First ever game- help! ;)

twilson

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 12, 2009
Messages
15
Hi all

I came pretty late to civ etc and recently brought the civ 3 (complete) and civ 4 games.

After reading the articles here, i decided to start on regent, with an island map included with the package since it seemed balanced.

Everything seemed ok, and i was keeping up i think..but now the AI has gone insanely agressive... i give tech to them to get peace, they agree and then invade a few moves later on, very annoying...literally everyone wants a fight it seems.

Anyway does anyone have any ideas how this game could be turned into a victory or is it a lost cause?

Also i think my city placement is messed up, any tips for my next game?

Any help rescuing this game appreciated, thanks..i think its a 'conquests' save.
 

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The first thing to note is like you said, placement. Once you realized you are on a small island, you have to pack those towns in close. Try to get as many as you can at CxxC.

Then defense would be a snap as you would have units from several towns to bring to bare. The next thing is to find more land to get as early as you can. Get boats in the water and settle any place you can find.

It may be that all island are already taken, but you then have to plan an invasion.

10 workers
5 warriors
11 spears
1 sword
5 pikes
1 knight
13 MDI
2 curraghs

So what can we say about them? Well curragh cannot cary anyone, so upgrade or scrap them long ago and gets some gallys.

Why make 5 warriors on a small island? Who are you afraid of attacking you?
Why make spears at all at Regent, but on a small island they have no value. You should be able to kill any landing and not let them attack anyway.

Sword, ok.

One knight? Why no horses that could be upgrade?

Why all those MDI, where you being invaded or invading? If not invading, 5 should be enough to defend, maybe less with horses.

Why Theo and not Engineering? It allows bridges.

52gpt for support. This is due to those useless spears and warriors and the lack of cities. I would have twice the cities by now.

Go ove the towns and look for things to correct, like Brighton. It is making an aqua and starving. I put pop on the three fish and now will grow and gain gold and beakers.

York making a cath, why? It has 10 happy faces. Change it to a knight. It has 39 food, gets some mines down on the irrigate grass. Sell the colosseum and granary. It is not growing anymore.

London does not have a single mine?

Read my tutorial fo rmore idea in my sig. A lot more could be said, but I am leaving.
 
Hi vxma, yeah i figured the cities were too loose, was a nightmare trying to not overlap them but grab all the resources. As for the warriors and spearmen, the plan was to get Tzus then put taxes up and upgrade them all?. As for invasions, the dutch and russians were both on me at one point, so thats why i built so many Med Infantry, but i guess i went over the top?

I was going theology for Bachs, i wanted to be able to drop my luxury rate right down..but it probably was a daft idea.

Thanks for the tips on micromanaging, its when something is built and the city governer takes over that tends to happen ...

Finally, ive read a pile of tutorials, but one dumb q, i want to make embassies/ treaties etc..but theres no option in foreign and no icon i can see.. is it because ive not landed on their islands?

Thanks
 
You can build embassies right now. Just click on the small E on the interface in the bottom right hand corner, as long as you have enough gold to pay for it. iirc you just need contact, Writing and gold. Well I am not sure about being at war, that may preclude them.

I cannot speak to Bach with certainty, I would suspect you will have trouble. You just are not making enough shields, unless you get a big head start.
 
Well ive had a look at your tutorial and im gonna restart anyway mate, its a good guide thanks. Trev
 
One small tip: When the AI gets aggressive, and you think they're going to start a war, see if they have any tech's for sale. If so, see if you can buy it for gold per turn (gpt). Then, if they attack, your deal ends, and you get the tech for cheap. Since you're on an island, and the AI is terrible at invading, you should be able to defend against the occasional spearman/archer combo's they will send out.
 
Just bear in mind that most think that would be an exploit, to deliberately sign a deal that will be broken. I don't allow that in my games, it is fine to make a deal and then they break it, as long as I did not expect that.
 
Making deals does seem to slow the aggression rate, so I would still be a trader, but i try to avoid deals that might make me poor, that is bad business. Making the AI poor, on the other hand, is very good business. Sell spare luxes and tech when possible, and the AI will not be so nasty. The other key is build offensive units, warriors, archers, swords and horses are more respected than spears, the AI is less likely to declare war if you have a large offensive military.
 
Some really good tips thanks...replayed this last night...unfortunatley untill 3 in the morning lol...and won quite easily... roll on monarch ;) . Fab game, wish id tried it before now.
 
Just bare in mind that most think that would be an exploit, to deliberately sign a deal that will be broken. I don't allow that in my games, it is fine to make a deal and then they break it, as long as I did not expect that.

I think most people don't have issues with signing deals in an attempt to convince the AI not to invade you, and paying them gpt is the best way to do that. Making a deal and then encouraging them to break it (for example, by making them furious and then issuing a boot order) is a different story.
 
AI behavior run the gamut of smug, to belligerent. Friendly to cranky.

Granted in Civ3, you can pretty much 'deal' with any AI given enough incentives for them to trade with you, (unlike what they did in Civ4, which I never really liked) but AI behavior is usually best when youi're middle of the pack or running 2nd to a larger AI.

Once you become #1, the AI will justifiably see you as their #1 threat and you can only keep a Civ at borderline polite with very good deals. This usually means its a Civ you're actively supporting or keeping in your pocket for geopolitical/strategic reasons.

If you're last or near last in the pact, the AI will invade and dogpile.

Also, AI gets a bit more eager to go to war after Nationalism or long periods of peace where they get to build up a large military.
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On Invasions by sea:

I also generally disagree with the 'AI is bad at invading' dogma. It's not very impressive in Vanilla and PTW, but C3C has an entire scenario built around the war in the pacific and the AI's naval capabilities had been improved to a point where It's only reliably worse in doing it than a newbie human (which is high praise!). But there's also quite a bit of self selection going on to start. Players who don't do well usually don't play far enough to be invaded by sea (assuming it's a continent's game or they're stuck on an island). The issue is if a human player wants to stick around long enough with such an AI in the game, and 2nd, the human footprint is often so large that in games where such an AI could develop, they do not as they're cut down to size early.

Large AIs, can mount impressive naval invasions, supported with naval and air power (if its a late game invasion) as well. It's not simply landing a galley with 2 units.

And lastly, there's the confusion with another AI strategy. During the Vanilla Civ3's final patch in early 2002, Firaxis snuck in new AI strategy which allowed it to sneak a small landing force, usually some piddly defender, by boat, as far away from the front as possible, usually into the core cities to pillage, disrupt and cause panic. Initially this worked, and it still works enough that most players keep a small reserve force to deal with them, but on Cheiftain or in cases where the players enjoy significant superiority, these suprise attacks tend to fall a bit flat which had led to the wrong association with botched naval landings.

You'll see a large scale naval landing when it comes, they usually don't happen until after magnetism when the AI gets galleons and frigates and build them en masse.
And here's the final catch. The AI's behave differently between each game. Some AI are land powers and have no navies to speak of, some develop an affinity with the sea and builds a lot more ships. A runaway AI can be both, but it's also somewhat more rare to find an AI that is both a land and sea power at the same time. So in any given game (on a standard map), there may only be one or two AI out of the 7 or so in the whole game that develops an affinity with the sea. So it's not like you'll be deluged with naval invaders from all tribes of the world as soon as they get magnetism.

Granted all bets are off in the modern era. Any sufficiently large AI will engage in an arms race *F3 military advisor* as they try to match the top Civ ship to ship.
 
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