Are you one of those people who really can manage an artillery war and do 200 bombardment actions per turn? If so, I have a recommendation or two for you.
[C3C] how long does it take to complete a game
- Thread starter robbus
- Start date
Please say more about this. Years ago I read a strategy guide here that recommended conserving worker moves at the beginning of the game. Mine green, irrigate brown, build a road before you move along.
I've been applying that method all along. Build workers as I settle cities, and improve the most important tiles. Build a road before they move along.Somewhere in the middle ages, my core is all improved and the workers move outward to begin improving tiles around the cities that I conquer. As I get close to Steam Power (in a SS game), I try to collect a cluster of them near my capital and a second cluster near a far-flung city on the front lines. These two clusters start building railroads toward each other, so that troops produced in the core can quickly move to the action.
Is there a point (just after the REX, perhaps? or the start of the first war?) where I should focus on covering all the tiles with road for the commerce, and then bring them back as you describe, to improve the tiles? What circumstances might motivate me to postpone mines/irrigation and just focus on roads? Is that tied to difficulty level?
First of all, never automate. The AI is called the artificial idiot for a reason.
At the beginning of the game I usually do mine, road, then move, then mine, then road, and so on. Sometimes I just build a road in advance to a resource, then double back to build a mine or irrigate, then retake the forward path to reach the resource or build a city.
The equation might change slightly with agricultural or industrious civs.
Deserts are usually wastelands but in my current game I'm in the early middle ages, playing with the Celts, and have six highly-productive cities located on pure desert. This is because irrigated desert tiles produce one extra food for agricultural civs, so every irrigated desert tile with a road is just as productive as a grassland tile with a mine and a road. So agricultural civs can expand into deserts earlier and this should not be neglected.
With industrious civs you might actually have idle capacity occasionally because something takes 1.5 turns to make so you either set one worker to do it and take two turns (wasting half a turn's worth of work) or use two workers and save yourself a turn but also waste half a turn's worth of work. Which is where captured workers come in.
Of course you have to also send out workers to just build up your trade network (foreign trade can really be profitable if you know how to handle it). It's sometimes best to just keep two or three separate stacks of workers.
Also, remember that worker efficiency, unlike city productivity, does not vary with distance from the capital or any (lack of) city improvements, so it is perfectly fine to build outlying cities near flood plains or grassland, irrigate the whole lot and have them churn out workers while other cities specialise in building units and improvements… and, if you can afford it and thoil i.e. justify it, wonders.
Those were general recommendations.
Now, as for roads themselves… every time you move onto/off a tile without a road it takes 1 entire MP, so you'd better maximise worker efficiency by building roads as you go along.
Suppose you have a group of three workers, all of them on one tile. If you move them all to the next tile (flatland) that takes one turn, then you build a road, which is another turn, then you repeat the process for the other two adjacent tiles, that's six turns just to build roads for three flatland tiles. If instead you send each of the three workers to a different tile you'll have all three tiles with roads on them in just four turns. So unless you need to power through mountains or hills you'd better not concentrate workers for roadbuilding.
With forests I recommend not chopping them down in the first two ages at least because tiles producing 2 shields apiece are rather rare, and also they can be really helpful holding back invaders. Remember, the AI will not move an SOD into your territory if they cannot dominate terrain, and just this past week I've successfully tested it: I averted invasions by going back three or four turns and moving a stack of workers (along railroads) to rapidly erect barricades and/or plant forests - the AI never invaded or declared war. Oh, and the AI cannot handle artillery - they will move a stack of 40-odd modern armour units even if there's a stack of 60-odd artillery units waiting just behind a double line of barricades to shred them into pieces. Or just a stack of 4× infantry, 1 musketman and 1 guerilla guarding two dozen Cavalry straight into said double line of barricades with 60-odd artillery units stacked behind them.
But I digress. Back to the workers! As I was saying, better not chop down forests because of the two-shield-per-tile yield, but jungle and marsh should definitely be cleared first and have a road built second. Just think: on cleared flatland it requires three turns to build a road but on jungles it takes 9. If it's within city radius, first clear, then build road. You'll also reduce the risk of disease along the way. If it's outside city radius, just build a road: you will save turns and it will be an obstacle, again, for future invaders.
Resources are distributed at the start of the game, so they will show up regardless of whether you've terraformed the tile or not.
I hope the above wall of text is not too dense. Feel free to ask questions.
At the beginning of the game I usually do mine, road, then move, then mine, then road, and so on. Sometimes I just build a road in advance to a resource, then double back to build a mine or irrigate, then retake the forward path to reach the resource or build a city.
The equation might change slightly with agricultural or industrious civs.
Deserts are usually wastelands but in my current game I'm in the early middle ages, playing with the Celts, and have six highly-productive cities located on pure desert. This is because irrigated desert tiles produce one extra food for agricultural civs, so every irrigated desert tile with a road is just as productive as a grassland tile with a mine and a road. So agricultural civs can expand into deserts earlier and this should not be neglected.
With industrious civs you might actually have idle capacity occasionally because something takes 1.5 turns to make so you either set one worker to do it and take two turns (wasting half a turn's worth of work) or use two workers and save yourself a turn but also waste half a turn's worth of work. Which is where captured workers come in.
Of course you have to also send out workers to just build up your trade network (foreign trade can really be profitable if you know how to handle it). It's sometimes best to just keep two or three separate stacks of workers.
Also, remember that worker efficiency, unlike city productivity, does not vary with distance from the capital or any (lack of) city improvements, so it is perfectly fine to build outlying cities near flood plains or grassland, irrigate the whole lot and have them churn out workers while other cities specialise in building units and improvements… and, if you can afford it and thoil i.e. justify it, wonders.
Those were general recommendations.
Now, as for roads themselves… every time you move onto/off a tile without a road it takes 1 entire MP, so you'd better maximise worker efficiency by building roads as you go along.
Suppose you have a group of three workers, all of them on one tile. If you move them all to the next tile (flatland) that takes one turn, then you build a road, which is another turn, then you repeat the process for the other two adjacent tiles, that's six turns just to build roads for three flatland tiles. If instead you send each of the three workers to a different tile you'll have all three tiles with roads on them in just four turns. So unless you need to power through mountains or hills you'd better not concentrate workers for roadbuilding.
With forests I recommend not chopping them down in the first two ages at least because tiles producing 2 shields apiece are rather rare, and also they can be really helpful holding back invaders. Remember, the AI will not move an SOD into your territory if they cannot dominate terrain, and just this past week I've successfully tested it: I averted invasions by going back three or four turns and moving a stack of workers (along railroads) to rapidly erect barricades and/or plant forests - the AI never invaded or declared war. Oh, and the AI cannot handle artillery - they will move a stack of 40-odd modern armour units even if there's a stack of 60-odd artillery units waiting just behind a double line of barricades to shred them into pieces. Or just a stack of 4× infantry, 1 musketman and 1 guerilla guarding two dozen Cavalry straight into said double line of barricades with 60-odd artillery units stacked behind them.
But I digress. Back to the workers! As I was saying, better not chop down forests because of the two-shield-per-tile yield, but jungle and marsh should definitely be cleared first and have a road built second. Just think: on cleared flatland it requires three turns to build a road but on jungles it takes 9. If it's within city radius, first clear, then build road. You'll also reduce the risk of disease along the way. If it's outside city radius, just build a road: you will save turns and it will be an obstacle, again, for future invaders.
Resources are distributed at the start of the game, so they will show up regardless of whether you've terraformed the tile or not.
I hope the above wall of text is not too dense. Feel free to ask questions.
strongreaction
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2015
- Messages
- 18
I definitely use artillery, but I dont use as much as you suggest. Typically in the industrial era an all the way to games end I will have between 30-40 artillery pieces and some of those either in defensive position or my home continent. So at the most Id use do 60 bombardments in a turn. But if you add bombers it would go up.Are you one of those people who really can manage an artillery war and do 200 bombardment actions per turn? If so, I have a recommendation or two for you.
Don't forget Railroads. They add one Food to Irrigated and one Shield to Mined Tiles so with increased Food it's possible to add Shields to Food-rich Cities by Mining over Irrigation. Just make sure you don't carry it to extremes so that your Cities starve
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tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
I agreed with everything you wrote, right up to this sentence (and particularly the bolded).
I agree on leaving Forests standing during the early game, but later on — once you're out of Despotism, putting up buildings, and have the Worker-power available to start mining Hills/Mountains instead — chopping Forests then becomes worthwhile. And on Forest — if you're going to clear it anyway — you're right that it makes sense to chop (1T to arrive, 4T to chop) before you road (6T on Forest, but only 3T after it's gone).
But the 'Clear Wetland' job has a base-worker-turn value of 16(?) — compared to 8(?) for 'Chop Forest' — and Marsh/Jungle have movement-costs (i.e. job-factors) of 2 and 3, respectively. So before RepParts, it takes a looong time for a lone native-Worker to finish clearing Wetland (1+16T in Marsh, 1+24T in Jungle), never mind a Slave (32T in Marsh, 48T in Jungle).
Therefore it makes (more) sense (to me) to use a lone-Worker to road first (base-worker-turns = 6; thus 1+6T in Marsh, 1+9T in Jungle), and then stack up multiple Workers to clear it — which then avoids the problem of wasted Worker-turns that you described so well for stacking-to-road on flatland.
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Jivilov, that was an outstanding reply. I need to digest the information and incorporate it into my play. I appreciate the thought that went into it, now hopefully I can translate it into a victory.
Thanks Cap'n Jack. Glad you got something out of it. Let me add a qualification to "Prioritize killing enemy units": If you're attacked first. If you start the War, definitely send in a stack of siege and attackers to grab a critical border settlement. You should have all border settlements garrisoned with at least two, preferably three defenders (including siege for defensive bombardment). Then, unless your foe has already been worn down in recent or current wars, stand by for an inevitable counterattack, and slaughter them without remorse 
before pursuing further territorial ambitions.
Of course there's more, considerably more, to Civ3 Conquests than warfare. Here are a couple of old threads which go into considerable detail about the game. Personally found tjs282, Lanzelot and justanick's posts especially helpful since they address many points concerning my own play:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/quick-answers-newbie-questions.318752/page-240 and https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/this-is-embarrassing.570489/
Getting back to the topic of this thread, here's a thumbnail showing the result of my game referred to above. Perhaps two main reasons it took longer than usual were:
1. Mediocre start. Tundra to south and west, mostly plains and mountains southeast, desert and plains northeast, and a narrow strip of grassland on which to settle and expand a short distance north and northwest. Constricted by Willem and Monty's rapid expansion to a tiny Civ which probably looked so pathetic neither one ever attacked
until it was too late. Perhaps the only silver lining was Ivory and Iron within reach; without Ancient Cavalry from Temple of Zeus and ability to make Swords, Med Infantry and (later, after confiscating Horses from Willem [Dutch]) Knights my goose would've been cooked from the gitgo.
2. Willem's fructifying Swiss Mercenaries. They're really, really hard to break down in Cities without large stacks of siege and attackers. Witness military resources devoted to, and losses incurred from taking Amsterdam. Where Dyrrachium now stands a Dutch City held out for four or five turns before it finally went under. Lucky for me his Horse Town on the southwest coast was the only settlement on high ground.
before pursuing further territorial ambitions.Of course there's more, considerably more, to Civ3 Conquests than warfare. Here are a couple of old threads which go into considerable detail about the game. Personally found tjs282, Lanzelot and justanick's posts especially helpful since they address many points concerning my own play:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/quick-answers-newbie-questions.318752/page-240 and https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/this-is-embarrassing.570489/
Getting back to the topic of this thread, here's a thumbnail showing the result of my game referred to above. Perhaps two main reasons it took longer than usual were:
1. Mediocre start. Tundra to south and west, mostly plains and mountains southeast, desert and plains northeast, and a narrow strip of grassland on which to settle and expand a short distance north and northwest. Constricted by Willem and Monty's rapid expansion to a tiny Civ which probably looked so pathetic neither one ever attacked
until it was too late. Perhaps the only silver lining was Ivory and Iron within reach; without Ancient Cavalry from Temple of Zeus and ability to make Swords, Med Infantry and (later, after confiscating Horses from Willem [Dutch]) Knights my goose would've been cooked from the gitgo.2. Willem's fructifying Swiss Mercenaries. They're really, really hard to break down in Cities without large stacks of siege and attackers. Witness military resources devoted to, and losses incurred from taking Amsterdam. Where Dyrrachium now stands a Dutch City held out for four or five turns before it finally went under. Lucky for me his Horse Town on the southwest coast was the only settlement on high ground.
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Hey, if you're trying to depopulate conquered cities then turning needless irrigation into mines is essential. It'll also help get a temple and cathedral up faster and reduce the number of possible resistors, demonstrators and defectors.Don't forget Railroads. They add one Food to Irrigated and one Shield to Mined Tiles so with increased Food it's possible to add Shields to Food-rich Cities by Mining over Irrigation. Just make sure you don't carry it to extremes so that your Cities starve
I've been doing eco-runs recently, i.e. playing with at best 2, maximum 3 cities with pollution.
That's why I said it's an equation and there's factors that can change it. This is one. Not my favourite solution, but a logical extension of what I say about first building roads on flatland and then joining together workers for further improvements. With Industrious civs it's worthwhile to just clear land first. With others it depends.
btw my latest experiences (all-random settings) have had me facing large tracts of land covered with jungle and marsh. After I routinely lost at least a pophead every 20 turns clearing them became a top priority -also the fact that clearing marshes enabled me to take the land under the baffled AI's noses.
Heh-heh. Don't generally depopulate conquered cities, I raze them, unless the Civ is already near extinction or they have a useful Wonder like Sun Tzu's. And what's this about building Temples and Cathedrals? Lanzelot would be appalled. Too much building maintenance and Shields better devoted to military. The most efficient way to keep Citizens happy is with Marketplaces and Luxes, Colosseums [Edit: Wrong! Lanzelot says they're worse than Temples. See below.], and the Lux Slider. Overbuilding is one of the main reasons why players (me included) couldn't get up to DG from Emperor. But if you're going for Cultural it's an entirely different kettle of fish. Cheers!Hey, if you're trying to depopulate conquered cities then turning needless irrigation into mines is essential. It'll also help get a temple and cathedral up faster and reduce the number of possible resistors, demonstrators and defectors.
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Donnot ever build them. They are even less efficient than temples and cathedrals.
WeirdoJoker
King
Not even when going for a cultural victory?
Of course it can make sense then. But even for that they are less efficient than temples and cathedrals. This is the part that ignited my opposition.
Don't object to the temples and cathedrals. I was playing Egypt (religious-industrious) and was suddenly invaded by the moronic 10-times-weaker Maya from next door, so I took one of their cities (25 popheads) just to make a point and permanently weaken them. I shipped in workers on railroad lines, switched all irrigated plains to mines and got a temple and cathedral in under 8 turns. The only really important defensive building (barracks) was leftover undestroyed from the conquest. And I was going for a cultural victory so of coruse it helped.
I know that colossea are inefficient, but with agricultural civs sometimes you cannot wait until you develop the capacity to build cathedrals. Your population just overflows.
I know that colossea are inefficient, but with agricultural civs sometimes you cannot wait until you develop the capacity to build cathedrals. Your population just overflows.
Temple 60 shields and 1 maint. Colo 120 shields and 2 maint for most civs in C3C. The per content faces is not a valid concern as the twice the shields and maint should be the issue. This does not consider that you had to build the colo, when those shields could go elsewhere. Though I am not well versed in culture as I mostly do not even build temples. Going for a culture victory negates the cost issue. Being religious is the same as going for culture, it negates cost concerns, if there are any.
It does not however negate the shields spent. They may be put to better uses at the time, but maybe not. If war is coming, I would rather get some troops, then again I always prefer troops.
The level can negate concerns as well. Emp and under, you can do whatever makes you happy.
It does not however negate the shields spent. They may be put to better uses at the time, but maybe not. If war is coming, I would rather get some troops, then again I always prefer troops.
The level can negate concerns as well. Emp and under, you can do whatever makes you happy.Can't find the thread [Edit: Probably 'cuz there isn't one. False Memory Syndrome strikes again. Sorry for the bum steer folks.] in which Lanzelot (IIRC) mentions Colosseums as preferable to Temples and Cathedrals when used in conjunction with Markets plus Luxes and the Lux Slider. At any rate been building them on DG with (extremely?) modest success. [Edit: And probably would've had more success had I not built them (Slaps forehead).]
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But less culture per maintenance and shield. Compared to cathedrals colloseums are clearly less efficient, especially if you get Michelangelo.
It may even make sense to build temples just to build cathedrals and then sell away the no longer needed temples if the situation warrants it.
I am fairly certain that Lanzelot did not say that unless it was meant for very specific instance of available luxuries. Markets +8 luxuries means that not temples or colosseums are needed. That is the case that matters mosts.
If you can keep 10 citizens content (on average of course, happy and discontent cancel each other out) without cultural buildings, then colloseums are preferable compared to a less preferable option. But those are niches that should be ignored at first and only included into the calculation if for some weird reason this makes sense.
If you have 5 luxuries and markets and play at emperor and above and have no other relevant effects, than you can have 10 citizens (on average) content. This does not mean that it makes sense to build colloseums under such circumstances. It only means that this case can exist for while. Trade or war are are a possible remedy for such a situation.
I am pretty sure, I would never have said something like this...
Temples are a complete waste of shields, and Colosseums (Colossei?) are even worse...(Except for cultural victories, obviously.)
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