New thread. How many people still play civ3

[Gray Wolf]

Thanks Civinator. I added about 5 new tutorials. I made them for myself at first but I thought I'd share them...

 

[Quintillus]

I played civ3 when it first came out, but it never drew my attention like civ2 did. I played some, but kind of forgot about civ, until 4 came out, that has easily become my favorite game of all time and my second most played (only behind the life pit that is wow).

Anyway I picked up c3c off a steam sale and am having major issues adjusting back from civ4. It should in general be simpler right?

I put about 3 hours in over two games, neither got out of ancient era. First was greeks on a large continents, regent difficulty. France north, Persia south. I expanded what I thought was a fast pace but everyone still has more tech and a couple more cities. Persia decides to invade and while my hoplites stop their immortals without too much trouble, I can't expand and defend so I gave them maths or something for peace. Then france invades from the north, basically an opportunistic grab because I moved all my troops south to fight persia. Frustrated I play a second game, this time as india.

Same settings, I find myself in the middle of some sprawling grasslands all alone so I expand fast again (what seems like fast). Build infrastructure, granaries, roads, temples, all that good stuff, my economy is booming! But I stupidly beelined monarchy so everyone has way more tech than I do and I can only trade for so much. Also get beaten to oracle by a couple turns. I decided no prob, I'll just build a crap load of swords and go conquer people with my absurd production with monarchy but iron is on the other side of the world. Again quit in disgust. Regeant (prince level) is supposed to be easy!

It seems like since there's nothing to check your expansion, aside from settlers costing people, (maintenance costs in civ4 and happiness in 5) you want to spam cities as much as possible, then build infrastructure later. True? Also seems like despotism sucks and really limits growth but bee lining monarchy or republic ruins your early tech. There seems to be too much luck involved with strategic resources. They seem a lot more spread out and rare than civ4. Finally defending in 4 was super easy, city walls with some culture meant the AI might use up to 5 axes killing one archer. In 3 a couple swords dominate my spear.

What should I do, spam settlers, research more balanced? Keep 3-4 units in cities to defend?

Civ3 is different than Civ4. Civ4 is more defensive than Civ3, as you've noticed. That seems to be part of the reason you're having trouble adjusting - you can't defend a front by relying on a few archers in border cities to keep the enemy busy until you built enough units to reinforce. When you focus all your troops on one front, you're taking the risk that your rivals at the other border won't invade, and sometimes they do. It isn't uncommon for that to result in losing a couple cities... on the plus side, you'll have more cities in Civ3 than Civ4 on average, so losing a couple cities isn't necessarily the end of the game. I recall a game as the Russians where I lost a few cities in a similar situation where my troops were on another front, but the front stabilized, and eventually I was taking their cities instead.

The maxim "the best defence is a good offence" is often recommended here for Civ3. While you will slow the enemy down with 3-4 units per city, that becomes quite costly in terms of unit support. An alternate that's common is having a skeleton crew or even no defenders in central cities (they're no happiness penalty for no defenders), and shifting what you'd normally have there to the border cities. Yet another alternative is to keep a small number of Horsemen (or Impis if you're the Zulu) in the area that can quickly move to any point of invasion and keep the enemy busy. Finally, build Walls in border cities that are at risk. They're cheap, and make the Spearman have a slight advantage over attacking Swordsmen.

Lacking resources can be quite challenging. To me, it's part of the game that you're dependent on luck to a certain degree with resources - what fun would it be if you never lacked resources? It does make it important to not wait too long to discover Iron Working - if you learn early on that you lack Iron, you can invade with Archers or Horsemen and correct the situation (if there's none anywhere close, at least your neighbors will also lack it - if they do, you could still fight them. Or just postpone aggression until Cavalry in the late Middle Ages. Might also be a good idea to prioritize seafaring techs in the Middle Ages, as it's not uncommon to find resources on empty islands). It's worth noting that the number of resources corresponds with the number of civs - if you play a Huge map with 4 civs, resources will be really spread out.

Expanding early is a lot more important than in Civ4. While it is possible to go for One City Conquest in Civ3, for the average player, you'll want to grab lots of land. Generally, you'll want steady-to-increasing rates of expansion until you're up against your neighbors' borders, and indeed, if you're highly developing your cities, your rivals will out-expand you. You can still develop your cities somewhat - just don't expect that you'll be able to build anything in most cities until you've finished expanding. As someone whose first Civ was Civ3, when I play Civ4 I often expand until my research is at 0% because I have so many cities (and I did that tonight, in fact), and on the occasions I've played Civ5, I usually end up quitting because my whole empire is doing nothing because everyone's sad. That's the amount of cities you want as a baseline in Civ3. More cities = more happiness in Civ3! Technically, less unhappiness, but same difference.

A couple other points of adjustment:

- Workers are just as important as ever. Roads are the key to your economy. That's the infrastructure you can afford early on.
- Barracks are much more important than in Civ4. If a city is going to be producing military units, it needs a Barracks. That could be why your war with Persia was a stalemate.

A good civ if you want to not have to worry about resources early may be Babylon, with their Bowmen, with 2 attack and defence, but costing no more than a Spearman or Archer. Carthage, with their expensive Numidian Mercenaries at 2 attack, 3 defence, is another resource-free unique unit option if you prefer more defensive power (albeit at higher shield cost).

 

[classical_hero]

I still play, but I generally play either the scenarios or custom made mods.

 

[Loudspeaker]

Civ3 is still my favourite game of all time. I have tried Civ4, vanilla, but it didn't appeal to me. I have heard, however, that you'll need one of the expansion packs, and then Civ4 should actually be a very nice game.

I have sometimes beaten my rivals on emperor level, but I prefer monarch. This level leaves me with an option of trying out new strategies without getting beaten up completely, even if the strategy isn't the most efficient one. On emperor and beyond I tend to play only one strategy all the time: The usual settler factories, land grab, research iron, set tax at 90% (or 100 if you can afford a scientist citizen), build a s... load of swordsmen, crush your next door neighbour etc. etc...

That was my 5 cents for now.

Edit: I am happy to see that there are still modders dealing with Civ3. You guys do a splendid work! Thankyou.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Still playing III at times (I migrate between III and BTS). I'm just getting back into "let's have a go at those CivIII scenarios again!" Admittedly, I probably have a sentimental attachment to III because I played (and enjoyed) the **** out of it when I first got it. It was, along with Age of Kings, what got me into computer games in the first place.

@Loudspeaker - if you're going to play CivIV, go with the Beyond the Sword expansion. The Warlords expansion doesn't do much but BTS is quite an improvement (especially RFC). I actually don't consider IV and III to be that similar to each other so I don't get bored switching back and forth. Just about the only thing the same in strategy seems to be building enough workers.

An advantage of III over IV is that it runs faster on older machines. Late in the game on larger maps CivIV really starts to slow down but III always seems to move fast.

 

[civvver]

Thanks for advice. It took me a few turns of frustration to remember to build roads everywhere. The resources I just feel like iron is basically make it or break it for you, so many units depend on it and there's no good alternatives. In 4 you couldn't build swords or knights without iron but you could still build trebuchets and maces with copper, and it was very likely you would have one or the other without too much trouble. At worst you'd get muskets not too far out. But then in 3 you need saltpeter for muskets and since units have different attack and defense values that kind of hurts it too.

For improving land, since despotism reduces outputs should I mine grassland early?

 

[Mizar]

It seems like since there's nothing to check your expansion

Yes. spam those settlers early on, learn how to setup a settler factory (a core city with production and at least a bonus food tile, often the capital).
Several cities that have more distance to your capital will be corrupt, doesn't matter, they all add to your strength (no maintenance).
Gradually, you'll get courthouses, a better government and the FP to increase the OCN (Optimal City Number), so many will get productive over time, the hopelessly corrupt rest can get specialist
land = people
people = power (technically: "improved tiles worked = power")

but iron is on the other side of the world.

extensive expansion will provide you with a substantial empire and improve your chances on resources.
If no iron, horsemen do a good job in ancient warfare.

seems like despotism sucks and really limits growth but bee lining monarchy or republic ruins your early tech.

road all worked tiles to increase commerce.
hook up as many luxes as you can get.
Republic will actually improve and not decrease your research, its just a matter of getting the happy situation under control and grow the cities rapidly. Don't be afraid to up lux tax temporary high, 30 turns later after cities are over size 7 you are on the way. A good plan is to have aqueducts (construction) as available builds before you revolt to grow the cities rapidly.

In 3 a couple swords dominate my spear.

Keep 3-4 units in cities to defend?

No, you're not an AI.
Apart from Military Police, keep offensive units concentrated in border cities.
Sign Right of Passage with your neighbors, then use it to station a couple of units in strategic forward locations inside the neighbor's lands. You want to setup an early warning net that gives you info on advancing enemy stacks, to give you enough time for concentrating your forces before a sneak attack happens.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Mizar gives excellent advice, Civver. I usually use the Republic slingshot myself and trade for the early techs. Some people prefer Monarchy and go that way fast. Whichever you do, GET OUT OF DESPOTISM! If you take a poll, you'll find that most people prefer Republic and a substantial minority like Monarchy. The other government types have their fans but these two are what 95% of the players use.

I disagree about Right of Passage except in limited circumstances. I'm usually in a Republic with no military at all in my interior cities. The AI loves to ROP-rape. In an early game, I shared my continent with some poor devil about 1/5 of my strength. I was going for space and felt generous so I gave ROP to him. 2 turns later he took one of my cities even though it meant his destruction. For some reason, other AI's hate the carbon-based player more for ROP-rape transgressions.

I am also an older gamer (53). CivIII appeals to both young and old alike! Bridges the generation gap.

Note: Republic slingshot is when you use the Philosophy free tech to get Republic (which is horribly expensive tech).

 

[rilnator]

Funny you should ask.

Just started playing again tonight after about 3 or 4 years.

Been playing civ since civ1 when I was in high school. didn't dig civ 4 too much.

Looking forward to spending my holidays playing Civ3 complete.

 

[timerover51]

I mentioned using the Civ3 editor to generate maps to my game design class, and discovered that about 6 students out of 25 were regular Civ Players. One was "Civ3 Forever" the others were split on Civ4 and Civ5, and had not really looked at Civ3. When they got into computer gaming, Civ4 was the new thing.

 

[bluebox]

... One was "Civ3 Forever" the others were split on Civ4 and Civ5, and had not really looked at Civ3. When they got into computer gaming, Civ4 was the new thing.

So was Civ3 when I started playing it. I never played Civ2, I spent some time with C-evo, the deterministic Civ2 clone and AI development framework. That made a lot of fun but then I wanted to find out by myself about all the flaws and weaknesses that C-evo was supposed to even out.

Instead of Civ2, I started with Civ3. In the beginning, I founded colonies dozens of tiles off my borders in unsettled lands in the jungle and hauled a catapult into enemy territory to siege a city. was and at me! Civ3 had to be taken a bit more seriously. So I joined CFC. Played GOTM's, learned a lot.

I'm still playing Civ3 once a while because I am too lazy to take the learning curve again and again. I also have Civ4 though and played some games and actually started to like it. But Civ3 still has depth. How often have I built stealth bombers? Maybe two or three times? I used helis exactly once in that dreaded India SGOTM where you started on an island with no galleys.