military reconnaissance

[justicemongoose]

I might be mistaken, but it seems that there is no way of accurately knowing how many enemy units are in a certain city at a given time, or to know how many and what types of units an enemy has in his army. This is not only unrealistic, as spies, lookouts, and more recently, aircraft, play a very important role in reconnasance. Knowledge of enemy troop strength is of vital importance when planning an invasion or defence. Furthermore, in the practical game sense, it makes it hard, at least in my opinion, to figure out where to place troops and how many to make. Perhaps I have not found some crucial tool in the game for this, or perhaps there is a method of finding this information that I simply need to learn to use. I know you can get general statements about an enemy army from the military advisor, but these are vague and i question their accuracy (it seems he only compares size of the enemy's foces, and not their quality). Furthermore, the embassy function does not work with countries with which you are at war, so i can't investigate their cities.
Any tips or information would be greatly appreciated. I hope this thread can become a place where people post military strategies/information of all kinds; so feel free to dicuss anything military about civ 3.

 

[Angmar]

Espionage is your friend! If you dump a spy into an enemy civ you will get the specifics about their army composition X number of spearmen etc.

You can also do an investigation on a city and if you look at the bottom of the screen you can see what is garrisoned there. I usually spend a couple bucks and see which cities to hit before I attack.

 

[Hurkyl]

Build a fleet of explorers and physically scout him during peace time. (haven't tried, but I haven't really felt the need to know yet)

Hurkyl

 

[justicemongoose]

But espionage comes pretty late--so i can't use that in the earlier battles. Thanks for the tip though.

 

[Richard III]

Espionage? Espionage!

My once-ever attempt at espionage ended with the spy getting caught, two valuable trading deals cut and a world war that devastated half of the largest continent back into a primitive natural state. Happily, I was the one doing most of the devastating and none of it was on my island continent, but all the same, it seriously disrupted the balance of power against me for years afterward. And all I'd wanted was a little comparative information on city improvements.

Frankly, after that hundred-years-war my attitude right now is that espionage is not worth the risk. If you really want to test someone's defences, go to war when you want to, bombard the snot out of a town :rocket3:, and you get a pretty good idea from the AI's "best defender on top" function as to how many defenders are left.

R.III

 

[ACM]

The Investigate City mission requires only an Embassy with the enemy civ and embassies require only writing, which is pretty early in the game.
If you don't know how to establish an embasy check the FAQ Thread.

 

[Richard III]

Quite true about investigate city ACM, but the one thing I haven't figured out is how you merely "investigate city" after discovering espionage and building the Intelligence Agancy wonder.

The game seems to force you to send a spy to do work that once did not require one - which is how my tragic WW started; if I hadn't built the IA wonder and had not discovered espionage, I would have been better off since my double click on the little icon would have proceeded peacefully.

This is obviously just my ignorance about where to click and why - any hints around this?

R.III

 

[ACM]

Clicking the Espionage button next to the info box (near the Spaceship, Histograph buttons and all th others) will acess both Embassy AND Espionage missions.
If you have a spy in the target civ (planted by clicking the Pentagon icon), you'll be given the option of either using the spy or the embassy when clicking the E button. By choosing the Investigate City or Steal Tech missions you're automatically using the Embassy.
I never ran into trouble using the Investigate City mission. But accessing the Steal Tech Embassy mission, though, I have made a lot enemies.