Memorable Moments In Civ III

[Quelquechose]

- Two Egyptian Armies are a square away from my lone spearman. Then, come dawn of battle, a volcano explodes leaving my spearman alive and the Egyptian armies slain. It was positively Biblical!
- The Aztec do not have Map Making but I do in an island game. One square from their capital is a a one square island with cultural revolt switched off. I put a settler on it. Sure he declares war but cannot touch me. Later in the game, I am first able to clobber any boat coming in or out of his capital with artillery and later still, by sticking radar artillery on the island and I can pulverise his capital to dust with impunity.
- Greece builds the Great Library. Next move, the town deserts to me.
- To the north of my is a patch of useless mountains where about 20 barbarians build up over time, until one day, I pop over with about 40 bombers.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

Mine involve epic naval invasions against a much more powerful civ that end up somehow working.

 

[walletta]

This does not rival those in the OP but I have this. Playing on a small map, lying second behind Egypt, I start a war to the north with Byzantium. Egypt declares war against Byzantium too but has to cross my territory to get to them. She sends her entire tank army (I know because I have a spy) and a bunch of infantry. I decide I don't want to share the spoils so I surround the Egyptian force with workers in the heart of my territory, kill off the Byzantines by myself and then pulverise the far-from-home Egyptians with artillery and bombers, leaving my larger rival with nothing but a static army of infantry and obsolete units. Interesting was that I had to cordon off quite a large area to surround them, leaving some freedom of movement inside but that, once surrounded, all movement stopped completely, like they were saving petrol or something.

 

[walletta]

I am playing the Romans and went for a crude sword rush. I quickly got a GL and then another and then another! All of a sudden I was being encouraged to build The Pentagon in ancient times.

 

[Everkane]

Sure you did.

 

[walletta]

Sure you did.

Lol. True! Really.

 

[Smellincoffee]

In my first game on Warlord, the Russians dropped off an invasion force to claim one of my colonies on a one-city island. It came down to two knights on a Warrior...and believe it or not, the warrior lived.

In another game, I approached the Roman capital, which was connected to the continent by a series of one-tile mountains. A little trail of mountains led three tiles into ocean, but around Rome there was another (The trail went Mountain, Mountain, Hill, with a Mountain on the side of the hill. When I moved to the side, to the other mountain, a MASSIVE stack of death moved out of the city, onto the hill. They were planning on following the mountains to reclaim some of their lost cities on the continent, but didn't have any room to move before I went to the side. WIth the city's army gone, I took it easily and that SOD disappeared as Rome was vanquished. If they'd stayed in the city, odds were they could have thwarted my attack: I had no idea they had that many troops still.

 

[Yoda Power]

Lol. True! Really.

In an unmodded game?

 

[walletta]

In an unmodded game?

If that means 'unmodified' yes (I have no clue about modifying games). I had two armies of legionaries and one of Ancient Cavalry and still managed not to be totally winning. I haven't checked the rules but I assume just having three armies is enough to trigger The Pentagon as a possible GW.

 

[walletta]

In my first game on Warlord, the Russians dropped off an invasion force to claim one of my colonies on a one-city island. It came down to two knights on a Warrior...and believe it or not, the warrior lived.

In another game, I approached the Roman capital, which was connected to the continent by a series of one-tile mountains. A little trail of mountains led three tiles into ocean, but around Rome there was another (The trail went Mountain, Mountain, Hill, with a Mountain on the side of the hill. When I moved to the side, to the other mountain, a MASSIVE stack of death moved out of the city, onto the hill. They were planning on following the mountains to reclaim some of their lost cities on the continent, but didn't have any room to move before I went to the side. WIth the city's army gone, I took it easily and that SOD disappeared as Rome was vanquished. If they'd stayed in the city, odds were they could have thwarted my attack: I had no idea they had that many troops still.

Nice.

 

[Kyriakos]

In some game of a popular CivIII mod i was launching an invasion of Austria from my base in the Balkans, playing as Greece/Byzantine Empire. I had a two-part invasion plan. 2/5ths of the european army would attack in Constanta (near the Danube in today's Romania) while the remaining euro force would march to the northern Adriatic coast, in an attempt to at least conquer a city in Bosnia, if not the other city after it as well.

Iirc the army that got to Dalmatia had something like four cataphracts and six catapults. It was guarded by only two hoplites, but one of them was an elite unit, and the terrain there was virtually all mountain ranges.
The other european army which attacked in Constanta had a lot less troops, maybe 3 cataphracts at most, and i think two catapults. It was guarded by three or four hoplites due to the terrain near the city being mostly flat.

Well, Constanta was taken pretty soon. But the Dalmatian army was obliterated without conquering anything. It was in some mountain and the hoplites died almost immediately... The rest just got ruined after them including all of the catapults which were captured.

Obviously i could not mobilize any second wave of attack in Dalmatia, since i could barely fortify Constanta and wait for some sort of zero-sum peace-deal. In the end the Austrians agreed to hand over a small island colony they had in Malta, which was good for me, obviously. But the resulting chaos in the Dalmatian border was quite intimidating for a while, cause Austria did send some troops that destroyed many farms in an area where i had three of my own cities...

 

[Quelquechose]

I've a stack of Man-O-War attacking a Stone Age Greece (still struggling with the Pottery concept in 2012) on a long slender island.

My ships hone down all his units to one pointers as my army moves up the island, blowing each iof his primative units away, first blow every time without so much as a hit point loss to my army. They die like cattle.

 

[Quelquechose]

I make a random nuclear strike that made no sense whatsoever just for fun. My machine then takes an incredible 45minutes to process the diplomatic result as the machine is utterly baffled by my action.

 

[Quelquechose]

A MEMORABLE PROGRAMME BUG...

I am ordered out under threat of war. I agree, but the only square on the continent where my unit can be sent is a native village. This generates a unit which can't go anythere as I've just beren kicked out. Result? System crash!

 

[Quelquechose]

It is the start of game. I send three warriors out. Each discovers the capital and sloe city of three other civs. I attack each. In each case, incredibly, I win, briefly wiping out each of 3 civs.

 

[Desertsnow]

I was playing the Celts. Mao came barging in, trying to extort me out of something or other, it might have been iron. I had almost an entire continent. He had three unproductive cities in the tundra on a nearby island and was half an era behind in tech. "You think you're a threat to me, Chairman Mao? Hah!" Well, yeah, he did make good on his threat. It was, um, a rather short war.

I was playing the Egyptians. Xerxes declared war, and within three turns everyone had piled on him. I bought alliances left right and center, and one of my allies bought the last civilization into the war. It was not as short a war as China versus Celts, but it was a blast.

I wanted the Great Library, and it looked like I was going to get it. Three, two, one turn to compl- WHAT? NO! I missed by ONE TURN! Later in the game I was at war with France (I declared) and snagged nineteen techs from GL after taking Paris. With that I upgraded about a bazillion knights to cavalry. The rest of the game was a lot easier.

On a less happy note, (and I've shared this story here before) my first experience was when I was a clueless newbie. I was playing the Egyptians, and losing a war. My last city (Alexandria) was attacked by German panzers, my last defender was a spear. I just sat there blinking in surprise. Then the Indians attacked immediately afterward and finished me off with an elephant.

 

[Quintillus]

Some great moments here. I particularly like the Greece building the Great Library and it deserts the very next turn. What are the chances of that? I can see it happening if they built it in a border city with no culture, but who would build the Great Library in a border city with no culture? Well, I guess the Civ3 AI probably would.

One moment that comes to mind for me:

- The first game I ever played through to the very end, I was playing as Rome and had conquered nearly the entire world. All that was left was an American city on a one-tile island in the Caribbean. I tried to move some units on to the island, but it wasn't working. So, I trained some paratroopers, rushed an airport nearby, and had them paratroop in to take the city. That didn't work either. No problem, I built a helicopter or two, and tried that way. Still no luck. My paratroopers are really bad at aerial invasions! All right then, 2050 is coming up. Time to try something that's sure to conquer them. Hit the red button, and send in a nuke! Huh. It certainly damaged the city, but it's still standing. OK, have a few Battleships and bombers bombard it, too. Nope, it's down to size 1, but they can't seem to get it down to size 0. There's no defenders, but my paratroopers are still failing. Fine, we'll send in another nuke or two, that'll surely wipe it out. No??? The city's still there?

What I didn't realize was that only Marines could conquer one-tile cities. I tried everything else in the book. But it was an exercise in futility. Eventually I did look through the manual or Civilopedia and realize what I needed to do. But that one-tile city had me bamboozled for awhile!

 

[Theov]

- As the Iroquois, discovering Europe in some sort of reverse discovery voyage across the Atlantic.
- Having the Vikings join me in an early war. The most powerful civ sandwiched between us (don't remember which) declared war on me, I got the Vikings to join forces which made the battle easier and easier as we both made our way towards the capital. I really really really enjoyed the AI in that one

 

[Theov]

Some great moments here. I particularly like the Greece building the Great Library and it deserts the very next turn. What are the chances of that? I can see it happening if they built it in a border city with no culture, but who would build the Great Library in a border city with no culture? Well, I guess the Civ3 AI probably would.

One moment that comes to mind for me:

- The first game I ever played through to the very end, I was playing as Rome and had conquered nearly the entire world. All that was left was an American city on a one-tile island in the Caribbean. I tried to move some units on to the island, but it wasn't working. So, I trained some paratroopers, rushed an airport nearby, and had them paratroop in to take the city. That didn't work either. No problem, I built a helicopter or two, and tried that way. Still no luck. My paratroopers are really bad at aerial invasions! All right then, 2050 is coming up. Time to try something that's sure to conquer them. Hit the red button, and send in a nuke! Huh. It certainly damaged the city, but it's still standing. OK, have a few Battleships and bombers bombard it, too. Nope, it's down to size 1, but they can't seem to get it down to size 0. There's no defenders, but my paratroopers are still failing. Fine, we'll send in another nuke or two, that'll surely wipe it out. No??? The city's still there?

What I didn't realize was that only Marines could conquer one-tile cities. I tried everything else in the book. But it was an exercise in futility. Eventually I did look through the manual or Civilopedia and realize what I needed to do. But that one-tile city had me bamboozled for awhile!

yes; that first one-tile city was a hard nut for me to crack too. I later checked all custom made maps for one-tile islands to prevent situations like those.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

1. In one scenario, huge map under vanilla, I started out in South America and had essentially conquered that entire side of the globe. I put a few cities in North Asia with the plan that I was going to airlift tanks to these cities and start a massive land invasion with the rest of the world.

Some of the cities were not all originally mine. I had conquered them from another civilization and left them defended with one riffleman. A few turns into the plan of slowly building tanks and airlifting them, the Russians approach me with a right of passage agreement. Since I'm not planning on attacking them within the next 20 turns I accept the agreement.

About 5 turns later I notice a Russian Cossack headed into my territory. I think to myself "surely you're not going to be that stupid." Sure enough, the lone Cossack decides to attack a city defended with a single riffleman, wins, and captures the city. Since I'm not ready to launch my full scale invasion yet I get the entire world to declare war on the Russians. The result was a cascading city loss over the course of the next few turns. I had wiped the Russians from the map without sending a single troop after them and only lost an unimportant city in the process.

2. In a huge map with two continents with a couple of islands dotting around them I was able to conquer the entire continent I started in before Navigation (as the boats kept sinking before I could find the other continent.) Once I found the other continent I noticed the Iroquois was the 2nd most powerful nation (me being number 1.)

I planned a massive invasion force to land near one of the Iroquois cities. I knew they would probably react to my invasion force with heavy fire so I filled two transports (had a total of 10 I think) with the best defensive unit I could make. I declared war, landed my invasion force next to one of their cities, and laughed as the IBT took about 10 minutes to complete. They had railroad and were stupid enough to send their entire attack force against me on that turn. I lost one or two units, gained a MGL or two, and was able to conquer them without worrying too much about defense.