Kinda new to this...

[guest]

Ive been playing since Civ 1...hooked when I was in the Navy. Anyway..Im always having problems.

How close or far from each other should you build cities? I build like 15 or 20 cities...then get world map and find the AI has 40 cities and they're right next to each other.

I always start out building warrior, granery, worker, settler..and keep expanding...but I usually put alot of space between my cities.

And when my citizens are unhappy they say..100% to crowded..how do I fix that?

One more....Tax collectors...should I have them in my largest cities or in every city,,and how many per city.


I know it's alot...but thanks.

 

[MTheil3508]

When I first star out a game, I build a warrior, settler x3, temple, worker, ...

This also depends on if their are any civs near you. If so, then I build warrior, temple, and anymore culture improvements. This will help pervent your cities from culture-flipping.

While in Despotism, don't build irrigation, It does not really help you since the food is -1 in squares with 3 or more food, shields or commerce. The better bet is to just mine everything and then irriagate when you change gov'ts. When you mine, this speeds up your shield production and lets you pump things out faster.

 

[superslug]

My opening play strategy usually completely avoids granaries. Make one settler and then go for the Pyramids and Map Making. If you get both before anyone else, you can compensate for lack of early early growth by having a nice population surge a few centuries later and knowing exactly where you can put them.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Most people have a build order for their capital of either:

1. warrior, warrior, settler, warrior, warrior, settler, etc. (how many warriors depends on shield production/growth, and some scouts instead of warriors if expansionists, and a little later be building spearman instead of warrior)

or

2. 2-3 warriors, granary, settler, settler, settler, settler (depends on shield output/growth, you may have to build some warriors or something to let your city grow if you lack bonus resources).

Cities built after the capital I usually build a warrior, worker, warrior, then start on other things. I want the worker out right away improving the terrain, so I can build the other stuff faster. If I had a high-food capital and has a granary, the capital will build all the settlers, while all new cities build barracks and military.

A granary can be a very good thing in your capital and maybe in 1 other city during the expansion phase, but you dont' want to have a 1 shield city be spending 60 turns building a granary. I usually just build 1, maybe 2 granaries, then focus on military to capture the Pyramids from my neighbor.

A granary in the capital before building a settler is more worth it on the larger maps (it would be a dumb move in almost all cases on a tiny map, but very smart move on a huge map).

About irrigating, you should still irrigate bonus resources (cattle, wheat), unless the city really lacks shields. And you need to irrigate plains, obviously. Just don't irrigate grassland that doesn't have a bonus resource on it, until you get out of despotism.

Food is usually the main problem while in despotism.
+5 food with a granary you can build a settler every 4 turns.
+2 food no granary you can build a settler every 20 turns.

 

[Phantom Lord]

How close or how far apart to build cities can probably be answered with "not too far apart". A few overlapping tiles are better than having many unused good tiles. You should try to make sure that every city has at least 12 workable tiles to insure growth until size 12. Corruption is a serious issue in Civ 3 and it heavily depends on the distance of a city to your capital or forbidden palace, so spreading too far leads to problems unless you're communist, most people consider communism playable during a long war but not as your normal government. Using a fixed grid to build cities doesn't work properly because some building locations can and will be blocked by mountains.

Concerning build order, I think this one also depends on the situation and culture you play. Don't build a granary too soon and consider pyramids if you're on a big continent. If you have a culture with an early unique unit, try to get ressources needed (iron and / or horses) early, meaning research the tech early (ironworking and / or horseback riding), because you don't see ressources until you're able to use them. If you have a swordsmen type UU (eg Persia, Celtia) building a few more warriors before going spearmen is good, because warriors can be upgraded to sordsmen. Otherwise it can be an advantage to go spearmen early.

Tax collectors are late game stuff imho, especially on higher levels you'll probably have entertainers only during the early game.

Overcrowded cities can be fixed to a certain degree with aquaeducts / hospitals or by lowering the population by building settlers and workers. You should consider that a size X city without unhappy people often works better than a size X+1 city with one unhappy person. This counts especially if more than half of the population is happy. In this case you'll get a "we love the <leader> day", which leads to a corruption decrease. To make your population happy, try especially to supply your civ with as many different luxuries as you can. One or two early luxuries also help a lot to avoid problems with unhappy citizens in the early game.

 

[Vinz Clortho]

It may be frowned upon by some serious gamers but I'll set my governer to manage the city moods, so you never get unhappy citizens or riots. But then again it's not cheating since the programmers made that option available.

Once you set that option on (by double clicking on any given city and then pressing the "g" button) you can focus on other nuances of the game that may be confusing.

When I build a city it usually goes something like this:

Spearman
Worker
Worker
Temple
(City Improvement)
(City Improvement)
(Settler)
(Military Unit)
(Military Unit)

Of course I have some dedicated cities (my capital among others) that I reserve for Great Wonders or for building nothing but military units.

I never build a city less than 3 squares apart (to maximize geophraphical coverage) AI's never try and drop a city in between them, it would be worthless.

One thing we humans don't take into account is that AI is not designed to be bloodthirsty (like us). Early in the game you can focus mainly on city improvements, science and culture and they'll leave you alone. If you fear they might become aggressive (like the Germans ALWAYS do) you normally have time to switch you focus to military units before you get slaughtered.

Not a foolproof plan, but it works for me 90% of the time. I've been slaughtered before minding my own business but normally I have time to react if I have built an average army.