Completely New, Completely Hopeless

Hi everyone,

I'm very new to Civ3 and I have a few problems I hope you can help me with. I'm playing the 'vanilla' version of the game.

What I want to do is get a victory of each kind on a difficulty level before moving on to the next difficulty. My main problem is time, I always run out of it if I'm trying for a scientific or cultural victory. What is the best way to go about speeding myself up?

One quick thing I was wondering is how much of the tech tree do you have to research in order to move on to the next era? I think knowing more about how this works might speed me up.

I have done a domination victory, and although I haven't tried yet, I think I could do a conquest as the AI at this level seems quite easy to crush in a militaristic sense. The only problem is when that my captured cities are next to useless for a long long time, when all of a sudden they seem more productive. In some cities I tried leaving the original citizens in place and in others I tried starving out the original populous to replace it with my own, but the effect seems the same. I tried building temples and marketplaces and other such things to make them happy, but often there is no effect to doing this, and it takes about 60 turns a time to build them, heh.

Perhaps its just me, or some other factor I haven't noticed, but the cities become useful again in roughly the same order as I captured them, so is there a certain period when they are useless, or am I just seeing patterns where none exist?

Thats all for now, thanks in advance.

UnusualBulge said:

What I want to do is get a victory of each kind on a difficulty level before moving on to the next difficulty. My main problem is time, I always run out of it if I'm trying for a scientific or cultural victory. What is the best way to go about speeding myself up?

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Crank up the science on the Domestic Advisor

UnusualBulge said:

One quick thing I was wondering is how much of the tech tree do you have to research in order to move on to the next era? I think knowing more about how this works might speed me up.

Click to expand...

The ones not Italicized and have a stop sign thingy

UnusualBulge said:

I have done a domination victory, and although I haven't tried yet, I think I could do a conquest as the AI at this level seems quite easy to crush in a militaristic sense. The only problem is when that my captured cities are next to useless for a long long time, when all of a sudden they seem more productive. In some cities I tried leaving the original citizens in place and in others I tried starving out the original populous to replace it with my own, but the effect seems the same. I tried building temples and marketplaces and other such things to make them happy, but often there is no effect to doing this, and it takes about 60 turns a time to build them, heh.

Click to expand...

Bring workers and/or build something that reduces corruption and the last bit is because another thing is that the resitors calm down or the city starts growing

PS Welcome to CFC!

for a cultural victory (100K) settle as many cities as you can as close together as you can, try to use either a religious or scientific civ or babylon which is both, build a ton of temples / libraries & throw in cathedrals / unis, maybe even coloseums if you can afford them, but more emphasis shold always be placed on new cities with a temple / library. once you learn the mechanics of a culture game yuo will never run out of time, the only factor may be keeping your opponents at bay, it is easy to find yourself weak militarily in this type of game.

in a space race game, do you trade a lot, you should trade a lot in most games, there are exceptions, but in general you should try to trade as often as you can even in cases where you dont really feel like you're getting a fair deal, because overall it will benefit you. For example, in the beginning of the game it is very common for the AI to sit at about 10 Gold & then they kill of a barb camp & get another 25 or they get some gold from a hut, but otherwise they're not going to have much gold. Say you have contact with 4 civs, each has about 30 gold for a total of 120 gold. you are up a tech in each of them. you might not think it's fair to trade the tech for 30 gold, but after completing 4 deals for all 120 gold, that's a big difference. also learn how to tech broker, trade tech A to civ B for tech B, trade tech B to civ C for tech C . . . Eventually as the game goes into the MA you will be bale to claim gpt deals, these are the great because it improves your economy & you might even get to the point where you can run 100% science while still making money due to the gpt deals. All the while the AI are hurting their own economies & are unable to research as fast as you so you keep getting tech monopolies, keep trading for more gpt deals and the effects steamroll.

also, have you looked at the war academy?

UnusualBulge said:

What I want to do is get a victory of each kind on a difficulty level before moving on to the next difficulty. My main problem is time, I always run out of it if I'm trying for a scientific or cultural victory. What is the best way to go about speeding myself up?

Click to expand...

The trouble with the lower levels is that you cannot rely on the AI for any help with scientific research so Space and Diplo can take quite a while. If you are finding life reasonably easy on the level you are playing at, you may want to reconsider your decision to only move up once you've got a victory of each type. IMO if you can pretty much keep pace with the AI at the next level, you are ready for it!

BTW are you really sure that you want to go through 100K cultural victories at every level? I find the latter stages really boring as it consists of loads of mm on literally hundreds of cities in ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) placement if you want to get there fast.

For 20K culture though, war is (perversely) the way to go. Get a suitable city site close to your capital and complement its building programme with a number of rushed wonders from the Great Leaders your warmongering produces.

Good luck!

Science victory on Chieftain? Fuhgeddaboudit! The AI is SOOOOOO crippled that you have to do all the research yourself, and there simply isn't enough time in the game for that even at 4-turn research.

You're more than ready to move up to Warlord.

DBear said:

Science victory on Chieftain? Fuhgeddaboudit! The AI is SOOOOOO crippled that you have to do all the research yourself, and there simply isn't enough time in the game for that even at 4-turn research.

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Umm...have you seen Sir Pleb's 210AD Diplo victory or Dave McW's 570AD space victory? The science victories are easy at this level if you abuse the fact that negative gpt is not penalised on Chieftain!

However I do echo your general sentiments, DBear. You learn more at playing at at level that you find challenging than at an easier level where you find yourself going through the motions.

Tone said:

However I do echo your general sentiments, DBear. You learn more at playing at at level that you find challenging than at an easier level where you find yourself going through the motions.

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That is completely true, i mean sure, you can try Chieftain, but more of a starter is Warlord, IMHO.

Thanks for your replies everyone.

I think I'll give Warlord difficulty a go then, I had noticed the AI had no tech to trade very early on, and whenever I run into a new civ, my advisor usually says 'The x scientists are not very advanced'.

Thanks again.

Oh, almost forgot...

Welcome to CFC!

Just another quick question.

I always feel inclined to just 'random' lots of things, such as world age etc and my civilization when starting the game. Is it a bad idea to do that? If so what is the best combination of world age etc for a new player?

Many thanks.

Average helps you experience more of everything.

To achieve victory on low levels, remember that you can grow like mad and the AI will not attack you (usually). Grab as much space as you can, build loads of cities and then go for improvements for a SS/culture/diplo win or military for a domination/conquest win. There is easily enough time to get all techs at 4 turns per.

And remember, if you are playing on a standard map, you will most likely get 1-2 competitive civs because the rest will not start out good.