a decade of noobness

ok i've been playing civilization since I was 6 and i've always found it fun, actually one of my first memories was saying to my mother (when still 6) "I though Abe was supposed to be honest"

here comes my problem though, no matter what it is, Civ 1, Civ 2, Civ 3, Civ 4 I have never gotten past the easiest difficulty, how do I get past this? what tactics are useful for building an empire?

Practically no difference 'tween chieftain and warlord. Try regent at least and use the lux slider to keep your population content.

Be more specific about your inquiry. It's almost impossible for us to tell what you're doing wrong based on your OP.

Captain2 said:

here comes my problem though, no matter what it is, Civ 1, Civ 2, Civ 3, Civ 4 I have never gotten past the easiest difficulty, how do I get past this? what tactics are useful for building an empire?

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I never played Civ1, and haven't gotten Civ4 yet, but .......

In both Civ2 and Civ3, expansion is key. Even if you have a play style
that is more suited to building up your cities (being a "builder"),
you still need more cities to have a productive civilization.

In Civ2, this means building more settlers (and later, engineers) to
ensure that all cities are connected by roads and rails. You should
also found cities with them, too. Deliver lots of caravans and freights,
because each one gives a burst of science/research as well as
increasing your cash. Don't try to
get all the wonders; plan for a couple of key ones (like Leonardo's
or Marco Polo) and deliver lots of caravans to help build them.

In Civ3, this means building more workers to ensure that all cities
are connected by roads and rails. Don't automate them!
Make sure that you "hook up", that is, build roads onto,
all the luxuries and strategic resources that are contained
within your borders. You'll need to build some military,
to try to deter the AI; build more offensive units
than defensive units, for this purpose. As trooper said,
move the luxury slider up to 20 or 30% to keep people happy,
and move the science slider up or down to make more cash
while researching quickly and keeping a positive cash flow.

Of course, if you're looking to take over the world,
then that's a whole 'nother discussion.

The three things that really opened the door for me to higher levels were:
1) Building cities closer together.
2) Improving my tech trading skills.
3) Building more workers.

Research horizontally, follow the trail deeper into the tech tree. That way you will hopefully wind up with techs to trade. Check out all the civs before you make your first deal. The price drops dramatically after the first one.

Build workers, develop tiles that are being worked, try to get big fast.
If you have too many workers you can always join them to a city to make it bigger.

Great thread title

The others have given good advice here. I would echo their posts and also add three quick digestible points:

- Pay close attention to what tiles are being worked in your cities.
- Learn how to use artillery.
- Quit building wonders.

Also, read your way through the articles in the Civilization III: War Academy, you'll soon be mincing them all.

yeah this info would be pretty much for civ 3 since both 2 and 4 upset me, and I cant find civ 1 lol

ive you have a computer with a 5 1/2 inch floppy drive..ill send you my oldest dos version..lol..its kinda just collecting dust.still got the box and manual and everythig..

vorlon_mi said:

I never played Civ1,

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You missed alot then I played civ 1 for ages.

I highly recommend the war academy. In particular, cracker's essay on opening moves. As far as I can tell, the most important skill I learned was how to spot and setup a settler factory.

at least in civ III, there is a very large difference between chieftain and warlord. To a player who is used to emperor, neither is difficult, but the AI is basically powerless on chieftain, while on warlord it's just not quite as productive as you are.

Put it this way: on chieftain, the game basically loses to you. On warlord, you have to put some effort into winning.

I've always played by instinct, and never lost. Especialy my first game on chieftain, which i obviously won by spacerace with the greeks. I never even considered war unless those ppl atacked me, and enjoyed the city view, the building of wonders, the prosperity.
(But then again i never tried the higher dificulty levels, nor do i have the time and will to do this. )
Of course my tactics changed a bit from then ... but i still like to admire wonders from any mod. They are the symbol of Civilization, i don't care much if in those turns i would have built X soldiers. When i play civ i only do it for relaxing, seeing the sights. I only go on a rampage if the enemy declares war first, or if i have tanks, or if i have nukes.

Surprisingly, this worked for me, for the first 4 dificulty levels i played. I did hear from lots of ppl that this style of playing is wrong(but i don't care), and that it is the cause of losing games (but it never happened to me).
So, i don't have any reason to change my playing style.

im right there with yah...im a builder first..teranical warmonger second..but its amazing how quick i can switch my mode.lol

thanks guys, I looked around up there and found out some pretty cool stuff

one question I still have: can the AI your allied with see subs? because the french and I allied agianst the Russians but the french attacked one of my subs I had off the russian coast, causing a war, and also causing me to ally with Russia

There's a strange situation with subs. They can't see it although they know the position of every unit you have, but if they bump into one of your subs by accident, that means automatic declaration of war.

So the answer is no, they can't see it, that's why they attacked it

Yeah, that's the infamous "submarine bug". The pathing algorithm understands that the subs are "invisible", so it ignores them, and plots a path right through your sub. When they accidently run into it, they automatically attack it, and war is declared, even though you were allies and the best of friends....

ohhhh that has to be my biggest complaint about civ3. ive lost so many allies from bumping subs its crazy

can you rename units in C3C? because I got it with the PTW add-on and I kinda want to change a few names to tell me where to send them

Select a unit and click the ABC button, and you can rename it. If that button isn't there, go into Preferences and select Show Advanced Unit Buttons.

hmm its not in there, would suck since I would have no clue whats going on without being able to seperate my two forces names

Captain2 said:

hmm its not in there

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Try hitting Shift-N then.