I've been playing Civ 3 for a few weeks, after finding a basic Civ 3 disc in my father's old CDs. It's an awesome game. I've been playing on Warlord, though I've dabbled (with mixed success) in Regent.
I've been lurking for about a week or so, after coming here seeking tips. It took me from mediocre Chieftain player to equally mediocre Regent player, so thanks.
I'm not sure this is in the right forum to post this, but I hope it is.
Edit: Also, what are the hotkeys? I haven't found them and the disk didn't have a manual with it.
I've been playing Civ 3 for a few weeks, after finding a basic Civ 3 disc in my father's old CDs. It's an awesome game. I've been playing on Warlord, though I've dabbled (with mixed success) in Regent.
I've been lurking for about a week or so, after coming here seeking tips. It took me from mediocre Chieftain player to equally mediocre Regent player, so thanks.
I'm not sure this is in the right forum to post this, but I hope it is.
Edit: Also, what are the hotkeys? I haven't found them and the disk didn't have a manual with it.
Hotkeys?
You mean M for mining, I for irrigation, R for roads, F for fortify, S for Sentry etc?
At the 'orders' tab, the hotkeys are right behind them. It will say Mining (M). Meaning, if a worker is on, you just hit M on the keyboard to make it mine. To build a mine I mean, not to give it to me.
Welcome.
The other times that I have found fortresses useful is if you have a colony of a vital resource, mine is typically rubber in the jungle, that is nowhere near one of your cities. If you are playing with either Roaming or Raging Barbarians, as I normally do, they will home in on a colony from a distance away. Putting in a fortress with one defender protecting your colony keeps that vital resource available.
They are very useful on choke points too, such as a single tile of land connecting two land masses, or a road/rail line through an extensive block of mountains, as mountains are impassable to wheeded units.
There are 'Advanced Unit Action Buttons' that can show, but are turned off by default. Control + P (Preferences) will bring that menu up.
Things to examine while you are here:
Turn on 'Always Wait at End of Turn'. Otherwise you won't know when the turn has ended. Plus, this gives you a chance to do things (make trades, change build orders, manage city citizens) before going on.
Turn on 'Show Civil Disorder Pop-Up'. While city disorders can be avoided, sometimes one get missed. Without the pop-up you wouldn't know that.
Turn on 'Show Food and Shields on Map'. Handy, just plain handy.
Turn on 'Ask for Build Orders after Unit Construction'. Never, never, never trust the game to know what you need/want to build next. Ever. You decide.
Turn on 'Show Advanced Unit Action Buttons'. These will vary depending upon the unit. Workers/slaves have the most advanced options.
Turn off 'Always Renegotiate Deals'. In the 20 turns a deal lasts, things may have changed. Maybe you want to attack your trade partner. Maybe you don't want them to have Iron/Saltpeter/Rubber any longer. Don't lock yourself into ongoing trades unless you want to. Even if you do want to send them Iron for another 20 turns, you might get a better deal if you let the old one expire and start fresh. Or, if your trading partner needs that resource, due to a war with someone else, you might be able to get tech or two with the trade, in addition to some gold-per-turn.
Ed McMahon:
I hold in my hand the envelopes. As a child of four can plainly see, these envelopes have been hermetically sealed. They've been kept in a #2 mayonnaise jar under Funk and Wagnall's porch since noon today. No one knows the contents of these envelopes, but you, in your borderline divine and mystical way, will ascertain the answers having never before seen the questions.
Which kind of CivIII do you have? Vanilla, Play the World or Conquests? As a quick check, if you can build the Great Wonder Temple of Artemis you have Conquests. If you play as the Vikings you have Play the World. Otherwise you have Vanilla.
And then which version do you have? The latest patches for each version are Vanilla at 1.29f, PTW at 1.27 (?) and Conquests at 1.22
The order of publication was Vanilla, PTW and Conquests. Later, there was a version called Civ III Complete that had all three versions, fully patched, in one install. It defaults to Conquests and is probably the most popular version of CivIII in play at the moment.
New items were added with each iteration of CivIII and that will affect the advice you need and receive. Some earlier saves in vanilla cannot be opened by later versions of vanilla, for instance.
The version number is in the bottom left hand corner of the main menu screen once you open the game.
In vanilla, Military Great Leaders can rush Great Wonders. In Conquests they cannot. That's a plus for you.
Also, because of the way corruption is calculated, there are two tricks you can use to increase productivity, Ring City Placement and the Forbidden Palace Exploit.
Ring City Placement just recognizes that cities an equal distance away from the capital have the same corruption rate. Thus, the goal of city placement is to put cities in one and sometimes two rings around the capital. The first ring might be 4 tiles from the capital and the second one either 6 or 7 tiles out. Terrain had to be factored in, too, in addition to how close your were to your neighbors.
The Forbidden Palace Exploit took advantage of the fact the game treated the Forbidden Palace as a second palace and cities around it had lower corruption also. A common thing to do was to build up the ring around your palace and then abandon the capital. The game would decide where your new capital would be (and you could 'force' a new capital, also) and this would be a place rather far away, say 20 tiles or more. As before, cities around the new capital would have lower corruption. Where the old capital once was, a new city is started, and the Forbidden Palace built/rushed there. Since the Forbidden Palace acts like the first palace, the old core is once again very productive and in time the new core around the new capital is productive also.
Helper Stuff
Both utility programs MapStat (part of CrpSuite (Civ RePlay Suite)) and CivAssistII can show you the distance a tile is from the capital, which is a great help. I think CivAssistII does a slightly better job. Both are free downloads here and were written by other CivIII players.
These programs can also notify you when cities are about to revolt and when trade options change. This means you don't have to talk to each civ every turn to find out what you can trade or what new tech they have learned. Nor do you need to visit each of your cities to make sure everyone is happy; the programs will do that for you. Both are great timesavers.
EDIT:
The corruption model was changed greatly from vanilla/PTW to Conquests and Ring City Placement and the Forbidden Palace Exploit are no longer a factor. The Forbidden Palace still reduces corruption but its location is not nearly so critical. Just having it built is good enough.
I think that fortresses make sense in different situations but the main thing is to realize that the AI will only attack if it calculates it has an acceptable chance to win the fight. There are exceptions - such as cities and radar towers that the AI will attack regardless. This is why the AI will not attack most armies exposed in the field. In the same way, you can make some terrain virtually impassalbe to the AI with a limited number of defenders. Put a vet infantry on a mountain in a fortress and the AI will avoid it like the plague. Put a couple vet infantry in such a fortress with artillery and you can bombard incoming units to dust before they ever reach your lines.
It takes a little testing to figure out the 'limits' you can push. Generally speaking I've found the AI unwilling to attack a healthy vet (4/4) unit that has about twice the defense value of the attacker. So a pike (defense 3) fortified (+25%) on a mountain (+100%) with a fortress(+50%) has a defense of a 8.25 - I would consider him 'safe' until the arrival of cavalry.
It is hard to guage, but units covering workers and settlers seem to get attacked with a lower threshold - this might just be paranoia. For example, in a recent game I had 2 spears covering a team of workers roading a mountain. MDI attacked several time - and died - until the road construction was complete. When the workers left the mountain, the MDI stopped attacking and started going around the mountain.
With all that said, I rarely build fortresses unless my workers have nothing else to do, there is a natural choke point advantage, or I want to stabalize my lines because my VC does not prescibe the quuick demise of my enemies. It's hard to trade with corpses.
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