inexplicable losing

[SirPatrick]

When I play Civ III, I customize the world; in the map editor, I generate a tiny-size world, I then make it even smaller by covering most of the world with ocean...so only a few small continents/islands are left. I do this because I like games to develop quickly. I usually play against three other AI opponents.

My problem is that about halfway into the game, I often inexplicably lose...the message comes up that I was defeated. But this was before time has run out (2050), the United Nations hasn't yet been built, I am about as powerful as the most powerful AI civ, nobody is dominating militarily or culturally or territorially, I'm certain no city has 100,000 culture, the Apollo program hasn't been built by anyone.

Any ideas why I keep losing? Thanks...Patrick

 

[alamo]

Welcome to the forum!

This sounds like a unique problem. Domination or culture seem to be the only options.

Have you checked mapstat? That is a utility to check the tile and population held by each civ. It is in the utilities forum.

With a small number of tiles it may be easy to get domination.

I don't remember the loss screen - does it say what kind of loss it was?

Also, you could try the accelerated production option to make play faster on a tiny world.

 

[bob rulz]

If the score came up somewhere in the HoF it will tell you what kind of loss you got.

And also, the cultural victory for a city is 20,000, not 100,000...

 

[Midnight Piper]

As long as we're throwing out guesses - double check the Scenario properties, make sure you haven't accidentally applied a short turn limit.

 

[microbe]

For tiny world, you need much less culture than 100K to win. Don't remember the exact number. Could be 60K.

 

[bob rulz]

For an entire empire anyway...

 

[sourboy]

Post the last auto sav file from one of these games (ie - the turn before the defeat window pops up)

OR

post the map file here so we can view the settings.

It sounds like a domination victory. Culture, and time limit are also possiblilities. Otherwise maybe victory points or elimination.

 

[Turner]

Or do both. That way we have the beginning product and the end result to work with.

 

[SirPatrick]

Thanks everyone. I think I'm losing on culture. When I lose, at the end it shows the power graph. In power, I usually do well...sometimes even better than any AI. But when I select culture to be displayed on the graph...uh oh...I see one AI culture has gotten progressively stronger and is now way stronger than anyone else including me. I have a feeling this explains my loss.

I rarely make the hall of fame, so I usually don't get a statement of the reason for the loss...I wish you get a reason displayed any time you win or lose.

 

[ybbor]

you do when you play a random map game, but not when you mod it

 

[Grille]

First, do you play vanilla, PTW or C3C?

I would *guess* you lost to 20k culture. Domination loss could be obvious if you know the world map, space is dependent on tech level (could be observed with a spy on top of that) and diplo needs UN (you'd be involved in the vote). Military loss... well you know.

In vanilla and PTW, "100k" (i.e. total) culture victory condition is at least 100k (must be twice as much as closest rival) for any mapsize (so not likely on a very tiny map with 4 civs on it). You could roughly check overall culture comparison on F8: You know your overall culture from F5 and would use that info as reference on F8. If you have, say, ~49k total and another civ has ~almost twice that amount, you must act. Fast.

20k loss seems more likely on a map with few cities. Check top5 on F11 (sorted by local culture of current city owner). If the #1 city has a ton of high-culture wonders (possibly even build early), conduct a city investigation there. Local culture and culture-per-turn gain is displayed there. If close to 20k, you could predict the number of turns left to hit 20k (check from latest save).
If you have a city ranked, say, on #2 and you know from F5 it has already an admirable 18k local culture, you should capture the number #1 city ASAP.

If you play C3C, you should get all info in one go on the victory status screen.