Beginner Advice, Please

I just bought Civilization III and have spent about an hour reading the 'For Beginners Only' chapter and trying out the tutorial game.

As a complete beginner to war games, I think I may have chosen the wrong starter game.

To be honest, I don't have the patience to read 100-200 pages of instructions (and trying to remember most of it) before playing.

I had hoped that the tutorial would lead me through a simple session, step by step, but it appears that the 'tutorial' game is not a true tutorial, but rather a very simple scenario.

Before I throw in the towel on this game I would like to ask whether there is a pain-free way for someone who is new to war games to learn Civ III?

Thanks for any advice!

Hello, and welcome to Civ Fanatics (CFC)!

So, let's set your expectations. Civ3 is an empire building game, which has a significant role for waging war. A great deal of the complexity that may be worrying you is the empire building part of the game -- improving your cities, improving the terrain, choosing which technology to research. It is a turn-based strategy game, so that you can take as long as you need to complete a turn. There are *no* undo's, remember.

If those aspects are not as appealing, you may have chosen the wrong game. A big part of the appeal of the Civ series (and Civ3 in particular) are the short-term and long-term decisions you get to make. Do I declare war now, or wait 3 turns? Do I start building a world wonder, or build a settler to found another city? There are multiple ways to win the game, and both your strategy and tactics will vary depending on which victory condition you are trying for.

The number of choices you start with are pretty manageable, and grow as you build more cities and more units. A simple scenario is probably the best way to introduce you to those choices. Every game is different (which is awesome!), and a full walk through might take 100-200 turns.

The best introductions are some of the articles in the Strategy forum, which talk about your initial choices, how to check out the terrain around you, and get your empire off to a good start.

This opening move strategy guide http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=31014 is pretty thorough. Don't know if it is too detailed for a first time player, or not.

Pick a warring tribe (like Japan or Mongolia), and start a game on Warlord level. Jump in, build a few cities, fight a few barbarians, and get the feel of the game.

vorlon_mi, thanks very much for the (quick) reply!

To clarify, I don't have concerns about the genre. My concerns are about the learning curve.

By 'strategy forum', I think you mean the 'Civ3 - Strategy & Tips' sub-forum, right?

vorlon_mi said:

This opening move strategy guide http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=31014 is pretty thorough. Don't know if it is too detailed for a first time player, or not.

Pick a warring tribe (like Japan or Mongolia), and start a game on Warlord level. Jump in, build a few cities, fight a few barbarians, and get the feel of the game.

Click to expand...

At this point, I'm not looking for strategic advice. When trying the tutorial I get stuck over game mechanics.

Looking at the link you provided, it look like it might be more strategy advice than game mechanics. Or, am I mis-interpreting the material?

It's largely a grand strategic wargame at higher levels (especially Emperor and above) but you can win more peacefully on lower levels without building a large empire or kicking much butt. For example, even on Emperor if you have at least 3 extremely productive cities, maintain a decent military with border cities or towns sufficiently garrisoned, reasonably good relations with other civs, and the required resources (either in your territory or by trade) you can still win the Space Race.

Of course the devil is in the details. This is an exceedingly complex game with a blizzard of variables. After more than a decade of playing there's still stuff I didn't know or overlooked. There are all kinds of tricks you can learn at the Strategy and Tips forum, plus there's plenty of material at the War Academy, including how the combat system works, fighting wars, and so on.

Anyway you say you're bogged down in game mechanics. Unfortunately the tutorial is not very helpful. Hard to give any particular advice except to note that Civ3 is as much a research project as a game. If you don't have any "feel" for how the game works then reading page after page of instruction may turn into a rather barren exercise. Check out some youtube walkthroughs or tutorials for more user-friendly info.

Cheers and good luck!

You can start with playing a scenario (Rise of Rome is a good beginner scenario, not that it's easy, but it's not complex), or just play a short game (small world, few AI opponents) and just get your feet wet.
Most information in the game is 1: on the map 2: in the city screens (click on a city, or right click to select 'zoom to city') or under the F1 to F11-buttons. F1 to F4 give the most info about your game)

And when you want more specific info about the units or whatnot, you can always check the civilopedia. (ctr-c)

Yes, the game is quite full of info, but it all makes sense and it's turn based, so you can take your time

Jivilov, thank you very much for the detailed and helpful advice.

Theov said:

You can start with playing a scenario (Rise of Rome is a good beginner scenario, not that it's easy, but it's not complex), or just play a short game (small world, few AI opponents) and just get your feet wet.
Most information in the game is 1: on the map 2: in the city screens (click on a city, or right click to select 'zoom to city') or under the F1 to F11-buttons. F1 to F4 give the most info about your game)

And when you want more specific info about the units or whatnot, you can always check the civilopedia. (ctr-c)

Yes, the game is quite full of info, but it all makes sense and it's turn based, so you can take your time

Click to expand...

Theov, thank you for the advice.

I started playing the 'tutorial' yesterday and was able to build a city and start developing resources in it. But, I got confused when trying to move personnel to start a second city.

Clearly, I made a poor choice in using CivIII as a starter game.

I'm going to look for a war game that's much more beginner-friendly. I welcome any suggestions (by IM, if forum rules discourage mention of other games).

Thanks to all of you for your help!

In terms of micromanagement, the order of choice would be:

Lowest - Settlers (quite consoley)
Medium - Medieval Total War (no longer plays on Windows 7 and the later ones are micromanagement nightmares more like the Civ series)
Largest - Civilisation (pick a number)


But I wouldn't give up on Civ III just yet if I were you, once you get the basic run of the most common processes in the game the micromanagement aspect shrinks in your mind like newly moved to town. After getting used to Civilisation going back to Settlers is like going back to Pacman.

Here's the basics:

Load up a game with all settings on average (middle setting), if the starting location is crap, load it up again until you just like the look of where you start.

Build a town and set your worker to build a road on the best tile. Just keep that worker working.

Set your town to build a warrior. Then another one, and then a Third. The first one can wander around looking for stuff while the other two keep everyone happy.

Build a Settler. March it out to build another town near your capital.

Rinse and repeat. You don't even need to build any buildings anywhere, just repeat this process until you feel like having a war.

Have a war.

Congratulations, you've learned 75% of the mechanics of the game and had lots of fun doing so.

The next time you play, add in another area you think you might be interested in, like building a Granary, for example, or a Barracks, or a Temple, or play round with the science slider, or try to have more conversations with other Civs etc.

If you start out on Warlord you'll gradually but quickly get used to more of the buttons, but you wont necessarily feel like your in out of your depth because the rate of 'new' is much slower after getting used to the basics of expand and war (same as any strategy war game, Civ just has more for people who want to play the game differently the next time they play it).

Buttercup said:

In terms of micromanagement, the order of choice would be:

Lowest - Settlers (quite consoley)
Medium - Medieval Total War (no longer plays on Windows 7 and the later ones are micromanagement nightmares more like the Civ series)
Largest - Civilisation (pick a number)


But I wouldn't give up on Civ III just yet if I were you, once you get the basic run of the most common processes in the game the micromanagement aspect shrinks in your mind like newly moved to town. After getting used to Civilisation going back to Settlers is like going back to Pacman.

Here's the basics:

Load up a game with all settings on average (middle setting), if the starting location is crap, load it up again until you just like the look of where you start.

Build a town and set your worker to build a road on the best tile. Just keep that worker working.

Set your town to build a warrior. Then another one, and then a Third. The first one can wander around looking for stuff while the other two keep everyone happy.

Build a Settler. March it out to build another town near your capital.

Rinse and repeat. You don't even need to build any buildings anywhere, just repeat this process until you feel like having a war.

Have a war.

Congratulations, you've learned 75% of the mechanics of the game and had lots of fun doing so.

The next time you play, add in another area you think you might be interested in, like building a Granary, for example, or a Barracks, or a Temple, or play round with the science slider, or try to have more conversations with other Civs etc.

If you start out on Warlord you'll gradually but quickly get used to more of the buttons, but you wont necessarily feel like your in out of your depth because the rate of 'new' is much slower after getting used to the basics of expand and war (same as any strategy war game, Civ just has more for people who want to play the game differently the next time they play it).

Click to expand...

Buttercup, thanks very much for the guidance.

I'll give your approach a try.

One of the neat things about Civ3 is there is no one correct way to play it. However that can also make it hard to figure out how to play at all.

The Chieftain difficulty level is often shunned for its crutches and encouraging "bad" habits, but if you're this new to the genre it could be a good place to strart while you learn the basic game mechanics. But move on to Warlord or Regent as soon as you start to "get it" so you can learn better.

I started a video tutorial where I play the first 23 turns, found a second city and meet another civ:


Link to video.

I then babble talk about strategy decisions--past and future--and use a helper program to plot my future city sites:


Link to video.

In my first attempt at the tutorial game I had an isolated start, so I replayed that as an isolated start tutorial:


Link to video.

I'm pretty bad at follow-through, so those starts are all I've done as far as tutorial videos, but maybe they can help. (The first one has over 4500 views in a year...wow I didn't realize it got that much notice.)

A couple of rules of thumb --
- Build a few warriors, and move them around to explore. The more spread out they are, the more ground you can cover.
- When you want to attack someone, group the units together into one stack. The game mechanics will make sure that the strongest unit in your stack defends the stack, if the AI attacks you. The AI is also good at finding any stragglers you have, and trying to get them.
- Build lots of cities, with about 2-3 spaces in between them. Try to have at least one city on the coast, so that you can build boats. When a city gets to be about size 4, consider building a settler to found a new city.
- In between building military units, build a few workers. Improve the land by building roads and irrigation. Each tile with a road on it gives more commerce, which helps your science and your cash flow.

@ 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'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.

WarGameNewbie said:

As a complete beginner to war games, I think I may have chosen the wrong starter game.

<snip>

Before I throw in the towel on this game I would like to ask whether there is a pain-free way for someone who is new to war games to learn Civ III?

Click to expand...

Quintillus said:

I'd consider Civ3 more strategy or empire-building than war games, although there's certainly a war element to it.

Click to expand...

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... )

Research nukes.
Bomb them back to the stone age.
Win.

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.

Puppeteer, thanks for vids!

I sent you a PM.

vorlon_mi said:

A couple of rules of thumb --
- Build a few warriors, and move them around to explore. The more spread out they are, the more ground you can cover.
- When you want to attack someone, group the units together into one stack. The game mechanics will make sure that the strongest unit in your stack defends the stack, if the AI attacks you. The AI is also good at finding any stragglers you have, and trying to get them.
- Build lots of cities, with about 2-3 spaces in between them. Try to have at least one city on the coast, so that you can build boats. When a city gets to be about size 4, consider building a settler to found a new city.
- In between building military units, build a few workers. Improve the land by building roads and irrigation. Each tile with a road on it gives more commerce, which helps your science and your cash flow.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the strategy tips!