My game, please give me some tips.

100games100days

Warlord
Joined
Mar 5, 2003
Messages
200
Location
Australia
Hi

This is my first game of Civ3. I did a tutorial with chieftan, just to get a feel of it. This game however is played in Warlord.

It's using V1.29f and is NOT PTW.

Can you please give me some tips on what I should do next?

The germans and the romans are at war at the moment, and I'm thinking of going to war with rome so I can get some land, if I don't act the germans will start to be ahead (if they win the war)

So, please give me some tips, advice, comments, etc :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/EgyptiansIAW.zip

Thanks in advance.
 
Let's see, basically I think you have everything under control so I'll just make some minor suggestions.

First of all, I wouldn't go after Rome. Their territory, like yours, is almost entirely desert. It won't help you much at all to conquer them. The Greeks seem to have the best land, and they're also your biggest tech rival (probably because of that great land). I'd conquer them and move your palace to Athens.

Second, you have a lot of spearmen. I'd try to get as many of them upgraded as you can before going to war.

You have a pretty wide city placement, but I don't see that placing them closer would really help with all that desert and tundra anyway.

You should build a harbor in Oryx. Sure those cities are corrupt but you might as well make them happy with some luxuries. :) A library won't help at all since it only produces 1 commerce anyway. Try courthouses instead maybe.

That's about all I can come up with. You're doing a lot better in your first game than I did in mine!
 
Hey, thanks for replying!

I was just playing then, and I took I think 3 cities from Rome, the Germans got the rest.

I have been upgrading all my units lately.

My next target will be the Greeks! :)

I have to admit it's not really my first game. I only got the game 1 week ago from today. This is my 4th game, but the others I have been restarting.

There was one chieftan game that really bored me, so I left. Another game I was stuck on an island, and when I finally found someone, they were about 7 techs ahead :| The other game, I'm not really sure why I quit, I think it's cos 2 computers declared war on me in one go. I think I should go back to that game, I feel I'm getting better at civ3 now.

Anyways, thanks for replying.... here is my save now.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/EgyptiansIAW2.zip

Tell me what you think.
 
i'll look tomorrow myself. But post an updated save of where you are now, because from all the newbie questions you posted, you seem to be much further ahead!
 
You are in good shape at this point. You are on top in score and culture. I think you will probably want to go for a conquest victory. On this type of map you have two opponents, Germany and Greece. Unfortunately they are on opposite sides of you. That makes conquest a bit more complicated, because you have to make some alliances to avoid being attacked from the rear.

I would suggest the following:

1. Don’t start a war now. You have a lot of defensive units and not enough offensive units. Cavalry is your best offensive unit, but it has weak defense. The other civs also have it. Delay your invasion until after you have Tanks and Artillery. I would choose to invade Greece as the weaker of your 2 neighbors. Also because you have cities surrounded by Germany. Once you make the decision to invade, contact Germany and see if they will form an alliance with you against Greece. Then give them a right of passage so they can get their troops to the battlefront. Make sure that Greece and Germany don’t have a Mutual Protection Pact. You don’t want to fight a two front war.

2. Greece is slightly ahead of you in techs. To catch up and put yourself in a commanding lead you need to get Theory of Evolution so you can get the 2 free techs it brings with it. You are 3 turns away from Scientific Method which gives you TOE. BUT, you should be pre-building it. Pre-building is using a city to store up shields so that when you have the ability to build a wonder you can get it built quickly. You are building Battlefield Medicine in Heliopolis. Once you discover Scientific Method, switch Heliopolis to TOE and that will get it built faster. Alexandria is your most productive city. Switch its production from Factory to Battlefield Medicine.

3. Move your defensive units so they are along your borders with Greece and Germany. You have 35 Riflemen, but none are in any city along the German border. The AI knows where you are weak and will strike there first. If Germany declares war on you, you will lose all of those border cities in the first turn. Move at least 2 Riflemen into every city along your land borders.

4. By the time you go to war you will have Universal Suffrage. That will allow you to conduct the war in Democracy without too much war weariness. However, since you are a religious society you can switch to another form of government in one turn. If war weariness becomes a problem, switch to Monarchy, not Communism.

5. Once you get TOE, choose Atomic Theory and Electronics as your two free techs and research Hoover Dam. It is a great wonder for reducing pollution in the later game.

6. With your 2 free techs you will be ahead of the Greeks and can trade for any techs they have that you need. Concentrate on the main techs and don’t worry about dead end techs like Communism and Espionage. You can always go back and pick them up later.

7. Build up your cash for the coming war, and to be able to upgrade units. All the Spearmen you have are doing you no good. Upgrade them to Riflemen or Infantry.

8. Once you get Replaceable Parts, upgrade your Riflemen. You have Leonardo’s Workshop so it will cut your cost in half. Post at least 2 Infantry in the cities along your border.

9. On the way to Tanks you will acquire the ability to produce naval units. Resist the temptation. On this map, at this time, you do not need them. Babylon is a fringe civ and you don’t need to conquer them to rule the world.

10. You should combine your workers into stacks in order to build your rail system more efficiently. Make sure all of you cities are connected and then go back and complete the spurs. Get all your cities connected before you start the war so that you can quickly bring new units to the front lines.

11. The Roman war did you no good. The 5 cities you captured are widely separated and are surrounded by Germany. You can’t support them. Consider giving them away at an appropriate time to another civ to gain favor.

Good luck and let me know how you do.
 
Originally posted by zagnut
Alexandria is your most productive city. Switch its production from Factory to Battlefield Medicine.

Those were some really good tips, but I disagree with this one thing. A factory would speed production by 50% and a coal plant by another 50%, meaning you can get Wonders twice as fast by building those improvements. My most productive city always gets these two improvements ASAP, even if I have to rush them with cash. I sell the coal plants once I build Hoover, but having them before Hoover makes building Universal Suffrage, ToE, and Hoover a snap.

I haven't downloaded the game, so maybe I'm missing something. However, that's always been my method. If it takes 20 turns to build Hoover with no factory/power plant, it takes 10 to do it with them. Building/rushing factories/power plants can easily be done in less than 10 turns.
 
billindenver:

I don't disagree with you. I was making the point that he should pre-build the wonder. Battlefield Medicine or the Palace will enable him to accumulate shields until he needs them for the Dam. That could be done in another city. I just took a quick look at his cities and chose Alexandria because it was very productive.
 
Originally posted by zagnut
billindenver:

I don't disagree with you. I was making the point that he should pre-build the wonder. Battlefield Medicine or the Palace will enable him to accumulate shields until he needs them for the Dam. That could be done in another city. I just took a quick look at his cities and chose Alexandria because it was very productive.

In my games, the turn I get Industrialization, every city in my civ changes from whatever they are building to Factories. I certainly agree with pre-building the wonder, I guess I just prefer to do it after I have factories and coal plants built, rather than pre-building directly on the Wonder. The end result is probably about the same:).
 
I think you need a few mor workers, you have 22 in that latest save, and lots of land to do up, as you are around building hospitals and have a wide city spaceing you want every tile done up, and it looks like it will take forever at the moment.
 
I had look at your game, and here are my comments:

1) Build more cities. You have lots of unused room inside your borders. Look at this screenshot. There is room for at least 4 cities in just this part of your empire. As a general rule of thumb it is a good idea to pack your cities much tighter. The red dots are spots where you could place new cities. Also try to take all that spare land left over from the Roman wars.



2) In Democracy, cities don't gain anything from having units in them, since military police only works in despotism, monarchy and communism. Upgrade all obsolete Spearmen and Musketeers to Riflemen and move them to the borders. Leave all cities more than 3 moves away from the border empty. With the help of your new railroads you can instantly move defenders into rear cities if the AI sneakily lands units from a boat. Don't build any more denfensive units. Remember that the best defense is offense.

3) Coastal fortresses are useless. Don't build those. Don't build any ships at this point.

4) Your outer ring of cities are corrupt, but not totally. Build courthouses in these cities (for example Kahun, Bubastis, Hieraconpolis, Byzantium).

5) Switch production to Factory in every city with more than 10-15 uncorrupted (blue) shields. The factory is one of the most important buildings in the game. Since these help you build other stuff faster, you should always build the factories first, then the other stuff. Factories take priority over hospitals. Forget about Battlefield Medicine for the moment, build a factory there instead.

6) You might want to consider using the governor, since yoy don't micromanage your cities anyway. Bubastis and Lugdunum, for example, has each an unneeded entertainer.

6) The universities you build in Mendes, Eburacum, Oryx and Richmond would be totally useless when finished, since those cities are totally corrupt. Build workers instead. The increased protection against flipping is so small that it isn't worth it.

7) Your main opponents are the Greeks and the Germans. You have 11-17 turns of deals with them. Which one to attack is hard to say. The Greeks would probably be a good trading partner, but your border with Germany is long and undeveloped, which definitely would mean loss of several cities, with heavy war weariness as a result.

8) I suggest you stay at peace until you get tanks. Meanwhile, expand so that all unused land is within your borders, your main cities have factories and hospitals, and that all borders and cities are connected with railroads. You need more workers. Don't build units, since you don't need any more defensive units, and cavalries will become obsolete. Decide who you will attack and time your trades to end about 10 turns after you get motorised transportation (to give you time to build some tanks, too).

9) Make sure you get the Theory of Evolution. Time your research so that you build the TOE the same turn as you discover a tech so you get a full 2 techs for free. Pick Atomic Theory and Electronics as your free techs. Build the hoover dam.

10) Beeline for tanks after that.


Hope this helps. :)
 
Hey guys, thanks for all your help!

It's early, and I have to go to school...

Just like to say a couple of things:

Those 3 cities on the far left I built along time ago, It was some spare land I found during the beginning of the game.
I only managed to get 2 cities from that Rome war, and I'll probably give them away like you said.

I have a settler going into that free space near the Rome war, right where the capital was...... How come the capital of Rome just
vanished? Do they vanish when a civlization is about to be defeated or really unhappy?

I thought that because your cultural borders always expanded that your area to work on squares around your city would also grow. This is one big lesson I have learnt from playing this game. I will build much closer next game.

I wasn't building factories much because I was affraid of pollution, but you guys seem to think it's the way to go, so I'll build heaps now (in cities producting lots of shields)

I have been micromanaging my cities, those cities I had entertainers were just in a civil disorder, so I had to make them happy again.

How did you take that screenshot? (did you just use print screen?)

Thanks again guys!

I will play more tonight and update my save when I'm done.
 
Originally posted by joedoe21

I thought that because your cultural borders always expanded that your area to work on squares around your city would also grow. This is one big lesson I have learnt from playing this game. I will build much closer next game.

I wasn't building factories much because I was affraid of pollution, but you guys seem to think it's the way to go, so I'll build heaps now (in cities producting lots of shields)

Your cultural borders will keep expanding, but each city will never work more than 21 squares. The cultural borders just keep other civs out of your territory. Keeping cities closer together also reduces corruption. The city locations suggested by Hurricane, being pretty close to your capital, would also be low corruption cities. If you irrigate and railroad that desert, you'll also get 2 food per square, so they'll be able to grow to fairly decent sized cities.

Pollution is only 1/2 caused by city improvements like factories and coal plants. The rest is caused by population. You can't eliminate it unless none of your cities grow larger than size 12, so don't try. If you have 20-30 workers and everything is railed, the workers can clean any pollution on the same turn it occurs. It's a nuisance more than a problem. It's annoying to have grassland turn into plains because of pollution, but it doesn't happen often, and even if your whole empire is pollution free, the AI doesn't clean pollution effectively so you'll always get a few squares terraformed.

Factories and power plants (or hopefully Hoover Dam, esp. on this large continent) mean you can produce Wonders in 10 turns instead of 20, or tanks in 2 turns instead of 4. For me, they are a MUST in every city that produces more than one uncorrupted shield.
 
Oh, one more thing. Get refining ASAP after Electronics. You need to find out where the oil is, because you don't want Germany to have any!!! Their UU is the Panzer which can be a real headache if they've got oil, plus, it'll probably trigger a Golden Age for them while they are producing Panzers during a war.
 
well I saw the screenshot and people's comments, but not the save. However I can offer this: factories are ESSENTIAL. Powerplants are ESSENTIAL. With them everything goes faster like the others have been saying.

to take screenshots hit "print screen" key. Then, open paint or some other art program and paste it on. Save it however you want to.
 
Ok, downloading right now. Is this with PTW or regular civ3?
 
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