Where do I go from here?
- Thread starter Wizard452
- Start date
WELCOME TO THE FORUM!!
(this really is the best place for info)
I've taken a look and will try to explain some things which are important for your empire.
I know nothing of Civ5 (only that it's the sequel to 4), so I don't know what habits you picked up there, and that doesn't matter anyway.
Aaaaah hoo!
(this might be lengthly, but hey, who cares right.)
First of all: Cities!
Civilization is a game of taking control of the World you're given. You have a nice continent, although the capital is placed quite away from the center, there are some basic improvements you can do.
You should see a city as a place from where you work the land. So Tenochtitlan, at size 12, works 12 tiles at the moment (12 + city center)
So the idea is to build cities, and 'work' all the tiles on the continent first, and expand from there.
You've laid down a nice framework of cities, but you really need more cities, and then large cities.
Just pump out settlers and workers until the whole continent is settled and improved. In the picture below you can see where there's room for more cities.
The black squares give a rough estimation of how I would place my cities on your continent.
Other than near Tenochtitlan, there's no fresh water (river/lake) on the continent so the cities won't grow past 6 people without aquaducts. So they can be place close together.
From here you can make workers, improve the tiles and build you economy, industry and science.
Those are not sink holes, sir.
Brings me to 2: Roads!
Roads. Where we're going, we will NEED roads.
Roads are your friend -> Friends are good -> Roads are good.
Roads do a couple of things, besides just laying there.
1: Roads connect cities, so they...
A: make it easier to walk from town to town with a unit. On roads, you can walk 3 times as fast and...
B: connect cities to share resources. Resources are hose nifty little things that make your people happy (luxuries, lux) and do other things like Iron and Horses which allows for Swordsmen and Horse-units.
Atzcapotzalco (in the South) is not connected, they don't enjoy Silks. Which is too bad.
Also, if you connect more than 1 resource to the Capital then you can trade it, if the capital has a trade network (of roads, or in this case harbors) with another Civ! Whoo hoo!
2: roads give you more commerce for every worked tile. If you lay down a road, a worked tile will give you one extra commerce.
More commerce = more money to be divided into science or the treasury chest.
Which always brings us to 3: Workers.
Half jokingly I've read here that: the rule of thumb about workers is that you never have enough workers.
Workers are your friend -> friends are good -> workers are good.
(if friends are not good, they are not a friend)
You know that you need to improve the tiles (roads add commerce, mines add shields, irrigation adds food), so we need to make a bunch of workers to do it with.
You're better off with a developed country and missed a Wonder or 2 than with all the Wonders in the World, but vulnerable for attacks, because your infrastructure is neglected.
In the pic below, you see that for those 5 tiles, you could have added 5 gold per turn (GPT) and 5 shields per turn (if those tiles had a road and a mine).
And lastly 4, a bit of empire management.
You're in a Monarchy (good) and have build some wonder to keep the people happy (good), but you've built City Walls in Tlacopan, to defend you against... who? You don't need all improvements.
You could have built another unit with those shields.
I would build a worker in Tlacopan, build irrigation towards the city, make the city grow with more food and then go from there.
In the black boxes in the picture below, you see that you don't need the Luxury slider to keep the people happy, so you may set it to 0%. Then I always slide the Science slider to the smallest tick that at least makes me some money so I always run a little profit for when I need it. And to have the fastest science.
When I notice that I only need 4 more turns, I slide it back a tick and see if it still says 4 turns. If it does, I keep it there. I also do that when there's 3, 2 and 1 turn left is to the next Tech.
So in the end it's a matter of priorities.
City improvements and Wonders are not important to start a game, working land is.
So build Settlers and Workers (more than 1 Worker per city) until we can't expand no more, then worry about the rest.
Oh and PS, one last thing.
Don't automate your workers. The use of workers is one of the biggest advantages we have over the AI, so don't let the AI do it.
Here's some preferences which gives you some better control over the game (just hit CTR+P in the game and it brings you here.)
Important is the 'ask for what to do' stuff
Puppeteer
Emperor
Hi, aside from being new to Civ3 you have a somewhat unusual start, even for an archipelago map. You've had a big island to yourself until recently, and there is only one square of fresh water, unfortunately across the island from the plains that need it. You also lack iron. I can't tell that you've had any wars of any consequence.
It looks like you've circumnavigate the world but didn't map out the edges of the other continents or try to find unsafe-to-reach continents. Circumnavigating the world had some significance in Civ4 (not sure about Civ5), but in Civ3 it doesn't change anything.
One of my sea priorities is to meet civs on other islands. You've met most of them, but there are two in this game you haven't met. And we can see by the color borders where one of them is, to the southeast of your island. In most games I like to try to meet everyone as soon as possible because if you're behind the computers in tech, knowing more civs with a tech makes it cheaper for you to research or trade that tech. And often the other civs don't all know each other until the late middle ages, and the human player can take advantage with trading techs between civs that don't know each other for a profit.
But that island to the southeast looks too far for your galley, right? You can end your galley's turn in the sea or ocean, and more times than not it will sink, but not always. We call this "suicide galley" and often send galleys on suicide missions to meet other continents or search for them. Sometimes they make it there.
You don't have much of a military. In this particular game that has worked out just fine, but sooner or later one or more of the other civs is going to see you as weak and attack you, and they're right at the stage where their militaries are going to get much stronger with better middle-age units from Feudalism and Chivalry techs. You also lack iron, so you may want to think about trying to take over that nearby island with iron, but unfortunately you can't use the iron on your main continent until you have a late-middle-ages tech that can connect connect harbor-to-harbor trade across sea squares.
You have a lot of irrigation. You unfortunately needed a big chain of irrigation to get water to the southeastern plains. And since your civ is agricultural irrigating the desert will help you out a lot, too. But in most cases you want to put mines on grass.
If you look at your capital, it is working 5 irrigated grasslands and a coastal tile. If you look at the city screen you'll see that you have 6 surplus food per turn and are unable to grow past size 12. If you irrigate those 5 grass tiles you're working plus another two--to use instead of the coast and the mined tundra tile--your capital city will go from 17 shields per turn to 24 shields per turn and still have two food per turn surplus.
It's not quite this simple, but for me the baseline tile value you want to work is two food and one or two shields. So that means mine grass and irrigate plains. And in the case of an agricultural civ like the Aztecs, irrigate the desert, too. If you want to grow faster or work hills, or if you are already grown as big as possible then you adjust tile improvements to compensate.
Also, the capital has no waste (shield loss) or corruption (commerce loss). All cities are perfectly efficient with food, but the farther away from the capital, the higher the loss. So if you you have several cities that need improvement, the capital and near-capital cities usually get priority because improvements are more effective there.
There is no wrong way to play Civ3, but the baseline seems to be to beat up everyone militarily and expand into their territory, and then you can pretty much pick any victory condition and beat them to it. If you head that route, I'd probably want to kick Russia off my island and then claim the iron island to the south. The big island/continent to the W/SW would probably be the next target of conquest. If you want to play peacefully, you already have half the culture of the world, so you could continue towards a cultural win. A U.N. victory might be doable, too.
For economy and efficiency, what Theov said: more cities, more workers, and you tell the workers what to do because the computer is stupid. No matter if you play peacefully or as a warmonger you should learn to not build every building and wonder you can. Civ3 is a resource game, so use your resources to build stuff that gets you closer to your desired victory condition. And you can always conquer a wonder from a neighbor if you're a warmonger.
It looks like you've circumnavigate the world but didn't map out the edges of the other continents or try to find unsafe-to-reach continents. Circumnavigating the world had some significance in Civ4 (not sure about Civ5), but in Civ3 it doesn't change anything.
One of my sea priorities is to meet civs on other islands. You've met most of them, but there are two in this game you haven't met. And we can see by the color borders where one of them is, to the southeast of your island. In most games I like to try to meet everyone as soon as possible because if you're behind the computers in tech, knowing more civs with a tech makes it cheaper for you to research or trade that tech. And often the other civs don't all know each other until the late middle ages, and the human player can take advantage with trading techs between civs that don't know each other for a profit.
But that island to the southeast looks too far for your galley, right? You can end your galley's turn in the sea or ocean, and more times than not it will sink, but not always. We call this "suicide galley" and often send galleys on suicide missions to meet other continents or search for them. Sometimes they make it there.
You don't have much of a military. In this particular game that has worked out just fine, but sooner or later one or more of the other civs is going to see you as weak and attack you, and they're right at the stage where their militaries are going to get much stronger with better middle-age units from Feudalism and Chivalry techs. You also lack iron, so you may want to think about trying to take over that nearby island with iron, but unfortunately you can't use the iron on your main continent until you have a late-middle-ages tech that can connect connect harbor-to-harbor trade across sea squares.
You have a lot of irrigation. You unfortunately needed a big chain of irrigation to get water to the southeastern plains. And since your civ is agricultural irrigating the desert will help you out a lot, too. But in most cases you want to put mines on grass.
If you look at your capital, it is working 5 irrigated grasslands and a coastal tile. If you look at the city screen you'll see that you have 6 surplus food per turn and are unable to grow past size 12. If you irrigate those 5 grass tiles you're working plus another two--to use instead of the coast and the mined tundra tile--your capital city will go from 17 shields per turn to 24 shields per turn and still have two food per turn surplus.
It's not quite this simple, but for me the baseline tile value you want to work is two food and one or two shields. So that means mine grass and irrigate plains. And in the case of an agricultural civ like the Aztecs, irrigate the desert, too. If you want to grow faster or work hills, or if you are already grown as big as possible then you adjust tile improvements to compensate.
Also, the capital has no waste (shield loss) or corruption (commerce loss). All cities are perfectly efficient with food, but the farther away from the capital, the higher the loss. So if you you have several cities that need improvement, the capital and near-capital cities usually get priority because improvements are more effective there.
There is no wrong way to play Civ3, but the baseline seems to be to beat up everyone militarily and expand into their territory, and then you can pretty much pick any victory condition and beat them to it. If you head that route, I'd probably want to kick Russia off my island and then claim the iron island to the south. The big island/continent to the W/SW would probably be the next target of conquest. If you want to play peacefully, you already have half the culture of the world, so you could continue towards a cultural win. A U.N. victory might be doable, too.
For economy and efficiency, what Theov said: more cities, more workers, and you tell the workers what to do because the computer is stupid. No matter if you play peacefully or as a warmonger you should learn to not build every building and wonder you can. Civ3 is a resource game, so use your resources to build stuff that gets you closer to your desired victory condition. And you can always conquer a wonder from a neighbor if you're a warmonger.
Hi Wizard(somenumber),
I play almost exclusively Huge Archipelago Regent. I don't know what difficulty or size you're playing on, but my aim is always to get to the Industrial Age (Steam Power) by 1000AD. This depends on a lot of factors but it's a great guide to how well you're progressing. I see you're at 1480 with Invention yet to be learned and an economic crisis.
I use a method which doesn't involve contact with other nations as my means to acquire things. This method doesn't work on really high levels and is a bit boring for smaller maps, but you can run your own island independently and use Wonders and the luxury slider for happiness and growth.
First city - two warriors and a settler then build the Colossus. Then dedicate the first city to permanent Wonder production. Try to get the Sistine Chapel and have Cathedrals in all your cities, this should allow growth to size 12 without too much hassle. The first city should be on a river or next to a lake (the lake being more common in archipelagos than rivers, which are very rare and often involve starting on an island occupied by other civs).
Second City - just produce Settlers until the island is full, all cities staying low in population by building workers and settlers, just using the luxury slider to keep the capital producing.
General guidance - roads before improvements, mining before irrigation in Despotism then irrigation after improved government if needed (to allow lots of food spare to mine low food squares such as hills or mountains). If a lot of your distant coastal towns are pretty much just coastal towns with not much opportunity for mining, put all their growth into coastal squares after you've built a Harbour, this will fill up your money bags easier than running workers to relatively useless far flung areas, coast doesn't require roads, so you only really need enough workers to maximise your core production cities (the far flung places can build stuff slowly, like 50 turns for an Aqueduct while they grow to size 6 after building a Harbour (so, for example, 2 mined grassland, rest in coast squares). Switching production between coast and land squares is an excellent way to maximise what your current goals are, coast for tech, land to build.
Sneaky trick - if you line up a load of boats in your coast, three long (or two in a choke point/corner) and you've built the Great Lighthouse, no AI ships will dare to end their turn on a sea square. So for much of the early game (up to about 1500AD) you will not have any fear whatsoever of being attacked by anyone and you wont need to waste time building and financing a defence, you can stick to your government limit and feel safe.
Annoying thing - if you're going for a military win, archipelago is extremely difficult compared to a Continents or Pangea because if an island full of AI feels it's not competing it will just maximise all it's resources to make units and then fortify them. I recently invaded a small island of Celts stuck in the Iron Age, about 8 cities, and my army of 40 assorted Musketmen, Longbowmen and Crusaders was nearly wiped out by Gallic Swordsmen in two turns. I was happy to take one city and accept peace until I'd got riflemen and Cavalry. Basically, there's virtually no point invading other islands unless you are happy to stay in the Iron Age or you are at least an age (or two!) better than those you are invading. Numbers are everything and building as many cities as you can possibly squeeze in will be a great help here.
Great thing - if you want a peaceful win, such as a single city 20k culture or a space race or Diplomatic win then Archipelago is great for achieving this in a really peaceful and relaxing way, with no threat of imminent invasion until it's probably too late for the AI to mount any kind of huge invasion. And if they do, just ask everyone else to attack them in exchange for some of your advanced tech, which you should have plenty of. The only drawback is if your island doesn't have any of the resources needed for the space techs, in which case you'll have to make some precision attacks or boost the owning AI up to your speed so they can discover the tech and trade it with you (if they have more than one). Great island defenders are Artillery, a batch of Cavalry/Tanks, bombers and Destroyers, and a sentry in each city just in case. everything else is not really needed unless you want to do the invading.
No idea if any of this makes sense to you, but I advise choosing your win type (peace or war) before you start playing and play to that win specifically. Don't over obsess about Workers, even just 9 or 10 should be ample for an island your size, but make sure those Settlers munch up the land (and coast!) ASAP.
I play almost exclusively Huge Archipelago Regent. I don't know what difficulty or size you're playing on, but my aim is always to get to the Industrial Age (Steam Power) by 1000AD. This depends on a lot of factors but it's a great guide to how well you're progressing. I see you're at 1480 with Invention yet to be learned and an economic crisis.
I use a method which doesn't involve contact with other nations as my means to acquire things. This method doesn't work on really high levels and is a bit boring for smaller maps, but you can run your own island independently and use Wonders and the luxury slider for happiness and growth.
First city - two warriors and a settler then build the Colossus. Then dedicate the first city to permanent Wonder production. Try to get the Sistine Chapel and have Cathedrals in all your cities, this should allow growth to size 12 without too much hassle. The first city should be on a river or next to a lake (the lake being more common in archipelagos than rivers, which are very rare and often involve starting on an island occupied by other civs).
Second City - just produce Settlers until the island is full, all cities staying low in population by building workers and settlers, just using the luxury slider to keep the capital producing.
General guidance - roads before improvements, mining before irrigation in Despotism then irrigation after improved government if needed (to allow lots of food spare to mine low food squares such as hills or mountains). If a lot of your distant coastal towns are pretty much just coastal towns with not much opportunity for mining, put all their growth into coastal squares after you've built a Harbour, this will fill up your money bags easier than running workers to relatively useless far flung areas, coast doesn't require roads, so you only really need enough workers to maximise your core production cities (the far flung places can build stuff slowly, like 50 turns for an Aqueduct while they grow to size 6 after building a Harbour (so, for example, 2 mined grassland, rest in coast squares). Switching production between coast and land squares is an excellent way to maximise what your current goals are, coast for tech, land to build.
Sneaky trick - if you line up a load of boats in your coast, three long (or two in a choke point/corner) and you've built the Great Lighthouse, no AI ships will dare to end their turn on a sea square. So for much of the early game (up to about 1500AD) you will not have any fear whatsoever of being attacked by anyone and you wont need to waste time building and financing a defence, you can stick to your government limit and feel safe.
Annoying thing - if you're going for a military win, archipelago is extremely difficult compared to a Continents or Pangea because if an island full of AI feels it's not competing it will just maximise all it's resources to make units and then fortify them. I recently invaded a small island of Celts stuck in the Iron Age, about 8 cities, and my army of 40 assorted Musketmen, Longbowmen and Crusaders was nearly wiped out by Gallic Swordsmen in two turns. I was happy to take one city and accept peace until I'd got riflemen and Cavalry. Basically, there's virtually no point invading other islands unless you are happy to stay in the Iron Age or you are at least an age (or two!) better than those you are invading. Numbers are everything and building as many cities as you can possibly squeeze in will be a great help here.
Great thing - if you want a peaceful win, such as a single city 20k culture or a space race or Diplomatic win then Archipelago is great for achieving this in a really peaceful and relaxing way, with no threat of imminent invasion until it's probably too late for the AI to mount any kind of huge invasion. And if they do, just ask everyone else to attack them in exchange for some of your advanced tech, which you should have plenty of. The only drawback is if your island doesn't have any of the resources needed for the space techs, in which case you'll have to make some precision attacks or boost the owning AI up to your speed so they can discover the tech and trade it with you (if they have more than one). Great island defenders are Artillery, a batch of Cavalry/Tanks, bombers and Destroyers, and a sentry in each city just in case. everything else is not really needed unless you want to do the invading.
No idea if any of this makes sense to you, but I advise choosing your win type (peace or war) before you start playing and play to that win specifically. Don't over obsess about Workers, even just 9 or 10 should be ample for an island your size, but make sure those Settlers munch up the land (and coast!) ASAP.
As you came from Civ5, the above is important to be emphasized: in Civ5 you have to pay gold for each road your build, consequently in Civ5 you only build a bare minimum road network for better movement and city connections. In Civ3 it is the opposite: you get gold for every road!
Also another important difference to Civ5 is: in Civ3 you can join workers into cities to make them larger. In Civ5 there is no use for workers, after all necessary improvements have been built. In Civ3, however, I build a large number of workers early on, let them build all necessary improvements quickly and then join them into my core cities - especially those that have no food bonus within their "big fat cross". That way, you can bring a city from size 7 to size 12 in a single turn. Letting it grow "normally" from 7 to 12 would sometimes require 50 turns: With a granary you need 20 food units for one citizen. So at +2 food per turn that's 10 turns. Growing 5 times takes 50 turns. Of course a size 12 city generates twice as much production and commerce (gold & research) as a size 7 city... So it's good to have your cities reach the limit asap.
That works to an extent, it's very dependent on the specifics of your setting though. If most of your cities are just producing 2 food per turn, maybe even just 1 if they are on tundra+coast, then it's better to prioritise Settlers in the early stages than waste 10 turns on a worker who can't actually do anything with Tundra when just leaving the 'worked' tiles as Coast already gives you two gold per square, more than a road will give you.
Also, if the city is a corrupt one, pumping it from a 7 to 12 too soon (before you've sorted some form of happiness, by trade or buildings/wonders) will just result in lots of useless joker faces and likely a population decrease. So you've slowed Settler/Harbour production in exchange for a few corrupted gold pieces that wont make much difference when your making 200 gold per turn later in the game.
Also, if the city is a corrupt one, pumping it from a 7 to 12 too soon (before you've sorted some form of happiness, by trade or buildings/wonders) will just result in lots of useless joker faces and likely a population decrease. So you've slowed Settler/Harbour production in exchange for a few corrupted gold pieces that wont make much difference when your making 200 gold per turn later in the game.
Puppeteer
Emperor
A pan-and-zoom web map of the save in the OP:
http://civ3.bigmoneyjim.com/hack-a-map/2014-12/30-04-28-47-Montezuma of the Aztecs, 1480 AD.SAV/
I recently got this to the point where anyone can take a save like the one above, upload it and get a map.
http://civ3.bigmoneyjim.com/hack-a-map/2014-12/30-04-28-47-Montezuma of the Aztecs, 1480 AD.SAV/
I recently got this to the point where anyone can take a save like the one above, upload it and get a map.
Please read my post carefully: I said I join the workers into my core cities. Core cities are by definition the ones that are not corrupt.
Of course you are right, pumping up corrupt outer cities doesn't make sense. In fact, often I use my outer crap towns to produce workers at a 10 turn rate and send these workers into my core, if there are still cities that haven't reached the max 12. That way a "population shift" from the non-productive corrupt areas into the highly productive core area can be achieved.
Similar threads
