Early Game City Building

krossingkhory

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 2, 2025
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So I get the general strategy in the early game to create a bunch of Warriors to explore (unless you have the Scout), and use workers to build roads, and then generate a boatload of Settlers to colonize whatever island/continent you are on. I generally use Settlers to colonize the entire coastline early, primarily to prevent other Civs who end up with Mapmaking early from landing ashore and trying to take over my land. But that's not what I'm here for, so I'll stop digressing. :)

At some point during the early game - and by early, I mean during Ancient times - I'll run out of stuff to build in my cities. I'll have Barracks, Granary, Temple, Walls, Harbor, and (more than likely in my capital city) multiple world wonders. I'll have built Pyramids, The Oracle, Great Lighthouse, and the Colossus. And then...I have nothing to build but Wealth. Sure, I can generate Settlers and Workers if I haven't gotten the entire continent yet. But if I'm on an island, or the continent is as settled as it can be (and I do take steps to plant cities close enough to the other Civs to take them over culturally)...now what? Wait until I can build something else, letting my cities fall into Civil Disorder and hoping I can remember how many happy people I've generated in each city?

Does anyone have any strategies they can impart upon me to alleviate this situation? Anything I should (or shouldn't) do to potentially not build so darned fast? Any technologies I should be going after to make sure I always have something else to build? I know I should go after Construction early, if only for the Aqueduct (and/or the Colosseum). But beyond that...???
 
It sounds like you are maybe playing with accelerated production turned on, and/or sticking to a difficulty level that is now too low for you. At higher difficulty levels you wouldn't normally be able to build multiple wonders in the ancient age at the same time as sending out sufficient settlers.
 
So I get the general strategy in the early game to create a bunch of Warriors to explore (unless you have the Scout), and use workers to build roads, and then generate a boatload of Settlers to colonize whatever island/continent you are on. I generally use Settlers to colonize the entire coastline early, primarily to prevent other Civs who end up with Mapmaking early from landing ashore and trying to take over my land. But that's not what I'm here for, so I'll stop digressing. :)

At some point during the early game - and by early, I mean during Ancient times - I'll run out of stuff to build in my cities. I'll have Barracks, Granary, Temple, Walls, Harbor, and (more than likely in my capital city) multiple world wonders. I'll have built Pyramids, The Oracle, Great Lighthouse, and the Colossus. And then...I have nothing to build but Wealth. Sure, I can generate Settlers and Workers if I haven't gotten the entire continent yet. But if I'm on an island, or the continent is as settled as it can be (and I do take steps to plant cities close enough to the other Civs to take them over culturally)...now what? Wait until I can build something else, letting my cities fall into Civil Disorder and hoping I can remember how many happy people I've generated in each city?

Does anyone have any strategies they can impart upon me to alleviate this situation? Anything I should (or shouldn't) do to potentially not build so darned fast? Any technologies I should be going after to make sure I always have something else to build? I know I should go after Construction early, if only for the Aqueduct (and/or the Colosseum). But beyond that...???
Sounds like you need to play at a higher difficulty level.
 
I agree you sound ready to try the next difficulty level up. On a higher difficulty the AI will then likely put you under pressure to produce units rather than buildings by threatening and attacking you. Playing with increased AI aggression or a lot more barbarians may also divert your resources to units.

In terms of buildings, libraries speed up your ability to learn technology (and therefore access new buildings). So Literature is a key technology if you want to focus on accessing new building types and enhancing your cities. Plus buildings will take longer to build if you avoid the science, agriculture and religious traits. Expansionist plus Militaristic (Zulu?) will get very little bonus in building buildings.
 
Playing with increased AI aggression or a lot more barbarians may also divert your resources to units.
I generally keep Barbarians as Sedentary, primarily because it seems like I always end up having them attack my starting city before I can get my first unit built. In multiple instances, I've had my starting Settler found a city next to a goody hut, only to have that goody hut turn into a Barbarian encampment that then kills off the city and ends my game.

However, you are probably right about needing increased AI aggression and/or jacking up the difficulty level. I will have to try that and see what happens!
 
So I get the general strategy in the early game to create a bunch of Warriors to explore (unless you have the Scout), and use workers to build roads, and then generate a boatload of Settlers to colonize whatever island/continent you are on. I generally use Settlers to colonize the entire coastline early, primarily to prevent other Civs who end up with Mapmaking early from landing ashore and trying to take over my land. But that's not what I'm here for, so I'll stop digressing. :)

At some point during the early game - and by early, I mean during Ancient times - I'll run out of stuff to build in my cities. I'll have Barracks, Granary, Temple, Walls, Harbor, and (more than likely in my capital city) multiple world wonders. I'll have built Pyramids, The Oracle, Great Lighthouse, and the Colossus. And then...I have nothing to build but Wealth.

Does anyone have any strategies they can impart upon me to alleviate this situation? Anything I should (or shouldn't) do to potentially not build so darned fast? Any technologies I should be going after to make sure I always have something else to build? I know I should go after Construction early, if only for the Aqueduct (and/or the Colosseum). But beyond that...???
Agree with the others' recommendations. In addtion, please consider:

Resources: As you progress in research, you will find where the iron and horses are. Make sure that these are in the city radius of one of your cities, with a road built to link them to your cities. Be sure that all your cities have a road connecting them to each other. Be sure to build roads to any luxury resources you find.
That leads to --

Veteran Units, Fewer Buildings: As you note, you have built plenty of Barracks. Once you have iron and horses hooked up, you can begin to build your land army. Not every town needs Walls, if you're on offense. Build as many units as your economy will support. Depending on how closely you've spaced your cities, you may not need a Temple most cities. Consider building Libraries instead, focusing first on the towns close to the capital.

Then INVADE! Check out your closest neighbor, build a stack, and starting adding their cities to your empire.

TL;DR - after building a few buildings, focus on military in the Ancient Age.
 
At some point during the early game - and by early, I mean during Ancient times - I'll run out of stuff to build in my cities.
That differs a lot from what i would consider normal. If you prioritize settlers over workers and optimize your research to get repulic ASAP, then you will hardly have the oppportunity to build buildings prior to leaving despotism. Once you are a republic your research will be fast and soon you are in the middle age with most buildings still not built. You should deselect accelerated production and choose Emperor as difficulty setting. At first you may loose. But Emperor is still somewhat easy to win. So if you loose, this indicates that you need to change your gameplay.
 
Ok, so I have to still be doing something wrong here. I increased the difficulty to Regent, but I'm still building way too fast and running out of things to build. There are times, though, when my cities fall into disorder way too quickly, like the game thinks that the higher difficulty just means unhappy citizens for no reason. And before anyone asks, no, I do not have access to luxury resources to quell their unhappiness. Again, it's like the game says "Hey, difficulty is increased, so you get nothing".

I'm honestly looking for strategies here on what to do. Either I'm building too fast and have some setting checked that I'm not aware of, or my cities fall into disorder before I can get anything built to make them happy. What am I doing wrong?
 
When difficulty increases all sorts of things get more difficult. Including keeping people happy, corruption, your strength relative to barbarians, the other Civs attitudes towards you etc. Use the luxury slider to put 10% of your wealth into making people happy. Right click on a city, select governor and make sure "manage happiness" is ticked. Then, as you get more experience you can do this sort of thing manually if you prefer.

It does sound like accelerated production is switched on in the game select screen. Even on lower difficulties you shouldn't be building everything so quickly.
 
It does sound like accelerated production is switched on in the game select screen.
I don't see an option in the game select screen for this. Nor do I see it in preferences. Where would I find this so I can turn it off in v1.07f?

Also, how do I change the luxury slider? When I click into a City, I can't change the values there. When I right-click and contact the Governor, all I get is the option to have the governor manage moods. Do I need to go the Advisors tab for this?
 
Ok, so I think I figured it out. Man, I have forgotten how nuanced the game became between Civ II and Civ III!

I ran a trial run on regent this evening, and I went into the Advisors panel. Turned Science down to 40 and Happiness up to 10, just to start and test. Got a good feel for how that affects income vs. expenditures, and then got a good look at the city in that same panel to see how a content citizen turns into a happy one just at 10. Then I right-clicked on the capital and made the governor be responsible for mood in all cities (and then selected to make it default). Played for like 30 minutes or so, expanding out to 3 cities. No luxury resources, but the capital was surrounded by strategic ones (some cattle, a gold mine, and several tiles with shields on them). After 30 minutes I went into the Advisors panel and saw that all cities still had 1 happy person - even without luxuries or temples - and no sad ones.

I am sure I have still forgotten something as I'm still building way too fast. My capital city in the test run ran out of stuff to build, but I think that might be more a function of putting roads and irrigation all over the tiles around it, generating shields for production/commerce at a ridiculous rate (not to mention the food exploding the population quickly). Cannot find a setting that says I'm in overdrive for production, so not sure why this happens. Then again, I don't build cities where there aren't any resources around, so it may just be a side-effect of how I play.

I'll state that I think I've got it, but I'm sure I'll be back with more questions that I could probably figure out myself with a bit of time. Thanks for the help, everyone!
 
Sounds like you are getting there. Try to keep your science percentage as high as possible and build lots of cities. Problems may fix themselves.
 
I increased the difficulty to Regent,
There your first 2 citizens start out content. At Emperor and above only the first citizen. I advise to choose Emperor because it is still reasonably easy but not unreasonably easy. Choose the difficulty setting too low and you create wrong habits.
And before anyone asks, no, I do not have access to luxury resources to quell their unhappiness.
On Emperor or above you may easily set the luxury slider to 40% to prevent riots. Later in game you get up to 8 luxury goods which together with marketplaces give up to 20 happy faces so you can lower the luxury rate. That tends to happen mostly in the early and the late medieval age when trade routes are established.
I don't see an option in the game select screen for this. Nor do I see it in preferences. Where would I find this so I can turn it off in v1.07f?
The option is chosen when starting a game. In the first screen you create the map in the second you choose civs, victory conditions and special settings such as accerelared production.

BTW: v1.07f is way out dated. C3C 1.22 is the official standard.
My capital city in the test run ran out of stuff to build,
If you build enough settlers for about 20 cities and 2 workers per city, this will reduce your population and thus your production. Expand first, improve terrain second and build up third.

If you do this right, then by turn 100 - 550 BC you may have one palace and 12 other building distributed over about 22 towns and thus an average of 0.5454 regular buildings per town. Your experience seems to differ a lot from that.
 
BTW: v1.07f is way out dated. C3C 1.22 is the official standard.
To be precise, 1.07f is the original release of vanilla (16 tribes) Civ3!

@krossingkhory, if you're going to play vanilla, then you should at least patch it to v.1.29f.

There was at one point a legal NoCD patch available online at the German PCGames magazine website, but that page has apparently now been taken down (or at least hidden; the original link now gives a 404 error, and I couldn't find the page doing a quick site-search) -- though the patch may have been uploaded to CFC before that happened.

(I haven't looked for it here, but) If you can't find it in the Civ3 Downloads section, I'd be happy to send you a copy of mine.
 
The option is chosen when starting a game. In the first screen you create the map in the second you choose civs, victory conditions and special settings such as accerelared production.
Unfortunately, no, it's not. The only options I have in the second screen are to select my own civ, select any of the opposing civs, and set the victory conditions. 1.07f doesn't allow to alter the production rate on the second screen...unless I'm missing something?

1736001624077.png
 
Old school Civ3 screenshot!

Its fine, I don't think it is accelerated production now. I think the issue is you had science down at 40% or 50% (which is what it starts the game on). Once you get your science rate at 80%+ and start sharing techs with other Civs you'll get access to lots of new buildings. If in doubt, you could take a screenshot of a town view and show us the screen where a building is being made.
 
No, you're not missing anything -- apart from the many additions to the game provided by the expansion-packs! ;)

Accelerated Production was added to the Choose Your Civ screen to speed up multiplayer games (not sure whether that was in PTW already, because I upgraded directly from Vanilla to 'Complete').
 
I'm honestly looking for strategies here on what to do. Either I'm building too fast and have some setting checked that I'm not aware of, or my cities fall into disorder before I can get anything built to make them happy. What am I doing wrong?
OK, let's look at the expansion more generally. Each time you produce a settler, the population of the city drops by 2. Size 4 goes down to size 2. If you've built a granary, you can grow back to size 4 in less than 10 turns. If you have bonus food tiles, it can be closer to 6 turns. Population size matters, even at Warlord and Regent difficulty. If your towns are small, they will be easier to keep happy, even without luxuries. Indeed, turning the lux slider up to 10% and keeping a unit (even a warrior) in the town should keep a size 4 town from rioting. Each settler you build makes the happiness problem easier, because the origin city has fewer people to keep happy.

If you've built a temple (or library) in a town, your cultural borders will expand, giving you more options for placing your citizens.
If you've settled next to a river, you could grow past size 6 without an aqueduct. If you're not next to a river, then building an aqueduct is a key building.
But keeping a larger city happy *without* luxuries will require a bigger boost to the lux slider. Claiming more land, either by settling or conquering, should eventually get you a luxury or two.

In Ancient Times, while still in the Despotism government, you don't need more than one unit as a city garrison. Build more units, send them out to explore. Build the best offensive unit you can: archers rather than spearmen, horsemen rather than chariots, swords when you can get them. Once you know where an AI city is, combine your units into a stack to go attack it. Yes, you will lose some units. "What shoul I build?" More units to replace your losses, units to serve as a garrison in the new towns.

Building new cities and spacing them like this: CxxC (that is, with two empty spaces between them) can claim a lot of land.

Are you building too fast? You may be focusing on buildings and wonders too much. You probably don't need BOTH a library and temple, unless you're hoping to win a 100k empire-wide culture victory.

Vanilla Notes: SInce you're not playing Civ3 Conquests or Civ3 Complete, the game play rules are a little different. In vanilla, swordsmen don't upgrade, but horsemen do. You will want to balance the number of swords that you build, based on your opportunities to use them in the late Ancient and early Middle Ages. The city corruption model is different, but that's not relevant for your "running out of things to build" in Ancient Times.
 
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