Need advice

[klopolov]

I just started playing Civ3 this week (don't know why I never played it before, shame on me). Being Russian, the choice for the civ was pretty obvious, but do you guys agree that Russians get screwed big time when it's time to upgrade the knights? Cossaks are awesome, but I have to start building them from scratch, whereas the AI just upgrade their knights into cavalry!
Anyway, I need advice: I am playing on the easier levels right now and basicly when I capture enemy towns, I starve them severely until there is only 2-3 people left and only then let them grow. This way pretty soon most of my citizens are Russians and they do not get unhappy about the demographics. Is this a good tactic to use or will come back and kick me in the behind on harder levels?
Anyway, thanks and you guys have a great site here!!!!!

 

[Padma]

Welcome to CFC!

I can't really answer your question about the Cossaks. I had never really noticed before. (I haven't played Russia, much).

As for your tactic, if you browse these forums a bit, you will find that is the generally accepted way of dealing with enemy cities. Starve them down to 1 or 2, then let them regrow with your own citizens.

 

[klopolov]

Thanks, I did lurk in here for a few days, and yes, I read about it and it makes sense to me to do just that, since they do not rebel or flip as often and if they do, the city is small and insignificant by that time. But I was wondering whether or not it might backfire on the higher difficulty since a lot of my cities are going to be small and take time to grow back to a decent size. I mean the core cities by the capital might not be able to produce enough army on their own to support the newly acquired territory and if I am in communism, wouldn't my corruption be the same everywhere and thus I could use those big cities as effectively as my original ones?
Thanks again!

 

[Tomoyo]

About the Cossacks: The problem is fixed with a patch.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Ouch, get the newest patch (1.29) at the Firaxis home page, or at CFC.
Not being able to upgrade to the respective UUs was changed way back in time; fully agree, that wasn't funny.

 

[Padma]

No wonder I forgot. That's been quite a while!

 

[klopolov]

I don't think comparing my relief to a few things I could think of would be very appropriate, but THANKS A LOT!!! An army of 25 knights was reduced to 10 in a very short and blody war, could I upgrade them to cossaks, I would own that Grece by now!

P.S. My friend gave me the game, I guess he bought it a while ago...

 

[Desertsnow]

I don't use the starvation tactic myself, but I know it is commonly used and has not in my knowledge been known to backfire.

 

[lech]

The starving tactic works just fine, although I don't always use it, unless the city produced a lot of culture for the enemy. But I'm not yet playing on deity. From what I understand, cities will flip far more on higher difficulty levels. I also like adding my race's workers to the city. That way, the native population will be diluted and the city will be less likely to flip.

 

[klopolov]

Thanks, I completely forgot that you can add YOUR workers to THEIR cities to manage demographics!

 

[Crow T Robot]

The fewer residual opponent occupants, the better. If (when) you later go to war, those 3 citizens can get pretty angry pretty quickly. The mere existance of foreigners, even in small proportions can cause a city to flip.

I had a French colonial city surrounded with oodles of culture to make it flip which it eventually did. Then a 100 or more yrs later it flipped back -- with only 2 or 12 citizens being French.