My first diety win raised these questions

[Crakie]

After numerous tries and many hours here at the Civ Fanatics centre, I got my first diety win today I'd like to take full credit but I got the feeling that I was quite lucky. I mean, I don't come even close to having the knowlegde of the game that some people around here display. But to close this gap a little, I would like to take you through the game, asking questions along the way. If you don't want to read the whole thing, the questions are clearly separated from the main text; they refer to it but you should be able to figure out what they are about.

I would be most grateful if anyone could provide me with some answers!

Game details

Unpatched Civ3, no expansion packs
Diety level
Standard size map, all options selected to be moderate (for example: temperate climate)
All victory conditions enabled
Barbs sedentary
Played as Iroqois
5 random opponents, which turned out to be France, Aztecs, Persians, Romans and Russians

The Game

Using my scout I run into the French after a couple of turns already. I intend for a quick expansion around my capital with cities and then start a war with my mounted warriors. My capital is the settler factory: only built a warrior and a scout, then a granary and then settlers. Used the luxury slider to keep people happy and maximize production (at the cost of science of course, which was set to 10 %). Irrigated bonus cattle on grass provide food, shields come from forests and mined grasslands. New cities build a warrior, a temple (sometimes rushed), a worker and barracks before anything else.

It turns out I share a rather large continent with France only.
After taking every possible slab of land in my reach, I am already badly outnumbered as far as cities is concerned. I have taken the north quarter of the continent, the French will take the rest in the south. Moreover, since there is no competition, the French charge me outrageously for techs. To add to my misery, I do not have a horsey and decide to buy it from the French - again at high cost.

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Question 1: I cannot see how someone could keep up with the expansion of the AI in this part of the game, at this difficulty level. I started many games on deity, always having to quit because I couldn't get enough land. This time I managed to get about 10 cities with on average 3 tiles between them. And that was mostly because there was no AI expanding in the north. What am I doing wrong? More specifically:
- use the granary?
- if so, wait with your first settler until after you have it?
- build cities closer together?
- What about the irrigation/mines thing... I'd like more mines, but I need the food also!

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Using the horsey from the French, I build 30 or so mounted warriors, split up in 3 groups. With one group I secure a French city with a horse (on my borders), with another I push for the only harbour I can see and raze that city, with the last one I go for the 'iron city' and raze that one as well. With my incoming reinforcements I capture cites, only to find out that they don't like me: all but a few on my borders seem to flip after only a few turns. I start razing every captured city, and later start building cities of my own on the empty land. I leave their capital alone.

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Question 2 Would there have been another way out here? If possible, I'd like to not raze cities for two reasons mostly:
1) Shame to destroy 11 or 12 pop cities.
2) I may have to deal with the bad attitudes of my other opponents. The French most likely already have contact with them.
3) I need bases to heal retreated mounted warriors.

However, in the situation I was in, it was just wasteful to keep units in captured cities to quell resistance, because I would lose them in a flip.

Just as a note: I understand why the cities flipped. I was just way outcultured. I could not keep up with the AI's expansion, I needed all my cities for the production of mounted warriors, I had to pay the AI alot so it could free resources for a bunch of wonders.

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I make progress and start building on the empty land. The one leader I got was used for rushing a forbidden palace there. Their capital is isolated but it takes me three times to capture it (it keeps flipping; dont want to raze because of the GL). I also start keeping smaller cities way down in the south. Eventually I got rid of the French completely and ONLY THEN they stop flipping. But just before destroying them, I made contact with the Persians and got a huge bunch of techs from the GL. Still, I am way behind in developping my Empire. I even need to build libraries still.

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Question 3: Does the AI's attitude depend on how they value my culture?

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I set my goal for the UN. All of my opponents are annoyed with me so that is the first thing to take care off. Trading doesn't help. They won't sell me techs so I do the research myself. I can do little more than keep up with the AI. I enter MPP's, a MI even but only defend when invaded. Luckily, the AI is stupid because I hardly spent effort on defences. Thus, only lost a few offshore formerly French cities. In the mean time, I develop like crazy (democracy!). Managed to get smiles on some opponents' faces and to turn non-corrupted cities into solar planted production machines. Succesfully built the UN (prebuilt palace) but the vote and all subsequent ones are inconclusive.

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Question 4: What are the determining factors for the UN vote? I got two gracious opponents, one polite and one furious. They all vote for my adversary or abstain.

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The Persians started their SS. I lack aluminum and uranium myself and noone will trade it to me. Used a few turns to create an army of tanks and mech infantries, with the intention of razing a few Persian cities.

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Question 5: How come the AI can enter a trade agreement and request an audience after 20 turns, but I cannot? I didn't keep track of the number of turns, but I have the feeling I was practically giving away my luxuries because the trade agreements did not expire.

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To my luck however, the Romans and Russians start doing the work for me: they start fighting among each oher, keeping the Persians busy for the moment. I keep the army, gladly paying the 50 or so additional costs because I know in this world, one needs to be ready for surprises.

The wars shuffle the attitudes, since I again enter MPP's but did not fight myself. Got uranium from my lifetime enemy the Aztecs even! Aluminium popped up on my territory. Got a head start on the space ship, to which the others could not catch up!

 

[Kirkless]

In response to your fifth question. If you go to the Preferences menu, there is an option to "always renegotiate trades." I usually have that on with my game, and the trade screen pops up whenever the twenty turns ends on a deal that requires it.

 

[Qitai]

Some of my answers.

1) Yes, it is possible to outexpand the AI during the expansion phase on deity. What I can see you are not doing right is that you did not concentrate on expansion. The settler factory is generally right. But you left the other cities to temples and barracks. I wouldn't say you are expading at maximum capacity when you are building those things. You should concentrate 100% on expansion during this phase since this phase can have a direct impact on whether you win or lose.

2) There are only two ways to completely remove culture flip possibilty - (1) Raze and rebuild. (2) Eliminate the civ concern. (1) Makes ALL AI angry and takes a longer time to rebuild. (2) is generally not easy. Short of that, the most common way to handle culture flip are (A) Let it flip, just don't put troops in there, but beside it to capture it back. To make it easily to capture back, make sure it is not connected to any resources. (B) Starve, build workers the city to size one before rebuilding it up again. I use a combination of (2), (A) and (B).

3) No. But razing cities is VERY bad to relationship with AI. Each razed city upsets them. One of the reasons I do not like to raze.

4) Not sure. Someone else might be able to answer this.

5) Trade do not cancel automatically unless you set preference as always re-negonitate deals. To cancel deals manually, you can call up the civ concern, hit on the active button in the negotiation screen, hit on the active deals. That will cancel the active deal concern.

 

[zerksees]

Nice job winning on deity! You overcame several significant obstacles to make this work, lack of horses, incessant culture flipping, and no decision on UN vote.

It is clear you have a fairly good grasp of the game, or you would not have made it this far - so please do not be insulted if my answers are not helpful.

Getting stuck on a continent with only one AI can be tough, because their first logical target is you. It is no small feat getting out of that pickle on deity.

Regarding question 1: How many turns did it take for your settler factory to build a settler? Did you micromanage food and production in that city each turn to make sure no food or shields were wasted? What year did you run out of space to build and how many cities did you have then?

Question 2: Leave one unit in the city and a garrison outside. If it flips back retake. Get the population down by cannon or artillery, and by starving them once you have the city. I know it would be nice to add a size 12 city, but what you really want is the territory. Also note the AI does not like it when you raze cities with a majority of foreign citizens. This affects your chances for the UN. To remedy, starve down to size one - if it keeps flipping then get two of your natives in there and then raze. I have also found rush building a temple after resistance ends greatly reduces the flip problem.

Question 3:
The AI will sell you techs if you have enough gold. And it is almost always cheaper to buy them than to build yourself. You need more gold. How quickly did you road/railroad all of your tiles. How quickly did you get marketplaces, banks, stock exchange to generate more cash?

Read Bamspeedy's article on AI attitude in the war academy. It tells everything that affects the AI attitude.

Question 4: I do not know what the deciding factors are in the vote, so I can't answer this directly. However, why not get everyone into a war with your adversary right before the next vote?

And did you try sabotaging the Persian space ship? I have not needed this yet but it is an option.

Also, why did you choose to play as Iroquois?

In my first deity game, I chose small map, roaming barbs, 2 AI rivals, and I chose Americans. I wanted expansionist to open goody huts early and I wanted that industrious trait to be with me through the entire game. I successfully build the GL myself. I wanted to win my first deity game, which I did!

I learned a lot reading the forum in the high score HOF. There I learned some of the fine points of deity play - maybe there are more tips there. If you haven't read the war academy articles on deity, I suggest reading them too.

 

[Grille]

regarding Q4:
Once you know the other UN candidate, it's normally *easy* to get the diplo win (sometimes it's hard to figure out the candidate, because it's a close call or there are even 3 candidates in total).

Not sure if these are 'rules', but it's at least common AI behaviour:
-Civs do not like to vote for a candidate they're at war with.
-Polite/gracious civs are more likely to vote for you.
So if you combine both things, chances are to win the vote (or not to lose it, that is).
So if there's just 5 civs or so left, you would declare war on the other candidate and bring the other 2 (or more) civs up against your enemy (-> sign MPP is possibly the easiest way, then sign MA... and do the other stuff to boost attitude status).
If you have done a lot of (known) razing in a game, diplo win is getting hard.
Note: Razing common enemy's cities will boost your allies' attitude (only for the time being!!), so you could do that on a larger scale just before the vote is held.
In your case:
Getting the the 2 gracious and 1 polite civ into war vs the other candidate *could* have been enough in your game. Maybe you want to check from an older save file.

 

[Offa]

Well done for winning.

You ought to patch the game though, as the original Civ 3 was rather different from the current patched game that most people on the site are playing. From what I remember horses almost always retreated from combat, which would have made the Iroquois extremely strong. In addition pop rushing was very overpowered in unpatched Civ3 so you could just stay in despotism for ages, whipping loads of mounted warriors. On a Pangea map (ie not yours) this would have been even more powerful.

Deity, not diety.

 

[Greebley]

You might want to take a look at the succession games forum.

There are a number of deity game wins there that can show you the miriad of ways you can win - even the games where the human only grabbed 3-4 spots before the land was settled have been won.

One can spend hours reading the different games.

Succession Game Forum

 

[Crakie]

Thanks everyone for your comments. Just to go over some of the issues raised:

1) Offa, I don't know why I never bothered to patch. It might have something to do that when I was spending alot of time on the boards, I got the impression that many people thought it sucked. One thing that stuck in my mind was that the patches were thought to basically ruin communism. Since I used to go for communism all the time, being a warmonger and all that, I was not inclined to patch. But when starting to play on Monarch+ difficulty, conquest and domination seemed much more difficult to get... and democracy became my favorite.
I did not pop rush for Mounted Warriors. I never did any math on it, but it just doesn't seem that advantageous to me. The MW are very powerful though, true. They only do not retreat with 1 health left, if I'm not mistaken. Then again, I hardly could heal them in the first half of the war, because I was razing the cities.

2) Glad to have that trade agreement thing cleared up, thanks all who mentioned it!

3) Ok, so I guess the factors that determine UN votes remain a little fuzzy. I obviously had been razing alot and I'm pretty sure everyone learned about it from the French. I'll try and get a save game to see whether I can get more votes when dragging my opponent (which is now known to me) into a war with everyone, just before the vote.

4) Starving a city is an excellent idea instead of razing it, but still it might flip in the turns it takes to get it to pop 1 or 2. Still, it might have made life easier for me and I'll definetely give a try in a next game. I'll also keep some units around to react immediately when a city flips.

Zerksees, to answer your more specific questions/issues:
- I actually quite liked being on 1 continent with only 1 AI... otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have been outsettlered again.
- It took about 4-5 turns per settler for my settler factory. I don't know what you mean by micromanage exactly. If it means I did not use the governor, but selected the tiles for the city to work on myself, then yes I did that. I did not check every turn though, as long as production seemed up to speed.
My first savegame is just before the war with the French (with lots of MW built). At that point, just before 0 BC, I was producing around 45 shields with 8 cities every turn (the remaining 3 or so did not produce that much on tundra). The MW costs 30 shields, so with 30 MW I guess it took at least 20 turns to get there. What year would that be? Anyway, that's when I probably was done settlering. It might have taken more turns, especially since I was also building a warrior, temple, worker and barracks in the cities and it may have taken a few cities some turns to finish that before starting on MW.
- After the war with the French, I frantically tried to build culture and increase cash flow with marketplaces etc. It took a long long time, in fact only in the final stages of the game all the tiles were really optimally used. Build more workers?
I did not have alot of cash because I was doing the research myself. I am just not used to buying my techs, with only 2 emperor and 1 diety wins under my belt. There is no way around it in the early stages of monarch+ games, but it is really that advantageous to keep buying them? I mean, you provide the AI with even more resources and it is already producing alot more than you.
- Nope, did not try for a sabotage. Good point!
- I opted for the Iroqois because I never did use expansionist civs, which seemed the way to go on deity. Their unique unit was very tempting as well, but not as cheesy as the immortals.

Qitai:
Yes, when you put it like this, I did not completely focus on expansion. But I figured I needed some military, some early culture and the workers. Maybe I was wrong about that. I guess it depends on your neighbours alot.

Thanks again everyone!

 

[Offa]

Originally posted by Crakie

I don't know why I never bothered to patch.

I just read that Amazon are selling Conquests for 10$. That would give you a much more up to date version immediately.

 

[Qitai]

Military and worker is fine and in fact necessary, which is why I include warriors and workers in the list of build only. Warriors act as military police too to keep the people content. Workers builds the much needed mines/irrigation/roads.

Temples are general not worth it in the early game since it also makes one person content which is really the same as just building a warrior. Early culture don't really do much. Proper city placement to link up culture border will put all terrian under your culture border. Usually this means 4 tile spacing or less (I.e. 3 tile in-between). Also, each settler claims more area than a culture border expansion. So, another settler is definately better than a temple as long as there is still room to settle.

Unless you are fighting a war before 1000BC, the barrack will not help you much there. Even than, only build it in those cities that are churning out troops. Too often it becomes a habit to build a barrack only to realize later that the city concern really only produces one military unit in the last 50 turns. Not very worththile for building and upkeeping a barrack in that case.

 

[CellarDweller22]

I disagree with the conception that early culture doesn't do much. It expands your borders (making AI deity settlers less likely to settle in-between your cities) and makes culture flipping less likely. Plus, you need temples to build cathedrals.....

Perhaps it depends on which civ you are playing at the time....

-- From The Cellar

 

[Grille]

originally posted by Crakie:

3) Ok, so I guess the factors that determine UN votes remain a little fuzzy. I obviously had been razing alot and I'm pretty sure everyone learned about it from the French. I'll try and get a save game to see whether I can get more votes when dragging my opponent (which is now known to me) into a war with everyone, just before the vote.

Just one more note: if you gang upon the other candidate, there's also a risk that he might lose to many cities - eventually another civ (possibly an ally of yours) will then be the candidate...
It's more an issue on pangaea maps with railroads and ROPs in place and if population/territory sizes are somewhat balanced throughout the bigger civs remaining (i.e. close call about the candidate role).

Also note that unpatched (1.07) Civ does not offer the possibility to veto the vote. At some patch level was this feature added: the UN owner can decide whether to hold a vote or not.

edit: about the razing: if you have razed cities before in that game, but there are still civs left who are polite or even gracious towards you (like you said in first post), you have not razed like mad (or it was in early game and your top 'razing-victim' had no contacts to tell the other civs and was finally wiped out before any other civ knew them).

 

[Qitai]

AI Settlers NEVER settle within 2 tiles (1 tile in-between) from other cities. So, the 1st cultural border expansion do not help at all in preventing AI settler coming near you. The 2nd cultural expansion from a temple comes at least 60 turns later after the temple is build. Too slow to stop a AI settler. Even a 3 tile (2 tiles in-between) is VERY RARE. And in all cases I have seen where they actually come so near, it always ends up having strategic resource near that spot. So, the point of stopping AI settler from settling is not valid.

As for cultural flipping, you need it only on the border towns, not every town. And that usually means the expansion phase is ending. I have no disagreement about building temples after the expansion phase. Problem is wasting resources on temples when there are more urgent task at hand - expansion.

And I did already mention that an additional settler expands your border much more than a temple. This is especially when AI do not settle near your cities. You need to compare alternatives, not just look at what temple does.

 

[CellarDweller22]

Originally posted by Qitai
AI Settlers NEVER settle within 2 tiles (1 tile in-between) from other cities....

As for cultural flipping, you need it only on the border towns, not every town....

And I did already mention that an additional settler expands your border much more than a temple. This is especially when AI do not settle near your cities. You need to compare alternatives, not just look at what temple does.

First of all, I don't use all the "strategic" city placements, but instead like to place cities 4 tiles apart (give or take), so that IS a concern for me (the one tile in-between is almost always there). I do this to maximize area while not blasting away the optimal number of cities (until I go to war....), as well as allowing for metropolises which clearly maximize population (and, thereby, score).

Second, correct me if I'm wrong, but total culture is MOST CERTAINLY a component of culture flipping, not just in border cities, but TOTAL culture of your civ (we are, after all, talking about flipping and not just the way the borders expand against one another). And the earlier you build culture (not in your settler and worker factory, of course! ), the earlier the culture starts doubling for the structure. On higher levels (and we're talking high level here), trying to at least minimize the AI's exponential culture grabbing is a key to survival. Hence, you need a balanced strategy combining culture, workers, settlers, and forces, but, of course, this depends on terrain, etc.

So, in essence, I am "comparing alternatives" in assessing what a temple does. In a shield-producing city, that temple keeps one more citizen from whining (more productivity), creating more shields (no entertainer needed then.... and no increase in luxury rate, saving gold as well) worked for building combat forces and buildings, etc. I will admit, if my civ is scientific I usually try to build libraries first, while if they are religious, a 40 shield temple is a no-brainer (provided that the city is not one of the "factories").

It's certainly not the only strategy, but to say that it's not a VALID strategy is simply false. And, as my original post stated, it really does depend on which civ you are playing at the time.... I play random civs and random maps (large 12 civ). Hence, I use a flexible strategy to try to counter any situation.

-- From The Cellar

 

[Grille]

originally posted by CellarDweller22:

Second, correct me if I'm wrong, but total culture is MOST CERTAINLY a component of culture flipping, not just in border cities, but TOTAL culture of your civ (we are, after all, talking about flipping and not just the way the borders expand against one another).

The total culture ratio is 'just' one factor for the flipping probability - with tile overlap and # of foreigners being the really decisive factors (that is, no tile overlap & no foreigners of a still existing civ equals zero flip chances). So when you're still expanding and reach an enemy border, your likely better off building (rushing... forest-chop-boosting) the culture structures in those border cities only (=cut down overlap if present) and concentrate production in the core on more settlers/workers and military. Furthermore, you could avoid overlapping to some degree or deploy a garrison (that also means military production in core) to reduce the flip risk.
In any case, having more total culture (even much more, which is unlikely on deity anyways) is still no guarantee to avoid flipping. Having a bigger military earlier, however, could help you to get rid of your neighbouring civ earlier and thus cutting flip chances to zero earlier. So even if you get a discount on temples/libs, it might be better to delay producing these structures a bit. If you first build these in the core (even in some selected cities only) and then build up military, you allow the AI to benefit from their production advantages for a longer time. At least it's my experience, they'll then have a good (even better than mine) culture and a strong military. Also, it seems like if you pull the AI into a war earlier (either you fight them or sign MAs), they'd avoid culture building (except for their wonder producing cities, but that's fine) and invest in military instead -so you may not lose to much culture ground here.

After all, this...

Hence, I use a flexible strategy to try to counter any situation.

...is always useful.

 

[Qitai]

First of all, I did not say it is not a valid strategy. I said it is not a valid point to argue for the building of a temple. Note the difference.

Second, if you know me, which many does I think, I almost always play the hardest level available when I have a choice - i.e. Deity and Sid when I get C3C.

Okay, on with the debate.

You want to restrict yourself to a 4-tile spacing? Well, I hope you know what you are losing out in doing that. It makes your available strategy so much more restricted.

As for the cultural flip, let me tell you that until you war, there is a 100% sure way of ensuring you get ZERO flips, without having a high total culture. The base calculation of the cultural flip is number of foriegn citizen + number of the 21 working tiles under foriegn control. The first part is easy to handle, just never add any slave to your city. The second part is not too difficult too. Just ensure your BORDER towns are 5 tiles (4 tiles in-between) from AI city and get a cultural building when the AI city gets their 2nd expansion. This will ensure all 21 working tiles are under your cultural influence. Note that this is why I did said you need cultural buildings at the border at appropriate time, without hurry. If you follow the above, you will not get a single flip until you go to war and capture AI city full of foriegn citizens. Also, since I am expected to have more cities by forgoing temples at the start, my total culture will be eventually higher, not lower.

For the other points. Again, the keeping the citizen from whinning part can be achieved easily using a 10 shield warrior. A warrior is free until you hit the maintenance limit and even then, only 1gpt. A temple cost 1gpt for upkeep.

 

[CellarDweller22]

Okay.... I understand your points...

However, are you saying that under no circumstances you build early culture? What about going for a culture victory? I didn't mean to imply that I "limit" myself to 4-tile spacing.... that's just kinda what I shoot for...

I guess I like to play from the hip. I have only lost 2 games (I don't restart.... but my highest level is only emporer (GOTM).... ), so I guess to each his own. I know I'm by FAR not the best player here.... I just think culture is more important than people give it credit for.

Here's to a great game, where multiple strategies are possible!

-- From The Cellar

 

[Qitai]

Depends on which cultural victory you are going for. I would play the same for 100K since having more cities would eventually lead to more cultural instead of concentrating on a few cities.

For 20K, then yes, rushing for those cultural buildings does help towards getting an early victory. In that case, you are not trying to build an empire, but a cultural center.

Additionally, I do build temple sometimes depending on circumstances. What I am saying here is that temple is generally not a good idea at the start. And in this case, Crakie is putting a temple in every city as part of his initial build before building anything else. Defninately not a good idea.

 

[CellarDweller22]

I totally agree with you there, Q..... a temple in EVERY city is not good. Cities that will be culture centers need to have lots of shields and be on rivers..... settler and worker factories need to be just that..... settler and worker factories! That balance is essential. Without settler factories, you could build all the culture in all your cities and still not even be close to 100k..... let alone domination, etc. because you do not have the resources to level the playing field without CITIES!

Hence, I definitely understand your contention that settlers are essential to winning a game. I just find that, by not having ANY culture in the beginning (other than the palace ), that it is almost impossible to catch up to the AI in culture ever. I might not be playing it right.

In any event, temples are a waste when placed in EVERY city. For the "happiness and culture" I was referring to, that was for primarily production cities. Who needs happiness in a settler or worker factory? You need to whip the population into shape ASAP..... hence, there should not be enough population in those towns to warrant a temple.

Crakie, I hope this discussion has helped you on your endeavours..... Qitai is a great player, and he is definitely right about that "all temple" thingy....

-- From The Cellar

P.S. I'm such a moron, Q! After reading that poll, it appears that I use the "optimal city placement", trying to make sure no more than one tile overlaps (sometimes, however, that is just not possible, and more tiles may overlap). So it's not so random after all! I just hope it's a good strat..... but it seems to work for me.

 

[Yndy]

I agree that it might sound weird for most players but temples are some of the least used structures by top players. Actually, I build temples more often because I need a pre-build structure (Cathedral) than because I want the culture and happiness effects of the temple.

Careful planning at 3 tiles distance between cities even allows for a capture of the three tiles in between without a cultural expansion.

As an exception, playing a religious civ, I see a point in rush-building temples in partly corrupt border cities for a free territory expansion at a cost of one population.