Civilization III Scenario Strategies.

[Kurgan117]

I have played all of the following Civilization III scenarios: Mesopotamia, Rise of Rome, Fall of Rome, Middle Ages, Mesoamerica, Age of Discovery, Senguku - Sword of the Shogun, Napoleonic Europe, WWII in the Pacific, Ancient Treasures, The Three Sisters and New Alliances.
Most of these scenarios (especially Fall of Rome) looked pretty intimidating. In fact it was only after I read a forum of favourite Civilizations for Fall of Rome. In this forum, I would like strategies for each of the above games, including the Civilization and what to do with it.
Notes: Please explain any abbreviations, and explain in as few lines as possible so we don't intimidate anyone with 457 pages. Also, state the level you used this strategy on.

Rise of Rome-Chieftain
Divided into paragraph 1-Diplomacy, 2-Units, 3-Technology, 4-City Production, 5-Conquering Strategy

1. Start with Macedon. On the first turn get military alliances with everyone against the Persian(You are in a locked war with them). They won't help much in the war, but they also won't join the Persians. With your MA (Military Alliance) get as much gold and workers as the AI will give you.

2. The build your army with hoplites. [the next one should be an AC (ancient cavalry) Army] With your soldiers in the same stack as the hoplite army start attacking Persian Cities. Some soldiers will attack the other city but the hoplite army will be more successful because it won't be attacked by the Persian Immortals.

3. Set your science for the techs in this order: (This is what I did) Literature, Philosophy, Monarchy, Tactics, Military Tradition, The Republic, and Imperialism. (Imperialism is the best government so wait to revolt until that one is done.) After you have researched the following, and maybe Construction because of Hadrian's Wall and Engineering because of faster unit movement, completely kill you science research because there are no more great wonders.

4. City production. When you start, you have more units than you can support, so build more cities up north and towards Rome. Only use the smaller, closer cities to build the settlers. With your most productive cities build the great wonders, most to least important in my opinion: Temple of Artemis, Oracle, The Great Lighthouse, The Colossus. These can all be built immediately. The Great Library should begin construction once you get the tech. Same with Hadrian's Wall. You should find spices ASAP to build Bacchanalia. Everyone near the Persians can build more Hoplites.
Once you have tactics build AC.

5. First destroy or mostly destroy the Persians. Than take out the Egyptians(Who should have the Mausoleum of Mausollos). Then take out the Carthaginians (Beware they have a strong navy), and then win!

Middle Ages - Chieftain
This one I don't have as much info. Start with Burgundy, and immediately start attacking the Germans for three reasons. One because you can!! Two because you have to many units to support so you need more cities. Third and most important take their treasure. Try to get a MGL (military great leader. That will help later.) Also declare war on and defeat Poland. Work on science until you get knights. Build a knight army and head for Jerusalem. Have two knights (each transporting a great treasure) head to Jerusalem by galley. Stay out of sight of the Abbasid(people who control Jerusalem) Use the knight army and Byzantines to declare war on the Abbasids. Take the city and garrison it with the knights that have the great treasures to get VPs(victory points). Then make peace with the Abbasid and try to take the French treasure and put it in Jerusalem. Then Victory!!!!

Ancient Treasures - Chieftain
Pretty Straightforward. Build as fast as possible and control the victory locations.

The Three Sisters - Chieftain
Treat like normal game. Send treasure and all attack defense units to the Three Sisters. Control the volcanoes with your units, kill any enemy units with the treasure, return the treasure, and send a settler there asap.

 

[Nathiri]

This sounds very specific. When I played the Conquests, I employed no particular strategy, except building an army.

I won Mesopotamia with Mycenae (cant remember difficulty, probably Warlord). I've tried other civilizations, but I never finished the game. Main strategy here is blocking off the ithmus to Asia Minor, and then peacefully building a good-size nation, and building wonders to get the I think it was Victory Point Victory.

I won Rise of Rome with Macedon on Warlord. I had no particular strategy in researching tech, I just did whatever I needed at the time. I won just by conquering Persia before the time ran out. I may have gotten a few civs into the fun with Persia, but it wasnt a huge concern to me except give Persia other things to worry about.

I won Fall of Rome with Vandals, and I think Visigoths. Same thing, main strategy was army building after of course building quite a few cities to sustain the army. These 2 civs are in a good location to take out both Western Rome, and Eastern Rome as there are cities for both of them decently close. You only need to eliminate 8 cities. It is helpful to get other civs to attack them to take out a few of the cities too, although it is likely they will attack at some point anyway.

I won Middle Ages with I think England and France on Warlord if I remember correctly. Won by returning relic to Jerusalem. Just normal building up of civ. With England you have to conquer the Celts, and then after that build up army for the Crusade.

If I remember correctly, I won Mesoamerica with Maya. I've played this several times, main strategy is building as fast as possible to block off the civs to the south, and then block off to the north, so you get a decent portion of land. Then do some conquering of the Toltecs, and then the 2 civs to the north.

I've played Age of Discovery many times, but I dont recall ever finishing a game to victory.

Same as above conquest with Sengoku. This was one of my favourite conquests several years ago when I was younger, but I kept on starting new games and never completed one to victory.

I remember winning on Napoleonic Europe with Britain. I did this by building a strong navy and basically blockading the entire northern French coast. I then took a few of the French cities on the north coast.

I dont think I ever completed a game on WWII in the Pacific.

I cant remember if I ever completed a game on Ancient Treasures and The Three Sisters. Although I may have on Ancient Treasures with Mycenae.

Played New Alliances many times, but I dont think I ever completed. I mainly liked choosing The Netherlands. I think they have a good advantage in taking out the Germans. I've chosen the Byzantines a few times, but I think they are in a difficult position and its difficult to get a good foothold in the region. Portugal to me, is one of the weaker civs in this conquest, so I dont recommend them. Germany is a strong civ, but I prefer the Dutch.

Most of these games took place several years ago. My strategies have changed alot since then, and I've learned more about better growth and speed of building up my civ. The most recent game was probably Fall of Rome. Most of these games also I probably did on Warlord, some may have been Chieftain. The Civs I chose, I would say are in the some of the best positions for victory (as I've pretty much tried every single one). I've tried playing Rome on Rise of Rome, and I could never conquer fast enough by the time limit in order to win and Persia almost always conquered Macedon which meant it was huge and hard to beat Persia's score. Conquering Carthage never got me high enough score. I even conquered some if not all of the Celts (IIRC, at least some), and a couple Greek cities. I did these Conquests just by trial and error.

 

[Kurgan117]

Please only say the strategies. No need to list a strategy for each scenario.

 

[T-mun]

I think Nathiri meant that there's not ONE strategy to win any of the Conquests scenarios. You don't absolutely need to do this or that to win the game. Most of these scenarios are fun to play and don't require that you follow a special path.

 

[Kurgan117]

Yes but most of these scenarios looked pretty scary and impossible, especially Fall of Rome. In fact I didn't win Fall of Rome until I read at least a dozen of these posts trying to figure out what to do.

 

[Josh W]

The Scenarios are actually way too easy on the easier levels.
I've been attempting to win them all on SID (The hardest difficulty).
Here are the results thus far:

Won on my first try as Spain in Age of Discovery.

Lost Rise of Rome twice with Rome (Although the 2nd time through I was much more competitive)
Won Rise of Rome with Persia.

Since on SID the AI gets an insane amount of units/production, the only way to really win the scenarios that have the Domination victory condition is to win by having the most points when the scenario ends or win via another victory condition.

 

[Lanzelot]

I agree with Josh_W. On the easier levels up to Emperor you can win any of the 9 scenarios with any of the major civs quite effortless. (Winning with one of the minor civs may be a bit of a challenge.) When I first got the game 15 years ago, I played every scenario a couple of times at Emperor level, until I won at least once with both of the two opposing civs (e.g. once with France and once with England in the Napoleon scenario, or once with a European civ and once with Maya/Inca/Aztecs in the Age of Discovery scenario).

Unfortunately I'm getting older and can't remember much of what I did back then...
But let me try and give a few useful tips about the ones I remember well:

1. Winning WW II Pacific Scenario on Sid level
   If you want to try one of the scenarios on Sid, playing WW II Pacific as Japan is the easiest to try. This is because one of the main weaknesses of the AI (on any difficulty level) is naval transportation.... The AI will have huge production bases in the US and in Australia, but both of them are far away from where it really matters: China!
   The AI will produce many many units in the US and Australia, but will ship only very few of them overseas. So as Japan you will only have to deal with what China manages to produce herself. At the start of the scenario, you start with more units than China, so if you manage to use that advantage and take 3-4 of the main Chinese cities, before their Sid production bonus really kicks in, you have a good chance of finally grinding down China completely. Once you have done that, you'll have accumulated quite a number of victory points. From then on play defensively, just fending off the occasional naval invasion attempt of the AI (which shouldn't be hard even on Sid...) and perhaps trying to snatch another lightly defended island or minor civ town here or there. Avoid big sea battles or other high-casualty operations, as the AI will be able to catch up on victory points, if your losses get too high... Just sit tight and survive till 1945...
2. Winning Age of Discovery as a European nation
   If you are having trouble winning the Age of Discovery scenario, here is a little trick (some may call it exploit...) that allows a smooth victory as any of the European nations: Focus on building settlers and grab a good portion of territory overseas. (You may also beeline to that tech that allows those half-priced settlers to speed up your rapid expansion, but if you wait with your expansion until you get to that tech, it will be too late.) Make sure to found many towns next to those resources that allow the treasure producing buildings: gold, silver, tobacco, furs, etc.
   Once you have a decent empire overseas, disband your capital in Europe! Your pallace will now "jump" to your biggest city in the New World. (Plan ahead a bit, so that this city will indeed be located nicely in the center of your empire.) This has two huge advantages over having your capital in Europe: a) The corruption in your colonies will now be very low (as all towns are close to the pallace), so you will be able to build all those treasure-producing buildings quickly. b) You don't have to ship all those treasures, which will soon start rolling in, back to Europe. A Cavalry unit will be able to pick up the treasures from most of your towns and bring them back to the capital in just 1-2 turns...
3. Alternative strategy for the Middleages Scenario
   The usual plan in this scenario is to a) keep your own Holy Relic while b) "visiting" your next-door neighbor to "borrow" his Holy Relic as well, then go and conquer Jerusalem and bring both relics to Jerusalem to win on victory points. (You need 30000 points. Each relic returned to Jerusalem gives 10000 points for a total of 20000, and the remaining 10000 points will be gathered during battle while robbing the second relic and while conquering Jerusalem. In my experience, trying to obtain a third Holy Relic will only delay the victory rather than speed it up...)
   However, on the higher difficulty levels (I would say Demigod or higher), this strategy will not be so easy to implement, because all major civs will have a land connection to your empire, so warfare on these levels is quite tough, especially if you get into a dog-pile and get attacked from several neighbors at once. So it may not be so easy to rob a second relic, and it may even be harder to conquer Jerusalem, since by the time you get there, it will be very strongly defended...! So here is my alternative strategy:
   You play as Byzanz. Stay peaceful with your powerful neighbors to the south and expand towards North-East. There is lots of unsettled empty territory up there, so if you expand quickly, you can grab quite a bit of land. Also the civs up there are rather weak, so with your very strong Byzantine Cavalry unit you can proceed to conquer further territory from the Rus, Bulgars and/or Mongols. The domination limit for this scenario is quite low (I think it's only 40% instead of the standard 66%), so using that strategy it is possible to achieve a Domination victory, before any other nation has won on victory points.
   (Of course, if you see that one of the AIs close to you gets beaten down by other AIs, you can join the dog-pile to grab some additional space on the Balkans or to your South. Just don't mess with any of the powerful nations.)
4. Winning the Sengoku Scenario with Ninjas
   For this scenario you need a well-developed core, so that you will be able to keep up in research. Also try to use tech trading to your advantage. The first important step is to finish the first Era as quickly as possible, because the last tech of the Era provides a new government that allows you to leave Despotism. This is very powerful, so if you get there first, you'll have a decisive advantage over the AI. This will allow you to extend your tech lead and be first to the tech that allows the Ninja unit. All the while try to avoid costly wars against powerful neighbors. Short wars with well-defined objectives in order to improve your empire when a chance for that presents itself, are ok. Just avoid getting slowed down by costly wars with strong opponents.
   Try to get the Ninja, before the AIs (or the majority of AIs) discovers the tech providing the "counter unit". (I don't remember exactly, but I think it is called "Yamabushi Monk" or similar. It's a unit that can see "invisible" units.) So once you have a couple of Ninjas, check in the F4 screen, which opponent doesn't know the tech with Yamabushi Monk yet. Send the Ninjas into their territory, and they won't kick them out, even if you don't have a RoP with them, as they can't see the Ninjas. Their Daimyo will usually be residing in their capital, so send the Ninjas there, declare war and then using the "Stealth" ability of the Ninja, you can pick the Daimyo from the stack of defenders and assassinate him... (If you have some cash to spare, you may want to investigate their capital to check whether the Daimyo is really there...)
   Once you manage to kill their Daimyo, the entire AI is razed from the map. Make sure you have a handful of settlers ready to quickly claim that free territory, before one of the neighbors does. Rinse & Repeat.
   It is not to be expected that you will be able to take out all opponents that way, because after a while all AIs will have caught up and will have Yamabushi Monks. (And then they'll kill your Ninjas before they get to their Daimyo.) But if you mange to pull this trick 3-4 times, you should by now have the most powerful empire (and nearly no losses in combat...), so you can easily take it to a domination victory from there.

 

[Simpson17866]

My favorites were always Sengoku and Three Sisters, and my favorite Three Sisters strategies were

• Roads, Roads, Roads
• Build up as much military presence around the volcanoes as possible

1. Winning Age of Discovery as a European nation
   ...Once you have a decent empire overseas, disband your capital in Europe! Your pallace will now "jump" to your biggest city in the New World. (Plan ahead a bit, so that this city will indeed be located nicely in the center of your empire.) This has two huge advantages over having your capital in Europe: a) The corruption in your colonies will now be very low (as all towns are close to the pallace), so you will be able to build all those treasure-producing buildings quickly. b) You don't have to ship all those treasures, which will soon start rolling in, back to Europe. A Cavalry unit will be able to pick up the treasures from most of your towns and bring them back to the capital in just 1-2 turns...

That is fantastic, and I would like to hereby name it "The Benjamin Franklin"

 

[Quintillus]

You can actually win WWII as Japan on Sid well before 1945. I did that a couple years ago, winning in mid-1943. Rather than focus on China (though I did take a couple cities early), I focused on taking out the Philippines first to keep the U.S. away, and then the British possessions in southeast Asia to keep them away. That meant no bombers nearby, and no land reinforcements of consequence, and the Allied navies were not very nearby. As such, I was able to use my navies virtually with impunity, and island-hop against the weak Dutch, racking up victory points quickly - in some ways more quickly than usual since the cities were growing faster and thus providing more victory points. They typically had at most 1 MG Battalion built (sometimes just a Flak) due to their low production, so especially with my air force it was easy to keep expanding. Wound up winning with 40,000 victory points vs the Allied 10,000, and China still had half a dozen cities that I'd ignored. By leaving 6-8 artillery behind, however, the Chinese were only a nuisance despite their Sid bonuses.

 

[timerover51]

That is an interesting strategy for Age of Discovery. That is the one scenario that I have won without do any tampering to it, and I won at Chieftain as England. The problem with the Netherlands is England is in the way for any fast transportation. I never did try it as Portugal or Spain, but I could see where those would really benefit from such a strategy.

 

[Theov]

I quite easily won with Portugal on Age of Discovery, by mass spamming colonists and settling everywhere and moving the capital to mainland US.
I kept a war going with France and kept Spain and the Netherlands involved to keep them busy... at the end I was behind in techs, but the other European countries did little to colonize the rest of the world.
The Aztecs got some cities in south west US and I took them by force, I involved the Incas in the south to soften up their defenses. The Incas developed some cities later in the game, but I ignored them - I had some mines in Brazil so I let them do what they wanted.

Spoiler :

I wonder if I ever tampered with the biq file though, can someone confirm if the Iroquois should be in there?? I hadn't met them.

I will try to play a game as England now and try to conquer Europe. See what happens if I mostly ignore the New World.

 

[Nathiri]

I quite easily won with Portugal on Age of Discovery, by mass spamming colonists and settling everywhere and moving the capital to mainland US.
I kept a war going with France and kept Spain and the Netherlands involved to keep them busy... at the end I was behind in techs, but the other European countries did little to colonize the rest of the world.
The Aztecs got some cities in south west US and I took them by force, I involved the Incas in the south to soften up their defenses. The Incas developed some cities later in the game, but I ignored them - I had some mines in Brazil so I let them do what they wanted.

Spoiler :

I wonder if I ever tampered with the biq file though, can someone confirm if the Iroquois should be in there?? I hadn't met them.

I will try to play a game as England now and try to conquer Europe. See what happens if I mostly ignore the New World.

Iroq should be in it.

 

[Theov]

Iroq should be in it.

maybe they were taken out by barbarians, because I didn't meet them in the first game.
The second game they were settled in the Washington region - but in the editor I don't see them.

 

[choxorn]

1. Try to get the Ninja, before the AIs (or the majority of AIs) discovers the tech providing the "counter unit". (I don't remember exactly, but I think it is called "Yamabushi Monk" or similar. It's a unit that can see "invisible" units.) So once you have a couple of Ninjas, check in the F4 screen, which opponent doesn't know the tech with Yamabushi Monk yet. Send the Ninjas into their territory, and they won't kick them out, even if you don't have a RoP with them, as they can't see the Ninjas.

Ninjas have Hidden Nationality, it doesn't matter whether they can see them or not, they still won't know they're yours and won't kick them out.

maybe they were taken out by barbarians, because I didn't meet them in the first game.
The second game they were settled in the Washington region - but in the editor I don't see them.

There's two different versions of all of the Conquests scenarios- one of them is in the "Scenarios" folder, called "<scenarioname>_MP" or something and only has 8 civs if it's one of the ones with more than 8. The Age of Discovery MP version cuts the Iroquois. (Fall of Rome cuts the Anglo-Saxons and Ostrogoths, Sengoku cuts the clans down to 8 and changes to a smaller map, Napoleonic Europe makes the minor civs in permanent alliances with the French and British just part of France and Britain instead of being separate civs, Middle Ages cuts all the unplayable minor civs plus the Swedes, Norwegians, Fatimids, Turks, and Burgundians (along with their relic), and gives a few of their cities to the remaining 8 civs (England, France, Germany, Denmark, Rus, Byzantines, Abbasids, Cordova)

 

[Theov]

Ninjas have Hidden Nationality, it doesn't matter whether they can see them or not, they still won't know they're yours and won't kick them out.



There's two different versions of all of the Conquests scenarios- one of them is in the "Scenarios" folder, called "<scenarioname>_MP" or something and only has 8 civs if it's one of the ones with more than 8. The Age of Discovery MP version cuts the Iroquois. (Fall of Rome cuts the Anglo-Saxons and Ostrogoths, Sengoku cuts the clans down to 8 and changes to a smaller map, Napoleonic Europe makes the minor civs in permanent alliances with the French and British just part of France and Britain instead of being separate civs, Middle Ages cuts all the unplayable minor civs plus the Swedes, Norwegians, Fatimids, Turks, and Burgundians (along with their relic), and gives a few of their cities to the remaining 8 civs (England, France, Germany, Denmark, Rus, Byzantines, Abbasids, Cordova)

Thanks, i was not aware of this... tbh i dont play the scenarios much.

 

[Lanzelot]

Ninjas have Hidden Nationality, it doesn't matter whether they can see them or not, they still won't know they're yours and won't kick them out.

Yes, but if they can see your Ninjas, they will attack them immediately! (Just like Pirate ships are always attacked.) And then your Ninjas are likely to get killed, before they manage to get close enough to the enemy Daimyo...