Lessons of my super-city game

[hr_oskar]

In my last game I completed Monarch with a classic huge-empire-builds-spaceship win. Incredibly boring, once I had conquered everything I intended to have for myself (two large continents, with a few luxury colonies around the world). The end-game just gets so painfully boring in this game, just as in all other civ-games I played.

So I thought it was time to try another way of winning, a way that wouldn't involve so much micromanagement and boredom. Building the super-city of 20000 culture sounded like exactly the right goal.

So that's what I'm doing in my current game and it's working out incredibly well (playing as the Egyptians). I think the lessons of this one will change my strategy even in the traditional games where I aim for a large empire.

I started by building a Temple in my capital city 3500 BC. Then I managed to build in it the Oracle, Pyramids, Great Library, and the Hanging Gardens. All while making myself a modest empire around this city as a buffer and support (enlarged it to size 12 as soon as I could). Then in the Middle Ages I proceeded to build Sistine Chapel, JS Bach's Cathedral, Shakespeare's Theatre and am currently building Copernicus' Observatory. Thebes is at about 80 culture per turn now. This is in Monarch difficulty.

I have no doubt that I will win by gathering 20000 culture in Thebes, even quite early. But what's interesting about this game is that I find myself very powerful in many other ways.

I expected to become relatively weak compared to the others early on, as I ceased my territorial expansion quite early. But instead I'm finding myself a world-power in terms of production and military.

I also expected to lose my ground in the tech race so I presumed I'd keep my tax rate at 90% most of the game. But with the help of delayed purchase of techs (I only bought tech that I needed for the wonders) and the Great Library, I kept up very early and then found myself in the position to take a strong tech-lead. I've kept the lead throughout the Middle Ages and am now approaching Industrial with 4 turns per tech and about 2-3 techs ahead of all others.

All with only 14 cities, none of them conquered, in a standard world. From my current point in this game I could easily win the game in any way I like, completely unlike what I had expected.

I'm sorry that I don't have a posted save game for you... I play Civ3 in a different computer, which doesn't have net access. So just a technical problem


My lessons of this game:

* Respect the 'max #of cities' limit. It makes a difference. Make each of your cities count, don't just aim to have a size-2 city in every corner of the world - it doesn't work very well in Civ3.

* So making a strong core empire to begin with, to expand once your superiority, especially in culture, is established, can be viable. Cultural superiority is convenient for rapid conquest, so you won't have to worry too much about reversion.

* Great Wonders can be built in the Ancient Age, and that really is worth considering. You just need to make the effort.

Any comments? How many of you have actually completed, or at least played, this kind of game?

 

[Baron Scot]

* Respect the 'max #of cities' limit. It makes a difference. Make each of your cities count, don't just aim to have a size-2 city in every corner of the world - it doesn't work very well in Civ3.

i wasnt aware there was a limit, i need to get my head out of the fog more often.

where can i find the information on max number of cities? for some reason i think it differs with governments. mabey i have seen something

 

[hr_oskar]

There isn't actually a limit in the sense that you couldn't build any more cities (then, of course, you'd be quite aware of it).

I should have called that 'optimal # of cities', that's what it's usually called. If you have more than this number of cities, you will start suffering more corruption in your empire. Very bad.

But I don't know myself the actual number I too would like to know where I can get that piece of information... I also think governments make some difference. I know for sure the size of the world does.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, there certainly is different ways to win. Just look at the GOTM. Everyone has different playing styles with people winning the game, whether they do a dense build or not.

It depends on what your goal is, what type of map you are playing, and whether score/fast finish is important to you. On some maps, ICS (dense build) would NOT be the best route to take to get victory.

* Respect the 'max #of cities' limit. It makes a difference. Make each of your cities count, don't just aim to have a size-2 city in every corner of the world - it doesn't work very well in Civ3.

Yes, you are only allowed so many cities before cities built after that are 'totally corrupt'. What you do with your cities is the key. If you plan on building libraries, universities, marketplaces, etc. in all your cities, then you do want to keep the # of cities low and spaced further apart. But with ICS (dense build) you can make those 'useless' cities very productive as far as research and commerce.

The best build would be to have your 'core' area spaced apart so they use as many tiles as possible, but beyond your 'productive' region, dense build like mad and irrigate EVERYTHING! Go ahead and build improvements in your palace region if you like, but no improvements in those high-corrupt cities. All those 'useless' cities will be giving you specialists that are immune to corruption. On a huge map, I had thousands of specialists so I could either learn modern techs every 4 turns with 0 libraries and science set to 10-40%, or I could make over 5000 gold/turn profit with tax at 100%.

With everything irrigated and railroaded, with cities spaced 3 tiles apart they grow to size 12+, not 2. Nobody using ICS properly builds cities that will be limited to size 2. Some that build densely at the start, later disband some of these cities to allow the other cities to get bigger and build the larger items such as tanks. But usually with ICS the game is won before hospitals/railroads.

* So making a strong core empire to begin with, to expand once your superiority, especially in culture, is established, can be viable. Cultural superiority is convenient for rapid conquest, so you won't have to worry too much about reversion.

Again, my example applies to huge maps, but if you have 100's of cities, imagine what your culture would be if you pop-rush a temple in each one....

Every city no matter how corrupt will produce at least one gold which would pay for the temple.

On a large map (but starting on a rather small island) I got a culture victory in the 1500's by doing a very dense build. Didn't build any wonders.

* Great Wonders can be built in the Ancient Age, and that really is worth considering. You just need to make the effort.

Of course they can be built. No one ever said it would be impossible on Monarch level. I'd rather spend the shields on military and take any wonder I want, but everyone has their own preference.

Any comments? How many of you have actually completed, or at least played, this kind of game?

Yeah, in the last tournament game I played (1-4) I built only 8-10 cities or something, not much overlapping of tiles, and limited myself to my starting continent, while almost all other players attacked other continents to expand. It was a tiny map, so if I didn't kick China off my island I would have been limited to 3-4 cities. Monarch level. Got spaceship victory in the 1700's. Since I didn't expand I lacked alot of resources, because my continent didn't have hardly any resources at all (no coal, no uranium, no rubber to name a few). I would have finished much earlier, but no one had coal to trade so I went the entire industrial-modern age with no railroads. Since I was blazing through the techs so fast I was practically giving them away to other civs. Someone else built the UN and held a vote. I could have won if I didn't abstain from the vote (the objective for that game was spaceship victory, you don't get credit for a win any other way).

where can i find the information on max number of cities? for some reason i think it differs with governments. mabey i have seen something

The optimal number of cities is in the editor under the 'world sizes' tab, I believe. Also, check out Alexman's corruption study in the strategy articles section. His study was with v1.17, I think, he may have updated it to v1.21f. If not, his numbers would be slightly off since corruption was improved a little after that patch.