Guidelines for thise who are New or Violent

[MirandaCore]

1. Dense build. That is, place lots of cities that are two or three spaces from ur capital. And then place cities two or 3 spaces from those cities. So on... Since corruption is HUGE on civIII, u want as many productive cities as possible.

2. Never attack another civ early on unless u are sure u can take 'em out in 10 turns. Use fast units ONLY such as knights or calvary.

3. Blitz like the Mongols or like Hitler and damn the footsoldiers when attacking

4. Get a Forbidden Palace far from ur palace and dense build around the Forbidden. Rush the Forbidden with a leader

5. GET THE PYRAMIDS AT WHATEVER THE COST AND MINE THE GRASSLANDS. (especially if u are on a continent). That way, ur cities can grow quickly allowing u to expand w/ settlers. The mines meanwhile really really boost up ur production (besides, for half of the game, ur cities won't expand past 12 so irrigation is pretty usless).

6. Attack another civ early, primarily to get another leader and to assert ur dominance.

7. Never war with more than 1 civ at a time. Divide and Conquer.

8. By 500 AD, make sure that u are one of the strongest civs. Otherwise u'll be picked or warred on by multiple civs.

9. Go for the optimal amount of productive cities. Once u've achieved that, the purpose of wars is not to strengthen ur empire (since all captured cities will be totally unproductive) but to bludgeon the other civs back to the stone age. Power is Relative.

10. Railroads double the effects of irrigation or mining.

11. Remember u are smarter than the computer. There are many ways to exploit their stupidity.

 

[MirandaCore]

Oh, one more thing I forgot to add.

If u are nonviolent and go for diplomatic or space race victory, what do u do w/ ur extra production? Once I have no more useful improvements left to build, I start mass producing units. Thats why all my games end violently in conquest or domination.

 

[God]

Thats basically my strategy. Dense building is key and size 12 cities are far better than larger ones because of less pollution.

Check Aeson's strategy on chariots and ICS. I used it, and its amazing.

From his thread:
Basically play an expansionist civ, America and Iroquious are the best. I like America. Build scouts, get as many techs as possible, and block all the iron, with about 10-15 scouts. Build tons of chariots, hold off on get horseback riding by researching with 0%. Then after you have alot upgrade and you should have tons of money and a large army. I do this for every era upgrading.

Another thing which I really like to do is build as many knights as possible. Even into Industrial Era, don't buy Military Tradition from the AI! Build tons and tons of knights. Then upgrade them for 20 gold per unit. I usually have 5-6k at that point. You can upgrade like 200 of them. And with Leos 400! This works better on monarch and above because lower levels you can out research the AI and get the Military Tradition while they have pikemen.

 

[Hawkster]

From a non-violent point of view - the extra production I use to generate wealth - then use the gold to buy in luxaries / techs etc and increase happiness as much as possible to boost the end score.