Expansion, Expansion

Hello, this is my first post.. wohoo

I started playing civ 3 bout a few weeks ago, only have civ 3 regular

I played a few one on one games to start out, I've played with Persia and Babylon and started trying out Japan and won a few one on one games and then 3 civ tiny map games

One thing I noticed that always kills me is my expansions.

I start out making a Settler Factory, having my capital pump out a settler every 4 or 5 turns.

My empire always out-expands the other empires and I always have alot more land on the given continant than then other opponents.

But, I found that my outer Cities always build SO SLOWWW. It takes them a WHILE to build the basics of what every city should have (temple, library, aquaduct if needed, granary, etc.)

Corruption also seems to slow me down.

What can i do to put a stop to this?

I was thinking it COULD be due to the way I expand. Instead of using the ICS or OCS or whatever theyre called, I expand sometimes to places that are probably too far from my capital to be in a better location (with lots of bonus grasslands or something) or to gain strategic recourses (iron, horses, etc.)

Also, should I keep expanding untill all of the land is taken up? If not when is a good time to stop?

For example, in my last game (warlord difficulty) I was playing Persia vs. India, Iroquois, and Greece. After exploring, The Iroquois were neighboring me around the middle of the continent with India to the right border of the continent and Greece completely isolated on its own island. I found myself having 13 cities while everyone else had 5 or less. After this happened, lots of problems occured. Jungle was slowing me down, Corruption was settling in, and building was going REALLY REALLY SLOW for the outermost cities and I found that my inner cities and capital (a group of 4-5 cities) began producing all of the forces to keep the Iroquois who were being greedy and invaded out of my territory. Although I was completely destroying them in the tech race (I had Immortals and was getting my last tech to get to the next age when they still had archers and the Iroquoi UU and didnt even have ironworking, polytheism, or any other advance past the first row) I couldnt keep up, and they started to take some of my slow-building cities while I frantically was rushing units over which really pissed me off.

So basically, any tips for expansion and faster city growth?

Thanks,
Tyler

metsfan51591 said:

what every city should have (temple, library, aquaduct if needed, granary, etc.)

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This is a mistake. You don't need those things in every city. In fact, you need very little of it.

Temples should not be build at all.
Libraries are only usefull in cities with a lot of commerce, and i recommend to build them only later in the game (early or halfway middle ages).
You may want one of these buildings in your border towns for cultural expansion, but be selective about where to build them. Do not go for cultural expansion in every border town.
Granaries you build for your settler factory and in a few other cities with a lot of food where you build settlers. I often pick one moderately corrupt town with lots of food to be worker factory for the rest of the game.

metsfan51591 said:

Also, should I keep expanding untill all of the land is taken up? If not when is a good time to stop?

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Don't play large of huge maps and use the maximum number of opponents. If you still have loads of land (>15-18 towns) to take before you meet neighbouring borders, you may be ready for the next difficulty level

It is normal that your core cities produce far most of your troops. Certainly at your difficulty level, you should easilly run over your opponents. Even with units from only 5 cities. Do not build all those city improvements you just mentioned, just build the few granaries and thats it. Barracks everywhere and troops from all towns. You will run over them with ease.

Now while with those barracks and lots of troops you are running over them, you gain even more ground. Use all those corrupt border towns just to build settlers. They don't need to grow past size 6, they don't need any city improvements at all. Initially you may need to build some settlers from the not so corrupt towns to get the ICS train going. Once you have a bunch of ICS towns ready, they will produce settlers for more ICS towns who produce even more settler etc...

Now your science may be a bit lower because you did not build libraries in your strong towns, but troops instead. This is no reason to worry, your ICS towns can support scientists to make up for that. After you have a reasonable force, you are conquering your neighbours and you are filling up the ICS land, you could build libraries in your core towns. But on the difficulty level you are playing, you will find that you won't need them and you will be able to crush all opposition with units no more advanced than knights and maybe even with only ancient age units. If that is not the case and the game takes long enough for libraries to be worth it (they are basically only worth it if you are gonna research at least to military tradition before winning the game) then start thinking about building them by the time a city produces about 15 science already without a library.

Of course, some people prefer to play more peacefully, but this is the most efficient method to reach any victory condition except for the 20k culture victory and it is the proven method used by all deity players who win gotm games.

If you play this way, your empire will cover the map like an ever faster growing oil stain on water.
You build a strong military to whipe out your enemies, your ever growing number of corrupt cities produce an ever growing flow of settlers and all those towns will house scientists so that you can keep up in science even without libraries.


The reason why this is so effective is the following:
The total production in your empire depends primarily on the total number of citizens you have. Every citizen adds to the production.
Each of your cities produce 3 things: commerce, production and food. The corrupt cities produce less of those things, down to just 5%. Food however is the exception, corrupt towns produce just as much food as non corrupt towns. Therefore, you must utilise that food optimally. You want to optimise food there by irrigating everything, and produce as many citizens as possible. You use this food to make many extra settlers and thus an ever faster growing population.
Now since this land is so currupt, your population won't be producing a lot of commerce and shields. However, if you make them scientists, they produce 3 science, or 2 gold if you make them taxmen. Of course every corrupt town also adds 1 commerce and 1 shield.
The balance you have to find is when to build settlers in a corrupt town and when to assign scientists (and thus stopping growth).

Another method to use the population in corrupt towns is by poprushing. This is usually done later in the game using communism when one wants 100k culture, but it can also be done in games where the AI techs very slowly like on your difficulty level so that you do not need the scientists. You could then stay in despotism and simply pop rush units in all your corrupt cities.

Welcome to civfanatics, metsfan!

As for your questions

1) You are overbuilding. Temples should almost never be built and libraries are overrated. In the beginning, the only thing you want is granaries in two or three selected cities. The capital usually gets one but whether it should be the first build depends on the start position. Other than that, all you want is settlers and workers, workers and settlers.

You will also want the odd warrior for exploration and MPs. Build those in cities while waiting to get what you really want. For example, if you just founded a city and it makes 2 shields and 2 food, build a warrior then a worker. If it only makes 1 shield, build a worker.

The only other building you may want at the beginning is a barracks. Don't do this until you are getting ready for war. Build these in cities with high shields and low food. In any case, all your troops except for 5-10 warriors built at the beginning should be vets and they should be built from these cities.

2) You are building your cities too far apart. Each city should get about 12 workable tiles, allowing it to grow until it needs a hospital - something which doesn't come until 2/3s of the way through the game, if it does at all. There is nothing wrong with reaching out to get a resource, but the back country needs to be filled in afterwards. As for where to place your cities, since you are using vanilla, read the War Academy article on ring city placement.

Also, should I keep expanding untill all of the land is taken up?

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Yes. Then keep expanding after that

WackenOpenAir said:

your ICS towns can support scientists to make up for that.

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He's playing vanilla. ICS is not very effective.

Oh that's too bad, buy C3C
But indeed, that voids much of my advice.

In that case, on the low difficulty levels, you may want to try the pop rush strategy. If you want to see it at work, you can look at the one and only SID level sgotm that has ever been done. I played that complete game in despotism and made 500 units trough pop rushing.
It can work at SID games if the AI stays in peace because they build so many units that all their income goes to upkeep, putting a halt to their scientific research, but it can also be used at difficulty levels low enough that they research very slowly anyway.

If you are gonna play somewhat higher difficulty levels, you will need some libraries to keep up in research and the corrupt towns are not that usefull anymore. In this case, just optimise your towns with < 2/3 corruption. (thus 1/3 remaining for use)
You should then build the library much earlier since you wont have the scientists to make up for it, and the reward of conquest is smaller. Still, conquest remains important and valuable since you will be conquering luxuries and wonders.
Try to keep some friends in the world who are willing to pay gpt for your technology. If you get gpt from them, you may be able to keep science at 100% and you may not need marketplaces. (though they can be usefull for happiness when you have 4+ luxuries)
Still, do not build temples and certainly not colloseums and cathedrals. Courthouses may be used in the moderately corrupt towns (25-70% corrupt). Build them first in the most corrupt towns and last in the less corrupt towns. In a 70% corrupt towns, a courthouse will help you just as much as a library, but in a 25% corrupt towns, the lib will help you more than a courthouse.

Vanilla and PTW have another strong point though, i am not gonna explain the details, you should do some research in the articles here.
Learn to use CRP and build the FP in an efficient place so that you can build 2 rings.
If you do this properly, you can build at least 10-12 towns with very low corruption (<20%)

Take a look at the reports from the players who are succesfull in the GOTM games. I think that is one of the best places to learn.

You are generally going the right direction. You expand expand expand and you take more land than the computer. This is what you need to do. But you don't need to build all those things. You said "It takes them a WHILE to build the basics of what every city should have (temple, library, aquaduct if needed, granary, etc.)" What I found out from these guys is that building all those things only seems necessary, mainly because you aren't looking at your corruption and costs.

Temple: Helps happiness in large, productive core cities and maybe expands your borders around less productive border towns that need to bring a luxury or resource into your borders. Necessary if you want a cultural victory, otherwise you should only build them as needed.

Library: Necessary in large, productive core cities unless you trade for all your technologies (which you probably don't do at Warlord). Also serves the border expansion role of a temple if you need to get those luxuries or resources that are nearby. Necessary if you want a cultural victory, otherwise you should only build them as needed.

Aquaduct: You should need very few of these. Place your cities next to rivers and lakes and they are not needed. Beyond that you should only build these if your city is 1) size 6, 2) capable of producing a food surplus, 3) not totally corrupt. If you don't see more than 1 commerce or shield that isn't red, don't build! Corruption is a big problem. If you make an aquaduct, your city and thus your corruption problem gets bigger. Why would you want to make a big problem bigger?

Granary: These only matter in cities that need to grow FAST. If you are producing settlers from a city, it should have a granary. If you are producing workers, you might want one. Otherwise, you do not generally need one. (Sometimes I will build one in a large city that has almost no corruption so that it can grow faster and be even more productive, but by that point in the game you usually have too many workers to manage and joining half a dozen back into this city is faster and cheaper.)

Etc: I don't know what else you think is a basic need. Barracks is not needed unless you are fighting a war and the town is right in the middle of the fighting, or in a productive core city that is pumping out most of your military units. No other reasons to build them. Marketplaces help with happiness if you have 3+ luxuries and the more luxuries the more useful, but this really only matters for larger cities, not for towns. It also increases income if you aren't 100% research (which I often am at that point in the game) but only if you build them in your core, uncorrupted cities. The corrupt towns never need them. Courthouses are only useful in the middle ground. A city that is not at least 20% corrupt will gain little by reducing that corruption, while a city that is over 80% corrupt will barely reduce that corruption. On a tiny map courthouses get used very little because corruption increases so quickly with distance, but in standard to huge worlds you end up with a lot of these.

Get your building habits under control and you will find the game gets much easier. It may not be as much fun if you enjoy building, but then maybe you should focus on space race, culture, and diplomatic victories than on world conquest.

2 details in the above post i don't agree with:

Don't wait for your cities to be size 6 before building an aquaduct. If a city needs an aquaduct, i make it a high priority to have it ready by the time it needs it (size6 + full food box)/

Barracks aren't only needed in war area's and not only when you are at war. Build barracks in any city that produces units. Do not build a single regular unit other than that few early scouting warriors. In my method of playing, that means i build barracks in every city, because i build almost nothing but units in every city. If you want to be more peacefull, you may be more selective, but after you have learned that all those city improvements are not worthy, i don't see what else your cities should be producing

WackenOpenAir said:

2 details in the above post i don't agree with:

Don't wait for your cities to be size 6 before building an aquaduct. If a city needs an aquaduct, i make it a high priority to have it ready by the time it needs it (size6 + full food box)/

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Are you referring to me? I didn't know I said any such thing. I didn't mean to say that because I don't wait until the last minute. I try to time it so the aquaduct is done at or a turn or two before maxing out, rather than later where the food is wasted.

Alex Johnson said:

Are you referring to me? I didn't know I said any such thing. I didn't mean to say that because I don't wait until the last minute. I try to time it so the aquaduct is done at or a turn or two before maxing out, rather than later where the food is wasted.

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I thought you might not wanted to say it that way. I called it details but mentioned it because i read it that way and others may too

So, let me see if I have this right.

In a typical corrupt outlying town, build a barracks and troops or workers and settlers, nothing else. Set up scientists after awhile.

In a typical productive core city, build a barracks and crank out veteran troopies. With maybe a grainary or a library.

What about marketplaces? Just the core, or as many as possible?

I build marketplaces in all my cities that will be going over size 6.
They are the building that gives happiness, not Temples.
I believe marketplaces are the most important structure you can build.

It depends on your goals. The higher difficulty level, the more focused players seem to be. I'm only at Regent, but I typically build both science and money making things:
Settler Factory: Granary (population doesn't get high enough to need happiness buildings and we don't have time to build libraries)
Core military pump: Barracks, probably Library and Marketplace and a happiness building since we aren't reducing the population regularly
other Core cities: Library, Marketplace, University, maybe Harbor if short of food and on a coastline
Middle cities: Courthouse, Library, Marketplace, maybe University and Bank
Distant cities: only Temple or Library...sell off after borders expand, Harbor if on another island/continent, Barracks if I'm waging war on that distant island

Depending on your style you might chose either Library/University or Marketplace/Bank but not both. I like having both so I get benefits no matter what my research slider is at. Once during war I slid to 0% research and just raked in gold for three turns, rushed a bunch of stuff, then went back to normal (90% research) and got my tech in 4 turns.

You may want to consider what you are going to be doing in the game, before you crank out structures and or troops. Say you are going to play medium levles like Monarch/Emp or even Regent.

Now are you going to attempt to run science at the max all the time? If so, how much value can you get out of things like banks? I see players with banks and exchanges and running with all on science and lux and zero tax.

Now how useful were those structures? Same coin flipped over for science. If you are going to do little research or none at some point in the early middle ages, do you really want to built uni's?

If you are peaceful builder, do you want barracks all over the place? Markets are special as they offer more than just 50% boost for gold. However you still cannot just throw them up in every town, it is not a good way to spend 100 shields in places that 100% corrupt or will not get over size 6.

what you are seeing is quite in line with how civ is designed. Your core 5-10 cities will probably create at least 1/2 of your forces, and perhaps more like 70%, at least over the life of the civ. The corruption model and the fact that the inner cities have been around for a longer time will see to that.


You can build temples or whatever you want in your core, because those cities can support them. Building temples in the core might slow you down with upkeep and unneccessary happiness.... but building temples and cathedrals in size 4 85% corrupt city with very little road improvements will drag your civ down - the maintenance costs will *kill* you.

Food doesn't corrupt, so use outer cities to build workers. Or have them produce wealth, or settlers.

Good advice, so far, though I should add, when you do get around to building Temples (and you should build them sparingly in the early game), build them from the frontier inward, as your outer regions will have the most need of them. Build Libraries from the core outward, to allow for the Temple pattern.
Also, do build a Granary in the core city with the best food production, and irrigate the food-producing tiles (you can mine one of them if you have several), and make sure its production is good with a few mines; this will be your settler factory. Your workers can come from any city that can produce them every few turns, or conversely, as an early (but not necessarily first) build out of every couple or few new towns until the REX is completed, and then out of your former settler factory thereafter to catch up. You should have 3 workers for every two cities.
Build Marketplaces when you get a chance, especially if your economy needs a boost, and then banks when you can.
Cathedrals and Colosseums are not essential unless the city has a serious happiness problem.

Desertsnow said:

Cathedrals and Colosseums are not essential unless the city has a serious happiness problem.

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Or if you want a cultural victory. We always assume everyone wants to conquer the world with guns, but some players like culture games. In that case you want:
Temple, Library, Colesseum, Cathedral, University, Research Lab (if the game lasts that long).

Build them as early as you can so that you get the double-culture bonus after 1,000 years. If you can't afford all of them, don't build the Colesseum or the Research Lab, they have the lowest Culture per Maintenance ratio (as does the temple, but you are likely to need that for the Cathedral and you'll build it early enough that it will be worth 2x for most of the game).

What are you guys talking about? Temples should almost never be built in the core in a non-culture game, they are only for border expansion in conquered cities to get domination. You get +1 happy face and you pay 1 coin for maintenance. So what is the benefit? Why can't i just move my lux slider to get exactly the same effect?

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OK, lets talk about "peacefull" victory conditions if you want to...

In a research game (space or diplo) you should be researching so fast that you don't have time for temples untill industrial age. The benefit they give is so small that it is better to build troops instead of those buildings.

Assuming you loose 1 cavalry unit per enemy city you capture and assuming that a city is worth 10 beakers (3 science specialists) we can approximately say that building units gives you 10 beakers per turn for 80 shields you invest.

Building a settler gives you 10 beakers per 30 shields, but you need to conquer land to fit those cities. You also loose population, and you don't want that in the core, so build them in semi-corrupt land or cash-rush.

The above are long-term investments though, you need to wait a bit because you can't attack with 1 unit, you need to assemble an army before attacking. And you also need to wait for those cities to grow. That is a disadvantage, but the cost efficensy is better then for most buildings.

So let us compare this with benefit from buildings. I'll arrange those buildings in the order from most usefull to less usefull in my opinion.

An aqueduct is always worth building in a core town if it is needed. Double population means double beakers (+12 per 100 shields in republic, roughly the same as building units, but it also doubles production and allows building other buildings and units twice as fast). Start building those as soon as you found a city and synchronise growth and shields so that it is built by the time you grow to size 7 (start building it a little bit later if you are agricultural). However you should settle as many cities as possible near fresh water to avoid wasting those 100 shields.

A harbour in a coastal city can be very usefull if it allows you to work several coastal tiles. It's usefullness depends on the number of such tiles. The average is about 5 coast/sea tiles or so. That is worth 12-15 beakers (if you have runned out of land tiles) for 60 shields (30 if scientific). So building harbours in cities with many coastal tiles is more efficent then building units. But that is only after you used up all the nearby land tiles.

A library gives you 12-15 beakers per turn for 80 shields in a good city (republic, size 12, roads everywhere maybe some bonus points from rivers), so it is worth building it before units if by the time it is built it will be at least size 9-10. If you are scientific you can build them even earlier. The advantage is that you'll be getting your beakers straight after building it.

A university however is almost always not worth building before units if you are not scientific. It gives you the same 15 beakers, but costs 200 shields. Building units instead is twice as efficent. Only build those early if you are scientific, otherwise build them after you have a large enough army to conquer the world.

Copernicus's Observatory and Newton's University are about the same efficent as normal university. They cost twice as much and give twice as much beakers. Build those if your military push is already progressing nicely by the time they are available, otherwise build units.

A marketplace allows you to turn down lux rate. Its value depends on the number of luxuries you have. It is most usefull when you have an average number of luxuries (5 fro example). Then it is worth about 20% science output, that is 6 beakers per 100 shields. So you can see that even in the best case it is much less efficent then building units and after you built enough units you can conquer all 8 luxes and you won't need markets. So don't build those at all.

The same reasoning applies to all other happiness buildings, but they are even less efficent.

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The culture victories are completely different. For a 20K victory you need exactly 1 temple, 1 cathedral, 1 colosseum in your 20K city and you better build them ASAP. It is even better to cash-rush those in 1 turn after disbanding a warrior if you want to get a good date. This is done so that the city is building wonders all the time. The culture city should become size 12 ASAP (before 1000BC in a good game, use worker joins). You should also build Shakespear's Theater as early as possible (about 200-300AD in a good game) and then join 8 more workers. Then you should build rails ASAP and build rush factory and coal plant in 1 turn each (about 500AD). Don't worry about loosing wonders to AI, if you research fast enough you'll always have something to build and you'll win before you get the chance to build all the wonders (or shortly after you have built everything). If you can build several wonders, choose the one with better culture/shields ratio, even if it comes later. Let the AI build wonders with poor culture/shields ratio. These games are actually quite fun because you have to balance building useless wonders and sacrificing everything for the 20K city, very fast research and conquest. These victories come very late even if you do everything right, so you'll have to kill them off on higher levels to prevent spaceship loss.

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100K is completely different. You can have as many cities generating culture as you want and thus settlers are much more efficent then culture buildings. You talk about culture doubling, but buy building a settler you multiply your culture by 2^N times and this N is not 1 or 2 or even 3... Because you build a settler, and have 2 cities, then these 2 cities build 2 more settlers and you have 4 cities and so on... And all of them can now build culture. So the answer is simple: fit in as many cities as possible, which means conquering a large area and building cities on every possible spot at minimum distance. When you have settled everything (thats about 200 cities for standard map you start rushing culture). Use Republic while settling and rush settlers with money and use feudalism for rushing culture after that. This kind of game is extremely boring though and don't even try it unless you want to win a culture award for GOTM. If you don't like this strategy you can of course limit yourself to 10 or 20 culture producing city and play a "variant", but that won't work on higher levels and it is still boring.

Sorry for the long post, i just had nothing to do

Obormot

In very high level (demigod and up) Space ships games, you can often end up having to build temples and cathedrals in core cities, because it's a cheaper way to keep people happy than the slider if you can't get many luxes. Also, deity AI's build culture buildings at a frightening rate, so you may need to build them to prevent flips - in a recent demigod 20K game, I had a city 8 tiles from my core flip to the russians TWICE, even though the moscow was about 30 tiles away, because the russians had so many towns there civ culture was higher than mine! and I had most of the wonders.

A temple always costs you 1 coin per happy face and so does the lux slider It does not depend on difficulty level and number of luxes as far as I know

You don't need tp prevent the flips, having such a strong culture requires so many shields that you'll easily conquesr the world if you invest them all in units. Just be ready to recapture cities if they flip and you'll be fine. The more land you capture the more corrupt are your border cities, the less you loose from a flip.