Need some help here trying to play regent

[Novice]

Well hopefully some folks can give some advice, ive played the typical games like warcraft and AOE but never turn based strategy just never liked em, but im addicted to civ 3 and i need some help here, i can win now on chieftain and the next level up after bout two or three days messing round and reading some tips, but heres the questions ive gotten that i think most of you guys assume us newbs already know:

1) how do you guys pump settlers out so fast as to keep up with the rivals on regent in expanding your initial cities, i usually try to build my capitol right off cuz ive lost way to many times due to settler dying at the hands of barbs, i usually play with them on highest setting...

2) ok do you auto control workers or manual and if manual how do you not go crazy having to give 5 or 10 or more commands per turn in the late game? i usually use ctrl n and shft I now since youre still telling them what to do in a way...

3) how do you know a good spot for cities and how far do you space them, i was looking and i know that no matter cultural expansion the city can still only work the 21 sqares so ive been trying to maximize use of my tiles by building cities with 4 spaces between them, the sometimes has good effects and sometimes just makes a weak city...

4) the worker thing really has me stumped, please give advice for regent games only as thats what im working on now, the chieftain was fun but no matter what i know i can obtain victory one way or another on it..

5) war is pretty tough on me but i think from reading the forums i can solve that,,

6) in the last regent game i played Babylon, and i used the standard map for earth one of the load mission files i think?? anyway i had africa right off, immedaitely closed the choke point at europe, built the oracle, but as soon as i finshed it i started another wonder, but everytime i got withing 4 turns another civ finished the other wonder, this happened like 6 times, another thing my science was taking forever to advance at one point the english approached wanting the wheel yet they had like 4 other techs i didnt have???

7) now on chieftain even without playing the Science broker strat i was still 3-5 advances ahead of everyone and had tons of cash to rush build when needed or support a large number of troops and i had science cranked up to 80, at one point i looked down i had 3k in gold and science was on 80% thats when i decided chief is way to easy but now im struglling..

Help me out with any advice you have, much appreciated

Novice

 

[acivguy]

for workers in the late game ctrl-shift-a works great. they take care of pollution how they should, and don't modify your mines/irrigation.

The only ancient wonder I like is the pyramids.. that's just personal preference, but building these means you can't be building settlers.

with raging barbs, you need to protect your settlers when you send them out.

The AI tech trading is really aggressive right now, so don't expect a tech lead

 

[Ouchgeddon]

1) Getting Settlers out depends on how fast your city grows and how many Shields you produce per turn. So make your Worker Irrigate or Mine 1st rather than build roads. While waiting for the population to grow, build Warriors or other men to escort your upcoming Settler. Remember that a Settler knocks your city down by 2 every time, so at a certain point you should let your capital just grow.

2) I just Automate workers, and Wake them if I need a specific task done. Workers reduce city size by 1 too, so you have to balance that as well.

3) Cities too near together makes for lack of squares to harvest. Too far leaves gaps until Culture expands, and means fewer overall cities. But you can't always evenly space cities, cos of rival civ expansion or trying to get a good spot. The best spot for a city is usually next to fertile Grassland, resources, and especially Wheat and Cows. Seaside is okay too. A city in the middle of all Jungle will never grow unless you start chopping trees.

6) That is really annoying I know! Maybe you can load to a few turns earlier, then build Mines around the city. You have to pick the Wonder you really want, and take into consideration wht techs you start with and what you need to reach the wonder. For example, if you go right for Great Library then don't bother trading for techs.

A big shield producing city will help, or building a Palace or different wonder to gather shields, before switching to the wonder you want. There are other posts on this tactic. If you MUST have a civ, you can avoid having to appoint Entertainers in the Wonder making city by paying LOTS of cash. This way all your population can collect resources, preferably from shield-rich areas with Mines.

Is it really worth it? You might want to forgo the Ancient wonders and prepare to rush for Medieval ones. For example Oracle which loses its ability when Theology is learnt. Instead of going for that you could build up your empire, and target Sistine Chapel and Bach's Catherdral which never run out of time.


I'm sure all the pros can give better guides than this!

 

[Novice]

well no one was able to post before i got to tired and crashed so i tried a few things last night...

1) i did awesome pumping out settlers as i kept getting africa for some reason, this time the southern tip which i thought was awesome.. so imediately i sent three warrior/spearman to the choke point and fortified them effectively blocking africa from invasion..

2) heh or so i thought, it worked good for some time, i failed at keeping an eye on my science, sheesh i advanced way to slow, other civs rocked my world on getting the techs, and wonders i didnt even get a single wonder before i tried starting them, heh my dumb fault there, i had a good civ base going and plenty o protection, something along the lines of 6 or 7 cities all even spaced with one at the choke point and the others working my way up the right side of africa trying to fill the gap, russia had europe and then plops three cities on the left side of africa on fertile ground whammo im thinking o no im screwed, heres the kicker, i produced nothing but settlers, and spearman and a few workers, granted the barbs whacked one or two before i saw they needed protection, but i couldnt remember the stack command for moving units all together??? but it really ticked me off when i check military advisor and find russia considers my army weak when all i built was spears and settlers the entire game??

3) so again i ask where did i go wrong besides not beefing up my science, by the way i was trying the dont build science buy it game, very expensive, cost me like 800 gold for one of the techs i wanted and caused all other civs to build the wonders first..

just to clarify this is 1.17f

thanks for the tips

Novice

 

[rdomarat]

1) The first Tech I go for is Pottery to make sure I can make Granaries very early. Then, my capital and first eight cities (built three squares away on the four axis and on the diagonal) have a build queue that looks like :

Warrior -> Granary -> Settler -> Spearman -> Settler -> Worker -> Temple -> Settler -> Settler

For the capital, if I'm not an Expansionist Civ, I need to start building some other improvement and switch to Granary as soon as I get Pottery. Your second city is built a little later than the AI, but your growth is almost exponential once you hit the 4 or 5 cities. The early granary really lets you get a jump start, but it's at the cost of giving up on Early wonders, since most of your resources are going to new cities.

2) I micro manager workers until about 1000AD at which point I just hit Shift-A and let do whatever they want. I'll tend to have 3 or 4 workers that I micro-manage to get priority things done (like mining everything at the expense of irrigation in a city building a wonder)

3) There are no bad spots for cities. City may start out weak, but once you get railroads, even a city in the middle of a desert with irrigation and railroads can support a half decent population. Also, jungle cities eventually turn into huge cities once you clear the jungle away. Claim these spots before the AI does.

4) Not sure what you mean ....

5) If I start with room to expand, I tend to only build defensive units until I get Cavarly and then go stomping. Sometimes I'll rush into a war with Knights if I'm resource/luxury poor.

6) The only Wonders I worry about are Sistene Chapel and Hoover Dam. I let the other Civs build the other wonders and take them later with my Cavarly rush.

7) With Science, I always choose depth versus width when researching. Go deep into the tech tree down one branch, and then trade your advanced techs in the branch for a mess of other techs that all the other Civs will have except you.

Most of my strategies assume that you start with some room to expand. I'm still struggling a little with the early war if I find myself boxed in, so I've been playing games on a Tiny map with 16 civs to get the hang of it.

 

[BillChin]

My advice is to practice the early game and experiment to speed up the build out. In the articles section, "Three Basic Starting Strategies" outlines some techniques that work well on Regent, Monarch or Emperor difficulty, standard size map.

At the very beginning of the game, I like to move one or two turns looking for the best tile to plant the capital. Send the worker in one direction, preferrably a hill to see more land, and then pick the best square visible at that time. Settling on top of a luxury icon or near fresh water is a big leg up. I like to put my first two cities very close to the capital, to give an early production boost. My early build queue is usually three warriors, settler, three more warriors, settler. I usually build the first two settlers before a granary or temple.

Later cities are placed to claim resources for the first war (horses and iron). Optimal city spacing is not that important, unless you have no neighbors. The computer does a good job at placing cities and these will be yours.

I manage the workers until all cities are connected by roads and most of the mines that I want are built. After that I may set them to automated (Shift A).

 

[Novice]

think it was this morning after reading the earlier replies i got a good jump on the world map standard, btw i tend to play this right now only because i know what the map looks like, meaning i dont have to explore to find the choke points, anyway, im still trying pretty hard, the crappy thing was i got what would be considered the NE side of what the old ussr was, so no real choke points, kinda sucked, good thing was i was able to establish 8 or 9 good placed cities and secure valuable luxury resources, sad thing was i didnt get much in the way of wonders again so i think im just going to concede the early wonders, i also went with breadth vs the depth which in my opinion was dumb but hey i was well defended, i.e. i had two spearman per city and most were elite because of the barbs being on the RAGING setting, again with that setting you really cant move much when you first start so i may try one or two spots but if the place looks workable i got for it, anyway i did great but the ai did plop some cities in and one of them cut off the silk luxury i wanted although i had like 3 horse icons some wine and another couple luxuries, anyway it made me mad but it would have fallen to culture eventually or i could have built an offensive army, anyway i think i got the expansion stuff down, now if i could stop getting frustrated when i lose the spot i wanted to the ai, well i didnt actually quit this one, ive been having trouble with the game crashing at times when i right click after clicking go to on a worker, sometimes it just crashes the game.. bleh bleh, thanks for the tips and if you see something else to help please feel free, also anyone have the command that moves the stack of units all at once i cant seem to find it again>? also someone mind telling me what goal you should shoot for when managing workers in the early game? like should i go mines or irrigation i dont usually do monarch so i usually am the last one to benefit from improving i guess since i go for the wheel and horseback riding then i think its pyramids i shoot for? the one that gives the granary effect, cant remember anyway im switching it to go pottery first for granaries, will concede early wonders cept hero epic and such, and go for the medieval ones,

rambling here and need to log but any suggestions are helpful

Novice