Civ 4 player trying civ 3, have many questions

[jnebbe]

Hi all, bought civ3 on steam to try it out. I play civ 4 at emperor/immortal level and have a lot of questions comparing the two games, about mechanics, etc. A lot of these are QoL things that I might just have to get used to but I figured I'd ask.
I tried to look up as much as I could in civopedia but it's pretty bare-bones and doesn't explain many things well.


1: Is there a way to see your % to win a battle?

2: How many workers should you aim for? It seems like improvements take eons to finish so should I be aiming for like 3 workers per city?

3: Do you not need to improve a resource, just connect it with a road to get it's benefit?

4: Is there a way to see how many units are in an ai city?

5: City overlap, good or bad? In civ4 it's really important to share strong food sources early game to grow cities fast. In this game it looks like your cities will grow very big since you can constantly be working 2-food tiles

6: I read you should build farms on plains and mines on grasslands, what about hills?

7: Is there any way to change controls? Like moving units with right click, moving map with arrow keys
7.1: I Have 2 monitors (main monitor on right, 2nd on the left) and I can't scroll left because of it

8: Is there an easy way to see which tiles are being worked without zooming into each city?

9: Is chopping forests worth it? 10 shields doesn't seem worth it, maybe unless you're building a wonder

10: Is there a way to move an entire stack of units at the same time?

11: Are there unit counters/bonuses? Like archers getting city defense, spears get bonus vs cavalry, etc.

12: Is there a way to mark/ping tiles to add reminders?

13: What are the stances (cautious, polite, etc) in diplo?

14: Happiness system is really unclear, is there a good guide for it?

15: Are there any graphics packs, mods, etc that I should be using and why?

Thank you all

 

[justanick]

1: No. There is a combat calculatar as a seperatate program.

2. You want to be a republic and as a republic having 3 workers per town is too expensive. What you really want to do is build settlers till all free territory is taken. Until then 1 worker per town ought to suffice after that you may go up to about 2 workers per city, but make sure you can reach city size(size7+) in order to not drown in unit support. Reaching city size is extremely important, especially as a republic. You really want to be a republic.

3. Just connect it with a road and have it within your borders.

4. You can use investigate the city with a spy. While at peace an embassy will suffice. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a-study-of-espionage-mission.97042/

5. Tricky question, opinions differ. In the long run(with hospitals) you want metropolises with about 16 tiles per metropolis. In the short run you want to use (almost) every tile while your cities cannot exceed size 12. So plan ahead, but build a few nonpermanent towns, too. Free unit support and the free food from the city tile matter. Since you come from Civ4 what you really need to discipline your mind to is building more settlers.

6. Hills get mines, you have no choice there. You have no choice in floodplains either. Where you have a choice keep in mind what the net food of your city will be. Changing improvements to met the need may be needed.

8. Not that i am aware of. In F1 you get an aggregated view, but that is a different story.

9. You cannot use chopping for wonders. Chopping can make sense, in fact some players try to get the 10 shields from every tile once planting forests is an option. But it is just a little extra, nothing to trouble you mind with.

10. Yes. "g" moves one unit. "j" moves many. Other user may explain better.

11. No. There are boni, but no specific ones like in Civ4.

12. Not that i am aware of.

13. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-attitude.44999/

14. You need to have one happy citizen to compensate an unhappy one. You want them to net a zero (which equals 50% approval in F11). Everything more is essentially wasted, but more unhappy ones than happy ones will create riots. You donnot want that, even starvation can be better than that. Content citizens are neither happy nor unhappy, they donnot matter.

WLTKD is different story, arguably it is not worth it.

15. There are, bot you donnot need them.

 

[Theov]

Hi all, bought civ3 on steam to try it out. I play civ 4 at emperor/immortal level and have a lot of questions comparing the two games, about mechanics, etc. A lot of these are QoL things that I might just have to get used to but I figured I'd ask.
I tried to look up as much as I could in civopedia but it's pretty bare-bones and doesn't explain many things well.

Welcome

1: Is there a way to see your % to win a battle?

No, there isn't. CivAssist maybe. Don't think so.

2: How many workers should you aim for? It seems like improvements take eons to finish so should I be aiming for like 3 workers per city?

2 rules of thumb:
- 1.5 per city
- never enough

3: Do you not need to improve a resource, just connect it with a road to get it's benefit?

food shield and commerce bonusses are generated by working them with a citizen in the city screen. (bonus resources)
Luxury and strategic resources (wines, spices, furs etc and horses, iron, saltpeter etc) need to be roaded within your borders, or connected from a colony. Harbors give you trade routes along the coast. Further tech (Astronomy) connects harbors over seas, (Navigation) connects harbors over oceans. Airports go all over the world.
Harbored cities need roads to connect it to the other cities in-land.

4: Is there a way to see how many units are in an ai city?

Spy them. Or bombard them and count how many units are damaged

5: City overlap, good or bad? In civ4 it's really important to share strong food sources early game to grow cities fast. In this game it looks like your cities will grow very big since you can constantly be working 2-food tiles

You need fresh water or aquaducts to grow past 6. If you don't have fresh water, it's smart to build CxxC. (city, nothing, nothing, city). So yes, the big fat cross (BFC) of cities overlap. That's ok. Easier to defend also.

6: I read you should build farms on plains and mines on grasslands, what about hills?

farms don't exist - I think you mean irrigation.
Hills can only be mined.

7: Is there any way to change controls? Like moving units with right click, moving map with arrow keys
7.1: I Have 2 monitors (main monitor on right, 2nd on the left) and I can't scroll left because of it

Ah I remember having this issue. But I just used the arrows.

8: Is there an easy way to see which tiles are being worked without zooming into each city?

no, you'll have to go to the city screen for it

9: Is chopping forests worth it? 10 shields doesn't seem worth it, maybe unless you're building a wonder

Wonders can't be hurried.
Chopping gives 10 shields, so getting that granary quicker can save A LOT of time in the long run. Yes. A well timed chop is very powerful. There's A LOT of shields laying around on the map.

10: Is there a way to move an entire stack of units at the same time?

Yes, I advice you to turn on 'show advanced unit action buttons' in the preferences (on the right). Pressing X will move units in stacks.

11: Are there unit counters/bonuses? Like archers getting city defense, spears get bonus vs cavalry, etc.

No, those don't exist. Some units have 'defensive bombard' though. They can't bombard units, but if attacked, they will shoot first. The Spearman for example.

12: Is there a way to mark/ping tiles to add reminders?

nope

13: What are the stances (cautious, polite, etc) in diplo?

disdainful of - dismissive of - unimpressed by - impressed by - admirers of - in awe of

14: Happiness system is really unclear, is there a good guide for it?

You'll have to search the forums for that. Short story:
depending on the difficulty level the first citizens are born content, then the next one is born unhappy and requires buildings to make them content. Luxuries make them happy. Have more unhappy than happy citizens and they will riot. Use the luxury slider instead of clowns (entertainers)

15: Are there any graphics packs, mods, etc that I should be using and why?

There are a few
https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ3-creation-customization.46/

Thank you all

No problem. But do a search first next time.

 

[justanick]

You need fresh water or aquaducts to grow past 6. If you don't have fresh water, it's smart to build CxxC. (city, nothing, nothing, city).

Or CxC. Before the middle of the middle age having as many towns as reasonable possible is the way to go. What "as many towns as reasonable possible" means is of course open to interpretation.

No, those don't exist. Some units have 'defensive bombard' though. They can't bombard units, but if attacked, they will shoot first. The Spearman for example.

The spearmen has no defensive bombard. But a catapult in the same stack may give defensive bombardement once per turn. So before the spearmen defends a shot is fired at the attacker and at bombard value 4 against an attack value of 3 or 2 chances of hitting are good.

 

[Theov]

The spearmen has no defensive bombard. But a catapult in the same stack may give defensive bombardement once per turn. So before the spearmen defends a shot is fired at the attacker and at bombard value 4 against an attack value of 3 or 2 chances of hitting are good.

Did I say spearman?
I meant to say Archer.

 

[tjs282]

7: Is there any way to change controls? Like moving units with right click, moving map with arrow keys
7.1: I Have 2 monitors (main monitor on right, 2nd on the left) and I can't scroll left because of it

I have a dual-monitor setup as well, and I got round this problem by offsetting my monitors vertically, both in physical space and in my Windows 'Display setup'

So I move from the primary monitor (upper left) to the secondary (lower right) by sliding the cursor over the small overlap near the lower-right/upper-left corners.

15: Are there any graphics packs, mods, etc that I should be using and why?

I am using @Puppeteer's 'popheads' mod, which adds smileys / frownies to the citizens in the city screen (and also the Domestic Advisor = F1 screen), making it easy to see at a glance which town(s) is in danger of rioting next turn (i.e. more frowns than smiles). I am also using @Sn00py's terrain graphics, which better differentiate between Forest and Jungle (and should also be included somewhere in your Steam download), along with (IIRC) @Pounder's Railroads and Marshes for aesthetics.

@ainwood's homebrewed CivAssist II app also provides riot-warnings — and also possible trades, and a map that shows which tiles have been Forest-chopped; I am using it with Win8.1 without a problem, but a lot of people have had difficulty getting it to work properly with Win10. CRpMapSuite[?] also provides some of the same information as CAII; and @Puppeteer has been tinkering with a browser-based .sav file reader as well.

disdainful of - dismissive of - unimpressed by - impressed by - admirers of - in awe of

These levels are for Cultural 'respect', not AI-attitude.

AI-attitudes are: Furious <—> Annoyed <—> Cautious <—> Polite <—> Gracious

This really only matters for the UN SecGen election (= Diplomatic victory), though!

(If an AI-tribe is a candidate, it will always vote for itself. If not, it will only vote for a candidate towards whom it is either Gracious or Polite, otherwise it will abstain; an absolute majority is needed to win the vote).

 

[justanick]

This really only matters for the UN SecGen election (= Diplomatic victory), though!

Arguably better relations also impact what prices you have to pay AI to get what you want. Also the likeliness of war is affected.

 

[Chicken Pizza]

1. I'm using my own command line script, which I can't post because my computer only runs in failsafe mode as of some months back... but feel free to type it in, I don't have the patience.

Only thing on the to do list: use integer calculations with a common denominator for the combinatoric calculations. Tcl has unlimited integer precision since version 8.5.

 

[Theov]

I am using @Puppeteer's 'popheads' mod, which adds smileys / frownies to the citizens in the city screen (and also the Domestic Advisor = F1 screen), making it easy to see at a glance which town(s) is in danger of rioting next turn (i.e. more frowns than smiles).

Those are good.
I took it a step further and I added civ specific colors to the smilies so it's easier to see who are foreigners and I added more 'native' american faces for the native american tribes.