A noobs cry for help

[Ronojoy1917]

I just started my first game ov Civ3 today, and I am totally blown away. I'm not new to the series, but I've been playing Civ4 for a while and can play not-quite-comfortably on Noble. I have to admit this was quite as engrossing as my first Civ4 game, but soo much more difficult.

I need a whole lot of questions answered. Why does civil disorder happen so often? Is making one citizen an entertainer the best way to deal with it? Is there no resource specific improvemnt like civ4, do you just need to build a road to gain access to a resource? Should I be irrigating everything? How important are mines?What are the more important units and buildings to hammer out at the very beginning? Is there no probability of victory calculator like in civ4? How are you supposed to know your odds of winning? Is there anyway of moving a group of units on the same tile together, like a stack?

Combat is a little weird because my units appear to be virtually invincible versus barbs, but almost useless against other civs. And its not like they have a tech advantage or anything.

Considering that I wasn't new to the series, I confidently decided to play on Warlord. Was that a mistake, should I have started on the easiest level?

 

[vmxa]

"Ronojoy1917"
"Why does civil disorder happen so often? Is making one citizen an entertainer the best way to deal with it?"

Disorder occurs when you have more unhappy citizens than happy. The best way to deal with it is to get a lux. This may not be possible right away, so then you have to determine, if the lux slider is better than a specialist or a structure (temple).

"Is there no resource specific improvemnt like civ4, do you just need to build a road to gain access to a resource?"

Just a road as long as the resource is within your borders..

"Should I be irrigating everything? How important are mines?"

Irrigate plains and food bonus is most common. Mines are only important, if you are going to net shields. Basically core towns benefit from mines and corrupt towns gain little.

"Is there no probability of victory calculator like in civ4?"

There are some in the utilities forum.

"How are you supposed to know your odds of winning?"

Just look at the attack value and the defeders defense value and you have a good idea. Tools exist to check the odds. Note that attacking across rivers boost the defenders odds. If the defender is fortifiedit gets a boost. If it is behond a wall or in a city or metro it gets a boost. Terrain can also increase the defense.

"Is there anyway of moving a group of units on the same tile together, like a stack?"

Cntrl-J

"Combat is a little weird because my units appear to be virtually invincible versus barbs, but almost useless against other civs. And its not like they have a tech advantage or anything."

At warlord you have a 400 bonus vs barbs, so they are not going to win very often.

"Considering that I wasn't new to the series, I confidently decided to play on Warlord. Was that a mistake, should I have started on the easiest level?"

No, there is very little difference from Chief to Warlord. One thing that is most noticeable is that you get 4 content pop in Chief and 3 in Warlord.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Interesting - there are many articles for those who went from III to IV, but none the other way around.

So, riots are probably going to the thing that drives you nuts the most. The "angry citizen" bit in Civ IV is there because the whole rioting thing upset people about Civ III. Get Civ Assist (utility program), which can be set up to warn you about most riots before they happen.

Mines/irrigation: at the beginning of the game, you are under the despotism penalty, where any tile that creates more than 2 food or more than 2 shield has that number reduced by one, which means that irrigated plain grassland is useless, since the extra food is just cancelled. (note that I just edited this post because Raliuven pointed out that i said 1 and 1 at first - see his next post

Personally, I'd stick with warlord. Chieftain AI's are basically bunny rabbits. Warlord is at least close to regent (where neither you nor the AI have any bonuses)

Combat is Civ III is MUCH simpler than in Civ IV - no collateral damage, no unit specific multipliers, no unit level strength multipliers - what you see is what you get. There are 4 different levels of HP (2-5) and there are defensive bonuses from terrain and city size, but those are pretty easy to figure.

 

[Raliuven]

Mines/irrigation: at the beginning of the game, you are under the despotism penalty, where any tile that creates more than 1 food or more than 1 shield has that number reduced by one, which means that irrigated plain grassland is useless, since the extra food is just cancelled.

AT, don't you mean anything that creates more than 2 food or shield receives a penalty under despotism? In other words, if a bonus grassland is producing 2 food and 1 shield under normal situations and you come along and irrigate it, that bumps it up to 3 food and 1 shield - but despotism takes away 1 food (because it is producing more than 2) and you have 2 food and 1 shield - exactly where you started. But if you mine the bonus grassland (BG), then you have 2 food and 2 shields, neither of which is affected by despotism.

Regarding which buildings to put up - you have to carefully evaluate each build and decide if it is going to pay off - take into account the building maintenance costs. If you are are not using it, you are still paying for it. In non-corrupt cities, you will probably want the basic multiplier buildings - marketplaces, banks (and stock markets). If you are researching techs yourself, then the multiplier buildings are libraries and universities (and research labs). Then there are factories and power plants to multiply shield production. Granaries work like a food multiplier, but are slightly different. Cities dedicated to military production should have barracks. Stuff like that. Just ask yourself what purpose the city serves and then build the things that will increase that function. Corrupt cities receive virtually no buildings/infrastructure.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

AT, don't you mean anything that creates more than 2 food or shield receives a penalty under despotism? In other words, if a bonus grassland is producing 2 food and 1 shield under normal situations and you come along and irrigate it, that bumps it up to 3 food and 1 shield - but despotism takes away 1 food (because it is producing more than 2) and you have 2 food and 1 shield - exactly where you started. But if you mine the bonus grassland (BG), then you have 2 food and 2 shields, neither of which is affected by despotism.

Regarding which buildings to put up - you have to carefully evaluate each build and decide if it is going to pay off - take into account the building maintenance costs. If you are are not using it, you are still paying for it. In non-corrupt cities, you will probably want the basic multiplier buildings - marketplaces, banks (and stock markets). If you are researching techs yourself, then the multiplier buildings are libraries and universities (and research labs). Then there are factories and power plants to multiply shield production. Granaries work like a food multiplier, but are slightly different. Cities dedicated to military production should have barracks. Stuff like that. Just ask yourself what purpose the city serves and then build the things that will increase that function. Corrupt cities receive virtually no buildings/infrastructure.

Doh!! My apologies - I'm going to actually edit that post, cause it's so wrong...

So, basically you can irrigate (and get a bonus)

cow on grass or plain
wheat on grass, plain or floodplain
wine on grass (but not plain)
Any empty plain tile and any empty desert tile (but no empty grass tile)

You can mine (and get a bonus)

Anything on grass.
Wheat or wine on plain (but not cow)

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Alright thanks, this seems good basic stuff for now. But a little bit more specific to my game, I've already become embroiled in a war with both France and Germany, my two neighbors. They are much larger and stronger. For now I think I'll be capable of holding my border cities, but I don't think I'll be able to do anything further than just withstand their assaults. It seems early expansion needs to be done much quicker than in civ4. Anyways, I'm not sure how to deal with the situation really. Should I sue for peace no matter the cost?

 

[vmxa]

Post a save and we can take a look. Yes expansion at the start is a major goal in III. IV had a cost for getting larger empires in the early game.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Tomorrow being the weekend I'll see if I can get a save up then. I've never done it before though, how exactly is it done?

 

[vmxa]

When you use the "post reply" button, scroll down and find the "manage attachments". The browse button will let you locate the save to post.

 

[Raliuven]

When you use the "post reply" button, scroll down and find the "manage attachments". The browse button will let you locate the save to post.

I'm starting to think you should get a kickback from the moderators every time you answer this question - not that I haven't asked it myself in the past.

 

[vmxa]

I can live with that.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Alright thanks, this seems good basic stuff for now. But a little bit more specific to my game, I've already become embroiled in a war with both France and Germany, my two neighbors. They are much larger and stronger. For now I think I'll be capable of holding my border cities, but I don't think I'll be able to do anything further than just withstand their assaults. It seems early expansion needs to be done much quicker than in civ4. Anyways, I'm not sure how to deal with the situation really. Should I sue for peace no matter the cost?

I play both. There's a lot of differences. You're right - there's no city maintenance but each city gives you more unit support, so you try to expand at a rate that would be insane in CivIV. Get out of Despotism ASAP - go fast for either Republic slingshot (use Philosphy free tech for Republic, it's hideously expensive) or Monarchy.

I'd probably sue for peace. Diplomacy works differently in this game. You can never trust an AI, even at gracious. They will tech trade like Mansa Musa - all the time, even if they hate you. If they're much larger and stronger, I don't know if you can win. You can't stop war declaration by diplomacy but you can by military strength. The AI values offensive combat points much more than defensive. If you're mostly Spearmen, they're more likely to attack. The AI is more practical, it asks "Can I win this war?" rather than attacking like Monty just because they hate you.

ROP in CivIII doesn't give the same bonuses as Open Borders in CivIV. I don't open borders in III and don't even spend the money to build an embassy usually. Beware of ROP-rape. Unlike CivIV, units aren't automatically ejected from enemy territory on war declaration. You can use ROP to line up troops for an immediate assault - once. No AI will never trust you again if you do this. It does seem to trust another AI if it commits ROP-rape however.

Road every square being worked in III.

The early game is expand, expand, expand. Read up on war weariness - it works a lot differently in III. The only ancient wonder I build in the expansion phase, if I have Ivory, is the Statue of Zeus. That wonder is more powerful than anything in IV IMHO. Helps with later expansion through the AI.

One of the best resources is a long play through by vmxa on Regent. I think it's called something like winning on Regent. You follow through the game and vmxa explains why he does what he does and what works. It is the best! He used to have a link to it in his signature, which was very nice.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Thanks for the long post Ataxerxes, very informative and helpful. Overall it CivIII seems like a much darker, more unfriendly world, where the AI can't be trusted for anything, and everything is less pretty and more evil looking. Anyway, here's the save, looking forward to suggestions.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Thanks for the long post Ataxerxes, very informative and helpful. Overall it CivIII seems like a much darker, more unfriendly world, where the AI can't be trusted for anything, and everything is less pretty and more evil looking. Anyway, here's the save, looking forward to suggestions.

Wasn't on the right computer to look at the download. Sorry.

You're right, CivIII is a darker, more unfriendly world. Never trust the AI, even at gracious. They backstab as badly as we do. There is one area where it's less evil. If you have a strong military with lots of strong attackers, you usally won't be attacked so you don't have this "stop trading with" and "give us XXX" being a big decision every 5 turns. Tell them where to go and maybe give them a shove in the right direction. Also, the AI is always willing to trade techs, even monopoly techs. Even if they hate you. No more working some AI to friendly and kissing his feet to get him to tech trade.

Another thing forces me to war. Resource trading. Nice days in CivIV, one luxury for one luxury, everybody's happy. No more. If you are leading, the price for their luxuries go up. Sometimes they won't trade you a luxury unless you throw in a tech. This means, if they won't give it to you, you take it. Most of my wars are dictated by resources (and key wonders, like Pyramids, that I never build).

One other ray of sunshine. Even by the Civ Fanatics standards, the CivIII posters are extremely pleasant and helpful. Probably the best subforum. Post any other questions. If I can't answer, there are lots of players a lot better than me.

 

[vmxa]

I could not load the save in Seedbeast, CAII or C3C. This usually means the game is not patched.

C3 is 1.29F, PTW is 1.27F and C3C is 1.22.

 

[Raliuven]

I was able to open the game in vanilla Civ3. Just some general observations - not meant in any mean way.

1. You are 143 turns into the game. You are still in despotism. You have a lot of the AA techs researched, but don't have any alternate governments. Pick Republic or Monarchy and go for it. Getting out of despotism is a top priority.

2. Your Civ is underdeveloped. I have attached a picture for those that cannot upload. This is pretty much the same problem everywhere. Your capital has 3 wheat bonuses in it radius - way more than it needs. You have over irrigated one wheat and you are not even using the other. I would have build a city at the X and taken the extra wheat and capitalized off the FP for extra food. With a little work, it would have made a good worker factory at the least. Might be hard to make a settler factory there.

3. But your capital is another issue. You mined a hill when you have 2 bonus grasslands available? You could have mined both of those for the cost of mining the hill and taken twice the shield resources to the bank. You have a grassland irrigated in despotism? That gives you nothing at this point - despotism steals the extra food (see my earlier post on this topic). And you must have left it without putting a road down? I would not have done that. If you moved there, might as well put a road down - its at your capital - you'll be using it eventually. General rule of thumb - work all flat land first, irrigate brown, mine green. You want a city to get to +5 food per turn to create a settler factory and need 6-8 shields per turn - and a granary.

4. You have several citizens as clowns in your capital, presumably because you wanted to trigger a WLTKD? That is pointless at your captial and you are still in despotism, so any benefits you might have gained are mostly lost. Put those clowns to work. Use th luxury slider to control unhappiness - though that is not a problem at all at warlord with 2 luxuries . . . and temples . . . and colosseums . . .

5. You don't have a granary at your capital? With all that food, it should be a settler factory turning out a settler every 4 turns after about turn 30. You should have 25+ cities from your capital alone. You only have 5 cities at 280 AD.

6. You only have 3 native workers and 2 captured workers. You should have many, many more. With a worker factory at the X city site, you should have 30+ workers, all making improvements for your 30+ cities. 1 worker per city is a good ration - 1.5 or 2 is even better.

7. You have iron and horse - and they are not connected.

8. You have luxuries that are not connected. You could use those for trade. But then I see you have roaded a Incense - and then moved to the nearby hill to mine? Why not mine the hill with incense to pick up the extra gold if you are going to work it? You also have a bonus grassland (BG) in the city radius that you haven't worked first. You can improve a flat tile at 1/2 the cost (in worker turns) of a hill.

9. You have built a temple and colosseum in your capital. You also built a barracks. I personally wouldn't have build any of those - I would have installed a granary and it would have been a settler factory since them. No need for all that in a city that will be size 5-7 for the next 100+ turns.

10. You have temples in nearly every city. They are tempting because you are religious (and I build a few of them for cheap culture myself with a religious civ sometimes, but later in the game), but if you want to claim land, do it with cities. CxxC spacing will take care of that, though if you want CxxxC spacing in some places I can see a temple MAYBE. But low priority.

11. You have mostly defensive units. A spearman costs 20 shields. A warrior costs 10 shields. Both attack at a 1. A spearman is only usefully if you are waiting to be attacked. A warrior on a mountain has the same defense as a spearman in a city. Of course, if you had the horses and iron hooked up, then you would have even better options. A few swordsmen on a mountian are death to anything walking nearby and fast moving horseman and skirmish enemy units to death before they can get far.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

I am in fact playing vanilla Civ3 without patches. I guess that can cause some issues.

Raliuven, thankyou very much! This is precisely the sort of dressing down I need, to tototally clear some misconceptions.

1. I'll go straight for Monarchy then.

2. I over-irrigated the wheat? what does this mean? But see your point about the X, do you think it would still be viable to found a city there, considering my dearth of workers?

3. So let me get this straight: mines or not better for production than grassland/plain. They just take far longer to improve then flatlands, when the shield yield is the same. Am I right? I'll just have to adjust to that then, because in civ4 you always mine the hills and almost never mine flatlands.

4. The excessive happy-making things such as the buildings as well as the clowns and luxuries is probably because I got sort of fed up with the civil disorder and overreacted a little. And then forgot about it. But I'll make those clowns work.

5. Okay, Granary in capital. And I will try to get it pumping out settlers, but at this stage, do you see many possible directions of expanion? I think mostly to the north, but France appears to have started up some colonies there already.

6. Expansion has always been my weakpoint, even in Civ4. But I'll have to learn to purposefully Rex, until I can't expand any further without a war.

7.

8. Duly noted, I'll mine the incense.

9. Okay. I'll try to focus more on settlers.

10. Does CxxC spacing mean cities two spaces apart? Now is that the edge of their culutral border or the city center? I'm guessing not the latter. But I'll hold of on temples(and infrastructure in general) till later.

11. I'm realizing that warriors have a far greater lifespan and usefulness in Civ3. And I know, with the horses and Iron its just inexcusable. I'll get out the horsemen and swordsmen as soon as possible.

And I think I'll beg for peace, theres just too much to be done and the war drags attention away from it.

EDIT: Also, is there a 'sign' function in game that allows you to stick signs on things like in civ4? Or did you use like paint or something for the x and the arrows. I'd like to have some signs, they're helpful.

 

[DWetzel]

I'll touch on one or two points real quick-like:

CxxC spacing means that there is a city, then two blank spaces, then another city -- so they're three spaces apart in total. There are two major reasons why this is beneficial:

First, the cities still have enough tiles to grow to maximum size. If you have too much space between the cities, you will find that there are perfectly good tiles that you aren't using.

Second, for military reasons: with two cities connected by a road (1/3 movement), you can move a defensive unit from one city to the other in one turn. That means that you need less defensive units, which leaves more room for offensive units (and generally speaking, offense is the best defense).

Irrigating all the wheats isn't terrible by any means -- except that you can't possibly want all of them to go to your capital. Right now those 3 wheats produce 4 food per turn (fpt) each); that plus the two that all cities get "for free" means your capital can grow at 8 fpt. That's cool, except that you find early in the game that it's hard to keep a massive city happy (hence, probably, your colosseum). Instead, if you built a couple settlers from Delhi, you could build a town somewhere near that X, and another town on the coast S-S-SW of Delhi, and each of those three cities could use one wheat, WHILE ALSO working more tiles for production. They'd all grow quickly, and you'd find that you soon have three cities making units or other stuff at a useful clip.

A very good rule of thumb is to try not to have a city work more tiles than the workers have improved, and to have workers FULLY improve a tile before leaving it. In this case, Delhi has 9 tiles being worked, and exactly one of those (the wheat south of the capital) is both irrigated and roaded. If you took the time to road and mine the two bonus grasslands, you'd find your production much higher. That 2 food, 1 shield tile east of the capital would instead be a 2 food, 2 shields, 1 commerce tile -- quite an improvement!

Never have a worker leave a tile without roading it. (This isn't ALWAYS the case, but if you do it you won't be too far wrong.)

 

[Ronojoy1917]

I see. The main point seems to be +++cities is goood. So if your gonna have a bunch of cities you might as well spread the goodness around, right it makes sense.

Right now I'm a little bit disgusted with this game. I played another session after this one, but it wasn't so good. Theres virtually no room left to expand and I'm locked in a draining war with Germany, trying to chug on with just 4 cities. So I have started a second game and that's going a little better. I'm playing as the Persians, Scientific and Industrious are really very nice. Thanks for all the help, I'm looking forward to applying these tips.

 

[Raliuven]

Okay, I planned a much longer response but my computer crashed, so here is the abbreviated version:

I was going to give you the breakdown of how to build a settler factory, but that is probably a moot point since we will be out of Despotism soon. But it is important to learn that technique IMO. So if you are interested, let me know and I will redo the work on that topic.

I don't disagree with DWetzel, but IMO, the real problem of over irrigating is that +8fpt does not go into 20 or 10. It does fit with 40 for a city size 7-12 without a granary, but that is an even bigger waste IMO. +5 fpt fits nicely. A city size 1-6 needs 20 food to grow 1 citizen, with a granary it is 10. At +8fpt, you will lose some of that food to waste. At +5 fpt, you can pick up some shields by mining rather than irrigating. Irrigation and mines have their place. Irrigating brown and mining green is a rule of thumb for despotism. It starts to fall apart once you are out of despotism. You will eventually want to irrigate enough so you can grow to size 12 and work the hills and mountains.

Answers to your questions:

#1 I prefer Monarchy myself, but many prefer Republic. I think Monarchy is easy for new players because of virtually no war weariness and use of military police to control unhappiness.

#2 see above

#3 see above, but I like that you are thinking in number of worker turns needed. Optimizing worker turns is very important.

#4 Clowns are evil. They may be a necessary evil at times, but they are evil. Only use them if the luxury slider does more damage and/or a specialist won't fix the problem. I think overuse of clowns is a very common newbie mistake - I did it myself. But they severely damage city productivity and you can't afford it at this point in the game.

#5 Enough said.

#6 REX can decide a game - at least if you are going to lose it.

#7

#8

#9

One last lesson - through diplomacy, I see that Germany knows China and Japan and you do not. Germany knows a lot of techs, but you have poly - which means Germany, china and Japan probably do not - or they would have traded it already.

Dial up Germany and say hello. Ask to trade. Germany froths at the opportunity to add poly for his tech collection. He offers Horseback Riding and contact with the Chinese for Poly and 10 gp. I agree. Dial up Mao and offer Poly. He too wants this rare tech. He offers contact with Japan and Lit. We take it. Contact Japan and we they too want poly. I offer poly and receive CoL and 9 gp. I could have done better but I wouldn't give up my maps. So for Poly and 1gp we got = contact with Japan and China, HBR, CoL and Lit. We will also get Monarchy first, and we can probably pick up MM and Currency and get to the MA in short order.