Centre of the map

[Crowqueen]

Getting to grips with this game fine, I notice that sometimes I find momentum and sometimes I don't, unlike with Civ IV where I can play most maps without a problem. I still play Chieftain but I like it when a game goes ballistic and I can happily spend many hours kicking the [proverbials] out of the vastly out-teched and out-gunned opponents, it's just this doesn't happen often.

When I get a map where I have a lot of jungle or flood-plains nearby I usually reload. What are the best ways to get going with just the basic settler and worker? I normally build warriors for scouting (2 - one each direction) then one warrior or spearman for defence and then get started on a second settler.

What does anyone suggest? The first scenario happens much too rarely for my liking and I would like to get it happening every game without fail before I think about moving up a level.

 

[Aabraxan]

If you haven't done so yet, I'd suggest reading "Cracker's Opening Plays" in the War Academy. It's an excellent article and one of the suggestions is to move your worker to the most valuable tile first. That will lift the fog from a few tiles and let you see if there's a better spot for your settler.

In a standard game (at Emperor), I usually build a warrior or two for scouting (unless I have scouts), then an MP or 2, depending on my needs. Either I'll build a second MP or a settler after that.

 

[Crowqueen]

MP?

Thanks for your help, I'll have a look .

 

[Aabraxan]

MP=Military Police. When you keep a military unit in a city and it helps keep people from rioting.

 

[NickyH]

A few hints that maybe can help:

The goal in the early game is to produce as many settlers as possible. You need workers and military too, of course, but its better to produce settlers and build new towns than to start building lots of city improvements in the early game. Concentrate on military, workers and settlers in the beginning.

In order to be able to produce many settlers, you need extra food. If you can work tiles with cattle or wheat in a town, you should irrigate that tile to get an extra food from it. Population will grow fast and that means you can build more settlers in that town.

If you don't have enough luxuries to keep your people happy in fast growing towns, don't be afraid to spend some money on the "luxury tax" slider to keep the towns from rioting.

And, like Aabraxan said, read articles like "Cracker's Opening Plays" in the war academy. CivIII is a fairly difficult game to learn, and if you like reading articles and learning from this forum, you'll learn much faster tahn by just experimenting.

And… good luck with kicking your "friendly" neighbors long and hard!

 

[Ringo Kid]

Simple plan:
Build nothing but warriors and settlers until you have ten cities, spaced so that your defenders can go from one town to the next in a single turn. Use your first worker to connect roads between your first ten cities.

Two warriors per city as defenders, extras go explore. As soon as your city reaches size two, switch production to another settler.

When you have your ten cities- build a barracks and attackers (Archers, horsemen, swordsmen) in the 5 towns with the strongest mineral production (shields) - and workers and settlers from the towns with the most food production.
Road every thing, mine the green and irrigate the brown.

When you have a stack of ten or so veteran attackers built from your barracks towns- take the whole stack and whack your closest neighbor with it. Repeatedly.

 

[Elear]

I must step-in and stress the importance of workers. BUILD THEM.

Proper amounts of workers allows new cities to be continuously improved, but more importantly, it makes certain that there are always roads leading to new city sites. As important as settlers are, you will actually save time by making sure you have roughly 1 worker/city, even if there is an apparent temporary loss by not building more settlers.

 

[The Professor]

The Chieftain level is really just to help you figure out where the buttons are, etc. It lets you get away with an awful lot. Since you can clearly win on Chieftain, I would highly recommend that you try Warlord. It's not much harder, but it doesn't let you get away with nearly as many bad habits.

 

[Crowqueen]

@Prof - What does it let you get away with? Is it just a more docile AI or is it more substantial?

BTW I had a look at the articles in the War Academy but they didn't answer the question about dealing with a specifically jungle/floodplain start. I might have to roam a bit further but it depresses me having to reload a number of times, particularly on such a low level.

I'll have a go at Warlord .

 

[dementedseabass]

Unlike Civ4, expansion is key in Civ3.

 

[Crowqueen]

Once I get going, expansion isn't a problem - I usually expand towards the first AI (or engulf them if they are particularly close), conquer them, then lather, rinse, repeat. I learned that the hard way at the beginning and I always build a settler straight after the first few military units/scouts and then make sure I settle again as soon as I can see the strategic resources (horses, iron - that's why I like to start with Japan, who get The Wheel free) that I need in the surrounding areas. Then I archer-rush the nearest AI and if it gets going that's war for the rest of the game. I usually build temples and, when they become available, courthouses to make sure I take care of unhappiness and corruption as much as I can. I go for the Pyramids, then Sun Tsu's Art of War, Leonardo's Workshop and Adam Smith's Trading Company; the other wonders are not mandatory (I play Pangaea so I don't do ships or naval invasions).

When I have squashed the first two AIs I normally have enough lebensraum to continue the war well away from my core empire and expand into available space. Since more cities means more GPT (rather than less as in Civ IV) at a certain stage I know I am going to win. It's getting to the stage where I am licking the first AI and moving on to the second that is difficult and out of 100 games I start I only end up playing three or four to their conclusion .

I guess it's not meant to be played that way though!

 

[capnvonbaron]

Nothing wrong with abandoning jungle or fp starts if you don't like those terrain types. It may suit you to try one of those starts sometime and give yourself a challenge, though.

I always say this and I know no one I say it to ever listens, but I'm going to say it anyways. DON'T BUILD THE PYRAMIDS. It is an early-game waste of shields... choose which cities will be settler factories and build granaries there... the rest of your cities don't need them. The Pyramids are much more easily conquered than built.

Also.. I hope you aren't automating workers. Please tell me you aren't automating workers...

 

[capnvonbaron]

I'd also like to add.. if you're bored, try variants. Try and see how early a conquer victory you can get. Try a Five-City Challenge (5CC) or a One-City Challenge (OCC) for any victory except domination. OCC games are fun because they usually don't take very long (lots of pressing spacebar) and you can concentrate on managing a single city the entire game. Both will help you with city management in large multi-city games.

 

[Spoonwood]

I personally love the Pyramids. When I can get an early SGL for them... even with the Maya.

 

[The Professor]

@Prof - What does it let you get away with? Is it just a more docile AI or is it more substantial?

The biggest possible crutch on Chieftain is that if your treasury runs out of money, there is no penalty. On every other level, you will have one unit disbanded and one building destroyed every turn that you have negative gpt. Additionally, you get four content citizens in each city, and you get a massive bonus when fighting the barbarians. The AI isn't exactly "more docile;" that is determined by the aggression level you set in the setup screens, but it has a huge production disadvantage, so it will have trouble building any sort of military to attack with. This makes the AI less willing to attack, and when they do attack, they won't be able to field a large enough military to do anything damaging.

On Warlord, you will be penalized for running out of money and you only get three content citizens in each city. The bonus against barbs is still quite large, and the production penalty for the AI only goes down a little, so I am confident that you can win at Warlord, if you've won multiple games on Chieftain.

 

[capnvonbaron]

@ Spoonwood: Of course. An SGL changes the whole equasion.

@Prof/Crow: Chieftan AI are typically more docile because, due to the production disadvantages, they simply cannot produce enough units to become powerful and cocky. Waaay back when I played chieftan frequently, my chief disappointment was that the AI seldom DoW'd anyone, and if they did, they almost NEVER accomplished anything. Even warlord saw little combat action unless it was spurred by me, although once in awhile a city or two would change hands... finally at regent and up, the AI went after each other without my involvement quite frequently. Weaker civs get pummelled, and stronger civs become serious competition.

I personally find all this to add some excitement to the game where chieftan lacks (I always love seeing "<some civilization I haven't met yet> has been destroyed!" in 300BC). It just makes the game more enjoyable.

 

[Spoonwood]

Spoonwood: Of course. An SGL changes the whole equasion.

It might really work out as more than this. Of course for a 20k The Pyramids sound great. Do you want them in a 100k? Also, I think you've assumed players playing with the maximum number of tribes. But, does if work out more beneficial to hand-build The Pyramids if you play with the minimum number of tribes or fewer? If you play with 4 instead of 7 tribes you don't run out of space so fast usually... at least that's the problem I see with The Pyramids... Masonry comes so early that if you build them, you hamper your outward expansion. But, if you don't have to worry about outward expansion as much, then you can have The Pyramids for more upward expansion. If Masonry came at about the time of Map Making or Literature, I think The Pyramids would work as a much, much different story.

 

[sk8boardbob2]

I've never built the Pyramids for a 20k. I use it as a prebuild for the Oracle if I can't built the Colossus and as a prebuild for the GLib. Even the MoM is more useful IMO for a 20k game.

 

[Spoonwood]

The Pyramids costs 400 shields for 4 culture per turn for its 1st 1000 years, and 8 culture per turn afterwards. That's already pretty good as it stands... it really makes it better than Bach's and the Sistine Chapel and arguably just about every other medieval wonder. Now the Oracle does cost only 300 shields for 4 culture per turn, which makes it seem much better than the Pyramids. But, the Pyramids has helps the other non-20k cities of your empire grow your empire faster. Since they get founded later than usual, this helps with money to cash-rush improvements for your 20k city and also helps you to research faster for earlier SGLs or earlier medieval wonders. It also helps to speed production in your non 20k cities for either military for defense or a shot at the Heroic Epic.

 

[sk8boardbob2]

I play on Monarch so things could be different at higher levels. Usually by the time I finish the Oracle, I either have Lit or are pretty close and use the Pyramids to again pre-build for GLib. In most- of my 20k games, I have around 10 cities for most of the game. I usually don't build that many cities because it takes more time to micromanage and corruption starts to affect those later cities.