Help please

Righty-ho. Think this is starting to make some sense.

Only 1 temple, early on, in my capital; a couple of banks whereby I was building a wonder and someone else got there first.

Otherwise, enjoying greater specialization, better at city micro-management (starting to see that that's a large source of counteracting the AI advantage), feeling more comfortable with more attack-minded units - getting fewer threats from anyone.

Main question here is whether I should be worried about Inca going for a cultural victory - should I be trying to hammer the domination aspect by going for America next, or trying to secure an alliance with Germany and send most of my troops by sea?

Only just established an embassy with Inca. No shared continents though we have in the past. Not sure what factors matter when it comes to planting spies.

Germany is the only country to have rubber so they're a candidate for invasion too. They're reasonably far behind in tech. Suppose I should probably try to secure them as an ally rather than risk fighting a war on 3 fronts though.

Thoughts? Swap governments soon? What to? Domination should be my direction, right? I still can't understand why I'm not trusted anymore - if you have some sort of hire-purchase treaty with someone and then you're forced to declare war because you have a mutual protection pact does that tarnish your rep? If that's the case I'll have to give a lot greater thought to my pacts.

 

Yes. Basically if you break any ongoing 20T-deal, you'll trash your trade-rep, not only with the AI-Civ you 'swindled', but also with any AI-Civs who know your victim. Have a look at this article about trading reputation, but do also read the discussion that follows, because Microbe got a few details wrong (for instance, he suggests that you can break a 20T peace treaty with impunity -- but subsequent posts demonstrate that this is not the case). Conversely, the AI doesn't (seem to) suffer the same penalties for deal-breaking as the human player, and will quite happily DoW even when they have deals running.

MPPs are very dangerous in that respect, because if you get inadvertently dragged into someone else's war, you are forced to DoW their enemy, whether you like it or not -- and if this then breaks a 20T-deal you have with the AI-Civ who attacked your Mutual Protector (or the AI-Civ that your Mutual Protector attacked), your trade-rep is toast.

I therefore only sign MPPs when I expect/hope to be starting a war myself in the very near future (like, in the next 1-2T), and I specifically aim to sign MPPs with any current trade-partners who already also have MPPs with my target. Since MPPs are only triggered by attacks on a Pactee's homeland (possibly also attacks on their units in neutral territory, not sure), the crucial point here is to ensure that I don't actually fire the first shot in anger. If I want my trade partner(s) to come in on my side (and not break our deals), I have to be able to hold fire for 1T, and wait for my target to attack me and mine.

One way to do that is to take advantage of the AI's fatal attraction to 'bait' units. By leaving a stray Worker/Slave within striking distance of my enemy's border, I can provoke my target into capturing it on the interturn after I DoW them. The Civ3-AI can rarely if ever resist such a tempting target, because it doesn't 'understand' that doing so will trigger my trade-partners' MPPs against it (and break all their deals, including their MPPs): once my trade-partners are 'protecting' me, I am then safe to start my own invasion.

If your would-be target has units on your territory without an RoP, another possible option is to trick them into DoWing you, by making a 'Leave or declare!' demand. Enemy units which are on your territory are considered fair game, so killing them will not trigger any MPPs they have with anyone else. But when they send in reinforcements to attack (or use a ship/ plane to bombard) your units/ towns/ resource-tiles, then your MPPs will kick in.

 

The link didn't work. Maybe you meant this.

 

No, I don't think the Inca can reach 100k here, if you get to them soon enough.

I would go for America next.

Do you know about specialist farms? You have some corrupt cities building things like an aqueduct when they could use specialists instead to increase your commerce.

Stay a Republic.

 

I do not, do you have a link please?

 

You don't really need a link. Specialist farming is simply a way of extracting useful work from towns in areas that are so far from your capital that they are almost inevitably irredeemably corrupt, so-called '1-shield towns'.

Instead of developing such areas as you would in your 'core-area', placing towns at Cx(x)xC and putting up commerce-/ science-/ shield-/ happiness-multiplier buildings in them, what you do instead is to pack as many towns into your corrupt areas as possible ('infinite city sprawl', ICS), placing them at minimum distance from one another (CxCxCxC), and putting up only 1-2 buildings in them, at most. Personally, I have a severe aesthetic aversion to using this strategy (I've seen it nicknamed 'city-pox' on CFC, and I agree!), but there is no question that it is (almost overpoweringly) effective, especially at higher difficulty levels...

Basics
You aim to settle your farms primarily on terrain that would otherwise give only 1 or 0 food (e.g. Hills, Deserts, Tundra), because a town-tile always gives at least 2 food (3 food if AGRI, under non-Despot govs), regardless of underlying terrain. All the surrounding fertile flatland (i.e. Grass, Plains, Floodplains; but not Deserts, unless they have Oases -- or you are AGRI) is then fully (chopped and) irrigated, and (post Steam) railed to maximise food-output.

Since each citizen needs 2 food per turn (FPT), a farm-town (max. 6 citizens) can produce 12-14FPT from only 2-4 tiles, allowing the remaining 2-4 citizens to work as Specialists instead: Scientists for extra beakers (3 beakers per turn per Geek), or Taxmen for extra gold (2 gold per turn per Taxman). 'Farm-cities' founded on fertile land next to freshwater (which would top out at Pop12 even without an Aqueduct), can be spaced slightly further apart (CxxC), and run with 5-7 farmers supporting 5-7 Specialists. Tundra/Desert towns with little/no food excess available can stay at Pop1-3, and support 1 or 2 Specialists each.

Happiness
Since all Specialists are automatically content, your only concern is the farmer-citizen(s). Although farms won't bring in enough commerce (CPT) to convert into Happyfaces using the LUX%-slider, if you have 'just' 4-5 Luxes hooked, it's not difficult to keep all the farmers happy, even in the Pop12-ers, and even if fighting a war under Republic (the best all-round gov in unmodded Civ3) -- provided that you ensure that you finish any such wars quickly and decisively. This is important, because fighting multiple and/or aggressive and/or drawn-out wars, even if you are winning those wars, may eventually push up War-Weariness (under Republic) to the point where your Specialists will have to become Clowns instead, just to keep order...

Builds
Depending on how far through the game you are, and/or what the rest of your Empire needs at that point, your farms can be set to slow-build e.g. Wealth (1T), Workers (10T), Settlers (30T), Bombard-units (40-80T), or boats (60-100T) -- you can pretty much just switch them on, and ignore them afterwards.

Since the farms won't be bringing in more than 1-2 uncorrupted CPT, you'll generally want to avoid putting up any buildings in them, especially if you're maxing your SCI%-slider (any maintenance-requiring buildings in a 1-shield town will then become a net drain on your Treasury). That said, you might want to consider putting up Walls (10-20 shields, zero maintenance) along your borders/coasts, Harbours (30-60 shields, 1 GPT maint.) in towns near Fish bonus-tiles, or Markets (100 shields, 1 GPT maint.) in 'wet' towns (even if you're primarily farming beakers, 1 citizen per town might need to become a Taxman, to run the Harbour/ Market at a profit).

Forest-chops and cash-rushes can be used to finish builds quicker, if you feel it's necessary/ worth it (but don't divert Workers to your farms while your core-area(s) still need(s) development). And once you have Replaceable Parts, you can also build any needed infrastructure using Civil Engineer Specialists (+2 shields per turn per CivEng: 5-6 CivEngs can put up a Market in ~8-10T).

@Spoonwood:
Thanks for pointing my link in the right direction: I copy-pasted it from a previous thread, but didn't test it

 

You might just use more tax collectors or scientists and starve them out instead. Specialist farms, especially after rails, grow back fairly fast.

No problem tjs.

 

For some examples see either the last save here or here. I would guess that you can also see the specialist farms in the 1000 AD save or the 780 AD save (I can't recall, I'd have to check).

 

To see some examples of what tjs happily described above, here lie some examples.

A whole patch of specialist farms:



Here's what one of them looks like:



Here's another that naturally lay on a river:



Here's one in a brown/desert area as an agricultural tribe:



Here's one from an non-agricultural tribe:



The library in the above probably wasn't the best choice.

and one near plains with a non-agricultural tribe:

 

Blimey. I suppose it's actually easy to manage as well - none of the assist programs I've tried have worked on my system, this seems like they won't cause any city disturbances as long as you have good luxury flow, and the density generates good upkeep for armed forces in republic. Do they suffer from cultural conversions at all? I know you can turn them off, is that something people do when they plan to farm like this?

Hoover dam before 1000 AD, eh.... I've got a decent amount to learn.

 

I don't turn off cultural conversions (you can't for the Hall of Fame or for Game of the Month). They might do so if on your borders, or if you added in a bunch of slaves. Usually though one citizen from a settler with a different nationality though doesn't pose much of a problem. I wouldn't worry about cultural conversions in specialist farms in general.

With respect to the Hoover Dam before 1000 AD, that's actually a rather ideal start playing as scientific vs. as many scientific opponents as I could get with gifting for their free techs also. When I opened the save it seems that I had an early SGL for The Pyramids and two cows in my core for earlier city foundings.

Also, you might want to note that in general you can finish coal plants long before you can finish Hoover's. So, coal plants might be better than Hoover's... that's something I just haven't generally done myself.

 

Quite amusing how similar this is, in a number of ways, to online poker. Have any of you guys tried to beat that, or does an attraction to civ3 not overlap particularly strongly with a desire to gamble?

 

No, I don't play online poker. Nor do I have any interest in doing so, nor do I see any worthy similarities of note.

 

Hmm, I've done something very wrong here it seems. Had iron reasonably close, got a couple of tech advances from huts early doors, and had maybe 3 SGLs? I had a war with Inca that lasted maybe 40-50 turns on and off, I was able to fend them off fairly well, but that's the only war I had - didn't fancy shipping over to Carthage to take them over, wanted to build up a good military to take on Inca but they seemed to match me for both tech and sheer numbers.

Was dense jungle to begin with, set a couple of workers to clean up automatically and set a few others according to which cities would benefit most. Micro-managed my city production / growth / science more than I have done before, including a few farms that seem to be working well; should I have had more workers though?

 

So you had a decent start but now are getting bogged down with poor production? I'd agree with that assessment. You have a lot of resources, but they're not maximized at all.

Yes, you should have more workers. Fortunately you have replaceable parts now, but 13 workers? One really easy way to get sufficient workers is to wait until towns are maxed out on pop and the food box is full. Make a single worker and the town grows the next turn. Remember that you can use workers to boost pop once your improvements are complete. But that jungle in your core has got to be dealt with.

What are your railroad priorities? Are you aware that rails increase the output of mines and irrigation by one? I ask this because:



You've invested 20 pre replaceable parts worker turns in railroads here and literally not a single one is doing you any good. You're not working the irrigated tile, three of them are on unimproved tiles, and they don't connect to your rail net for movement purposes. Assuming the worker was on one of the railed tiles when you got rails, he should have moved immediately to the hill and railed, then South or West of pasargadae to work toward a rail net. Note that in the 20 turns since that time you would have 12 additional shields from the hill, another 8 from the grass tile, and another 4 from another mined tile. That's 24 shields, AND you would get 4 additional shields EVERY turn going forward. By the time you spend the turns (at least now it's only 10 turns) to cover those same tiles you could have made almost a whole extra Calvary and started other projects, all while improving your transportation system.

Science wise, I have to ask: What exactly does sanitation do for you? Look through your cities and ask: which of these have unused, valuable and developed tiles that justify 160 shields? Now, is that more valuable to you than the 1876 gold you save by setting science to zero for seven turns? That would let you buy 23 workers at 80 gold each from corrupt towns to catch up your rail network. If you're getting ToE then there's no risk of falling behind, assuming you're taking Atomic theory - electronics and trade wisely.

Build wise, you've got a lot of 30-70% corrupt towns, and not a lot of courthouses. Not a factory in sight, and you need them. Don't forget about civil engineers for those markets (which you should consider making courts).

 

Why are all those Cavs fortified round Pasargardae? Cavs are for attacking, not defending...!

Also, try to avoid doing this:

You should be aware by now how poorly the AI-Civs prioritise their tile-improvements. So why deliberately inflict that handicap on yourself as well? Several things to mention here:

1. The Worker-AI will rarely stack sufficient Workers to finish slash-n-burning/ swamp-drainage in a timely fashion: instead, it will assign 1 or 2 Workers per tile, so that before RepParts it will take 12-24T just for the tile-clearance, in multiple (Jungle) tiles (6-12T afterwards) (if not IND). In the meantime, the nearest city is stagnating at Pop1-2. For Jungle-clearance, it's far better to stack Workers high (if IND, use multiples of 2 or 4, if non-IND, multiples of 3 or 6: halve this after RepParts), and clear a single Jungle-tile in 3-6T instead -- and once that's done, part of the stack can road it (1-2T), while the rest simultaneously mine it (2-3T). Bingo: now you have 1 tile fully improved in under 10T, just in time for the nearest town's next newborn citizen to work it -- rinse and repeat
2. The 'Automate [tile-improvement] -- this city only' option doesn't seem to work as advertised: it won't always prevent your Workers from disappearing across the board to clear Wetlands somewhere you don't want them. On a related note, therefore: when your enemy has Cavalry, Automating your Workers is a great way to lose them fast!
3. Use Slaves! Yes, they work at half-speed, but they cost no maintenance, so you can have as many as you can afford to build/rush. Rather than starving captured towns to shrink the rebellious foreign population, I prefer to build/cash-rush Slaves out of them (max-cost per Slave: 1T for 1s, plus 36g). For every 2 Slaves, I can then add a native Worker back into a (core) town to bring it up to max-size quickly, reducing my unit-maintenance costs, and increasing that town's productivity (Slaves from extinct Civs can also be safely joined to towns).

 

OK, so more worker micro-management - I must have some mental blocks about exactly how much work has to go into these things!

What are slaves?

 

They were a barrier - Inca sent in a ton of troops to invade the Carthaginian cities and I wanted them cut off from their main armies in preparation for a full-scale invasion of Inca.

 

There is a counterlogic for that: For joining 1 national worker to a city you can join 2 nonnational workers to your city, thus gaining about twice the economic output.

Another option is to disbandrush them. You can disband cannons and MedInfs for 10 shields each, thus also saving the money to upgrade them to artillery or guerella. In the industrial age production is plenty, but commerce is scarce.

Workers of a different nationality. If you capture workers they keep their nationality, as do artillery units if you have the required tech to build them. All nonnational units cost zero maintenance. This can be used to keep a reserve of nonnational settlers.

 

Effective Worker-management is the one skill that most high-level players rate as absolutely essential for competing at those levels. I'm not there yet either, not by a long shot...

When the AI begins an invasion, it commits all the 'offensive'-flagged troops it has to the job. So you don't need to cut them off after they've already gone through, just DoW and start taking towns. Using just the 7 Cavs I can see in that screenie, you should easily take Tamboccocha, especially if you Arty-bomb it first from the Desert-tile 2S of it -- and possibly also Macchu Picchu, if you have more Cavs hiding in Pasargardae. If you can continue to take his towns and repel his counterattacks for, say, 4-5T, Pacha will be desperate to make peace on your terms.

As soon as you DoW, any RoP you have with your target gets cancelled (caveat: will kill your RoP-rep), so Pacha's attack-units won't be arriving back in their homeland anytime soon. Unless you meant, you were relying on the AI's knowledge that the route north is blocked, so that they wouldn't even start coming back before your war started?