Some improvement here. Advice welcome

Hi everyone!
And thanks for the responses on my first post. I did some more reading on the threads and the info center, and have seen vast improvement. This game is ADDICTIVE. I spent about 4 hours tonight, and am attaching my game as it stands now. Since evryone seems so helpful and friendly, I thought I'd put it out there and if anyone is bored, have a look and tell me how I'm doing. Is this a catastrophic failure (if so, it's been fun, anyway)? Do I have any hope of winning this one, and if so, which type of victory is most likely? What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong.....besides ignoring life's basic responsibilities in pursuit of the ultimate gaming experience? Anyone who wants to chip in, positive or negative, thanks in advance!

Hmmm....the file was too big to attach.....I'll send an earlier save game.....

What game version do you play?

Also, it might be useful to post some specific game info like map stats, level etc.

As for the file size, you may either zip the file when using the attachement feature ( *.zip are allowed to be attached, but any files must be below 100k IIRC) or you just use the file upload feature (explained in the FAQ, file size much bigger here).

Hi Grille. Thanks for the info. I just uploaded my most current save game to the "uploadsd4" folder. It's called Tokugawa of Iowa, 1190 AD, or something like that. Somethings I did not understand in your post: What does version mean, and how do I find it? And what does level mean? These are probably dumb questions, but I'm just starting out. What are the most useful stats or screen shots to post to give folks a quick idea of my progress or lack thereof?

@stemloop:
He means what patch you're playing and if it's PTW or vanilla Civ3 (it's on the main page, after you've watched the inrto video. Its says something like 1.14f or 1.29f)
Also what difficulty level

Thanks, Darkness. I'm playing 1.29f, straight out of the box. I'm in tutorial mode, the easiest difficulty.....think it starts out as Japanese by default.

Tutorial??? You'd be better off just playing regular games in Cheiftan, all those pop-ups in Tutorial mode drive me nuts! You could just read the manual and find the same info, while still being allowed to play uninterrupted.

Probably good advice.....I think I will start a regular game, chieftan, of course. I had fun getting here, but am kind of stuck now What civ should I use.....Iroquois?

hey, sorry if im a little off-topic, but does the v1.29 patch work for just the vanilla civ3 or is it also in effect for PTW?

Iroquois are nice because of their effective UU that can get you a lead for the rest of the game. They might be a good choice. However, you would hav to deal with the problem of securing horses, and an early GA. They have OK attributes, IMO, (Relgious, and Expansionistic). If you do use them, play on a Pangea to get the most use out of the Mounted Warriors and their Expansionistic trait.

Personally, I like Carthage, but since you don't have PTW, Iroquois are fine.

stemloop,
if you do use the file upload feature, you may also put a link to the respective file in your post. It's rather comfortable to download the file from a post (or view a picture directly by using img tags) than searching for it in the folder (loads of files there). Of course, this is not meant as a complaint , I should have explained more detailed (no dumb questions, it's just dumb answers -> confusing people is my unintentional hobby ).
Adding links and such site related vB code stuff is explained
here.

(edit: no - it's a link to "smilies", see below for vB code link; end edit)

Remaining mysteries will be uncovered in the Quick answers thread.

Anyway, I think I found the actual
save game file.

The two files eventually might show the in-game-development. Vanilla civ3 is fine with me, I'll have a look at the game (as for my humble advice, I'm a bit lame ).

The "best" civ (if any exists) depends probably on personal playing style (you'd probably like to use your superior UU, then Egypt means an early war w/ war chariots, for example) and somewhat on game settings: the expansionist trait is *wasted* when there's "no barbarians" (no goody huts), also hut luck is related to difficulty level.
Most players agree on industrious to be the best trait (an actual thread/poll is found on the General Discussions Forum).

edit: vb code is actually here. The other link above leads to smilies (these are nice, so the other link still sits there).

There's nothing wrong with using the tutorial. The pop-ups disappear after awhile, because they already showed you everything. And they do give you different maps and civs. I've played the tutorial twice in my whole life, and oddly, both times were fairly recent.

Stemloop- 1. You need more workers. It's 1190 AD and you only have 9 workers, and there is TONS of jungle unchopped yet.
9 workers/5 cities is actually a good ratio, but you must have had tons of jungle to clear, and/or wasting alot of worker turns and/or just recently built many of them and had very few for most or all of the BC years.

2. You can fire a few entertainers (put them to work as a regular citizen), getting more food/shields/commerce. All but 1 city has an entertainer. In some cities you may have done this to trigger WLTK day, but sometimes that doesn't make up for the food/shields/commerce you are losing by not having a citizen working the land, so each city will be a different case. Maybe you just got out of anarchy or got a luxury, but if you hadn't just got those happiness boosts, then there was potentially lots of waste there by having those unnecessary entertainers. If you aren't going to watch for that all the time, then use the governors to control moods.

3. Are you automating your workers? I see a whole lot of irrigation and roads, but hardly any mines. Or else I think you may have seen a tip about 'put roads everywhere' and took that tip a little too literally. You definitely need some mines to go along with it. (or irrigation, but in this case, you want definitely want the mines more). Olwein (Size 7) is building a wonder, but is only working on 1 fully improved tile (mined hill). It's got 3 bonus grassland tiles you could mine, which would improve that city's production power by 50% or more. Muscatine (size 8) is building a wonder, but is producing only 1 shield (that is not considering corruption, which is non-existant for 1 shield).
What I usually do is first find the most powerful tile (the tile your first citizen is going to be working) and fully improve it before moving onto the next tile, and fully improving that one.

Mine, Mine, Mine that grassland. Irrigating grassland is useless while you were in despot (unless it's a bonus food resource), so I'm not sure if you had it irrigated then or not. You are in monarchy now, so irrigating will help, but only if you need the growth. You need production alot more than growth. Mining the grassland will get you those libraries, wonders, and everything built so much faster!

Even if a city still has some jungle in it's radius, you should fully improve any other powerful tiles (like bonus grassland) before starting on the jungle. I'd almost tell you to mine every single one of the regular grassland before starting on jungle, but that depends on the city's growth, and whether or not the city will have the population to use those tiles (which they currently are using now).

4. Tech pace. Granted, you can't get much help from the AI on Chieftain, but I figured you should have more techs than just the ancient ones by this point. Next time, try trading techs with the AI more frequently, so your not wasting time researching a tech they already have, and could give you techs you are missing for techs you have researched. Part of this problem may also be related to the worker thing again, because without proper terrain improvements, that is why it can take you forever to build the Pyramids (770 AD). Pyramids should have been built at least in the BC years.

5. Cities spaced too far apart. I know you had jungle limitations, so it's good that you claim any non-jungle areas quickly, but after that, try to fill in some of that jungle. Those jungle cities can have a build order of warrior-worker-warrior-worker, until you have some jungle cleared by it, so it can start using the grassland tiles and start being a more productive city.

6. Go to Republic. You are religious. I just switched for you, and Fuedalism went from 24 turns to 16 turns, and you are making +22 gold/turn instead of +11. Left the science/tax meters where they were at and just used the governors. By bumping science to 60% (from 40%), fuedalism is due in 10 turns, with a small loss of gold/turn (-4).
If you bump luxury to 10%, fuedalism is due in 12 turns at 50% science, but then you can fire the entertainers and be losing only -1 gold/turn.

I suggest you take a look (at the very least take a glance at it!) at the article "Improving Your Opening Play Sequences", which you can find the link for in my signature.

Now I'm confused about this game. Don't know what happened, as it's probably a bug or something. Anyways....

I was looking at your cities in the city view screen, and I was surprised at how early your cities were founded! Then I watched the replay, and got a totally different reaction. In the city view screens, it says you built like 4 cities by 3100 BC, but in the replay, your 4th city wasn't built until 130 BC or something.

This may be a bug in crossing the game versions (I'm using PTW, and I think you are using vanilla Civ3), but if your fourth city wasn't built until 190 BC, you definitely need to work on speeding up your expansion. Getting more cities up and running quickly is more important than building temples or whatever else you were building in that long time gap between the time you had 2 cities, and then getting your 3rd city (2,000 years) and 4th city (another 1000 years later).

You guys are all helpful! Thanks Bam, for going to the trouble to load my game and send all the specific advice. It all seems to make sense, and I will get to try much of it soon, hopefully tomorrow!

And thanks Grille, for the help with file uploads. I'll be back soon with more questions!

Stemloop
Wellcome to the club
and good luck

Finally, I took a look at both save game files.
Generally, I stongly second Bamspeedy's points: Improve (most) cities' working tiles with mines, build more cities (earlier & more dense), trade for techs (e.g. China had horseback riding, India had writing already in 150 AD IIRC).

Bamspeedy said he opened the 1190 AD file w/ PTW and suspected some buggy things due to PTW. I used vanilla and there seems to be nothing wrong w/ the city founding dates (by the way, maybe you could have built your capital a bit earlier), also I didn't spot any entertainer (maybe PTW "hired" them automatically?), but a 10% lux tax. Currently, you have enough luxs to do w/o that lux tax in monarchy, but you should change to republic anyway, as Bamspeedy said.

As for the worker & jungle problem: in 1190 AD, 8 of 9 workers are building stuff on tiles ouside any city radius! At the moment, that's a waste. But I guess you thought your city tiles were improved well enough so far - if not: the city radius a "fat X", you can check all potential working tiles of a city by displaying the city screen, just to get the idea of the city radius. Then you might agree to build cities much more dense, tile overlap (two cities "share" tiles) is not a problem in civ3, even if it's somewhat extreme (assuming here you have many cities). The city radius is constant (equal to the area covered by the first cultural border expansion of a city). You can't use those tiles that are inside your territory, but outside of any city radius (except that you are able to connect resources to your trade network- just like that iron near Kalona). So w/ all that nasty junlge, it's not a good idea to clear jungle outside of any city radius (as some workers do) first, when there is still jungle on potential working tiles. By the way, an industrious civ has an advantage here, such could clear jungle (or perform other worker jobs) twice as fast as non-industrious civs. The workers seem to be not automatted, that's fine (automatted workers are not recommended).
Basically, it was a very good idea to have that worker/city ratio and to build roads on working tiles with them (new players under-estimate the power of workers and roads in general). Just add some mines and you will certainly double your city production.

For fast & early spreading, you may also follow the first link in Bamspeedy's sig, "Make a settler every 4 turns, forever". This is great advice for founding many cities early.

As for a strategy in that game: You have both iron and horses, so I'd suggest to build up a decent military (horse- & swordsmen, some extra spears; your horsemen can be upgraded to samurai when chivalry is in - that's not far away from now and the samurai is a great unique unit) in cities that have a barracks. Owning the whole continent should be your aim. Then, if your military is strong enough, don't renew your deals w/ India and go for them (if you don't mind to make wars, of course). One or two wars might crush them, China could be the next goal (just beware of their riders!).
Have fun!

Thanks a lot, Grille! Between you and Bamspeedy, you've given me much to think about. I should be able to improve my playing. I need to decide between going back to an earlier save game, or playing through 'til it gets better (or hopeless.....and then start a new game). Either way, this is fun as hell!!

hehehe, another addict.

'no, I don't need sleep or food or drink or drugs....

...I got Civ!!'

Welcome to CFC stemloop.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy

5. Cities spaced too far apart.

Click to expand...

Stemloop: This is funny because Bamspeedy puts more cities on a given map than probably anyone else in the world. He is also the reason I can play a decent game of Civ. Bamspeedy is too modest to point you here but you could do worse than read, and put into practice the information in this link. It goes hand in hand with the "opening plays" page but is easier to take in.

Welcome to your new life!

EDIT: Just build a few mines and horsemen and stop building wonders for a while. Upgrade the horsemen to Samurai when you learn Chivalry and take on the world. No need to go back to an earlier save IMO.