Need help!

[Thadlerian]

Ok, I've now been playing this game for almost 1 year, and I haven't been able to finish it once.... (that is, I almost made it twice, but it crashed)

When I bought it, I had expected it to be like Civ2, just better graphics, culture, trade and some strategies. But then I find that chieftain lvl in C3 is far more difficult than warlord in C2. I can barely start a good game, and they all prove failure after an hour or two playing. These are the worst problems I encounter:

1. In C2, there seemed to be some kind of feature making sure you started in Forest, GrassL, or Plains. In C3, I have to restart 9 out of 10 times, because I start in the middle of a desert, jungle, tundra or mountain range. I mean, how many great empires had their origin on the peak of Mount Everest?

2. Military campaigns = no good. After 1 year of play, I find that I lose 3 of of 4 battles, no matter what conditions or units. I find my phalanx fortified cities overrun by warriors, or my veteran knights losing after attacking a non-fortified archer. I usually cannot support more than 8-9 units at the beginning anyway, while the AI seems capable of spitting out 20-30 units with only 5 cities.

3. I fall behind in research. I know the reason the other AIs get more techs is that they trade with each other. But why can't I do the same? They always charge 200-300 gold for an ancient age tech, wich is more than I can afford. I can only imagine what huge vaults those AI players have, making them able to get whatever they want at any time. And how can a small civ, which I have beaten almost into submission, get iron, horses and saltpeter from another civ, almost 4 times as big as itself?

4. Are artillery, ships and planes really no good? Why can't they kill units? Why do they miss 90% of the time? One of the things I really loved in Civ1 and 2 was to build huuge air forces and navies.

5. Why do I have to produce more units all the time, to at least be able to survive?

Any help will be appreciated.

 

[Tassadar]

Hi


1.- you are not lucky, usualy on standard map size, continent i always start near river with some bonus food like cow or wheat. But sometime what may look a bad position could be insteed a tremendous good position. An exemple is when you start with lots of flood plain, it give no shield, but if you irrigate it and mine hills than later on your city is very productive. But sometime it happen that the starting position is a thrue puzzle ( extremity of a peninsula surrounded by water ), just restart.

2.- i wage early war with knight and i move them so they end turn on a hill or forest to get defense bonus, i always attack with stack of 6- 10 so if 1 knight is lost it is not so bad. Never try to attack a city with only 2-3 units. To support more units you need more income because you pay 1 gold per turn per units, income is proportional to # of your citizen on roaded tile, so increase population in your city as much as you can, built road on those tile, build marketplace to boost income.

3.- doing research mean you should not be at war, built temple and libarary in your city, later on marketplace and switch to republic ( disband all non veteran units, no need of military police under republic). Increase size as much as you can, 10 % on lux slider could help a lots if you dont have many luxuries. Head for education and banking first and build them. With 8- 10 city you will go through medieval era pretty fast but you need about 16-20 city ( with forbiden palace) to reach modern era.

4.- To get suceesfull bombing you need to mod defensive value against bombardement into editor, firaxis increase this from 4 to 16 with patch. Lower it back to 4 and evrything will be great.

5.- usualy i win war with less units, the key is the ground, never let your troops on grassland or plain, always end their turn on hills or forest. Attack with a stack and dont split it until your goal is achieve. you need to concentrate your force. If you are under attack BUILD city wall and produce only veteran units.

 

[Lynx]

this guy knows what he's talking about.