Does anyone here play Civilization 3 on mobile phone?

[ianpwilliams]

...because I've been playing it and could do with a bit of advice. I know it's a long shot.

I've read the manual, FAQ, charts etc on the com2us website, and I can win a game by conquering everyone on the easy difficulty level. But I don't understand the way resources etc work.

So far I think I've worked out that food feeds your citizens, resources (shields) let you build city improvements, and trade is made up of luxuries (makes citizens happy), tax (brings in gold) and science (research for speeding up technological advancements). But I can't work out when or by how much you should be altering your budget balance between the last three, or when you should be changing governments.

Also, I can't work out when you should be moving workers around your city to work in different areas. I tried doing that once and immediately I was getting a warning every time that food was running out, so I changed it back. And I can't work out when you should be changing workers into specialists (entertainers, taxmen and scientists) either. Any help much appreciated.

 

[Death_Machine]

Playing Civ on a mobile phone would be an ass whip of the highest order. I could not imagine having the patience for that.

 

[ianpwilliams]

It's actually a great game. Obviously it's stripped down (no diplomacy for example), but it is really good for playing on the go (haven't got a DS for Civilization Revolution). It just takes a bit of getting used to.

I suspect that a lot of the resource-based stuff is similar to the other Civ games, so it's just a bit tricky getting used to it, having never played any other Civ games much.

 

[Aabraxan]

Welcome to CFC, ianpwilliams!

I don't play it on a mobile phone, but here's what I can tell you about the standard game.

Resources come in different varieties in Civ. There are (1) strategic resources; (2) luxuries; and (3) bonus resources. In order to benefit from the first 2, you need to put a road on the tile and hook that road up to your empire. Every city connected to the resource can then make use of it.

(1) strategic resources - Things like iron, horses, oil and saltpeter. These are used to build military units. A city connected to iron can build swordsmen, for exmaple.

(2) luxuries - Things like silks, dyes and ivory. These make people happy. The number of happy faces that you get from them can be increased by building marketplaces. Ivory is also a requirement for the Statue of Zeus.

(3) bonus resources - Things like wheat, gold and whales. They simply increase food, gold or shields. In order to get the benefit, you've got to have a citizen on the tile, working it.

When you move citizens around, they work different tiles. Different tiles have different values for the food, gold and shields produced. By moving citizens around, you can change how much of each is being produced. For example, if you have a city at size 12, producing 28 fpt, before Sanitation (and without Shakespeare's), it's wasting 4 fpt. Move a citizen from a high-food tile to a high-shield tile to decrease food waste and increase shield production.

Specialists produce no food, but can produce beakers, gold, or happy faces. They do, however, eat food, so you'll have to feed them. Check out "The Role of the Specialist Citizen" by Bede in the War Academy for a more complete explanation of how they work. Generally, don't use them in your core cities except in special cases. For example, if you have one very food-rich city that is outrunning the rest of your empire in growth, it might make sense to hire a scientist there now and again until you can peel off a settler. If you want to build metros and such in the late game, you'll probably use specialists in those, too.

Hope this helps.

 

[ianpwilliams]

Thanks Aabraxan! A lot of what you said seems to apply to mobile Civ (and no doubt all other Civs).

So now I understand that food feeds your citizens, resources determines how long it takes to build city improvements, and trade is made up of luxuries (makes citizens happy), tax (brings in gold for upkeep of city improvements) and science (research for speeding up technological advancements).

One thing I'm still trying to work out is how the Trade split works (I don't know if this applies in PC Civs or not). Trade is split into Luxuries, Tax and Science, and you can alter the balance of these three on your budget. But when I look at an example of a city screen, there is 1 Trade, 0 Luxuries, 4 Tax, and 7 Science. If you are bringing in 1 Trade per turn, how can that be divided between Luxuries, Tax and Science?

Also, what would be the best strategies early on generally speaking (bearing in mind that there is no diplomacy). The ways to win are Conquer the world, Complete all technological improvements, or survive until 2000 AD.

I've tried to get into Civ games on the PC before now and failed, so I'm hoping that by getting into this mobile version I will be able to end up getting into Civ 4, which looks amazing. I'm also getting Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360 soon, which I'm really excited about, having played the demo and really enjoyed it. I've always been a big Sid Meier fan, and I love the way Civ is turn-based, and that you can think about what you want to do next, rather than the standard empire-building RTS games where you can't really stop and think and take your time.

 

[Aabraxan]

As I said, I've never played the mobile version, so you may find that my information is incorrect. With that said:

Thanks Aabraxan! . . . .

You're welcome.

. . . . So now I understand that food feeds your citizens, resources determines how long it takes to build city improvements, and trade is made up of luxuries (makes citizens happy), tax (brings in gold for upkeep of city improvements) and science (research for speeding up technological advancements).

On this stuff (& still going from the basic PC game):
Food feeds citizens -- yes.
Resources determine how long it takes to build city improvements -- no. Strategic resources determine what can be built, now how long it takes. For example, once you discover military tradition, any city with horses and saltpeter in its resource box can build cavalry. But some cities will build them faster than others, depending on how many shields per turn a city produces. A cav is an 80 shield build. A 20-spt city will produce them every 4 turns. A 5-spt town will build one every 16 turns. A 1-spt town will build one every 80 turns.

One thing I'm still trying to work out is how the Trade split works (I don't know if this applies in PC Civs or not). Trade is split into Luxuries, Tax and Science, and you can alter the balance of these three on your budget. But when I look at an example of a city screen, there is 1 Trade, 0 Luxuries, 4 Tax, and 7 Science. If you are bringing in 1 Trade per turn, how can that be divided between Luxuries, Tax and Science?

If you've only got 1 trade per turn, it's not going to divide well and (I think) will all end up in one basket, depending on where you put the slider.

Also, what would be the best strategies early on generally speaking (bearing in mind that there is no diplomacy). The ways to win are Conquer the world, Complete all technological improvements, or survive until 2000 AD.

Not having any diplo changes the landscape pretty drastically, so I think the answer depends on what that does to the trade situation. Can you buy and sell resources & techs? If not, well, I'm an unrepentant warmonger, so that's the route I'd go, but researching all the techs might be fun once or twice. As for the early game, food is king and rapid expansion is usually a pretty sound opening move.

 

[ianpwilliams]

Ok, thanks again...I'm getting there slowly I think.

 

[TomYo689]

Hoe to get civ 3 on phone?

 

[TomYo689]

No one knows if civ 3 really exists for phone?

 

[vorlon_mi]

No one knows if civ 3 really exists for phone?

Civilization Revolution (Civ Rev) exists for some phones and portable gaming platforms. Firaxis made some conscious decisions when designing the interactions between the game engine and the user interface elements in Civ IV to make it easier to move a version of that game (namely, CivRev) to mobile platforms.

But I'm pretty sure they have NOT done that with Civ III, PTW, or Conquests.

 

[Thorn]

Nokia released a version of Civilization for it's N-Gage a while back. It was a cut down version of Civ 2 or 3 I think. That might be the mobile version that's talked about here.

 

[GeneralMeng]

im totally gonna get it now! thanks for introducing me to it, i love civ and i always want to play it on the go. they really should make a version for psp, i gave away my ds -_-