a cultural victory or a peaceful victory by getting voted the president of the United Nations, it adds a third and fourth dimension to the game, which again conflict with the previous two...
A good Civ3 player needs to find a well-ballanced overall strategy (at least on the harder difficulty levels), concentrate on the strong sides of his nation, while not neglecting the other aspects too much, etc. Like with Chess, it takes years to learn the game... But it will also provide years (nay decades!) of enjoyment. (I'm playing Civ since 1992 and still learn new things every time I play.)
I think the printed manual is still part of the installation as pdf file somewhere? If not, you can probably download it from the Internet (perhaps even here on Civfanatics?!). When I switched from Civ2 to Civ3 in 2002, I read the manual cover to cover and liked it a lot. It explains all the different screens in the game and also the basic concepts that you need to grasp before you get easy at what needs to be done. So I think it really pays off spending an afternoon reading the manual, before you start the game.
Then, once you've mastered the basics and made your own first experiences, come back here and start reading the advanced strategy guides!
(But be warned: Civ is addictive and may change your life forever... )
I bought a used copy of Civ3, and it came with a hardcopy manual of about 200 pages.
To be honest, I'm not sufficiently motivated by the war game/empire-building genre to read (and try to retain) a couple hundred pages of material before getting started. In fact, I'm not sure I"m capable of retaining that much information all at once. One of the problems I have found with instruction books that start with "Read the entire instructions before playing the game" is that the reader often lacks the mental framework to store the information in. That is, as I read I sometimes wonder, "Do I really understand the passage that I just read?" If not, then if I continue to read, I lack the foundation and context necessary to understand subsequent text.
I already have two other genres of games that I play regularly, and I'm looking at dabbling with war games (or empire-building, I supposed) to see how much I like them.
Recommend playing as one of the expansionistic nations, like the Zulu, Iroquois, Mongolia or Hittites. Having a scout at the start of the game is very helpful because of the fast movement and friendly natives in the goody huts. By playing as an expansionistic tribe You can build scouts later in the game as well. If you prefer a non expansionistic nation, just like the other text said, go for a tribe with a strong unique military unit. Always read/click on Civilopedia before making major decisions, even about what research to go for next. The game isn't really that complicated, at least on lower difficulty levels, it is however very addictive and time consuming.
I thought that I would start with the tutorial scenario, in part because that frees me up from having to figure out how to create a scenario. Also, there is verbiage in the manual that helps hand-hold the beginner through the tutorial scenario, at least to some extent.
Is there a compelling reason for a beginner not to use the tutorial scenario?
1. Don't give up. We all started like you. It was complicated at first, but it's not so bad when you start understanding a little more.
2. In the preferences (accessed in game) change two settings from their default:
- Wait at end of turn.
- Always ask what to build.
Doing this allows you to stay in control of every turn.
3. I remember when I first started, I knew less than anybody. I played after work for a few hours trying to figure things out. Then at work, I'd come to this site and read read read all the strategy/informative articles. I had to print out a cheat sheet for the tech screens and one for keyboard shortcuts. I referenced them a lot while playing. I did eventually learn every unit and building, but not all the first week. You're right that the mental framework needs to be in place, so just start playing around. It took years to learn all the little tricks and develop improved strategies.
4. Some basic things to remember:
-Keep your people happy with either: Luxuries, buildings or troops in the city.
-You need to get the food growing to get the settlers and workers, and those are what you need to grow your empire.
-Manage the tech slider up and down to earn more/less money per turn.
5. i never tried the tutorial. I didn't even find it until later. And, I got pummeled my first few times. But, I'm sure after a few games I got the hang of it pretty easily, and you will too.
WarGameNewbie's complaints about the "For Beginners Only" chapter are spot on.
Revisiting Civ3 myself at the moment, I'm in the middle of rereading the manual. While spectacular by today's standards, it is not as friendly to the new player as the previous manuals were.
In my opinion the best general introduction into the game can still be found in the first six pages of the original Civilization manual ("Introduction" and "Cities and Civilizations"). They describe the idea and the mechanics of the game in terms both broad enough to be comprehensible to someone who never played the game before and detailed enough to give a careful reader a broad understanding of the mechanics of the game that allows him to absorb the more detailed information to follow. Except for a bit about caravans and the omission of workers, this introduction could just as well have been written for Civ3. The Civ1 manual is available in the Civ1 section of this site and the first six pages are good reading for anyone new to Civ (or nostalgic about it).
In the Civ2 manual, the "Cities of Civilizations" section was replaced by "Four Impulses of Civilization". Arguably, that was a bad move. The new text was shorter and less descriptive. It might have conveyed what a "cool" game Civilization is meant to be, but as on overview of the game mechanics it was just too broad to be helpful. The Civ2 manual made up for this faux-pas by containing an excellent tutorial chapter that walked the new player step by step through the first 100 turns of a game that covered most important game mechanics except for combat. You could actually load a saved game with the map that the tutorial chapter was talking about and play the game step by step as you read that chapter.
In the Civ3 manual (hey I'm on topic again!), the bland "Impulses of Civilization" (with culture, there were now five of them) section became the only general introduction to the game. The tutorial chapter survives, but it no longer refers to a saved game where you can play it out for yourself, but tells a story about an imaginary game. Why anyone thought that might be an improvement is a mystery. A reader with a bit of imagination will still get an idea about the early game mechanics. Unfortunately, he will also get a completely wrong idea about the pace of the game. Civ3's imaginary game proceeds pretty much like the Civ2 tutorial game; in fact, the chapter is just a heavily edited version of the Civ2 tutorial. For example, the starting worker is mentioned at the start of the chapter, but then forgotten for several centuries. Also, research costs were changed between the two versions in a way that will give any player (never mind a new one) a really hard time researching Monarchy in anything resembling the time frame covered by the tutorial chapter. That's frustrating to new players comparing their first game to the imaginary game they've read about.
In short, the tutorial chapter in the Civ3 manual is flawed. Still, at least they tried. Also, the main body of the manual (Chapters 6 - 14) is very much worth reading. It describes the game in a lot more detail than I have come to expect from today's manuals.
There is no reason for a beginner not to use the tutorial button in the main menu. It's just important to remember that this button just starts a random game at the lowest difficulty with popups giving a few tips and explaining the interface. It has nothing to do with the imaginary game described in the manual.
I thought that I would start with the tutorial scenario, in part because that frees me up from having to figure out how to create a scenario. Also, there is verbiage in the manual that helps hand-hold the beginner through the tutorial scenario, at least to some extent.
Is there a compelling reason for a beginner not to use the tutorial scenario?
I didn't know there was a tutorial 'Scenario'. Or are you talking about the Tutorial Mode, where the game makes suggestions as to what you could/should do next, during a normal game? If you are talking about tutorial mode, then yes, I would strongly recommend using it, at least for your first couple of games.
The best way to learn to play this game, is probably just to play it, and pick things up as you go along.
The Civ3 Manual (or any well-written manual, come to that) should not really be read as a book that you wade through page-by page, trying to memorise the whole thing from beginning to end. (After all, no one would expect an author to memorise a whole dictionary before starting to write a story!) Instead, just skim-read it, so you know roughly what's in there (concentrating especially on chapter titles and subheadings, which should help you build that 'mental framework'), then put it to one side, and use it as a reference-work you dip into when you want to look up something specific. I haven't looked at it for years, mainly because anytime I want/need specific information/ reminders about just about any aspect of the game, I can consult the in-game 'Civilopedia', which gives all the basics, lists nearly all the unit/menu keyboard commands (there is also a cheat-sheet available here at CFC), and each individual page has internal hyperlinks to other pages.
OR I can come on here to CFC, where this page gives a good overview of the game's development/release history, and this one includes some useful info on game mechanics, hints and strategies -- and also explains a lot of the jargon/ abbreviations that you'll find used in the CFC forums. Neither is quite as long as the Manual and both have links to further articles/ resources if you're interested.
Personal CIV history follows. You don't need to read it if you don't want to, but you might find it interesting for comparison with your situation:
Spoiler:
Although I'd played the original SimCity when it came out, and later SimCity 2000, CivDOS (v5) was the first 'proper' 4X game I ever played. I got it in early 2002, and played almost nothing else for the next 5-6 years (briefly dabbled with Alpha Centauri, but didn't really get into it at the time -- partly 'cos I didn't RTFM, if I'm being honest...). After all that practice, I became a pretty good CivDOS player -- not highly expert, but I could win consistently on the included Earth-map using nearly any of the Civs, at the second highest difficulty level ('King') -- and without using any of the bugs/ exploits/ cheats I learned about later from CFC!
I discovered CFC in 2007, and eventually bought Civ3 (the no-frills 'Vanilla' version 1.07, patched to v1.29 via CFC) in 2009, pretty much dropping CivDOS after that. Because I thought I knew the game already when I switched to Vanilla, I thought I'd easily be able to start playing at 'Regent' -- but I got pummeled. So I dropped to Warlord -- and got pummeled again. So I swallowed my pride, went back down to Chieftain, and switched on the tutorial mode. And learned. Now I'm back up to playing and winning -- sometimes! -- at Monarch. I only upgraded to Civ3 Complete (aka 'C3C' or 'Conquests') earlier this year.
I would recommend starting a game with the following settings:
Map:
Small (quicker game, less to manage, but more AICivs than on a 'tiny' map)
Continents (pangaea basically forces you into constant warfare, archipelago might mean you don't get to meet anyone else until you've built a coastal city and a boat(s))
60 or 70% water (80% gives very small landmasses)
Normal humidity (not so many rivers, but less jungle too -- which takes a long time to clear)
Temperate (roughly even mix of terrain types)
4 or 5 billion year age (terrain types are more fragmented, and I think you might also get fewer Mountain tiles with 5bn year-old planets)
On the 'pick your civ' page, choose:
Romans, Babylonians, Celts or Persians as your Civ (all have a powerful and early 'Unique Unit', and are either Scientific or Religious, IIRC)
Chieftain difficulty (major production advantages over the AI, and easy fights against barbarian tribes)
All random opponents (to be more interesting)
Low-level (not 'raging'!) barbarians
Turn off 'culturally-linked start locations'
Turn off 'wonder victory' condition (if it's on)
At the main game screen:
hit CTRL-P to bring up the game preferences, and turn on 'always wait at end of turn' and 'always ask what to build next'
And if anything happens that you didn't understand (or didn't happen the way you thought it would!), come back here and post a question in the 'Newbie questions' thread. It will probably be answered fairly quickly, and comprehensively...
The Civ3 Manual (or any well-written manual, come to that) should not really be read as a book that you wade through page-by page, trying to memorise the whole thing from beginning to end. (After all, no one would expect an author to memorise a whole dictionary before starting to write a story!)
I guess people are indeed different... In the summer holidays before I went to the US as an exchange student, I read a German-English dictionary cover to cover as preparation. Approx. one letter a day, so it took me roughly three weeks....
(And it kind of worked: when I finally got there, I was able to read almost everything, and writing letters, applications, etc. wasn't a problem either. But for the first month or so, I didn't understand a word of what people were saying around me... And whenever I was saying something, people were staring at me with a blank face... )
I've heard people describe playing civ as "playing a spreadsheet". There certainly are a large amount of variables and things to keep track of.
Any specific questions of actual game mechanics? Are moving units, worker tasks, building units and city improvements, recognizing terrain types and using them to your advantage, basics of talking to the AI civs, setting research goals and spending clear?
I love the competing needs for exploration, infrastructure, research, defense/offense, diplomacy the game offers.
As for other games, i like Rome Total War for the battles, but never got into the empire building aspects.
@ WarGameNewbie: Pleased to be of service, but I'm afraid I gave you a bum steer about legendary and succession games (since deleted). They're really more for experienced or advanced players. Sorry about that.
A succession game is one of the best ways to learn how to play the more difficult levels. Amongst the team there is plenty of discussion, especially when people are playing out of their normal comfort zone. Plus, you only play for 10 turns at a time, and you have to really work hard to kill a game in 10 turns!
And even if you don't participate in an SG, you can download the save and from that save file determine what you would do the next turns. Or try to follow the next turnset and determine how and why the turnplayer did what they did.
And even if you are not part of the team, you can always ask questions about the game and why certain decisions were made.
I think that SGs are one of the safest ways to improve your game and then you go solo to see how good you really are (or are not, as has happened to me more than I want to admit!)
To be honest, I'm not sufficiently motivated by the war game/empire-building genre to read (and try to retain) a couple hundred pages of material before getting started. In fact, I'm not sure I"m capable of retaining that much information all at once. One of the problems I have found with instruction books that start with "Read the entire instructions before playing the game" is that the reader often lacks the mental framework to store the information in. That is, as I read I sometimes wonder, "Do I really understand the passage that I just read?" If not, then if I continue to read, I lack the foundation and context necessary to understand subsequent text.
You don't pick up programming by reading books about code. You learn by doing. The same is true for Civ 3.
I already have two other genres of games that I play regularly, and I'm looking at dabbling with war games (or empire-building, I supposed) to see how much I like them.
I also like Hidden Object games, if that helps you feel better.
I haven't played a lot of wargames on the PC. I think all I have is Close Combat, from the previous century. With a game like Civ 3, I have no desire to refight the Battle of the Bulge or D-Day.
WarGameNewbie, which version of Civ 3 do you have?
Are the Vikings a playable civ? How about Portugal?
Can you build the Temple of Artemis?
There are three versions of Civ 3; vanilla, Play the World and Conquests. While a lot of things stayed the same between all three verisons, some things, like Armies and the Forbidden Palace, had major changes made to them.
A succession game is one of the best ways to learn how to play the more difficult levels. Amongst the team there is plenty of discussion, especially when people are playing out of their normal comfort zone. Plus, you only play for 10 turns at a time, and you have to really work hard to kill a game in 10 turns!"
@ CommandoBob: OK my bad. But so many SGs I've tried to read spent lots of time getting the team together, discussing strategies, etc. a beginner might be snowed. Guess my problem is I'm strictly a loner. Cheers.
@ CommandoBob: OK my bad. But so many SGs I've tried to read spent lots of time getting the team together, discussing strategies, etc. a beginner might be snowed. Guess my problem is I'm strictly a loner. Cheers.
There is no reason for a beginner not to use the tutorial button in the main menu. It's just important to remember that this button just starts a random game at the lowest difficulty with popups giving a few tips and explaining the interface. It has nothing to do with the imaginary game described in the manual.
I didn't know there was a tutorial 'Scenario'. Or are you talking about the Tutorial Mode, where the game makes suggestions as to what you could/should do next, during a normal game? If you are talking about tutorial mode, then yes, I would strongly recommend using it, at least for your first couple of games.
I've heard people describe playing civ as "playing a spreadsheet". There certainly are a large amount of variables and things to keep track of.
Any specific questions of actual game mechanics? Are moving units, worker tasks, building units and city improvements, recognizing terrain types and using them to your advantage, basics of talking to the AI civs, setting research goals and spending clear?
I love the competing needs for exploration, infrastructure, research, defense/offense, diplomacy the game offers.
As for other games, i like Rome Total War for the battles, but never got into the empire building aspects.
I don't recall specific questions about game mechanics. From the game that I tried a week or so ago, I recall the opening moves being very easy because of the tutorial hints, then at some point I could not figure out the next move. If I recall correctly, the tutorial suggested that my first city was well under way and that I should move the settler to start a second city. I got stuck because I didn't know how to move a settler.
Later, I found the passage in the manual that describes how to move the settler, but it wasn't super-easy to find that.
Thanks very much (to you and others) for generously offering to answer my questions in this forum. When I give the game a 2nd try (hopefully in the next week or two) I'm sure I'll have questions.
WarGameNewbie, which version of Civ 3 do you have?
Are the Vikings a playable civ? How about Portugal?
Can you build the Temple of Artemis?
There are three versions of Civ 3; vanilla, Play the World and Conquests. While a lot of things stayed the same between all three verisons, some things, like Armies and the Forbidden Palace, had major changes made to them.
A succession game is one of the best ways to learn how to play the more difficult levels. Amongst the team there is plenty of discussion, especially when people are playing out of their normal comfort zone. Plus, you only play for 10 turns at a time, and you have to really work hard to kill a game in 10 turns!
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And if you are going for a cultural victory or a peaceful victory by getting voted the president of the United Nations, it adds a third and fourth dimension to the game, which again conflict with the previous two...
)
and both have links to further articles/ resources if you're interested.
Wrong. 
