Building an empire of Metropolises

[Bamspeedy]

Learn some tips on how to build my version of the perfect empire. This is ideal for players who want to play on levels Chieftain, Warlord or Regent on Huge pangea maps, and prefer to have very large cities that will run at maximum efficiency with minimul corruption.

http://www.msnusers.com/BamSpeedysCiv3Screenshots

 

[Raskolnikov]

I loved your website! The ghost of the girl that pops up in your funny pictures nearly gave me a heart attack... I am also large map lots of cities with all the improvements player. Sometimes I wish the ai positioned their cities better. At least (after annexing my enemies territories and creating a worldwide empire) my origional cities are all the largest and most developed! I have never tried posting units along the border like your Russo-Sino border... I think I'll try that next game!

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, I lined them up like that because I was bored. Usually you want a stack of units ready to attack each border city on a tile where you can reach the city the fastest (usually on the diagonal). Bigger stacks towards his main production cities/capital. When sharing a long border like that I like to be able to attack all of them at once. The AI sure doesn't like it when you take out 10 of his cities in one turn. Lined up like I had them some units weren't able to reach a city on it's first turn.

 

[KindLE]

That picture with the girl scared the bejeezus out of me! I jumped out of my chair and gasped. Like some nightmare or something. I was like, OK, maybe it's one of these "hidden picture" type things that I can never see. GEEZ! I'm awake now.

 

[Richard III]

Great site bamspeedy. Particularly liked the stuff about building cities - it never occurred to me to use settlers to beef up the capital, something I did do in Civ2.

The one thing that surprised me about your city placement was the fact that you would place cities in "optimal" positions even if it meant putting them one square away from rivers, which often happened on your Russian map. This surprised me - care to comment?

R.III

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, it does make more sense to place cities on rivers, especially in the early game (ancient era-middle ages). The optimal city placement is used for using every single tile with minimal overlap. Once you enter the industrial ages, every single tile is used. That one or two extra tiles you are using producing more than enough gold to support the aqueduct and produce more shieds to offset the shields you spent earlier on building the aqueduct.

No, this is not a strategy to get a real high score, or to get early conquest victories, or strategies that will work on smaller maps or higher difficulties, that why I specified map size and difficulty levels. This is for people who like to have large metropolises with very low corruption. Corruption in this game sucks so bad once you exceed the 'optimal number of cities', this is one strategy to combat that by using the fewest number of cities to cover the most tiles. When I first played this game I loved seeing as many cities with pop 35+ that I could. Of course once I learned about how bad pollution is and how useful specialists really are, I have changed my strategies. But there are probably some that still like seeing all those large metropolises.

 

[JoseM]

how can you be able to make FARMS??? im only able to make irrigation but not FARMS...

 

[Bamspeedy]

how can you be able to make FARMS??? im only able to make irrigation but not FARMS...

There are no farms in Civ3, just the irrigation. If your talking about the fact that the graphics on my screenshots looks like farms, it's because I used a graphic mod. I believe it's called Snoopy's graphics. Try doing a search on that in the User Creation forum and you might find it, I don't have the link for it handy.

 

[MightyMick]

I think you can still get essentially the same effect as a farm - you just have to build a railroad. They add +1 food to a square that's already irrigated.:scout: :scout:

 

[Civanator]

hey Bamspeedy, how do you place the cities to the east and west according to your picture?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Just count the tiles, and you should see the pattern. You can go about it two ways, I guess.

1. Easiest way: From the capital, go three tiles east, then either 1 tile north or south. Then for the town to the west you would go the opposite direction (if your eastern town had gone 1 tile south, then the western town would go 1 tile north).

2. What I had done: From the capital go 4 tiles southwest, then 2 tiles northwest for one city and 3 tiles southeast for the other city. In the other dirction (4 tiles to the northeast), you would flip-flop the two (2 tiles southeast, and 3 tiles northwest).

Since the pattern keeps repeating, you can just visualize any city as the capital to place future cities. Doing some drawing on graph paper helps you see the pattern easier.

Just keep in mind this is only a good pattern in theory, not necessarily in reality. By placing cities in a consistant pattern, you may end up with cities 1 tile from a river, 1 tile off of a coast, in poor terrain that doesn't have enough food (mountains/hills), etc. Also, you don't get benefits from placing cities directly on some bonus resources (food bonuses), like you did in the original version, so that would lessen the practicality of this if cities end up being built on certain resources.

I'm thinking of adjusting this site to also explain/show ICS (very dense build) city placement.

 

[Civanator]

you should explain/show ICS city placement. Also, does you strategy work on standard maps? or Large? cause the computer i use can't have Huge or it will lagg alot. Also thanks for explaining

 

[Bamspeedy]

ICS works on any size map. The fewer civs the better. On a huge map this means 400-511 cities (this would be a major problem on slow computers), or 100 or so on the smaller maps. You need to start on a good size land mass, preferably pangea maps, but continents will usually work. JuicyCivNewbie wrote an article about this in the strategy & Tips section titled "How to Build 100+ cities by 10 A.D." a few weeks ago.

 

[slothman]

Where is the picture of the girl? I looked around but couldn't find it.

 

[Bamspeedy]

It's in the funny pics section. The picture is called 'evil'.

 

[slothman]

I almost jumped. It could be scary if I hadn't known it was there.

 

[Neomega]

This to me is ineffective, yes your cities have lesser corruption by the numbers, but what about conquering, you'll reach your optimal number faster, and occupy half the territory. I'd rather reach out and have my culture cover as much territory as possible, so I don't have to worry about coal, iron, aluminum, rubber or uranium.

 

[thefrenchzulu]

I actually had the same placement. I use a closer one for deity play. limiting workable squares to 13.

I would love to see a placement stategy getting to 20 workers! The amount you get for all luxuries plus market places. Have anyone worked on a grid for this? Needed for high scores!

 

[Torakami_Bltzen]

Bamspeedy, I used the 2 ring O.C.P from the article, but Where do you think would be the best place to add the forbidden palace?

 

[Bamspeedy]

As far from the palace as possible if you want the lowest corruption in the long run. If you have a leader to rush the FP, an enemies' old capital is usually a good place for the FP, then place rings of cities around the FP also.