Return to Civ3: Advice on game

Hey guys,

It's been a couple of years since I played this game but decided to have another crack at it as an escape from all the other crappy stuff happening in life. Good to see that they haven't closed down this section of the forum and you guys are still alive.

Have started a Pangaea game using Iroquois and their mighty Mounted Warrior but have seemed to run into a wall after conquering my neighbours by letting the two remaining AI gain an almost run a-way lead in items of technology. This seems to be slowly translating into an army lead having to face musketmen with only Mounted Warriors which then prevents me from expanding my empire to procure more cities. My economy seems to be shot at the moment and I'm in a catch 22 as I have all these units but can't upgrade to Knights due to lack of money and having these units is killing me in terms of gold per turn cost.

At the same time my self research abilities are down due to the poor economy. Just seems like a downward spiral which I can't seem to get out of. I have attached the save and some screenshots, anyone have any ideas?

I've looked at your file. Are you seriously serious?

Moderator Action: He is asking for help, not ridicule. If you do not know how to help or cannot help, then please move on. Posting like this is trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Yes absolutely. I would like to have some direction on how to proceed from here considering my army is declined (or has already declined) in value but is strangling my economy and ability to tech.

Maybe he can't believe you are seriously the cricketer. Anyway, I might take a look tonight.

If you have too many units, a quick and dirty war with your neighbor might be good to reduce unit cost. You might also gain cities and techs that way.

This is just from looking at the screenshots:

It's not your military costs that are strangling you as such, it's your huge stack of Workers and Settlers -- which you also have to pay maintenance on.

And if you've been in a long war under Republic, war-weariness is probably hurting you badly, especially if you've been starting to lose units against more advanced defenders. And I see only 2 hooked Furs in your core, and 1 hooked Silk in your [captured] territory -- are there any other Luxes under your cities? If not, and if you've been using Clowns or Lux-spending to counter WW, you've been seriously diminishing the commerce/gold you could be getting from your core-cities (and or the beakers/gold you could be getting from 1-shield 'specialist farms').

And also your cities: your current 'core' city placement/management really kind of sucks (sorry, but it does).

Admittedly, your starting location wasn't great, because -- even if you'd moved your starting Settler 2NW and put Salamanca next to the river (=> no need to spend 100s on a 'Duct, plus the Iros are Rel/Agri in C3C, so you can build Settler-pumps on freshwater really easily, even in Despotism), you still wouldn't really have had much room to build a decent 2nd ring.

EDIT: Iros are not Religious in C3C; Despotic Agricultural Settler-pumps will still require at least one +2F food-bonus tile (and two are preferable!)

But that being the case, you could/ should have made much better use of your available 1st-ring sites. You could easily have fitted at least 7 or 8 cities into your 1st ring, at distance 3-5 from your capital (i.e. CxxC to CxxxC placement, and CxxC from each other for mutual defence) -- but you've currently got only 4 (at CxxxxC and distance 7.5, Oil Springs is pretty much 2nd-ring), they're very spread out , none of them are on that river , and none of them -- including Salamanca -- are even at Pop12 yet!

So the first thing I would do in this situation is quit No I wouldn't. You're actually in a pretty good position ... you own most of the map already, so you can basically control the game from here on out. I assume you're going for Domination or Conquest, i.e. warmongering your way to victory? If so, since the Iroquois are Religious (i.e. they can switch govs with only 2T of Anarchy), one thing you could do would be to revolt into a more war-friendly gov-type, such as Monarchy (if you have it) or possibly Feudalism. That would eliminate the WW (Monarchy) and/or increase the free-unit support (Feudalism may not be advisable in this regard, depending on how many Pop7+ cities you have). Although revolting would also reduce your income, you might not have to spend so much on Luxes and/or mil-units, so it might balance out...

EDIT: Iros are not Religious in C3C

Or, if you want to stay in Republic and you're still at war, make peace (at least temporarily) -- and once you've made peace, found some cities! You currently have 11 Settlers, each of which represents 4 gold per turn cost to your treasury (=44GPT): the 2GPT unit-maintenance you're currently paying per Settler, and the 2GPT you'd also save on your unit-support costs by founding some more cities and increasing your free-unit limit. Even 1-shield cities in the 'total corruption' zone would have increased that limit, but you can still squeeze in some decent 1st-ring cities around Salamanca, e.g.:

• the Hill 3SW,1S
• the riverbank Plains 2NW,1W
• the Grass 3W, and
• the Grass 2SE,1E (BTW: WHY was this mined? No city can use it!)

And you could also put at least two 2nd-ring cities on the peninsula south of Cattaraugus. Here's a quick and dirty dotmap, showing both where I think your new cities should/could go, given your current placement (yellow squares), and also where I would probably have placed Salamanca and the 1st-ring cities (red circles), given the information I would have gathered from my Warrior-scouts in the first 20-30T of the game or so:



In fact, given that you still haven't completed a decent core, I really don't understand why you've put at least 2 or 3 of those 11 Settlers in imminent dnger of being killed by the Babs (OK, that's one way of saving maintenance, but not recommended!)...

You also have 69 native Workers running around (=138 GPT unit-support!). I would recommend adding most/ all of those native Workers to your (core) cities to immediately bump them up to their max. sustainable sizes (Pop6 or 12), so that they can start earning you cash, instead of costing it. At this stage in the game, where you hold most of the continent, slave-Workers should be doing most of the terrain-improvement work, not natives. Yes, I know that slaves only work at half-speed, but they cost nothing -- so every 2 Slaves saves you 2 GPT Worker-maintenance! Just stack them in piles of 3-6 to finish jobs quicker. I don't know how many slaves you've got so far, but it's probably not enough so build/rush Settlers/ Workers in captured cities until they're down to Pop 1, then let them regrow. (NB if the cities have already grown since you captured them, you'll initially get native-born units until all your citizens are converted, then you'll get slaves -- use the native-units to found/ join your cities, and put the slaves to work!)

Increasing the native-to-foreign ratio in cities will also decrease culture-flip probability...

I would forget about trying to upgrade your 48 MWs -- it will be horrendously expensive! Without Leo's, upgrading will cost you:

• To Knights: (70-30)*3*48 = 5760g
• To Cavs: (80-30)*3*48 = 7200g

It would be much quicker and cheaper to build Knights/Cavs from scratch in your core! Instead, use your MWs to secure your border cities for now, and consider disbanding some of them in cities where you need shield-boosts on important projects. Prioritise:

• Courthouses in 2nd- and 3rd-ring cities to reduce corruption (=>increase commerce/ income) and shield-waste (=>quicker subsequent build-times)
• Aqueducts in any dry core cities which don't have them yet, to get them above Pop6
• Harbours in your coastal cities (to feed them and improve commerce in your core cities)
• Libs and Unis to boost research and Cultural expansion (especially against the Babs, who get all their Culture buildings at half-price)
• Markets to keep Pop7-12 cities happy (if you have ≥3 Luxes) and earn you more cash
• Walls to defend dry Pop1-6 farms on your borders

But do also look at all your cities carefully -- sell off any improvements that are costing more than they're earning, and/or switch builds-in-progress if the completed building would not be worth it (e.g. there's little point putting commerce/ shield/ research multiplier-buildings in 1-shield towns, since they will always cost more than the provide).

I checked your save. The problem is manifold.

1. Micromanagement. You have a lot of 100% corrupted cities, hence they are useless except for reducing unit support and as science farms. Fire the taxmen and hire scientists, they give 3 beakers not 2 coins. And use high food tiels so you can employ more scientists.

2. I reduced lux to 10% and employed a few more scientists instead. This is much better than having a 20% lux and losing a lot more gpt.

3. I traded a tech with Portugal as we would be attacking Babylon the next turn to reduce unit cost. Gained a few gpt.

4. Make sure you retreat your army before declaring war as you don't want to lose your reputation.

Have a look at the save, it doesn't look so bad now.

Hello, thanks for the replies

Thankfully I am currently not at war with the 2 remaining allies left, although I do share a big border with the Babylonians in red who are now upgrading to musketmen. I just feel that warring for the sake of warring will cost me in terms of losing my Mounted Warriors against the musketmen with nothing to show (versus even disbanding them for shields), war weariness from constantly losing units, a long front to manage, and also whether or not I'd be able to make peace again if they gang up on me or if they don't agree to peace?

The 11 settlers are all in transit at the moment and will be building cities on the borders adjacent to the Babylonian territory/building more cities in empty areas.

Interesting about adding the workers back to the cities, this is something which had only considered when tile improvements where all finished, but I guess I may have to do this as they are costing a lot. Maybe if I use this in conjunction with disbanding some Mounted Warriors to contribute to marketplaces for cities larger than size 6 I can get some more money - however most of my my cities at the moment without marketplaces are pretty much fully corrupt.

One other strategy I just thought of now actually whilst typing this is maybe just to build some extra cities in between existing cities around the fully corrupt areas far from the capital and just turn them into scientist farms to try to regain parity with tech research/keep some for taxmen, then tech to Military Tradition and roll them with cavalry?

ThERat said:

I checked your save. The problem is manifold.

1. Micromanagement. You have a lot of 100% corrupted cities, hence they are useless except for reducing unit support and as science farms. Fire the taxmen and hire scientists, they give 3 beakers not 2 coins. And use high food tiels so you can employ more scientists.

2. I reduced lux to 10% and employed a few more scientists instead. This is much better than having a 20% lux and losing a lot more gpt.

3. I traded a tech with Portugal as we would be attacking Babylon the next turn to reduce unit cost. Gained a few gpt.

4. Make sure you retreat your army before declaring war as you don't want to lose your reputation.

Have a look at the save, it doesn't look so bad now.

Click to expand...

Interesting, let me take a look at this

ThERat said:

I checked your save. The problem is manifold.

1. Micromanagement. You have a lot of 100% corrupted cities, hence they are useless except for reducing unit support and as science farms. Fire the taxmen and hire scientists, they give 3 beakers not 2 coins. And use high food tiels so you can employ more scientists.

2. I reduced lux to 10% and employed a few more scientists instead. This is much better than having a 20% lux and losing a lot more gpt.

3. I traded a tech with Portugal as we would be attacking Babylon the next turn to reduce unit cost. Gained a few gpt.

4. Make sure you retreat your army before declaring war as you don't want to lose your reputation.

Have a look at the save, it doesn't look so bad now.

Click to expand...

Interesting, let me take a look at this

Ok, I have had a look at it now, interesting turn around with the tech trades, good work Therat. I like it, we have now pretty much caught up, except missing Gunpowder which will be researched in 4 turns.

I totally overlooked the difference between taxmen and scientists, you've made a huge difference converting them all to the latter. Might I ask then, are there any situations in which you'd prefer taxmen over scientists given that one has gives 3 versus 2?

It's interesting how you changed the luxury slider from 20% to 10%. Does that mean with less tiles worked we are now essentially trading the food that is lost (from having less people work tiles) to the extra beakers gained from the scientists? I've never considered this in the past as well. Again what sorts of situations would you go for one versus the other?

I will play a few turns of this tomorrow night and see how the war goes. My plan is to raze cities so that I don't have to expend energy holding them and replace them by building more settlers. I also hope the musketmen don't completely stonewall me otherwise that will be trouble as they may not be willing to negotiate peace after this.

tjs282 said:

This is just from looking at the screenshots:

It's not your military costs that are strangling you as such, it's your huge stack of Workers and Settlers -- which you also have to pay maintenance on.

And also your cities: your current 'core' city placement/management really kind of sucks (sorry, but it does). Admittedly, your starting location wasn't great, because -- even if you'd moved your starting Settler 2NW and put Salamanca next to the river (=> no need to spend 100s on a 'Duct, plus the Iros are Rel/Agri in C3C, so you can build Settler-pumps on freshwater really easily, even in Despotism), you still wouldn't really have had much room to build a decent 2nd ring. But that being the case, you could/ should have made much better use of your available 1st-ring sites. You could easily have fitted at least 7 or 8 cities into your 1st ring, at distance 3-5 from your capital (i.e. CxxC to CxxxC placement, and CxxC from each other for mutual defence) -- but you've currently got only 4 (at CxxxxC and distance 7.5, Oil Springs is pretty much 2nd-ring), they're too spread out none of them are on that river , and none of them -- including Salamanca -- are even at Pop12 yet!

So the first thing to do, if you're still at war, is to make peace (at least temporarily)! If you've been in a long war under Republic, war-weariness is probably hurting you badly -- and if you've been using Clowns or Lux-spending to counter it (I see only 1 hooked Silk in your [captured] territory -- are there any other Luxes under your cities?), you're seriously diminishing the commerce/gold you could be getting from your core-cities (and or the beakers/gold you could be getting from 1-shield 'specialist farms').

Once you've made peace, found some cities! You currently have 11 Settlers, each of which represents 4 gold per turn cost to your treasury (=44GPT): the 2GPT unit-maintenance you're currently paying per Settler, and the 2GPT you'd also save on your unit-support costs by founding some more cities and increasing your free-unit limit. Even 1-shield cities in the 'total corruption' zone would have increased that limit, but you can still squeeze in some decent 1st-ring cities around Salamanca, e.g.:

• the Hill 3SW,1S
• the riverbank Plains 2NW,1W
• the Grass 3W, and
• the Grass 2SE,1E (BTW: WHY was this mined? No city can use it!)

And you could also put at least two 2nd-ring cities on the peninsula south of Cattaraugus. In fact, given that you still haven't completed a decent core, I really don't understand why you've put at least 2 or 3 of those 11 Settlers in imminent dnger of being killed by the Babs (OK, that's one way of saving maintenance, but not recommended!)...

You also have 69 native Workers running around (=138 GPT unit-support!). I would recommend adding most/ all of those native Workers to your (core) cities to immediately bump them up to their max. sustainable sizes (Pop6 or 12), so that they can start earning you cash, instead of costing it. At this stage in the game, where you hold most of the continent, slave-Workers should be doing most of the terrain-improvement work, not natives. Yes, I know that slaves only work at half-speed, but they cost nothing -- so every 2 Slaves saves you 2 GPT Worker-maintenance! Just stack them in piles of 3-6 to finish jobs quicker. I don't know how many slaves you've got so far, but it's probably not enough so build/rush Settlers/ Workers in captured cities until they're down to Pop 1, then let them regrow. (NB if the cities have already grown since you captured them, you'll initially get native-born units until they're all gone, then you'll get slaves -- use the natives to found/ join your cities, and put the slaves to work!)

Increasing the native-to-foreign ratio in cities will also decrease culture-flip probability...

If after doing all that, you still can't afford to upgrade your MWs, you could also think about disbanding some of them in cities where you need shield-boosts on important projects. Prioritise:

• Courthouses in 1st- and 2nd-ring cities to reduce corruption (=>increase commerce/ income) and shield-waste (=>quicker subsequent build-times)
• Aqueducts in dry core cities, to get them above Pop6
• Harbours in your coastal cities (to feed them and improve commerce in your core cities)
• Libs and Unis to boost research and Cultural expansion (especially against the Babs, who get all their Culture buildings at half-price)
• Markets to keep Pop7-12 cities happy (if you have ≥3 Luxes) and earn you more cash
• Walls to defend dry Pop1-6 farms on your borders

But do also look at all your cities carefully -- sell off any improvements that are costing more than they're earning, and/or switch builds-in-progress if the completed building would not be worth it (e.g. there's little point putting commerce/ shield/ research multiplier-buildings in 1-shield towns, since they will always cost more than the provide).

Click to expand...

You bring up some really good points here, stuff which I will have to study more on.

I still haven't gotten the settler pump mechanics down pat even after having read them for years ashamedly. I may have to go and revisit that, but would a 6 turn settler factor been possible with Salamanca in this case after moving the starting settler?

I agree with you about my city placement. I think in future, particularly with the starting cities I need to have a plan around which city builds what and needs what improvementst, but also in relation to the rings as well which I never really considered. Will have to read some articles on this. I'm also unsure of when to transition them to building infrastructure as I kept my inner ring cities just with a barracks in each and pumping out Mounted Warriors, workers and settlers for the entire game up until now. How do you make that judgement call of the moment you start to build marketplaces and libraries and other city improvements?

I like what you said about the courthouses in particular, I never used them that systematically before, I just looked at each city and made an arbitrary judgement call, but what you said about using them for 1st and 2nd rings only really quantifies it and makes it more clear. The other thing you've made clear is the discount which civs get for buildings! I can't believe I never really appreciated the impact this has on the direction one can move in prior to this.

From your post it's really sounding possible that this situation can resolve itself peacefully by building some more cities, joining some more workers to cities and then teching using the scientists recommended by Therat to get to Military Tradition (whilst also saving up gold on the way) and then go and finish off the remaining AI!

Btw, beware of your army, its defense is a mere 1, so the enemy won't hesitate to attack it.

If you check the MM of the cities, you can see that I employ scientists in such a fashion that food will still overflow for growth or if size 6 is reached, I max out scientists as the city won't grow anyway. MM can be tedious but it's the difference between a good and a great player.

The drop in luxury rate didn't really harm, only a few bigger cities. It is advisable to build markets and temples there for more happiness. As for taxmen, I don't employ them usually unless you go for a min research with only one scientist.

Mike Hussey said:

You bring up some really good points here, stuff which I will have to study more on.

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Thanks, but note that I gave you at least(!) one bum steer in my previous post -- the Iros are Commercial and Agri in C3C, not Religious (they were Religious/Expansionist in Vanilla, hence my confusion). So you don't wanna have a revolution!

I still haven't gotten the settler pump mechanics down pat even after having read them for years ashamedly. I may have to go and revisit that, but would a 6 turn settler factor been possible with Salamanca in this case after moving the starting settler?

Click to expand...

After a little more thought, not under Despo, unfortunately.

For a 6-turner (with a Gran), you need 3-4 excess FPT and 4-5SPT (because you can get 2s from a high-productivity tile on growth). On Grass/Plains starts near rivers, it's relatively easy to get at least 2 FPT per worked tile (including the city-tile), so you'd also need to work two 3-FPT tiles for +4FPT excess. Under Despot (-1FPT if >2FPT), with a non-Agri Civ, that means you'd need two food-tiles that would normally give 4FPT (e.g. Grass with Cattle/Wheat/Game, or an irrigated Floodplain), just for a 6-turner; an Agri Civ gets 3FPT from the city, so would need 1 additional 3FPT-tile. But a Sugar-Plains (+1FPT bonus) tile wouldn't be enough, since even irrigated it would still only give 2FPT under Despot -- so it would be better to mine it for 2FPT and 2SPT.

So no, that spot couldn't pump settlers under Despot -- but certainly could under Monarchy. And although the Iros don't get any of the starting techs towards that gov-tech, they do get Alphabet (and get an extra trade in their capital city), so can go for the Republic-slingshot and then (if they have sufficient contacts) tech-trade Rep for everything else...

I agree with you about my city placement. I think in future, particularly with the starting cities I need to have a plan around which city builds what and needs what improvementst, but also in relation to the rings as well which I never really considered.

Click to expand...

Initially, of course most of your cities will need to build military units, Workers and Settlers to expand and protect your fledgeling Civ. But once you have at least half your 1st ring up and running -- and the requisite techs of course! -- you can start thinking about infrastructure in the capital and the 'safe' cities (i.e. the ones that can't be taken from you without warning in a single turn!).

(Besides, units are cheaper than same-era buildings -- so especially at the higher levels, it may be better to let the AI build the buildings/ Wonders in their cities, and then go and take them!).

But yes, in the early stages, when income is low, it's much better to restrict that infrastructure to what a city needs to be useful to your empire as a whole, rather than what you want that individual city to have. That was a hard lesson for me: I used to be an incurable Builder, and routinely tried to turn all my cities into 'jacks of all trades' -- but building everything everywhere swiftly gets very expensive. So now I specialise to a much greater extent. In the early stages of the game (say the first 60-120 turns, depending on map-size), I follow a general rule of thumb that no 1st-ring city should have more than 2 or 3 buildings (i.e. cost 10-20% of its GPT). Here are my tech-triggers:
Ancient Age:

• No tech (Barracks): high-shield towns
• Pottery (Granary): 1 or 2 high-food (4-5FPT excess), high-shield cities can become 4-turn Settler- (with 7-8SPT) or Worker-pumps (with 4-5SPT)
• Literacy (Library): high-commerce/ border cities do research/ culture after I've built plenty of roads and/or switched to Monarchy/ Republic,
• Maps (Harbour): to boost food/ commerce in coastal cities, often with Libs
• Masonry (Walls): dry, flatland border/coastal cities likely to need the +50% defence-bonus for a long time before Construction
• CoL (Courthouse): 2nd- or 3rd-ring cities (and maybe 1st-ring cities with more than 2-3 trade/shields lost to corruption/waste), since that will boost whatever else they're supposed to be doing
• Construction (Aqueuct): I build core cities on freshwater wherever possible, but if not, a dry but fast-growing 1st-ring city will start a 'Duct (pre-)build when Construction shows up on the horizon (slow-/no-growth towns will just build Workers or cheap military/artillery at Pop4-6)
• Currency (Market): Depending on difficulty (i.e. inherent happiness) level, and how many Luxes I control, usually not until cities hit Pop6-7 or more: after that, with 4-6 Luxes and a Market, a city of Pop10-12 can be kept happy pretty easily (barring WW)

Optional(!):

• Ceremonial Burial (Temples): only for happiness if I'm Lux-starved (or for cheaper Culture than Libs if my Civ is non-Scientific), and/or I'm going for a Culture Vic (which is rare -- I like building the Spaceship!)

Middle Age:

• Education (Unis): in Lib-towns
• Monotheism (Cathedrals) [and Construction (Colosseums)]: for happiness/Culture if I'm building Pop13+ metros in my core (also needs Sanitation --> Hospitals)

Industrial Age:

• Industrialisation (Factory): in high-shield 1st- and 2nd-ring cities only

Specialist farms get Walls (if dry or un'Ducted), and at most a single 1-GPT building -- maybe a Harbour if coastal, maybe a Market or Barracks if inland (but if a captured city had already built a 'Duct, every other building which costs GPT will be sold).

Hey guys,

There more and more I read your posts, especially tj I realise how deep this game really is. I've been playing Civ3 since about 2003 and only now are discovering these insights despite having played on and off for the last ten years (although admittedly large periods of off). Even after posting this thread about 4-5 years ago (which was the last time I played this game seriously), I feel like my play (despite winning) was still inferior back then and too shallow:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355835

I feel that this is main barrier preventing many Emperor players (I'm not claiming to be one yet) from moving up in levels is the additional level of planning, micromanagment and overall vision required in each game recommended through your postings.

The concept of city planning for me has only been really basic in the past. In terms of specialising cities I've only really considered two types of cities, the settler/worker builders and the military builders, one deserving a granary and the other a barracks.

In terms of the settler builders (in despotism) all I have known is that they require some sort of food bonus to operate, but the thing is how do we proceed with picking settling sites when there are no food bonuses (bonii?) available? Traditionally, I have simply gone with cities where there are a lot of plains and making them settler/worker pumps, but I'm wondering if you guys have any better suggestions? If there are no food bonuses and the government is in despotism, then the maxium food surplus you can have is 2 food per turn right, which would result in possibly a 8-10 turn settler factory. It seems that nearly all the succession games, public games on this forum have some kind of food bonus, there are not many games with 'mediocre' starts.

In relation to military cities, the obvious answer is bonus grasslands or grasslands sites with some hills and mountains for later ramping up of production. To add to this however, I think I have learnt now that it is about planning for a particular number of shields per turn for these types of cities to achieve a just a round divisible number so that there are no shields wasted. E.g. if we are Iroquis, then having our military cities aim for either 5SPT (6 turn MWs), 10SPT (3 turn MWs), 15SPT (2 turn MWs) rather than have a city with 8SPT with shields wasted where that tile could be given to other cities to work. This is an insane revelation which I've just had!

The biggest question I have in relation to these two concepts is what factors should influence these cities from changing from settler/worker/military production to building libraries, courthouses and marketplaces? I want to get the timing of this switch spot on because in the past I have only switched to building these buildings once the opportunities to conquer enemy cities is greatly diminished either through AI tech advantage or lack of reach. I'd imagine this "tipping point" will be sooner and sooner at higher difficulty levels?

I really like the idea of ring city placements, yes I have read about them in the past, however never really understood the absolute importance of them in maximising the number of good core cities, minimising corruption but the biggest thing I've realised now is also the idea of being able to quantify the allocation of city improvements through ring numbers, e.g. ring 1 get X city improvement where ring 2 gets Y city improvement. I am amazed at this last thing! One thing that's also just dawned on me now is that by using such ring placements, you can optimally 'drag' or make use of tiles further out from the capital.

Correct me if I am wrong then, but better understanding these concepts now, would it be good to have 2 rings worth of cities for production (mainly military and unit production) and then cities outside these rings to be packed together, 1 city every 4 tiles, irrigate everything and make them specialist farms?

Now in terms of city improvement selections just to make sure I've got my understanding right:
- Barracks: for military pump cities in the first ring, not needed for 2nd ring cities due to artillery piece production)
- Granaries: for settler/worker pump cities. Unsure of whether they are needed for military pump cities which are growing large
- Temples: stopped building them after I graduated from chieftain difficulty level. Feel that they are useful for rushing border culture to prevent flips in the mid to late game in exceptional scenarios
- Courthouses: I now quantifiably know to only build them in 1st and 2nd ring cities if the benefit derived is more than 1-2GPT/SPT
- Marketplaces: Built in high population core cities for the primary purpose of alleviating happiness problems and the secondary purpose of generating more income. For happiness purposes, ignore in cities outside the 2nd ring due to the use of specialist farms. Unsure if these add to the effect of taxmen? Can anyone confirm?
- Libraries: I have heard that these are not very useful at higher levels due to the reliance on tech trading, and 'pointy stick' research. Although I can't cite the source of this but for some reason it has just stuck in my mind so I'm surprised you recommended this. I think somebody said that the game should be over before you find libraries useful or something along those lines. I wonder if the effects of these buildings stack with using scientists? But then again predominantly you would have scientists in outer cities and libraries in inner cities.
- University: Again for some reason the only thing I remember about these (haven't built them in a long time) is someone mentioning that they are too expensive.
- Cathedrals/Colosseums: Lumped these two together. Again the words "two expensive" but I also remember reading somewhere that these things are only a band-aid to deeper seated happiness problems throughout the empire which should be overcome with other methods.

Sorry about the long post, I feel that even just typing this up has really ignited my passion for this game again. It's the only game I know which champions concepts such as depth, unique replayability, absolute immersion, efficiency, planning and strategy. I really feel that the newer versions such as Civ4 have become dumbed down for the masses and dumbed down in terms of scale and that it is about building 'all buildings in all cities' which would be severely punished here. It's just a shame that over the years, the numbers of players have naturally dwindled, that we will never get back to those glory years with tons of people playing and discussing.

Re: Libraries and Unis:

Agree, may not be needed for fast Domination/Conquest games on <Medium and/or Pangaea maps, that can be won in the Ancient or Middle Age via fast overland assaults or short marine invasions, but may be needed on >Medium and/or Continents maps where overseas AIs can grow to high-tech monsters before you can reach/ kill them. But pretty much essential for 'science-victory' games that require you to reach the Modern Age (Space, Diplo)

Re: City rings:

When I talk about 1st-/2nd-/3rd-ring cities in connection with C3C, I should probably emphasise for third-parties that those are approximate rings. In Vanilla Civ3, there were significant anti-corruption advantages to building precisely circular rings around the Palace- and FP-cities, i.e. so-called 'ring-city placement' (RCP). However, using RCP did tend to 'force' the player to plant cities on tiles that he might otherwise have preferred to leave unsettled (e.g. food bonuses). Strict RCP is not necessary/ advisable in Conquests, because the corruption algorithm was tweaked to some extent (and RCP no longer applies to cities around the FP). So 'rings' can now be oval, or more likely polyhedral as needed based on the terrain that the pRNG has rolled for you. However, it does still make sense to plant your cities in roughly equidistant ring(s) around your capital.

For one thing, in the early game, you're going to be expanding outwards from that one point, possibly over unroaded terrain, probably using mostly 1MP-units until you get TheWheel/HbR (unless you're playing e.g. the Aztecs, with their 2MP JagWarrior replacing the 1MP Warrior). You want those new cities to be up as quickly as possible after the Settler is built, and start making some return (food, shields and/or gold) on that 20f, 30s 'investment'. So you don't then want to be sending your Settlers on a 6-10T trek across the map to found new cities (not to mention the Workers and Mil-units to connect, improve and defend them): you want to settle close to home. This especially applies in higher difficulty levels, where the AICivs have major production advantages, and start with extra units, so are able to expand (and/or conquer) much faster and looser than the human player, at least initially.

Secondly, since the shape of a city's BFC didn't change from Vanilla to Conquests (or indeed from CivDOS to C-IV!), from the point of view of allowing your core cities to

• work at least 12 tiles when fully grown (Pop12) prior to the Industrial Age (and Sanitation, if you want it)
• work all tiles under your control (optimise space usage)
• defend each other (to minimise your mil-unit support costs)

... they need to be reasonably close together -- ideally CxxC (for mutual defence using 1-MP units), but certainly not more than CxxxC.

Re: City production:
Finally, given the above, roughly equidistant rings will give you the maximum number of cities at each major distance-corruption level, so you can then tailor those cities' outputs/purposes according to their inherent strengths/weaknessness, before, during, and after terrain improvements, as you mention above. e.g. for zero [or minimal] wastage without turn-by-turn micromanagement, you could build:

• a 10s-unit in a town making 2 or 5 SPT
• a 15s-unit in a town making 3, [4,] or 5 SPT
• a 20s-unit in a town making 4, 5, [7,] or 10 SPT
• a 30s-unit in a town making 5, 6, [8,] 10, [11,] 15 [or 16] SPT
• a 40s-unit in a town making 4, 5, [6, 7,] 8, 10, [11, 14,] or 20SPT, etc.

Summed up, the ideal SPT is obviously (a multiple of) 5 or 10SPT -- and so 9- or 13-SPT towns are pigs for building just about everything (except maybe 50s- and 70s-units...)! In such cases, it may be preferable to swap some SPT (production) for FPT (growth) or CPT (gold) -- or vice versa -- to reach a more useful SPT number before starting a build. There are also 3 additional things that can be done to minimise shield-overrun without major MM, short-rushing etc.:

• If a city has an awkward SPT for a unit with all citizens assigned for minimum food overrun, maybe start a building instead.
• If a city grows while producing something, you can/will get some 'magic' free shields on the IBT (if the Governor is set to 'Emphasise production') before you reassign citizens for nicer FPT/SPT numbers on your next turn, e.g. a city with 3SPT can build a 10s-unit in 3T, if it grows on that third IBT
  • This is often the essential magic of a Worker- or Settler-pump, which completes its build using the IBT growth-shields, then drops back to the cycle's starting Pop-level (usually Pop4 or Pop5), ready to go again
• Or, if you have the cash (or Pop) to spare/waste, you could always rush the last 2T of production to avoid overrun

My apologies to both Mike Hussey and CivFanatics. No excuses.

I never really bothered so much about the exact placement of cities in C3C. However, i would make sure that the no corrupt cities are spaced out somewhat to be able to work all tiles at size 12. I am not a fan of ICS. Even distant corrupt science farms are spaced 3 tiles apart.

If you want a fantastic mod that gets rid of all the early settler rush, a lot of the corruption and concepts such as pollution, try CMM. Worth a look.

ThERat said:

I am not a fan of ICS. Even distant corrupt science farms are spaced 3 tiles apart.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree.

I just finished a Large Continents Monarch-C3C game as the Chinese (Dom Vic -- my first ever). The savegame (downloaded from CFC) had been modded to reduce the no. of AICivs, which I didn't realise when I start playing, so it was a lot easier than it should have been, but still...

Anyway, I used ICS (also for the first time) to build Pop6 farms (2-3 citizens, 3-4 scientists) thoughout my captured territory -- of which there was lots! First I CxxxC'd my coasts, then I backfilled the gaps and inland to CxCxC. By the time the land-area ticker hit 66%, I was founding 'New[City]7's; assuming 20 city names per civ, I must have had >20*2*7 = >240(?) founded cities, plus 40 or 50 captured cities.

The beaker-output was incredible (I was doing 4T research in the mid- to late- Industrial even with Sci% at 0% and virtually no foreign income) but the map looked, well, horrible. Also, turn-times got noticeably and significantly longer (my laptop is old and creaky). And finding one city name in a list of hundreds, to gift ex-Indian and Aztec cities back to them (to take advantage of our RoPs) was a pain in the butt. And when WW from my invasion of Zululand finally started becoming problematic, I had to give up any hope of keeping the farms optimised -- I turned on the City-Governors instead, who of course made Clowns and massive food overruns (although it didn't really didn't matter by then, I'd got all the tech I wanted and more money than I could spend before I won).

So if I do farming again -- especially on a Standard+ map -- I'll probably build CxxC Pop12 farms instead of Pop6, even though that will mean building loads of Aqueducts (4-6 citizens, 4-6 Scientists, and 1 Taxman to pay for the 'Duct = ~15 BPT and ~1-2 GPT per farm, which is pretty much what you'd get from two Pop6 farms -- but with half the MM).

Hey guys,

Sorry about the late reply. Just got around to the game again and finished it off with a domination victory in 970AD. I think it could have been better had I followed Therat's advice in attacking Babylon right away as upon further investigation, at the time of the save file, it was mainly spearmen versus my MWs and there were only one or two musketmen to face. It was just the initial sight of them sending me into a panic and deterring me from attacking.

I basically went the economic route instead by making use of my scientist farms. I feel like I'm starting to fully understand them now. Basically you every 4 grasslands tile, you build one city and let 3 citizens work the irrigated grasslands whilst the surplus food provided can fund 3 scientists all game long. No need to build any other improvements at all in that city saving you time and money. Put the city on wealth. That way you can actually systemically plan for a load of scientist farms through clever tile and city allocation to maximise the number of cities you can spam to use up all the corrupt grasslands in your empire whilst in Republic. I'm not sure if there is even a more efficient use of corrupt cities? Correct me if I'm wrong. Using this strategy, you basically fund all your scientific research using scientists which then negates the need for using the science slider and also building science related building such as libraries or universities etc.
Another thing I'll add to this is size 12 city I would probably not recommend for a science farm due to the amount of wasted food. I think that the numbers are odd. This may change when railroads are available though, haven't looked into it. Plus the time it takes to grow to size 12 is always wasted time.

Another nuance I discovered to this is that for the irrigated tiles which are not grasslands (which is pretty much only plains for non-agricultural civs and includes deserts for agricultural civs) is that you can either still spam cities to maximise the use of tiles or you can allocate sufficient tiles for the city to grow up to 12 and let them become settler/worker pumps for the rest of the game. Considering that they do not produce food surplus, this I feel is the most efficient use of those cities, particularly if you constantly warring and using combat settlers or utilising a 'raze and replace' style of conquest.

In essence, a large or medium Republican empire will essentially consist of 3 sections;
- A productive/semi productive core consisting of 1st and 2nd ring cities which produce all your military units, small wonders, pre-builds, and self built city improvements.
- A corrupt section (presumably of conquered cities) where the cities are located on grassland and can therefore be turned into specialist farms
- A corrupt section where the cities are not located on grassland and are turned into settler/worker pumpers

One thing I did not experience in this game (because I set the game settings to flat world) is that there may be cases where sections of the corrupt empire are predominatly hills. If that's the case, based purely on theory, I would think an ICS setup would be optimal as there would be insufficient yields on both shields and food. That way each city square yields something of worth.

So going back to the game, I simply exploited this empire setup and did 4-10 turn 0% research utilising only scientsts to beeline to Military Tradition, all the while obtaining hundreds of gold per turn (talk about having your cake and eating it too!). I was able to upgrade my MWs via knights to Cavalry and the rest is history.

I've attached some screenshots too. Probably have some more insights but can't remember them all at the moment, will post when I do. Have a look, I had 126 workers left at the end, I only joined a few to the cities and all of them always had work to do.

MarkK said:

My apologies to both Mike Hussey and CivFanatics. No excuses.

Click to expand...

No worries Mark, all water under the bridge

tjs282 said:

Yeah, I agree.

I just finished a Large Continents Monarch-C3C game as the Chinese (Dom Vic -- my first ever). The savegame (downloaded from CFC) had been modded to reduce the no. of AICivs, which I didn't realise when I start playing, so it was a lot easier than it should have been, but still...

Anyway, I used ICS (also for the first time) to build Pop6 farms (2-3 citizens, 3-4 scientists) thoughout my captured territory -- of which there was lots! First I CxxxC'd my coasts, then I backfilled the gaps and inland to CxCxC. By the time the land-area ticker hit 66%, I was founding 'New[City]7's; assuming 20 city names per civ, I must have had >20*2*7 = >240(?) founded cities, plus 40 or 50 captured cities.

Spoiler :

I'd killed the English and the Americans on my continent, and then the Romans on theirs, but that still wasn't enough for the 66% land. The Zulus (who'd started to run away on their side of the ocean, in territory but not tech) then DoW'd me over possession of a piddly little 20-tile island off my coast, so I had the cassus belli I needed to go after them with impunity. While the Aztecs and Indians would have been easier targets, neither had enough territory left for it to be worth killing them -- besides, it's always nice to have an admiring audience, right?

I eventually expanded the invasion to 4 separate fronts, and my Cav-Armies, Tanks, Inf and Arty ended up capturing so many Zulu cities (defended by Rifles and Muskets), that I could afford to keep the Indians and Aztecs Gracious by occasionally gifting them back one of their ex-cities -- after its Barracks had healed my units (I wasn't being altruistic: I had RoPs with them, so the instant cultural expansions also helped my advance against the Zulus on those 2 fronts!).

The beaker-output was incredible (I was doing 4T research in the mid- to late- Industrial even with Sci% at 0% and virtually no foreign income) but the map looked, well, horrible. Also, turn-times got noticeably and significantly longer (my laptop is old and creaky). And finding one city name in a list of hundreds, to gift ex-Indian and Aztec cities back to them (to take advantage of our RoPs) was a pain in the butt. And when WW from my invasion of Zululand finally started becoming problematic, I had to give up any hope of keeping the farms optimised -- I turned on the City-Governors instead, who of course made Clowns and massive food overruns (although it didn't really didn't matter by then, I'd got all the tech I wanted and more money than I could spend before I won).

So if I do farming again -- especially on a Standard+ map -- I'll probably build CxxC Pop12 farms instead of Pop6, even though that will mean building loads of Aqueducts (4-6 citizens, 4-6 Scientists, and 1 Taxman to pay for the 'Duct = ~15 BPT and ~1-2 GPT per farm, which is pretty much what you'd get from two Pop6 farms -- but with half the MM).

Click to expand...

This sounds like a really fun game! You should post screenshots. I'm interested to know more about why you think size 12 pop science farms are better than size 6? For example in the screenshot below, a 12 science farm can only support 5 specialists whereas 2 size 6 farms can support 6? Maybe I've overlooked a crucial aspect?