First Game in a while...

nolls

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 5, 2007
Messages
27
I am playing a game to get back into civ. Regent, Mongols, Standard Pangaea. I picked Mongols cause I am getting addicted to agri civs. Any advice on what to do next is appreciated. I am preparing for war against Maya since they demanded a tribute and I don't have much defense at the moment.
 
Mongols aren't Agricultural, but they are a decent tribe to brush up your skills with, having 2 weak traits. Expansionist is only good in the AA, and Militaristic just gives cheap barracks and more promotions and leaders. Build more offense than defense and attack the Maya on your turn when possible. Defending can be very iffy. I wish I would give in to demands more often, it always starts stupid wars. Good luck in your game.
 
I think the Mongols are a so-so civ at best. To put a more positive spin on it, if you can win with the Mongols, you can win with anybody. Obviously, they are best suited for a conquest/domination victory--you won't see Mongols in the space victory column of the Hall of Fame. So, go build a bunch of your best offensive unit, and clear the Mayans off the map.
 
Okay thank you for your input overseer and professor. And sorry overseer my wording was bad. I meant that since I was getting addicted to agri civs I would pick a random, non-agri civ, lol. Well I did wipe the Mayans off the map, but only because the Incans started a war, then they allied with someone else (I forget who). So I decided to jump in to grab some land and I got their capital :D.

So now I am deciding to prepare for war with Inca. What should I choose in terms of units? Wait for Calvalry, get Knights (and Mongols happen to have a UU Knight which is a 4 att and 2 def)? Or should I stick with swordsmen?
 
Definitely use more up to date units, especially mobile ones. However, use those old elite units up and upgrade or disband the rest. A run to chivalry, then to Military Tradition is typical of Always War games. If you have an overseas invasion, there is the detour to Astronomy, but in a regular game, that can be traded for. Looked at the save. Now I could be like many others and tell you everything that you are doing wrong, but I'm going to try to minimize that. What you can do is build about 10-15 Medieval Infantry and about 3 Pikemen and 10 catapults and get some horses by taking Palenque. With horses available, then you can build a Mongol horde of 15-20 Keshiks and sweep the Inca away. Last but not least, next game you start, uncheck the culturally linked box, it is bugged. If you want to meet other civs besides the Inca, Maya, Iroquois, America and the Aztecs, do it.
 
Took your advice overseer and started mass producing Medieval Infantry, Cats, and Pikemen. Unfortunately they demanded a tribute and I refused cause I was getting tired of their tributes every 10 turns, which probably wasn't a good idea, so I was delayed. I made an army and stationed roughly 5 MI, 2 P, and 2 Cats each outside 5 of their cities and managed to get three.

Unfortunately I was practically fighting on all jungle terrain so the cats went to no use....
Also, I forgot about the city with the horses I should've obtained so late in the war I started mass producing more MI and rallying them outside of Palenque, since a lot died because Inca is the most powerful next to me and they have Ancient Calv :(.

Anyway, I decided to save a bit into the war and 3 turns after a city that I captured that had an army AND some stationed in it pledged alligience (sorry spelling) to the Incans. Then the turn after that I refused a peace treaty and all my cities went into civil disorder.

Lucky that I had the save, I went back and offered peace treaty to end this and keep my army and city. I got theology and gave them a big portion of my gold. What I also did was get horses from them for wines and invention, and I also got my money back :).

So, any suggestions for next moves? I intended to get to Mil Trad and mass Calvarly and wage war on the Incans again. Any alternatives that seem better to anyone?

P.S. I am also attaching the pre-war file that is saved 1 turn before I waged war. I am hoping someone will try to do a better job than I did :D.
 
Some Observations-

1) Your Cities pop is a bit low, You might be too busy warring to worry about that but still try to get higher pop in the cities

2) I started the war on the same turn and fortified to let the inca show their power. both the Inca and I lost about 20 units and i eliminated the ancient cavalry. with the offensive troops gone i took cities slowly, Maybe you might emulate that

Hope these tips from an Emperor player helps
 
Unfortunately, I don't have time to peek at the save, but something caught my eye:

Took your advice overseer and started mass producing Medieval Infantry, Cats, and Pikemen. . . . . I made an army and stationed roughly 5 MI, 2 P, and 2 Cats each outside 5 of their cities and managed to get three.

Unfortunately I was practically fighting on all jungle terrain so the cats went to no use....
I like cats, but if you're going to build and support them, keep two things in mind. First, build enough to do you some good. You're not going to do much damage with 3 stacks of 2 cats each. Better to have 1 stack of 6 cats. Second, keep the terrain in mind. If you know that you're going to have to trek through the jungle to get to your enemies, either road it, or don't use cats. The latter is probably easier. Just build something that can walk through the jungle.
 
1 stack of 10 cats can really knock down a cities defenders fast. Aabraxan is correct, massing troops is the way to go in this game. The map is almost a bigger enemy than the AI civs, jungly maps kind of suck. Looks like you did pretty well with the handicaps on play that you had. The Inca can become a runaway in many games, and you've done well against them. Now that you have horses, build many Keshiks, they are the cheapest knight-level units in Civ 3. And use them. Waiting for cavalry might let the Inca gain too much ground. Definitely head that way, but stay busy while you research that direction, and then the Cavalry might be your knockout punch.
 
Start with Tabriz and see it has FP and a barracks and is size 6 and not
growing. Has 1 joker. I would not be shocked to see this is repeated in many
places.

You are in republic, so that means you are hurting for support with so many
towns not being cities. This should have been addressed by now. You need troops, but are going 138 in the hole for support.

Getting all these towns to city size would help a lot and putting everyone to
work.

First move is to up lux to 10% and put the joker on the hill. Switch MDI to
aqua. Now in 9 turns with the extra 3 shields. This place needs aqua and market at least.

16 towns and 16 workers, not enough for this land. Will need to squeeze out some additional ones as soon as it can be done.

Wow giving lux to US for nothing and to Hiawatha for 2gpt? I would rather do
without the gold and let them do without the lux, if that is all I get.

Yeah I know, you were trying to stay out of trouble, but you do not win by
letting them have it easy. You have to have more land and that means war with Inca in this case.

I do not understand the value of these small stacks sitting on tiles with no
roads, so they cannot get to any place quickly and are not in position to do
anything useful.

At least have workers making a road to them. Oh I forgot you only have 16 and that is not even enough to do the routine task.

You managed to avoid getting any of the whales in the border of any towns? You should have gotten two towns down on that river and one more town to get the two whales near Ta-Tu.

Switch Ta-Tu to aqua.

Karakorum switch to market and put scientist on a plain. Hated to not use the
mountain, but need growth. It is just a crime to have the capitol at size 6 and
not growing here, must be at max size by now.

Tesetserleg, I wanted to switch to aqua here, but will wait for MDI to finish.

Found worker making a road on a mountain near Kazan. Stop it and send it to road the grass on a river tile by Mandalgovi. River tiles are a priority.

Mandalgovi put scientist back to work on the grass tile and switch to market.

Ulaanbaatar back to work please.

Kazan switch to market. Note we can switch back, if needed, but the empire needs gold.

I see the preferences are not optimal. At least have the wait on turn end
enabled. I turned off all the animation, other than battles.

I move worker to Kazan to mine bonus grass tile. It is not useful to have
workers irrigating plains in a town with BG tiles having not been mined. Especially when you already have unused irrigated plains in that town.

IOW workers task are important, do not casually send them on errands.

Erdent put scientist on hill and switch to aqua. Note that a size 6 town with
three happy faces does not need a specialist and you cannot afford them right now.

Choybalsan put one of the scientist back to work on a hill and switch to market.

Dang, I saw a bunch of units moving automatically. Those need to be found and stoped. I saw some pikes leaving the border area?

Ereen switch to worker as it will grow in 5 and worker in 5.

Found 4 workers doing things that can wait and give them better things to do.

Dalandzadgad switch to settler to fill in a few holes.

I think I found all the units on goto commands and stopped them. All that is
left is to decide what to do with the mini stacks.
 
If you use your stacks properly, you should not have much trouble with the war. Consolidate the troops and try to funnel attackers to a kill zone. Move workers away from the front to prevent any losses.

Sell of many of the barracks, I did not go into that. You do not want a barracks in every town, that cost money.
 
Wow thank you for the very detailed advice vmxa!

Unfortunately I decided to continue and I didn't get to read your post before I continued my game, and I don't feel like going back too much :(.

Well, I took Overseers advice and decided to mass Keshiks. As I was massing them Russia declared war on me out of the blue, and tried to attack one of my cities with a little spearmen I think it was, lol.

So I moved all of the Keshiks and Med. Infantry that was left over from Inca war over to Russia. I took 3 cities and I was continually churning out Keshiks (now I have Calvalry so I am building them up to continue russia war/save for future Inca war).

I captured 3 Russian cities including their capital Moscow, all was going well as I was receiving more units to conquer Russia and I was in a Golden Age, getting a tech every 4 turns.

Although, now I am experiencing a lot of war weariness as this war has been going on for a very long time. I lost St. Petersburg to the Russians due to Culture AND one of my cities up by Inca was lost due to culture as well. This made me FURIOUS! So I decided to stop and see if anyone knew what I could do to prevent it in the near future (St. Petersburg was still resisting, so my fault there).

I also did a very amateur thing during this war. I disregarded the lux slider when cities were in disorder so I was manually either making citizens into scientists or entertainer (I don't know what the hell I was thinking). I realized this after I read vxma's post and seeing lux slider suggestions. I cursed myself at the HUGE mistake I made. I know I am going to be seeing MANY replies about lux slider after this post.

So, any ideas anyone about what I should do next? End the war? Continue? End and prepare for war on Inca?

P.S. I also uploaded the save from the beginning of the war if anyone wants to see how much better they can do against the Russians then me (very easy task :( ). Russia 3 is where I am at now.
 
Considering the amount of warring you have to do, a Change in Government might be good.

Dont worry, everyone makes mistakes :)

With Cavalry perhaps you should peace with the russians and go for the Inca as they are closer

please do tell me if you find these tips useful
 
I think you can do wars in Republic, you just can't let them drag on. The culture flips can really get you:mad:, but they can be minimized by a. starving the resistors, b. turning citizens into slaves, and c. never putting any valuable troops in a city prone to flip after the first turn. Another, more radical step would be to raze everything you capture.
 
One thing that I like to see, is to start making some settlers at the start of a war or even before then. Now when you over run a town, raze and replace or combat settle. What I mean by combat settle is to send a settler into the town and then abandon it and found your town on the spot.

This lets you use the road to the town and not lose a turn moving onto the ruins. You do not need this much at level from Emperor down, but it is a good habit. Having a few settlers around is nice even when your neighbors are fighting, so you can jump in and grab some land.

Once a game gets to the stage where you are into the 800AD time frame and the land is all settled, you can expect to be at war a great deal. This is rough for republics, unless they have many luxs to feed to markets to get happy faces.

If that is not going to be the case, Monarch is probably a better way to go.
 
Okay, so I decided to end the war in Russia due to war weariness and I had "I love the X day" in almost every city (too many entertainers :(), lol. I had military tradition and my own horses for the first time :). I massed Calvalry and some cannons and by the time I thought I was "ready" I had about 40 Calvalry and 10 cannons. So I decided to attack the weakest, Russia. As I was moving into their territory my Calvs were being slowed down by my cannons (since I didn't want them to be captured by enemy units).

I decided to not even use the cannons, and I still slaughtered them! I took all of their 6-7 cities in 5 turns, wiping the Russians off of the map. I had so much Calvalry left that I decided to war against the Aztecs soon after.

I built up some more Calvalry and I captured 3 of the Aztec cities, but I underestimated them, because I got down fighting the Russians, and I wasn't used to the mass of enemy units moving around in a good AI civ (Aztec in 2nd place in score, I am 3rd, Inca 1st). So I ended up taking a lot of casualties and I was forced to protect the cities I had conquered. I signed a peace treaty as quick as I could to prevent any cities I had from being taken over.

Now, I was thinking about getting to motorized transportation as fast as I could and warring the Aztecs again. A war against Inca isn't too feasible, because they are 5 techs ahead of me (although not so much in the direction of moto trans :)). I after getting moto trans, I would mass tanks and cannons and invade Aztecs and clear them off the map.

Any better alternatives anyone have in mind?
 
Trench Warfare maybe? Change government and just let the AI stagnate and waste units on you? You can declare war once you get infantry, block your border, The AI will waste production trying to kill you while you can continue as in peace

Any thoughts on that?
 
nolls I started to run a few turns and found that some units are fortified in jungle and that can get them killed. Moved to hill and join other units.

800AD:
bombardment is a swell 1 for 11. 5/5 sword kills a redlined knight (1-0).
1st kills pike in Copan (2-0).
MDI kills archer (3-0).
MDI's go 2-2 and one goes elite. We capture Copan with a worker. Grab another worker outside (5-2).
I mayl rush a wall here as I want to hold that spice.

Atico MDI's go 3-1 and capture it (8-3).
MDI kills mdi (9-3).

820AD:
Have to sacrifice some 3/3 MDI to kill off redlined AC and Knights.

A few more turns and getting painful attacks from AC and Knights. Not so much that they kill units as they retreat and I have to end with a unit exposed. It has cost them a lot of horse types as I paste them with bombardment units on the way in.

Have clear off a lot of incoming and the army is at full strength with a promotion. Should be able to go on the attack again.
 
960AD:
War is going ok, no leaders though. Captured Nasca. I razed the city that had
horses a couple of turns back and found a town next to the horses. Have Keshiks being made now.

Got most of the civs in against the Inca for some techs and luxs. No attacks are coming now as I have pushed them back and they are defending from all sides now.

1010AD:
Captured Andahuaylas. Very short of workers. I am making some as I can, but
there is a lot of land to road and tons of jungle. Have 7 turns of alliance with
US to go and then can make peace.

Got the three things I needed most 1) horses 2) land 3) spices and the 4th is to reduce the Ican empire. The bad news is that the US is getting some of the pie.

1070AD:
captured Huamanga

1130AD:
Captured San Fran. No alliance left, but I am going to press on to get Cuzco as it has several wonders. Still not a single leader from many elite wins. MT not far away.

1170AD:
Whoops got GA from Leo's. I switched a long running prebuild to it and it
triggered. Next turn will be adjacent to Cuz. I sort of figured a GA had already
taken place.

1190AD:
captured Cuzco with 4 wonders including Great Wall, Pyramids, Oracle and Knights Tempar.

1240AD:
Ok, the WW is starting to get ugly, so I captured Machu Picchu with the SoZ and made peace. It comes with Ivory as well.

The game is in the bag anyway as I have more pop than anyone and about the same land. At this level the AI will not be able to fend me off without a lot more land.

Have 5 lux in hand now and getting or have markets up in the cities. Would prefer to be in Monarchy here so I could stay at war the rest fo the way.

Anyway just a few tech till Industrial age. Actually Mag is done on the IBT and then only Theory and on to Steam and then it is really too bad for the AI.
 
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