FF: What keeps you from being a better player - and what are you doing about it?

[Txurce]

Newcomers have the obvious reason - lack of experience - but what about those of us who have been playing more hours a day than we care to admit, for long enough to be better?

Part of my problem is that I don't know how to look under the hood. Macs don't have 1.29 editors, I refused to learn math as a kid, and I only have a "consumer" proficiency with my computer. I've made up for this by reading lots of strategy threads, but I stop right where I stopped with chess books: the moment I see a bunch of numbers. You don't need to be a numbers or computer person to crack this game, but it sure seems to help.

More problematic is the limit to my attention to detail. I'm good at detail in general, but not at the Civ level. I like to play fast, and never worried about mistakes, since I was going to win anyway - if anything, they just added a bit of challenge. Pause between turns and consciously consider a variety of factors? What's the point of having intuition, say I. This led me to blithely reload every time a city went into disorder, for example, because constantly checking that screen is a bore.

Now that I'm playing the GOTM, I not only can't reload for disorder, but just winning according to my own standards isn't good enough, either (for me). This has forced me to slow down on a per-turn level, quit playing when I'm sick of hitting function keys, and learn a few things, like how to add and build a settler factory. But I realize that these improvements in my game play are remedial - I'm never going to be as focused on detail as the best milkers. The way for me to improve is to set challenges for myself, and play enough in a focused enough manner that I "absorb" some of the lessons that others have literally figured out.

 

[Svar]

I think my old play style inhibits me since I used to play really fast and just reloaded if I made an error like not watching for city disorder or forgetting to trade new techs the first turn they were discovered.

The ability to constantly reload if you don't like the result really taints my playing style. Now I will have to plan well ahead and play much more attentively. I can do that it just takes practice.

BTW the game is much more exciting this way, with my old playing style it was easy to get bored because I almost always won.

I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Now that I have submitted the game for Gotm20 I have gone back and started over to see just how much better I can do and improve my playing style.

 

[hotrod0823]

Not sure?? My game has improved immensly - 6 months ago I couldn't win on emperor. I continueing to learn by reading and playing. My game has improved but still lags, by a great margin with the best players here and at the SG threads.

Middle of the road is good. Improving with time is better. I haven't given up on playing and will continue to play and hopefully continue to get better without relaxing my standards.

I challenge myself to be a better player. Not necessarily the highest score or the fastest space win but improve with each game.

How do you get better? Play and try new things. Read and learn from others. Active participation in discussion helps emmensly. Playing with other great players in SG games has really helped my individual games. I have a lot of good accomplishments, an always war victory, an honorable rules SG victory, an always war infantry variant SG victory many many others that I am proud to be a part of. LK Series is alive and strong (too many victories to mention). The most significant for me is the ongoing HOT series of games.

• HOT1 - Monarch artillery variant
• HOT2 - Emperor Spanish culture (became domination)
• HOT3 - Deity Neophytes 5 non diety players combine for a miracolous Diety come from behind victory.
• HOT4 - Emperor Honorable rules Diplo victory.

All these games I have enjoyed because my game play has improved. How do I reach the next level??? I will let you know when I figure it out !

 

[Creepster]

I think I have been limiting myself by not fully understanding the issues that are about to develope. Essentially my planning could improve.

The QSC has helped me to plan a bit better. But there is room for improvement. I have done this with GOTM 20 I stopped at 3800BC and actually wrote out a plan for the next 100 turns and how I was going to achieve certain goals. By focusing on the short term goals I hope to achieve my end goal a bit faster and better.

 

[jeffelammar]

I'd say that my biggest weakness is lack of patience and thoroughness.

I know that if I had the patience to do the review of all cities production every turn I could do a much better job of optimizing my game. On the other hand, I just don't feel like doing after I get to about 5 cities.

My other big weakness is that I tend to play by feel rather than by hard numbers. I don't always figure out my production schedule, so I waste shields and food. I get over excited and attack when I don't have enough superior numbers.

I am working on it, but a lot of the time it feels like more work and less fun to take all that time.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Txurce, I know what you mean. When I started playing civ3, I always turned on the governors at 4000 BC and put all workers on automation right away. I could beat the game up to monarch level doing this, but not beat any higher levels.

Then I learned about micromanaging and how bad automated workers are, so I started to manually control these things and my game improved significantly. Later in the game I still use the governors in most cities and turn workers on Shift-A, but the micromanaging in the early game allowed me to get into a position where I can afford the luxury of having some inefficiency in city management and worker tasks.

There are varying levels of micromanagement. I sometimes get into the more advanced levels of micromanagement in the early game, but rarely in the late game.

Short rushing and planting forests on tiles that haven't previously had a forest, just to chop it down for more shields is too tedious for me. So is micromanaging cities that are +50% corrupt, barb farming, or designating what cities build based just on how many shields they produce (because I usually just have cities build the same military units, not having some build infantry, some artillery, and some battleships/bombers, etc.)

 

[denyd]

Things I'm doing now I didn't do 6 months ago:

1. Build a settler factory and grow as fast as possible (thanks to Bamspeedy's tutorial on Babylon Diety)
2. Check for trades every turn and parlay a trade monopoly into tech parity and cash surplus (thanks to Moonsinger's trading thread). Also sell TM everyturn netting 3-4 gold each turn.
3. Gifting of techs to weaker scientific AI's to get age bonus tech available sooner (thanks to the tournament games with the required victory condition)
4. Buying tech from the bully about to attack for gpt
5. Suicide galleys - never left the coast before caravels in past games
6. Learned the value of the WM, I used to trade it for nothing all the time.

Things I know about, but don't do yet:
1. Rarely rush - and have never pop-rushed anything
2. After early game growth - rarely move lux slider above zero
3. Hardly every build courthouse, coastal fortress, walls and more than one granary.
4. Micromanaging of tile usage to max growth / production.
5. Never build chariots, scouts, explorers, catapults, frigates, ironclads, paratroops, helicopters, cannons or rocket/nukes.
6. Rarely build riflemen, archers/longbow, privateers, jets, fighters/bombers or stealth units.
7. Never able to 'milk' a game (not enough time)
8. Know about, but have never used 3rd party tools.

Things to learn about in the future:
1. How to start world wars, without having to actually fight.
2. How to build a worker factory to go along with the settler factory.
3. How to conduct a cross ocean invasion without using way too many troops (airports).
4. How to use communism
5. How to war during democracy without excessive WW
6. How to bump production with power plants (got the article, but haven't tried it yet)
7. How to use the PTW city improvements (Commercial Dock, Civil Defense, Stock Exchange)

About the time I achieve some of those goals, the next expansion pack will arrive and I'll have to expand the list.

 

[alamo]

Yep, discipline in the trudgery is a major problem for me.

Hey, I'm trying to play a game for fun. What's up with all this tax-form details and headaches.

Good list denyd. Mind if I copy it? I'm not a very good list-minder.

One thing not mentioned so far: Tweaking sci spending as turns-to-go dwindle.

EDIT: what to do about it - make more posts...and copy denyd's list.

 

[Smirk]

Its hard to say simply what I have yet to learn, because if it were then I could just learn it. But I know the lack of micromanagement beyond 2000BC could really improve my game, but at the cost of a lot of time. This is the main reason I've yet to do it, the QSC has motivated me to do more mm until 1000BC but if you looked at my game at 1500 and 500BC you would see a stark drop in the efficiency. I mentally breath a sign of relief as soon as I save the 1000BC game, like a weight has been lifted, for some reason I have a great resistance to that level of micromanagement.

Of course there are a lot of other general issues that I figure come most just from experience. The larger issues that aren't just a simple calculation, like how the AI will react to such and such, and how many Sipahi do I need to take out a strong industrial age roman empire from sea (estimates indicate > 30 to survive the landing ).

 

[pman67]

I was sitting here trying to figure out how to say what I wanted to for this post and Bamspeedy and denyd both summed it up pretty good.

The main thing I can add is this:

When trying to do all these things every single turn , the game starts feeling too much like work and not enough like fun. That's when I start losing interest in it.

I have to figure out how to maintain that interest level so that I can practice all of the tips and tricks that I have been reading about these last few months.

 

[Moonsinger]

I don't really know why I don't have any problem learning Civ3. Not just Civ3, when it comes to computer game, I'm good with most games - Might and Magic, Master of Orion, or whatever. I guess having a background in computer science does help. Whenever I play a computer game, I am not really playing with the AI or the computer, I am really playing with its creator, its designers, and its programmers. What would I do in this situation if I am the designer or programmer of this game? Once I find the answer to that question, the rest is easy. As for the GOTM, it wasn't the AIs (deity or not) that I should be worrying about. It's really Cracker that I should be keeping an eye on. If I am Cracker, what is my intention on this map? Once I think I can depeat Cracker, it just a matter of time before I clean out his AI minions.

 

[CdB]

What I learned
1. Settler Factories
2. Trades & Diplomacy

What I still need to improve
- Micromanagement
- Force WW between AI
- Correct usage of Navy (rarely use it)
- Using the Lux slider
- Use PTW enhancement
- Managing people in cities (Scientist ... Did not see much impact up to now)

What I am lacking for this
- Time & Patience

 

[ltcoljt]

I just need experience and I need to study the nuts and bolts of a few fundamentals. I have a lot of TBS experience and the biggest issue for me has been learning to play for score rather than for speed, but the new scoring system is helping me out on that.

As Moonsinger says, figuring out what cracker has done to change the game from a typical computer generated game is probably going to separate my best games from the average ones.

I also have a big problem with corruption. I seem to run about 10% high than others that I have seen.

Finally, I am really focusing on turn advantage. When we were mastering SMAC we dialed in really close on maximizing turn advantage. I knew exactly when to rush buy and in Civ3 I am not quite sure about case buys yet. I need to learn to use the short buy and the whip. I have learned to disconnect resources and build low shield units when saving cash and then do the mass upgrades.

It's coming. A little slower for me than some because I am not a math head.

 

[CruddyLeper]

I think my biggest fault on Civ3 is falling between 2 stools.

Far too often I'll come up with a grand scheme, only to cut it back to develop my empire other ways.

In other words, I lose determination to stay on the same course, and try to develop all ways at the same time.

Early war is something I just don't dig. It goes against my character to auto-raze cities, so I never attack before the opponents are Republics or Monarchies.

This current Diety game is helping a little with the first problem - got to be focused. But the 2nd point is again eluding me, because I've had to expand a lot into the space given.

Oh well, keep trying I guess.

 

[denyd]

Alamo - go ahead with the copy

Others need to improves I thought of while reading this thread:

1. Learn to use Entertainer/Taxmen/Scientists better
2. Learn to use trade embargos during wartime
3. Learn how to perform a sucessful palace jump
4. Build a Forbidden Palace before AD (non GL involved)
5. Learn how to use armies in pre-IA periods
6. Learn how to use combined attacks (air-sea-artillery bombardment, pillaging along with my usual frontal assaults)
7. How to conduct multi point of attack campaigns, not the usual SOD approach, as the AI doesn't seem to counter this very well.
8. Use defensive terrain when approaching targets
9. Understand terrain improvement better in the mid-end game time frame (when / where to mine, irrigate, forrest, rail...)
10. Use of submarines and aircraft carriers in a continent game.

The more I know, the less I know!!!!

 

[OneFastWarrior]

Patience, Must..... slow...... down......

Must take time to read as many threads as possible.

and keep playing untill.......

 

[Renata]

Most of my improvement is incremental: noticing flaws in one game and doing just ever-so-slightly better with whatever it is in the next. For example, in one GOTM neglecting to join excess workers to cities in the middle ages to maximize population. In the next, doing really well with that, but then being caught short on workers at the advent of steam power. In the next, getting both aspects about right.

One thing which still holds me back is a lack of planning in the mid-term. My small-scale tactics are decent (i.e. maintaining an efficient worker factory, or good use of my elite units), and overall strategy is decent in most cases (deciding on a victory condition early, planning out which wonders, if any, I am going to go for, etc), but the mid-range stuff stinks. I'm constantly doing things like getting halfway into a massive attack on my neighbor only to realize I could have saved a ton of effort and a third of my forces by first sending a couple units on a run-around for a pillaging run. I need to pause and think more, instead of going into the autopilot zone.

I also seem to be blind to the kind of meta-issues that ltcoljt and moonsinger bring up. It took me forever to realize that something was funny with Rome in GOTM19, for example.

Renata

 

[JonathanValjean]

For about 3 months now, I have needed to study carefully the tips and strategies for winning at deity level. I keep procrastinating because, I think, at least subconsciously, that if I win at deity, I will lose interest in Civ 3. You know, it might seem as if I've made my final conquest or something. If that isn't the reason, maybe it is that I fear it will be too difficult and time-consuming to master deity level. This question really helped me to search introspectively as to why I've been putting it off. Thanks!

 

[runifoc]

Lack of experience is a big part of it. My playing style tends to be a bit timid. I am more interested in seeing how well I can develop my society and wait too long before attacking. Usually, I wind up being attacked first. It's not uncommon for me to be massing troops on one border when I get attacked on another one.

My game has improved tremendously since the start of the year; in part from following the discussions in the GOTM forum. The pregame discussions are a big help. Maintaining a timeline for the QSC has also contributed to improving my play.

I started following the SG discussion two months ago. Participating in some SG's would definitely help me to improve; however, I am not ready to reallocate time for that.

 

[Ricardo]

My biggest problem is no free time to play. I have to play for an hour here or an hour there.... rarely can really sit down and play for a day. So up until about 3 months ago when I started coming here I used the automated workers and governors all the time. The GOTM has definitely led me to be a bettter player. Taught me how to build a settler factory and the importance of trading/diplomacy.

I need to sit down and really study the war academy threads and trading/diplomacy advice on this site to get better I think.

My problem still is I just jump into the game and play as fast as possible (kind of a hack and slash approach) I need to be more patient.