How I'm doing

FuzzyDoom

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
59
Location
Oklahoma
I have Civ3 Vanilla (A rarity I'm guessing) and was wondering if anyone can help me. So far, I find that Chieftan is very easy, but not very fun. I always just sit back and mass culture, (it's an addiction of mine it seems. I have to build EVERY SINGLE building. It bugs the hell out of me when I don't.) but the problem is that I never war. I actually just initiated my first attack on an enemy nation since I started playing again (about a week ago.) I succeeded in capturing 5 French cities, Paris included, and razing one that was 2 squares from one of my other cities. Overall, my war strategy was a success and I stopped the offensive and called for peace. (so that I could build infrastrucure and improve all the new tiles) Also, does anybody find Jungle to be the most annoying and useless terrain type there is? And I always start at the equator so it takes FOREVER to clear it all.

I see people post saves and if any of you could tell me how, I'd post a link to it.

Edit: Save is up.
 

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Well I do not see anything you are asking help with, so I cannot offer any on the game at this time. To post a save:
Use the post reply, not the quick reply.
Scroll down the screen to find manage attachments.
Use that to attach your file.

Jungle is not so bad, just clear it. Marsh is the same, in Conquest. The worse tile is a volcano, also not in vanilla. Nothing can be done with it, except clear the pollution.
 
I used to build every building as well. But after my 3rd game I realized that this strategy will end up totally ruining you. My advice is to spend the ancient age churning out settlers and take a miss on some of those ancient wonders.
 
The problem I want fixed is my building fixation. I just cannot allow myself to not build everything in every city. In the end it makes me not build any armies, besides a skeleton force of 1-2 of the defensive unit per city, and I would like to stop doing that before I go up in difficulty where I will need an army. I would also like some general advice on how I'm doing. I'll post the save now.

P.S. Ignore the name. I was bored and that's the name of the leader/name of the nation that I used in a game called Nationstates 1-2 and Cyber Nation. :)
 
No one can help you with the issue of not being able or willing to control your style of play. I can offer you the idea that you do not need defenders in every city, unless you are in a form of government that uses MP's.
 
I have C3C; I could not open your save with the vanilla.exe but I could open it in Conquests.

Yes, you have a building fixation. That can be cured.

However, you have only defensive units. No Archers or Longbow, just Spears and Pikes. You do not have a source of Horses, so even though you know Chivalry you cannot build Knights.

Trading
You need Engineering so that you can cross rivers freely. If you talk to the Aztecs and offer them Theology, they will give up Engineering, their World Map and all 48 gold. No one knows Invention, so you cannot buy it right now. Sell Education to France for their WM and all their gold. This will kill The Great Library, located in Paris. No more free techs for Joan.

Luxuries
You have only two, which means your markets are under-employed. You need to get roads and harbors to connect you to other civs so that you can trade for more luxuires. Getting new luxuries is better, since once they are yours they tend to stay yours. Trading just gets you that luxury for 20 turns, unless the AI declares war on you.

Techs
I would switch from learning Democrary to Invention, due in 7 turns if you traded like I did. Then learn up to Military Tradition (for Cavalry, a 3 move unit) before getting Astronomy and the rest. Ignore the optional techs, except MilTrad. You should be able to pick up the optionals in trading and maybe some of the required, too.

Workers
You have 27 workers, which is good. But have them work in gangs, not alone. One worker can road a tile in 3 turns or 3 workers can do it in 1 turn. Which is better? I prefer 3 worker roading one tile in one turn. That gives me two extra turns to use that improvement, which means faster movement and more commerce for a new road.

City Improvements
Library is generally better than Temple. The upkeep is the same, 1 gold per turn, and Libraries help you learn things faster. Temples add culture (so do Libraries) but not much else.

In your good production citeis you don't need a Courthouse. Courthouses reduce corruption, but if the city has little to no corruption it is not needed. My rule of thumb is to ignore a Courthouse unless the city is producing 6 or more shields per turn and 3 or 4 of them are corrupt, leaving on 2 shields per turn (net). If a city is producing 6 sheilds and 5 are corrupt, a Courthouse is a waste of effort. That city will stay corrupt. In those cities build workers, settlers, artillery units or wealth.

Cathedrals and colosseums are generally a waste, unless you are trying for a Culture Victory.

Military
Build more offensive units. The AI respects a strong offense more than a strong defense. You are in Republic, so don't need MPs in your cities. You may need garrison units on the borders, but not generally in the interior of your empire.

Build some rock-throwers too. They can help you prevent losing units when they attack first.

City Placement
It looks like your core cities are all 5 tiles away from the capital. While vanilla does have some quirky aspects (City Rings, for instance) consider building only three tiles from your capital. That makes your cities within walking distance of each other, which in turn makes it easy to shuffle units around.

Build more cities.

Overall
I think you have a good game going; wish I had time to finish it. :D
 
About that Great Library...I took it when I took France. :P

I am now in the Industrial age and RRing my country up. I still hate Jungle though. Takes so long to clear, and if you don't, your cities get sick, and it's also better if it's cleared anyways. <.<

New save is up! You could always of course finish your save instead. :P

Also, I'm not going to bother changing my style this game, I'll try it next game. Next game might be the next difficulty because Chieftan just isn't fair. Oh, and about my cities, does OCP not work in Vanilla? See, I've read all the guides, but guides don't always apply to everything.
 

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About that Great Library...I took it when I took France. :P

I am now in the Industrial age and RRing my country up. I still hate Jungle though. Takes so long to clear, and if you don't, your cities get sick, and it's also better if it's cleared anyways. <.<

Just put 20 or 30 workers on a tile at the same time, get it done in a turn. What, you don't have multiple gangs of 20-30 workers!? O well--set your non-heavy-hitting-core towns to making them for a cycle or two. Or cash-rush them in the totally corrupt towns.

Also, I don't know about Vanilla, but in Complete, Replaceable Parts makes your workers twice as fast. So learn that tech ASAP ;)

kk
 
FuzzyDoom said:
The problem I want fixed is my building fixation.

I haven't looked at your save, but I simply don't see a problem in favoring buildings over military. The trick lies in building useful buildings prior to less useful ones and having enough offensive units and other strategies to keep the AIs off your back, such as RoPs. In general (depending on barbarian level) that means something like going granaries in cities with food bonuses at least-settlers, workers, and warriors-libraries (perhaps using temples/granaries as pre-builds)-marketplaces-universities. Then at that point you might go for wonders like Cope's, Bach's, Smith's, and Newton's. Then you can also put in temples, cathedrals, and colosseums if you like. Courthouses probably should come even before libraries, unless you need a library to prevent a flip, if you can use one in a city. You don't need courthouses in first-ring cities. If you're playing more of a builder/trader, it also usually makes more sense to research Banking, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, and Theory of Gravity before learning Metallurgy and Military Tradition, as the AIs tend to research the bottom part the tech tree instead of the top. Democracy, however, only makes sense when you'll want to build Shakespeare's Theater ASAP,
i. e. *in a 20k or OCC game*.

On city placement. OCP works great *in theory*. But, *in practice* an OCP placement often means that there exist squares within your cultural borders which will NOT ever get used by any city, even with a hospital. So, I recommend either placing cities OCP and then looking to fill in all of those gaps, or going with a 4 tile city spacing.
 
I don't build every wonder that comes my way, only the useful ones and the ones I don't want the other civs to have. (e.g. The Pyramids, Leonardo, Sun Tzu, etc) I also usually only play with barbarians on Sedentary. I like the goodie huts and yet not having to defend against waves. I'm going to try that also next game. I also prefer Democracy over Republic so I usually slightly beeline towards it, after getting all of the first techs of that age anyways. Should I just stay Republic? I knew about the OCP making gaps, but just thought that it was best because of it being "Optimal" and I think the Pros outweigh the cons. So instead of CxxxxC you like CxxxC?
 
Wonders
These things are very nice but can be a stumbling block if you think you must have one specific wonder to win a game. Especially at any level below Emperor.

Certain wonders help certain victory conditions. For example, Sun Tzu's is great if you plan to conquer or dominate the world. It may not be so helpful if you want to be elected President of the Planet (UN).

Everyone is a bit different, but I try to avoid building wonders most of the time. In vanilla, you can rush a wonder with a Military Great Leader (which is an option that does not exist in C3C). Generally, but not always, if you want a wonder you let the AI build it and then capture it from them. :D

City Placement
At Chieftain CxxxC is fine. The AIs are not too agressive. Around Monarch CxxC becomes a better choice, since you are often Weak (according to the Military Advisor) compared to the other civs. Being Weak makes you more prone to demands/extortions/wars from the AI, so being able to reinforce your cities becomes more critical.
 
About that Great Library...I took it when I took France. :P

I am now in the Industrial age and RRing my country up. I still hate Jungle though. Takes so long to clear, and if you don't, your cities get sick, and it's also better if it's cleared anyways. <.<

New save is up! You could always of course finish your save instead. :P

Also, I'm not going to bother changing my style this game, I'll try it next game. Next game might be the next difficulty because Chieftan just isn't fair. Oh, and about my cities, does OCP not work in Vanilla? See, I've read all the guides, but guides don't always apply to everything.

There is nothing about OCP (optimal city placement) to work or not work. It is simply a city placement ideal where the number of available tiles to a city is maximized without wasting any tiles in your territory; this pattern will generally have a little overlap of city radiuses.

When it comes to Vanilla and PTW, there is also RCP, which is the concept of placing your cities equidistant to the capital. Which distances you pick doesn't matter here so much, it is more that they are at the same distance. (Count 1 and NW-SE, NE-SE and 1 for N-S, EW)

You could combine the two even for an RCPed OCP pattern:
attachment.php

(I deliberately picked especially bad terrain from a map; this is not supposed to be an actual starting location.)
The RCP acpect would only work in Vanilla or PTW and eventually give you seven nearly uncorrupt core metroes.



Me, personally I like tighter placement much better though.
 

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You have dead tiles in that pix. If you use pattern 19, you get 19 tiles in all towns and no dead ones. Someone put out a layout for all patterns from 21 down.
 
The problem I want fixed is my building fixation. I just cannot allow myself to not build everything in every city. In the end it makes me not build any armies, besides a skeleton force of 1-2 of the defensive unit per city, and I would like to stop doing that before I go up in difficulty where I will need an army.

There's a saying in spanish :old: La carga es la que hace andar al burro (it's the load what makes the donkey move). In your case, the best cure for building fixation is playing on a higher difficulty. When you begin to see more pressure from the AI, you'll know it's time to build military. Then you'll see that you can't build units and buildings at the same time, and will be forced to chose. Afer a couple losses, you'll start to change your strategy and voila! Your fixation is cured. :D
 
FuzzyDoom said:
Should I just stay Republic?

I say yes, and just about everyone else seems to say yes also. The problem comes as that the differences work out as slight. So slight, that a second revolution usually (at least appear to) wastes too much time. I like CxxxC over CxxxxC in practice. I think placing cities according to terrain comes as more important, settle on lakes and rivers, settle on hills if you want more food and/or defense, off of hills if you want more production, settle on brown instead of off of it, settle tight in jungle areas to cut down on work clearage turns, if wanting to do a lot of research or have a lot of commerce, jam into the coasts and maximize sea square usage, settle at the edges of rivers so you can have as many decently spaced cities on rivers as possible, etc.
 
It's not like I religiously follow CxxxxC. I'll move the city a square or two usually depending on what's near it. It's just a guideline after all. Guess I'll try just staying Republic. I always liked the idea of a Republic anyways...

Edit: I also have problems with not expanding as fast as I possibly can. I tried this game, with pretty good success, having each city build 2 workers as soon as they're built, but that was just a trial run. Should I build a settler or what? I can never get a large amount of cities very quickly. How do people do it?
 
I'm ending this game and starting a new one one difficulty up. I still have NOT finished a single game to the end. I plan too, whether this game sees me end in defeat or victory is yet to be determined though. To help me, I have downloaded Snoopy's terrain (love it), Civ 3 Useability Mod (is that its name?), and Pure Civ 3. I would download Civ Assist II but my computer is so bad it can barely handle running the two programs at once.

If anyone wants, I'll happily provide saves from the new game.
 
Chieftain is a good way to learn how things work and get some of the mechanics of gameplay mastered. And it is a good place just to beat up on the AIs, which is always fun, but can get a bit boring. Here the AI's pay more to build things and more to learn things than the human does.

I would suggest that you start a new thread for your new game in the Civ 3 Stories and Tales section of the forum. Post a screenshot of your starting position and your general ideas on what you are planning to do in the near future. That would be things like your first few build orders, what your worker will do, where you plan to build your capital and things like that.

But don't play anything passed on that save. I know that sounds hard, but it is worth it.

Be sure to post a link in this thread to your new thread, so that others can find it from here.

So what does this do?

You'll get other folks at the forum to look at your situation and give you advice. What you do with such wisdom is up to you, of course, but it will give you some things to consider that might not have occurred to you.

Format?
The details of my second solo game at Monarch are at Chieftain to Monarch: Game Two. Use it as a guide for what you want to do and how you want to do it. Another good example of how you could do this is Experiment 626's Solo TDG.

I'm not sure how much help you want. Both of these games were played as a single person Succession Game and are very detailed about what is going on. That may be too much detail for you. And it is a lot of work. Good for learning, as it forces you to explain what you are doing and why, but it can be a chore. In mine, for instance, I tried to name each unit I built. Which is fine until you have 30 or 40 of one kind of unit and forget what the last number was!

Any format you use will be fine. Don't feel like you have to do anything as elaborate as the two I've mentioned. Other's haven't and you don't need to either.

Looking forward to your next start!
 
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