Building - When and Where?

[Tunnel Vision]

I have only played a couple of games of Civ 3, and admittedly, I am not the best.

One problem I am having is knowing what buildings to build and when. I haven't put a lot of thought into this and it shows in my games. I tend to either follow the AI suggestions or just build every building in every city. I am sure there is a much smarter way to go about this, and before I start racking my brain, I was wondering if anyone had some basic (or advanced) pointers...

Thanks!
Tunnel Vision

 

[sealman]

I hope you are prepared for many different variations. I for one, build haphazardly and am comfortable with that.

 

[BillChin]

The answer depends a lot on the map size, the difficulty level and the starting terrain. In general, I build warriors and settlers until I have three cities. At that point a temple, granary, or barracks may be appropiate depending on the starting terrain and early neighbors.

If early war looks likely, barracks are given priority. If there are no neighbors and a lot of good land, a few granaries are good. Temples are useful for expanding city borders and happiness and eventually every city gets a temple.

Later on, libraries, marketplaces, courthouses are good to build, but continue to build some military units if there are enemy civs near by.

It is hard to be more specific without a specific game to comment on. I suggest that players participate in the Game of the Month in order to have a common game to comment on. Players can learn much more that way than playing isolated games.

The March GOTM is just wrapping up. A player could rush through it before the deadline (April 2) because it is a small map. An April game will be posted very soon.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3gotm/

 

[Rain]

I agree with the suggested approach of settlers and warriors early on. I also recommend forgetting science and concentrating on economy. You can buy most tech more easily than researching it. For science jsut get the alphabet and writing then work on embassies and RoP's. Generally u can keep civs from attacking you by buying Rop's from them. This is a non-militaristic approach so if u'r keen to break heads it wont suit your style. Me i love the french hehe.

 

[X_Pacifist_]

My basic hint (by a player who play at Civilization since 1992) are to start not to much with the idea of to be ''big''! ... You have to make your first cities(4 or 5) with strong and not to far of each others...be sure to develop the ground a lot and be really friendly with your first ''ennemies'' with big alliance...you will be really strong and really advanced!

P.S. Sorry for my english, I'm come from Quebec and my born language are french!...

 

[Willem]

I always set up my cities so that they each produce 2 Settlers, and defensive support, ASAP. When that's done, I build a Temple to expand the borders, and keep my citizens happy for awhile. After that I build a Worker, and in the early part of the game a Barracks, if there's no wonders available at the time.

 

[philippe]

first try to seek a good location and then build granary and in my game i can build settleres every 4 turns so i spread al my settlers around the country and now i am REALLY powerful!


GAME ON!