Meneer Popken
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2001
- Messages
- 80
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Last updated on 5/5/02 by PaleHorse76 and 4/20/02 by Thunderfall.
General Questions
What is the latest patch version and where can I get it?
. The latest patch is v1.21f. You can get it (as well as all old patches) at http://www.civfanatics.com/civilization3.shtml#patches. The latest patch includes all fixes in previous patches.
How do I take screenshots?
. Hit the 'Prt Scrn' button on your keyboard. Then open a graphics program such as Paint (you can use the windows key, then go to Programs....Accesories...Paint, this way you don't need to exit the game), then you 'paste' and there's the screenshot! Remember to reduce the image size a bit, or crop it, and save the file as .JPG. There are also lots of screenshot programs you can download at download.com.
What does GOTM stand for?
. GOTM stands for Game of the Month. It's the most popular (casual) contest in the Civ community. You can learn more about it here.
Is there a newsgroup for Civilization III?
. Yes, the newsgroup is at alt.games.civ3
Where can I download Civ3 scenarios?
. No scenarios are available at this time because Firaxis hasn't released an editor capable of building scenarios.
Multiplayer Questions
Where is the multiplayer?
. Multiplayer will be available with the expansion pack. Check here for more information.
Gameplay Questions
Why doesn't my city grow past size 6 or 12?
. Cities either need access to a river or need an aqueduct to grow to size 6. To grow beyond size 12 you need to invent Sanitation and build hospitals.
How to establish embassies?
. Double click the star next to your own capital to establish embassies.
How do I disband a city?
. There are two ways. The NEW way: Right click on a city and choose "Abandon City" from the menu (requires patch v1.21 or higher). The OLD way: Starve the city (by changing the citizens into entertainers) and keep producing workers or settlers.
How do I access the advanced espionage missions?
. Click the pentagon next to the city you built the Intelligence Agency in. Once you have planted a spy use the Pentagon icon near the enemy city you infiltrated to execute missions.
How do I change/stop trades after 20 turns?
. In the trading dialog click "Active" at the bottom of the screen to view active trades. If a trade is preceded by a number that means how many turns are still left. Press "New" to return to new trades.
Why do capturable units sometimes get destroyed and sometimes captured?
. You can only capture units when you have the appropriate technology to build them.
What do the numbers and icons by my cities mean?
. The large number on the left shows the size of the city (red if the city is decreasing in size, yellow if it stays the same, white if it's growing
. The top number indicates how many turns are left before the city will grow.
. The bottom number indicates how many turns are left before the current building or unit is built.
. An anchor indicates there is a harbor in the city.
. An airplane indicates there is an an airport in the city.
. Black smoke means the city is in disorder.
. Fireworks mean the city has a We Love The [ruler] Day.
How do I get out of Mobilization economy?
. End all your wars to get out of it, if you enabled it during peace time you will have to start a war to get out of it.
Why can't I build my wonder?
. You might be building it in another city already. You can only build one of the same wonder at a time.
. You rush-built your current building and you're trying to switch. To force people to build a wonder completely you can't do any type of rush-building, not paying for it, not clearing forests, not disbanding units, not even if you rush somehting and then try to switch.
. You don't have the required items yet, some wonders like SDI Defense require 5 Sam Sites in your cities.
Upgrading all my units is a pain in the ***!
. When on of your units is selected press shift-U instead of U and all the units of the same type that can be upgraded will be upgraded. (Must be in cities with barracks, resources must be available, gold must be available) If you are upgrading naval units, the city must have a harbor.
How many units can I build off one iron resource and similar questions.
. Resources disappear randomly, don't hold back on building units, it won't make resources disappear faster or slower.
I can't build railroads. Why?
. Your capital needs to have access to Coal and Iron strategic resources.
How do I cancel a bombardment?
. Right-click on the unit that you had selected. The bombardment grid will disappear.
How do I use the queue?
. Shift-Click - Add to production queue.
. Shift-Q - Save production queue as default.
. Q - Load production queue with default.
. Shift-Del - Removes all items from the queue.
. Click-Del - Removes the item clicked.
How do you load a nuclear missile into a submarine?
. Same as you would for a unit into a transport. Have the sub in a coastal square and simply move the unit over land and then load on the sub.
I irrigated my grassland, and it's still producing only 2 food. Is this a bug?
. In a despotism, production that is 3 or more gets cut down by one point. So if you have 2 food on a square you get both of it. If you then irrigate you have 3, which gets cut down by one so in the end you have 2 food.
How do I unload armies or change units in an army?
. You can't upload, change, or upgrade units in an army once it's formed, in versions 1.07f, 1.16f, and 1.21f of the game. In version 1.17f you can unload units from an army by using the stack movement command, "J". Being able to unload units is a bug in version 1.17f.
How do I turn off the city governers?
. Rightclick on your city and select contact governer to change options.
Is there a turn limit on the game, regardless of what victory conditions you chose?
. Games will always stop recording score at 2050, no matter what type of game you are playing, but you can still continue playing after that. If no one has won by the year 2050 then the winner is determined by the sum of your score at the end of each time period. So, if you ended the game with 200 points at the end of the first time period, 300 the next then 400 then 1000 you'd have a final score of 200+300+400+1000/4 = 475.
How do I view the other 8 civs on the foreign advisor screen in a 16 player game?
. Shift-rightclick on a portait to change it to another civ. There still is a maximum of 8 portaits at any time.
How often do Great Leaders appear?
. When your elite unit won a battle, there is 1/16 chance to become a GL; If Heroic small wonder exist, then 1/12.
. A "militaristic" civ improves that ratio, but no quantative # is available.
. No GL will appear from fighting Barbarians, only against another civs units.
. You can only have a maximum of one GL at a time.
. There are reported bugs of getting more than one GL at a time and getting armies from goody huts.
How do I view Top 5 cities, wonders of the world, etc?
. The keys F7 through F12 show such things, just like in Civ2.
Corruption is way too high.
. To reduce corruption don't make too many cities, the game keeps corruption lower when you have upto 8 cities on a tiny map and upto 32 cities on a huge map, other maps are in between.
. Try to get your cities in We Love the Ruler mode, do this by trading for all luxuries, or increasing the luxuries rate in the domestic advisor.
. Corruption is modifiable in version 1.21f of the game through the editor in new games only.
The AI always gangs up on me.
. Beat the AI to alliances, and get some Mutual Protection Pacts (MPP) for yourself.
. Use the Foreign Advisor screen to see which A.I.s have MPP.
Read the hotkey reference in the civilopedia or manual and read readme.txt from the civilization 3 directory to access some options that can't be accessed through menus or icons, like Railroad-to (ctrl-shift-R), upgrade all (shift-U), view clean terrain (ctrl-shift-M), etc. The Civ3 Reference section also contains some excellent reference files.
My automated workers keep changing my irrigation and mines. How do I stop that?
. Press shift-A to automate them instead of A, this way they will
- won't destroy any existing improvements
- won't plant forests
- will do things like forest/jungle cutting
- will build irrigations, mines (not sure what's the decision factor but it works fairly well, as most of my major cities are around size 25-30)
- will build roads, railroads, although often without any sense(IE, they will not build railroads between cities FIRST, but rather they will build rails around one city, then around another and so on). They will build roads and rails outside your borders as well, if cities aren't connected.
- will clean pollution (it's their priority task)
- will connect any resources to existing road/railroad network as soon as they are discovered and inside your borders(that's great IMO, you don't have to bother with map scanning)
- will generally avoid contact with any enemy forces(if auto worker sees enemy unit they will turn back)
How exactly do you "heal" your troops?
. Whenever a unit stands still for a hole Turn, he will heal. If he is in a city WITH the Barracks, he will heal completely, but if the troop is healing in the field he will heal one point. Your unit can't heal in enemy territory, without the Battlefield medicine.
How do I destroy an enemy Colony?
. You just walk over it with an unit. Or build a city near the enemy colony.
Can I rush the production of a Wonder with an Army?
. No, only with a Leader, which is the unit you build armies with.
After I build a Solar Plant I notice no difference in Production.
. That's because you have another Power Plant that already produces 50% production. The positive thing with Solar Plant is that it doesn't produce any Polution.
How many Golden Ages can I have throughout the game?
. One, and it lasts 20 turns.
What does the yellow dot next to a leader mean in the foreign advisor screen?
. It means you have an embassy with that civ.
Is there any way to change the year the game ends?
. For this you'll need to use one of the player-created save game editors.
Bugs &Technical Questions
Miscellaneous game-doesn't-start-problems.
. Unload all programs running in the background by rightclicking and closing all the icons near the clock and use ctrl-alt-del to stop other unused programs.
. Update mother board, video card and/or sound card drivers.
I get a divide by zero error in the game.
. If you have over 255 fonts this can occur, reduce your fonts to less than 255.
The text in the game is exceptionally large and doesn't fit in dialog boxes.
. Try removing the Lucida Sans font from your windows\fonts directory.
The screen goes black or says Out of sync after the intro video.
. This is caused because you don't have the right driver installed for your monitor, find it and install it. If you're unable to do this you can find more difficult solutions on the problems forum.
Scrolling is terribly slow and I'm using a NVidia video card and Windows 2000 or XP.
. Either change your driver to the windows default one or put hardware acceleration down to one notch from the lowest in the windows advanced display properties, however this will cause the next problem mentioned.
The screen goes black after the splash screen and doesn't do anything anymore.
. The intro video can't be played. Delete or rename the movie files, they are in your Civ3 directory below Art\Movies\
The splash screen shows and the game stops or gives an error in ~DF394B.TMP
. This is an error in the copy protection, try running the game with a different cdrom drive or remove the Safedisc copyprotection (this is illegal in USA and some other countries though). Contact Infogrames through their technical support and they can give you a legal copy of the .exe file without the Safedisc protect if you prove that you purchased the game.
My foreign advisor shows too few enemy faces.
. In your previous game you played with less enemies, a possible solution seems to be to delete the savegames from your previous game.
. If you play with more than 7 enemies you have to shift-rightclick on faces to change to one of the others.
I tried changing the resolution as written in the readme.txt, but it doesn't work?
. You can only change the resolution by setting KeepRes=1 and changing your desktop resolution.
Last updated on 5/5/02 by PaleHorse76 and 4/20/02 by Thunderfall.
General Questions
What is the latest patch version and where can I get it?
. The latest patch is v1.21f. You can get it (as well as all old patches) at http://www.civfanatics.com/civilization3.shtml#patches. The latest patch includes all fixes in previous patches.
How do I take screenshots?
. Hit the 'Prt Scrn' button on your keyboard. Then open a graphics program such as Paint (you can use the windows key, then go to Programs....Accesories...Paint, this way you don't need to exit the game), then you 'paste' and there's the screenshot! Remember to reduce the image size a bit, or crop it, and save the file as .JPG. There are also lots of screenshot programs you can download at download.com.
What does GOTM stand for?
. GOTM stands for Game of the Month. It's the most popular (casual) contest in the Civ community. You can learn more about it here.
Is there a newsgroup for Civilization III?
. Yes, the newsgroup is at alt.games.civ3
Where can I download Civ3 scenarios?
. No scenarios are available at this time because Firaxis hasn't released an editor capable of building scenarios.
Multiplayer Questions
Where is the multiplayer?
. Multiplayer will be available with the expansion pack. Check here for more information.
Gameplay Questions
Why doesn't my city grow past size 6 or 12?
. Cities either need access to a river or need an aqueduct to grow to size 6. To grow beyond size 12 you need to invent Sanitation and build hospitals.
How to establish embassies?
. Double click the star next to your own capital to establish embassies.
How do I disband a city?
. There are two ways. The NEW way: Right click on a city and choose "Abandon City" from the menu (requires patch v1.21 or higher). The OLD way: Starve the city (by changing the citizens into entertainers) and keep producing workers or settlers.
How do I access the advanced espionage missions?
. Click the pentagon next to the city you built the Intelligence Agency in. Once you have planted a spy use the Pentagon icon near the enemy city you infiltrated to execute missions.
How do I change/stop trades after 20 turns?
. In the trading dialog click "Active" at the bottom of the screen to view active trades. If a trade is preceded by a number that means how many turns are still left. Press "New" to return to new trades.
Why do capturable units sometimes get destroyed and sometimes captured?
. You can only capture units when you have the appropriate technology to build them.
What do the numbers and icons by my cities mean?
. The large number on the left shows the size of the city (red if the city is decreasing in size, yellow if it stays the same, white if it's growing
. The top number indicates how many turns are left before the city will grow.
. The bottom number indicates how many turns are left before the current building or unit is built.
. An anchor indicates there is a harbor in the city.
. An airplane indicates there is an an airport in the city.
. Black smoke means the city is in disorder.
. Fireworks mean the city has a We Love The [ruler] Day.
How do I get out of Mobilization economy?
. End all your wars to get out of it, if you enabled it during peace time you will have to start a war to get out of it.
Why can't I build my wonder?
. You might be building it in another city already. You can only build one of the same wonder at a time.
. You rush-built your current building and you're trying to switch. To force people to build a wonder completely you can't do any type of rush-building, not paying for it, not clearing forests, not disbanding units, not even if you rush somehting and then try to switch.
. You don't have the required items yet, some wonders like SDI Defense require 5 Sam Sites in your cities.
Upgrading all my units is a pain in the ***!
. When on of your units is selected press shift-U instead of U and all the units of the same type that can be upgraded will be upgraded. (Must be in cities with barracks, resources must be available, gold must be available) If you are upgrading naval units, the city must have a harbor.
How many units can I build off one iron resource and similar questions.
. Resources disappear randomly, don't hold back on building units, it won't make resources disappear faster or slower.
I can't build railroads. Why?
. Your capital needs to have access to Coal and Iron strategic resources.
How do I cancel a bombardment?
. Right-click on the unit that you had selected. The bombardment grid will disappear.
How do I use the queue?
. Shift-Click - Add to production queue.
. Shift-Q - Save production queue as default.
. Q - Load production queue with default.
. Shift-Del - Removes all items from the queue.
. Click-Del - Removes the item clicked.
How do you load a nuclear missile into a submarine?
. Same as you would for a unit into a transport. Have the sub in a coastal square and simply move the unit over land and then load on the sub.
I irrigated my grassland, and it's still producing only 2 food. Is this a bug?
. In a despotism, production that is 3 or more gets cut down by one point. So if you have 2 food on a square you get both of it. If you then irrigate you have 3, which gets cut down by one so in the end you have 2 food.
How do I unload armies or change units in an army?
. You can't upload, change, or upgrade units in an army once it's formed, in versions 1.07f, 1.16f, and 1.21f of the game. In version 1.17f you can unload units from an army by using the stack movement command, "J". Being able to unload units is a bug in version 1.17f.
How do I turn off the city governers?
. Rightclick on your city and select contact governer to change options.
Is there a turn limit on the game, regardless of what victory conditions you chose?
. Games will always stop recording score at 2050, no matter what type of game you are playing, but you can still continue playing after that. If no one has won by the year 2050 then the winner is determined by the sum of your score at the end of each time period. So, if you ended the game with 200 points at the end of the first time period, 300 the next then 400 then 1000 you'd have a final score of 200+300+400+1000/4 = 475.
How do I view the other 8 civs on the foreign advisor screen in a 16 player game?
. Shift-rightclick on a portait to change it to another civ. There still is a maximum of 8 portaits at any time.
How often do Great Leaders appear?
. When your elite unit won a battle, there is 1/16 chance to become a GL; If Heroic small wonder exist, then 1/12.
. A "militaristic" civ improves that ratio, but no quantative # is available.
. No GL will appear from fighting Barbarians, only against another civs units.
. You can only have a maximum of one GL at a time.
. There are reported bugs of getting more than one GL at a time and getting armies from goody huts.
How do I view Top 5 cities, wonders of the world, etc?
. The keys F7 through F12 show such things, just like in Civ2.
Corruption is way too high.
. To reduce corruption don't make too many cities, the game keeps corruption lower when you have upto 8 cities on a tiny map and upto 32 cities on a huge map, other maps are in between.
. Try to get your cities in We Love the Ruler mode, do this by trading for all luxuries, or increasing the luxuries rate in the domestic advisor.
. Corruption is modifiable in version 1.21f of the game through the editor in new games only.
The AI always gangs up on me.
. Beat the AI to alliances, and get some Mutual Protection Pacts (MPP) for yourself.
. Use the Foreign Advisor screen to see which A.I.s have MPP.
Read the hotkey reference in the civilopedia or manual and read readme.txt from the civilization 3 directory to access some options that can't be accessed through menus or icons, like Railroad-to (ctrl-shift-R), upgrade all (shift-U), view clean terrain (ctrl-shift-M), etc. The Civ3 Reference section also contains some excellent reference files.
My automated workers keep changing my irrigation and mines. How do I stop that?
. Press shift-A to automate them instead of A, this way they will
- won't destroy any existing improvements
- won't plant forests
- will do things like forest/jungle cutting
- will build irrigations, mines (not sure what's the decision factor but it works fairly well, as most of my major cities are around size 25-30)
- will build roads, railroads, although often without any sense(IE, they will not build railroads between cities FIRST, but rather they will build rails around one city, then around another and so on). They will build roads and rails outside your borders as well, if cities aren't connected.
- will clean pollution (it's their priority task)
- will connect any resources to existing road/railroad network as soon as they are discovered and inside your borders(that's great IMO, you don't have to bother with map scanning)
- will generally avoid contact with any enemy forces(if auto worker sees enemy unit they will turn back)
How exactly do you "heal" your troops?
. Whenever a unit stands still for a hole Turn, he will heal. If he is in a city WITH the Barracks, he will heal completely, but if the troop is healing in the field he will heal one point. Your unit can't heal in enemy territory, without the Battlefield medicine.
How do I destroy an enemy Colony?
. You just walk over it with an unit. Or build a city near the enemy colony.
Can I rush the production of a Wonder with an Army?
. No, only with a Leader, which is the unit you build armies with.
After I build a Solar Plant I notice no difference in Production.
. That's because you have another Power Plant that already produces 50% production. The positive thing with Solar Plant is that it doesn't produce any Polution.
How many Golden Ages can I have throughout the game?
. One, and it lasts 20 turns.
What does the yellow dot next to a leader mean in the foreign advisor screen?
. It means you have an embassy with that civ.
Is there any way to change the year the game ends?
. For this you'll need to use one of the player-created save game editors.
Bugs &Technical Questions
Miscellaneous game-doesn't-start-problems.
. Unload all programs running in the background by rightclicking and closing all the icons near the clock and use ctrl-alt-del to stop other unused programs.
. Update mother board, video card and/or sound card drivers.
I get a divide by zero error in the game.
. If you have over 255 fonts this can occur, reduce your fonts to less than 255.
The text in the game is exceptionally large and doesn't fit in dialog boxes.
. Try removing the Lucida Sans font from your windows\fonts directory.
The screen goes black or says Out of sync after the intro video.
. This is caused because you don't have the right driver installed for your monitor, find it and install it. If you're unable to do this you can find more difficult solutions on the problems forum.
Scrolling is terribly slow and I'm using a NVidia video card and Windows 2000 or XP.
. Either change your driver to the windows default one or put hardware acceleration down to one notch from the lowest in the windows advanced display properties, however this will cause the next problem mentioned.
The screen goes black after the splash screen and doesn't do anything anymore.
. The intro video can't be played. Delete or rename the movie files, they are in your Civ3 directory below Art\Movies\
The splash screen shows and the game stops or gives an error in ~DF394B.TMP
. This is an error in the copy protection, try running the game with a different cdrom drive or remove the Safedisc copyprotection (this is illegal in USA and some other countries though). Contact Infogrames through their technical support and they can give you a legal copy of the .exe file without the Safedisc protect if you prove that you purchased the game.
My foreign advisor shows too few enemy faces.
. In your previous game you played with less enemies, a possible solution seems to be to delete the savegames from your previous game.
. If you play with more than 7 enemies you have to shift-rightclick on faces to change to one of the others.
I tried changing the resolution as written in the readme.txt, but it doesn't work?
. You can only change the resolution by setting KeepRes=1 and changing your desktop resolution.