Making the Transition from Civ II

[michael4000]

I'm a longtime CIV II player about to take a stab at CIV III. I'd like to find some advice about making the transition, but I'm having a hard time finding anything (probably because I'm so far behind the ball). I've read through most of the War Academy, so I have a feel for what the changes were, but I want to be thorough.

Any suggestions for required reading?

 

[Pook]

I'd recommend playing through one game first at two difficulty levels lower than what you play in Civ 2, just to get you accustomed to the mechanics of the game.
Then read the entire War Academy. Yes, it's 80+ articles, but the time you spend reading that will be a lot less than the time you would have spent in wasted, frustrating games.

 

[morchuflex]

Having made my own transition only 8 months ago, I am happy to share my experience with you.

First of all, congratulations on a wise choice. You won't ever play Civ2 again, because Civ3 is better in almost every way. However, the transition was extremely frustrating for me and you may very well feel likewise if you try to win the same way you did in Civ2.

General principle: nothing that made Civ2 easy even on Deity still works in Civ3. There is no way to catch up in tech with spies, to build wonders collectively (caravans being gone), to block CPs' expansion with a few well-located units or cities (no more ZOCs) and to grow cities in no time with WLTKD ("We love...").
Also keep in mind that combat has changed a lot: stacked units defend themselves one by one, and when you destroy the last one, the victor will occupy the location of the defeated, making him vulnerable to counter-attacks. Hence you can no longer defend a city forever with 2 good defenders and 2 attackers. Furthermore, the AI won't make futile attacks forever but may turn around your strong position. They are indeed (somewhat) smarter.
The economics have changed too. The new production to gold change rate (4 gold for 1 shield instead of 2) makes "buying" improvments much more expensive.
Politics have changed too. Since you can now declare war under representative govs, and troop maintenance is now paid in gold instead of shields, choosing between Monarchy and Republic is now essentially a mere budget issue.
Monarchy is no longer the great gov it used to be. Forget rushing towards it as you probably used to: it is now much further away and not worth it, unless CPs give you part of the tree tech (Mysticism, or Polytheism) and you plan to keep at war all the time.
Democracy isn't worth it either, unless you have a huge empire. On a standard map, you'll gain only about 2.5 to 5% gold compared to republic, and this bonus certainly isn't worth researching two non-necessary techs (Press and Democracy), not to mention the anarchy period.
If you have neighbours, cultural influence is essential. Temples now only make one content face instead of two, but early temples are immensely powerful in the long run.
Finally, learn to use pre-builds for Wonders, and focus on essential ones (Leonardo's no longer being one of them!).

That's the most essential things I had in mind to advise a beginner.

Anyway, try to play Civ3 with a fresh perspective, because it's almost a new game. It is much more different from Civ2 than SMAC was, for instance.
However, I don't advise reading too much about the game. Try to discover your own way of playing it. You'll enjoy it, for sure.

 

[Turner]

It's a very long read (close to 2000 posts) but check out GK2 - The Training Day Experiment. Gengis Khan formed a training day game for some new players, and it's a good place to watch other people learn the basics and be critiqued by more experienced members. Lot of helpful information there, from reasons and situations to picking certain civs, city placement, tech development.... Very long read, but very informative. There are save files (it's done in Vanilla Civ3 1.29, so any civ player should be able to follow along) to d/l, and screenies to see what people were talking about.

 

[Hygro]

However, I don't advise reading too much about the game. Try to discover your own way of playing it. You'll enjoy it, for sure.

Definetly the best advice I read this thread. While it might be frustrating to try civ2 tactics and have them fail, don't ruin the joy of discovery by learning everything too early from outside sources. First discover, then improve your game with outside reading. Of course, if you have any specific questions, it's good to ask them instead of not knowing the answer.

 

[Masquerouge]

Oh, and you can't rush wonders anymore. You can't buy them. You must finish them only with your city shield output. So it's indeed crucial to learn the prebuild technique, because you can still switch to a wonder from any improvement that was not rushed (yes, the game knows when you rushed a building ), but it's more important to realize that Wonders are not game-killers anymore. You can win quite easily with no wonders. Remember that, because it took me quite a while not to get mad when I missed a wonder in my games

 

[Drakan]

Oh, and you can't rush wonders anymore. You can't buy them. You must finish them only with your city shield output. So it's indeed crucial to learn the prebuild technique, because you can still switch to a wonder from any improvement that was not rushed (yes, the game knows when you rushed a building ), but it's more important to realize that Wonders are not game-killers anymore. You can win quite easily with no wonders. Remember that, because it took me quite a while not to get mad when I missed a wonder in my games

I thought you could rush Great Wonders with SGL's and Small Wonders with MGL's; at least it works for me in C3C....

 

[ozo]

I kinda have to disagree with morchuflex in one aspect. I still play Civ2 and I think it's a very good game. So is Civ3. The point is that the game are so different. Sometimes I feel like getting a real challenge and play Civ3, and sometimes I just feel like playing a game a bit easier and more simple than Civ3. Then I play Civ2. They are both very good games, and I don't see why one of them has to obsolete the other one.

 

[Masquerouge]

I thought you could rush Great Wonders with SGL's and Small Wonders with MGL's; at least it works for me in C3C....

You're right, of course I totally forgot about those leaders... Guess I was too much focused on Civ2 while I wrote

So yes, the only way to rush wonders is with Military Great Leaders in Vanilla Civ and with Scientific Great Leaders in C3C.

Leaders are a really nice addition to Civ3 ; Military Leaders allow you to build armies (and rush wonders in Civ3), they appear randomly when one of your elite unit wins a fight... (Elite units are another addition. Roughly, the more your units fight and win, the more HP they'll have, the easier they'll win). Scientific leaders are in C3C only and you have a chance to get them every time you're the first in the world to discover a tech.

 

[michael4000]

Thanks for the advice, folks. Not buying Wonders won't hurt too much b/c I've played under a "house rule" for a long time that I couldn't buy 'em. Too much like shooting fish in a barrel. I will miss my camel farm cities, though...

I do want to start fairly blind and discover how the new world works, and starting at a lower level to avoid frustration is probably good advice. What I didn't want to do is run into brick walls playing CIV III by CIV II rules, and y'all have done a good job of warning me what NOT to do.

I'm looking forward to the different victory conditions. I'm kind of a peaceful builder type, but have always found CIV II spaceship building a real snooze....

Thanks again!

 

[Yaype]

I think the main thing that helped me make the jump from playing chieftain/warlord games up to dominating emperor now was reading about settler farms. I picked up a few tips here and there, but just one article that helped me to expand early and strong changed how all of my games have gone since. I do not always get a settler farm to start things out, and I still do quite well, but for some reason, that one article did it for me.

 

[morchuflex]

I kinda have to disagree with morchuflex in one aspect. I still play Civ2 and I think it's a very good game. So is Civ3. The point is that the game are so different. They are both very good games, and I don't see why one of them has to obsolete the other one.

Of course Civ2 remains a great game. But after hundreds of deity games without a loss, it didn't have much appeal left for me. And when you come back from playing Civ3, the graphics really hurt. However, I miss the town council, the "camelification" and the diplo-tech-hunting...

 

[ozo]

Of course Civ2 remains a great game. But after hundreds of deity games without a loss, it didn't have much appeal left for me. And when you come back from playing Civ3, the graphics really hurt. However, I miss the town council, the "camelification" and the diplo-tech-hunting...

You can always play Deity+3 with Barbarian Wrath. That is a bit more challenging when your first citizen is born unhappy. The worse graphics of Civ2 don't disturb me, but I agree that the Deity-level is way too easy.

 

[michael4000]

How humiliating! Playing my first game on Warlord -- seems like it should be pretty easy. But, I can't seem to make any money, can't keep up in tech, can't keep much of a military. CAN generate a ton of culture and keep the people happy (I'm Babylon), but that only gets you so far, and pretty soon you've got nothing to trade....

For hours I was looking forward to the Forbidden Palace getting my remote cities on line, which worked beautifully -- for one turn, at which point my suddenly furious neighbors, who had been all buddy-buddy since prehistoric times, took my whole southern half off my hands. Yikes! This AI has a relative clue! I am definitely missing the CIV II AI's willingness to call it a day after taking a single city.

The people, I'm afraid, are probably going to remember me as

--Michael4000 the Worthless

 

[Volstag]

Micheal,

It's definitely a fine balancing act between economy, military and technology. Generally, one of the first things I attempt to do (when realistically feasible) is to get my empire hooked-up w/ as many luxury items as possible. This can greatly reduce the headache of trying to keep everyone happy -- which will allow you to focus your energies in other areas.

If you're neighbors with aggressive Civs, I strongly recommend that you attempt to keep your military within relative parity of them. I've had enemy civs declare war based purely on the fact that they knew my military was sorely inadequate. Enemy civs, IMO, are drawn to militarily weak civs like flies to a gutwagon.

-V

 

[rbis4rbb]

I expand at the beginning and don't really worry about money until I have an empire established.

 

[michael4000]

I expand at the beginning and don't really worry about money until I have an empire established.

OK, this brings up maybe my biggest problem with getting my CIV II head wrapped around CIV III. Maybe y'all can talk some sense into me.

It's this: I stop building cities, probably too early, because corruption makes them into one-shield one-gold wonders that are as much a liability as anything. Forbidden Palace? Sure, but you can't rush it, so it takes what, 120 turns to build? In this game I'm getting drubbed at, I tried to keep my FP-building city in WLTK mode to hurry things along, but the AIs seemed wise to that and stopped trading luxuries with me. And when I finally did get it built, like I said, my pal Xerxes waltzed in and took it away from me. So, while I can tell that most good players are serious expansionists, I feel like I'm getting nothing but trouble for trying to expand past my first homeland region. Am I missing something obvious?

 

[Arathorn]

Am I missing something obvious?

Obvious? No, but I do think you're missing something. Those 1/1 "worthless" cities help provide unit upkeep (nationwide now, not citywide), can claim resources/luxuries which you can trade for other good stuff, and provide a buffer in case of war -- losing a few tragic border cities isn't a problem, but losing a core city (or an FP city) is a big problem.

If your FP is taking that long to build, try building it closer to your capital. Yes, you won't get the same gains as a distant FP can bring, but substantial gains 100 turns earlier than huge gains is the better bet short-term and is pretty close to identical long-term (since shields/gold are worth more NOW than in 50 turns or whatever). You might also be missing courthouses...they're actually worthwhile builds now, in a lot of cities.

As for the rest...I'm happy for you that you're struggling at lower levels. That gives you much more space to expand into and many more firsts to accomplish. Good luck and have fun with this great game!

Arathorn

 

[ManOfMiracles]

What government are you under and how many units are in the remote cities. Make certain you have the full military police limit in your remote cities unless you are a democracy or republic. They can be cheap or outdated units since it is only the number that matters. That can help.

If you want to build FP in a city that is losing a lot of shields to waste, rush-build a courthouse in that city first. Gaining just a couple more usable shields makes a huge difference. You can always sell the courthouse after you finish FP.

 

[Tarkeel]

Many of those 1/1 cities can also be improved to get some more gold/production out of, and can always be used to produce a new worker every 10 turns. Build roads everywhere you work tiles, especially in republic. Remember that food is power, but beware the despotism penalty.