Help with some strategies. plz

[Brucha]

I have viewed alot of the threads on this site, but never posted, so here goes.

I am currently playing England at Regency level. After a long war, I managed to wipe out Maya, and control a good portion of the continent that i share with the Aztecs and Incas. I started the game out really strong, but after the long war with the Maya, I have fallen somewhat behind. America is in the lead with Victory Points, but I am in second place.

I disabled Diplomatic and Wonders victory. As this is my first post, i'll have to respond to be able to upload my saved game.

 

[Brucha]

Ok so here's my saved game:

I am not sure what to do next. I assume that i'll go to war with the Incas soon, or else have to remain in second place. I would rather try a more peaceful strategy, but I am constantly having to give gifts to the Incas to keep them on good terms with me. I thought that maybe I can ally with the Aztes who border the Incas to the north, but I am still behind in tech, and so the Incas can field better units. As I see it, there is no way to catch up with them in techs, and a war with them would long and costly.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Delphi456]

1. Make armies out of offensive units, not defensive units (like you did with infantry)
2. Modern Armour is the best unit out there, yet you aren't researching it.
3. You are trading 3 lux's to the civ you hate the most. Why?
4. You have traded most of your lux's away, leaving you with only one.
5. You are trading a lux for 1 gpt.
6. A tundra-bound city with pop of ~2 has every happiness improvement possible.
7. One of your lux's is being traded both ways, yielding you a net affect of -3 gpt.

 

[Aabraxan]

1) Don't mix units in armies. You have one army with cavalry and infantry. As it stands, it's a 2-move or 2-attack unit. If it were all cavalry, it'd be a 4-move or 4-attack unit. That makes a huge difference.
2) You've only got 8 artillery. You should have dozens.
3) Hastings and Newcastle are both near the core and you've got them on wealth. They both have raxes, so they should be training troops.
4) Palenque and Lazapa are both building colosseums. Why?
5) You've got 23 cities and 22 workers, 15 of which are natives. That's not nearly enough. You should shoot for ~2 workers per city.
6) There are 26 foreign units inside your borders. Why?
7) The Incas have ~7000 gold and you have nothing to sell them. You're trailing in techs relative to everyone except one civ that has no gold. That's a bad sign. Your position economically and technologically is the product of not expanding fast enough in the early game and not having enough workers early enough in the game. By this stage of the game (Modern Ages), at Regent and with a Conquest VC in mind, you should have kicked everyone off your continent and be invading overseas.

 

[vmxa]

Brucha, the reason you are behind in this game is the lack of workers and the wide spacing of towns. You have a lot of tiles that are dead now and a lot more that were dead for most of the game.

You have tiles that still do not have roads. It is a big error to enter the modern age with so little land and not at least have it all railed by now.

This cost you food and shields. You just have realize that you are not using the best tactics, if you are not at least een with the AI in tech by the modern age.

One can usually match the AI in research at Sid by this stage of the game. At regent, you should be out in front the whole game. That you are not, means less than optimal use of your land.

You spent a great deal of energy cranking out AA wonders, which can be done, but only if you are getting the rest of the game in gear as well.

You just do want to let the AI beat you to ToE below Deity. That is two expensive techs they get for free, that you have to research.

 

[vmxa]

I am not going to go over the cites as I am sure I will find things like:

wealth in productive towns
factories going up in 5 or 6 shield towns
colosseums
units build with no barracks
court houses in places that are not corrupt enough or in places that could not really justify them
cathedrals in small towns
banks in small towns

and any number of things that are costing you shields and gold and not paying for themselves.

 

[vmxa]

I should have added building hospitals in places that will never feed enough pop to grow to 13 or larger.

 

[Brucha]

first, thanks for all the responses and input. I have owned Civ3 for quite a while, but never eally gave it much lay time until recently. I now see that I could have saved myself alot of wasted time in my games by the advice given above.

I started several other game, and began to watch what buildings I built, micro-managed my cities better, etc, as advised above. I'll try to list them accordingly:

1. One of the biggest changes has been not building certain City improvements that were not needed - such as temples in cities that were not needing them, or courthouses where corruption was mild. I guess my main problem was that I would biuld every improvement in almost every city (especially wonders - I admit I had the noob wonders addiction).

2. I also notice the difference of having 2 workers per city - that has greatly speeded up my progress considerably.

3. Militarily, I switched to more offensive units than defensive ones - I guess I was thinking that units like medieval infantry, riflemen and infantry were better than cavalry or Knights. However, after reading some war articles on the site (and reviewing the unit stats), I see where I was going wrong. Now my wars go alot smoother than before.

4. My spacing of my cities were placed terribly with alot of space. One thing I had thought was to use the dead space to plant forests to cut down on global warming and pollution. However, perhaps this was not a good plan.

5. I also waited to build improvements like aqueducts and hospitals until there were really needed. I see now that they were a wasted to build early and certainly a waste of gold upkeep every turn likewise.

6. I also have tried to revamp my trading to other civs. some of the trads I had done were to keep certain civs happy with me by giving them lux's a a sort of a gift. I am still unsure about trading lux's however. If I have extra wines, for instance, if I do not trade them, do the extra lux's give any more happiness benefit, or is it a one-shot bonus and not multiplied by the amount of the lux that you have?

7. I am still having some problems in tech research. I have managed to stay ahead of everyone else in techs until the industrial age, then I begin to lag behind. Even with micro-managing my cities, it seems that, at most, I have my lux and scientific sliders at no higher than 30-40%, and my gold output each turn with these settings is around 50gpt. Happiness seems to be a mjor problem still, which forces me to use entertainers to keep happiness up, along with the lux slider. What is a decent amount of unhappy citizens in a city of say Pop 10? Should I not be too concerned as long as there are more happy citizens than unhappy? If so, I could then use some citizens for science research/taxes. etc, than entertainers.

8. Lastly, as far as improvements, I have tried to have two types of cities: military cities to build military units and income/science cities to make gold and help techs. In miltary cities, I do not build librairies and the like, and in the others I build no barracks or the like. However, if I am not at war (or expecting a war soon), I usually have my military cities build wealth when there is nothing else to build (units or improvements). I don't see the point of biulding units I don't need that will require gold each turn to maintain.

As always, criticism is always helpful.

 

[Aabraxan]

That's a lot of comments. Glad to see that you're reading the advice that was given. I've got a couple of comments:

4. My spacing of my cities were placed terribly with alot of space.

Two things about spacing cities too far apart: (1) While it may make for powerhouse cities later in the game, it just leaves lots of unused tiles until you can build hospitals. That's a long time to wait and a lot of lost opportunity. (2) Widely-spaced empires are harder to defend.

6. . . . . I am still unsure about trading lux's however. If I have extra wines, for instance, if I do not trade them, do the extra lux's give any more happiness benefit, or is it a one-shot bonus and not multiplied by the amount of the lux that you have?

No, there's no extra happiness benefit from having more than one source of a lux. You get the same happiness benefit from 1 wine as from 37. One thing about trading luxes to the AI that you should remember is that the AI loves to hire clowns. Trading them luxes allows them to put clowns back to work.

7. I am still having some problems in tech research. I have managed to stay ahead of everyone else in techs until the industrial age, then I begin to lag behind. Even with micro-managing my cities, it seems that, at most, I have my lux and scientific sliders at no higher than 30-40%, and my gold output each turn with these settings is around 50gpt. Happiness seems to be a mjor problem still, which forces me to use entertainers to keep happiness up, along with the lux slider. What is a decent amount of unhappy citizens in a city of say Pop 10? Should I not be too concerned as long as there are more happy citizens than unhappy? If so, I could then use some citizens for science research/taxes. etc, than entertainers.

If you can straighten out your spacing, your worker situation and your MMing, I think that you'll find that research will largely straighten itself out. If you expand fast enough in the early game, you should have plenty of cities to stay ahead of the AI at Regent.

Also, what government are you using? The Republic commerce bonus goes a long way towards fueling research.

Don't forget trading. If you research monopoly techs, you can trade them around and get several techs for them, and gold to boot.

 

[PaperBeetle]

7. I am still having some problems in tech research. I have managed to stay ahead of everyone else in techs until the industrial age, then I begin to lag behind. Even with micro-managing my cities, it seems that, at most, I have my lux and scientific sliders at no higher than 30-40%, and my gold output each turn with these settings is around 50gpt. Happiness seems to be a mjor problem still, which forces me to use entertainers to keep happiness up, along with the lux slider. What is a decent amount of unhappy citizens in a city of say Pop 10? Should I not be too concerned as long as there are more happy citizens than unhappy? If so, I could then use some citizens for science research/taxes. etc, than entertainers.

8. Lastly, as far as improvements, I have tried to have two types of cities: military cities to build military units and income/science cities to make gold and help techs. In miltary cities, I do not build librairies and the like, and in the others I build no barracks or the like. However, if I am not at war (or expecting a war soon), I usually have my military cities build wealth when there is nothing else to build (units or improvements). I don't see the point of biulding units I don't need that will require gold each turn to maintain.

To maintain decent research, I think you need the following: (1) the science slider set at about 100%, (2) a decent government, i.e. republic, (3) a high population, with citizens in your core working the land, and citizens in your provinces working as scientists, (4) the Forbidden Palace, (5) libraries and later universities in all your core cities.
I listed them in the approximate order in which these goals are usually acheived, but (3) is probably the most important. Of course, there are problems to overcome with each of these points:
(1) How do you pay for your upkeep? By selling your techs and luxuries to the AI. This is actually more problematic on the easier levels, because low level AI are terrible at making money.
(2) Okay this one is easy, especially if you are playing C3C and can get Republic for free early on.
(3) How do you keep that big population happy and doing something productive? Get more luxury resources. War for them, trade for them (especially when selling techs), look for unclaimed resources and settle on them, and build markets to increase their effect.
(4) Also no great problem. It is usually worth building by hand early on, rather than waiting for a leader.
(5) These are comparitively expensive buildings, so you have to find a balance between building them and making units to get more land. There are many factors which influence that choice, such as your traits, geography and game version.

Having acheived fast research, you should find that your towns are kept sufficiently busy building useful improvements and keeping the military up to scratch, such that there is no need to build wealth. If you think the military is getting too big, you can always find some use for it.

 

[vmxa]

The best way to pay for happiness is to have a market and 4 lux. It will take time to get there and of course only the better cities get markets.

The thing about trading lux to the AI is it helps them more than you in most cases. As was stated, they can put pop back to work and they never pay enough. It is ok to trade one here and there, just not to the better civs and not more than one type.

To pay for things, you want to keep getting larger. More towns and get them to cities. No need to get to metro size.

You will not be able to research at 100%, until you have at least 4 or more lux, but that is ok. 70% of a larger empire yields more beakers than 100% of a smaller empire.

Do not forget scientist, they as very helpful as those beakers are not corrupt.

BTW how did you fare in that game, did you finish it?

Oh and it is Regent, so do not worry about the AI they are a paper tiger. I was fooling around with the save you posted and I planted a spy and found the Inca have nearly finished the tech tree.

They have tactical nukes and ICBM's, while you do not even have Fission. so I declared on them and got the Aztecs to join and crushed them. I just wanted the the Aztecs to keep them busy a bit, by entering their land.

Incas were so weak they did not even enter your land.

I should also mention, that you want to replace coal plants as you get the hydro or solar plants. I popped off a few settlers to fill some of the dead spots. Just a no growth town for support.

Popped a lot of workers out of towns that had little going for them to rail.

 

[Brucha]

I started another game to try the new ways of playing. The game is a regent, and I am playing the Dutch. I opted for a decent island, with another island jsut to the north to allow expansion and that is home to two other civs. I am not trying for any victory, just a learning experience on managed cities.

I already played the game once before, so, at the point of the save, I haven't bothered to explore the other island yet, nor have I bothered to trade with the other 2 civs because they offer really lousy terms. I am way ahead of them in tech and the other civs are across the ocean a good distance.

I have tried to build up my cities without waste accordingly:

1. I only built 2 wonders, both which are geared for seafaring.

2. I have stayed away from overbuilding city improvements, especially ones I don't need. I have been watching corruption levels, and avoided building courthouses in cities that i thought did not need them. I have built alot of temples, cathedrals, etc, because of happiness issues. I thought of bigger garrisons, but units don't seem to give me the same effect.

3. I am in the process of building up units for an invasion on the island to the north. I spent alot of time early on building my core cities, so this is the first chance I've had to start. However, I was also waiting for knights to conduct the invasion. The 2 civs to the north have very little resources, so their military is no where mine, and so the invasion is quite easy.

4. However, my money situation is rather pathetic. My sliders are no where near what they should be, especially researching techs. I think I am at 30-40% on researching techs right now in the saved game. It should be much higher. I guess I could make some citizens scientists and forego food, shields and gold, but then I have a big issue with gpt rates.

 

[Delphi456]

Your city placement is much better this game, and you have a nice amount of workers.

Here's were you need improvement.

1. Unless playing for a culture win NEVER build coleseums or cathedrals. Learn to use the lux slider. Building temples is usually frowned upon also. You are getting killed in maintenance costs.

2. You don't need a granary in every city, especially that dinky island. Sell the granaries in cities that are size 12.

3. Do some more exploring to find more trading partners. You can bribe them to fight for you with your abundant number of silks when the time comes.

Sadly you only have one lux and can't trade until you get Astronomy.

 

[Brucha]

Without the colleseums and temples, the citizens are very unhappy. That is why I built them. At the moment, I can't increase lux slider any further, and without those imporvements, my cities would be rioting. If I didn't have to pay maintenance for temples, etc, would I have enough gpt to raise the lux slider to match the benefits of temples, etc?



Two questions here on graneries: how can you sell a building? And is it a good idea to still build graneries in smaller cities of less than size 12?

 

[Delphi456]

Without the colleseums and temples, the citizens are very unhappy. That is why I built them. At the moment, I can't increase lux slider any further, and without those imporvements, my cities would be rioting. If I didn't have to pay maintenance for temples, etc, would I have enough gpt to raise the lux slider to match the benefits of temples, etc?



Two questions here on graneries: how can you sell a building? And is it a good idea to still build graneries in smaller cities of less than size 12?

1. The mntc cost of these buildings would pay for the lux slider.

2. To sell, open up the city window, right click on the granary, and select "Sell".

3. Don't build granaries in the other cities, they will grow just fine on their own. Or, you can add unneeded workers back into the city.

 

[Brucha]

Ah, ok, Delphi, thanks for the help. Civ3 is alot harder than it looks to master. I see the waste of alot of city improvements I was - and still am - building. I needed to build temples early on to make citizens happy and avoid riots. However, once my cities got bigger, I guess I can sell them off and just go to the lux slider. Its just that, early on, my cities seem to have a real problem with the citizens being unhappy and I don't have enough gold to use the sldier effectively.

For corruption (as far as building courthouses), when is the time to build one. I am checking the cities corruption rates, and only build a courthouse when the amount of corruption icons outnumber the gold icons by more than 2 or 3. Is that a safe way to do courthouses?

 

[Delphi456]

I needed to build temples early on to make citizens happy and avoid riots. However, once my cities got bigger, I guess I can sell them off and just go to the lux slider. Its just that, early on, my cities seem to have a real problem with the citizens being unhappy and I don't have enough gold to use the sldier effectively.
/

Here's where you are misunderstanding the cost/benefit of temples. A temple produces 1 happy face and costs 1gpt. That same 1gpt could make the same person happy via the lux slider. You gain nothing by building a temple (except cultural expansion, which can be gotten via libraries). Remember, unless you are experiencing WLTKD, there is no reason to have more than 50% happy people - it gains you nothing, yet you are still paying for that temple to provide happiness. If you were using the lux slider, you could lower it to zero and save gold.

As for courthouses, CAII is a good tool for showing corruption %s. I think the rule of thumb is to build them in cities with 20-50% corruption. Don't quote me on those %'s though.

 

[Brucha]

Ok, now I understand about citizen happiness. What I kept seeing is that, by the time some cities hit size 4, I would have 1 happy, 1 content, 2 unhappy, which would lead to a civil unrest. Then I would build a temple to offset the unrest. Perhaps, I am letting my cities grow too fast before I have enough money to up the lux slider. I always tried to micro-mamange the citizens to prevent this without a temple, but that would lead to less production or gpt.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Further to Delphi's point about temples providing a net benefit of exactly zero commerce, we can make a similar point about citizens: ideally, all your citizens should be working roaded tiles (or water) so every citizen should produce at least 1g. And via the lux slider, gold produced by citizens is converted into happiness. In other words, each citizen should be paying for his own happiness. I hope that is a convincing argument that even in the early game, you should still want to grow your towns at least as far as pop 7 (or pop 6 in towns without fresh water), and you should not be afraid to lean on the lux rate even if it seems to be at the detriment of your science rate.
Of course, you aren't playing in an ideal world, so the lux slider doesn't work out that neatly. Its benefit is degraded by corruption, its rate can't be individually tailored to suit each town, and roads take time to build. So you compromise by choosing a lux rate which keeps your best towns working, and your lesser towns just have to fit themselves around that (usually by building workers, which keeps their size down, or by employing a scientist).
Once you hit Republic, the lux slider becomes much more potent, as much more commerce is produced by the citizens at work on the land, and less of it is lost to corruption.

 

[Brucha]

Thank you all again, especially Delphi and PaperBeetle for fully explaining temple effects and how the lux slider works. I now understand alot more than I did before. It certainly makes the game alot more fun to play and not so much hard work.

I started another game on regent - I used Civ Editor to randomly create a map. I only looked at an island in the corner of the map and changed the start location to England and then started playing. Suffice to say, the game is completely different than any I have played before. I choose an island to be able to focus on building and citizen management.

I was able to biuld the great lighthouse and collosus wonders right away, and got my golden age right after building the collosus. (It would have been better for the GA to come later, but...). Without building any temples, etc, I had no problem keeping the citizens happy with the lux slider.

At the point of the save, I am way ahead of the other civs in techs. Money is not an issue either.

Although there is alot more I need to learn, this definitely makes a huge difference in playing. I would read the forums here with confusion of how others would get their civs so powerful.