New to Civ 3 and somethin' aint right...

[MacKeyser]

I used to play Civ II a fair amount, though with 4 kids, I never did have the time to be really good at it. I also had a fairly slow machine, so later stages of the game got to be REALLY slow.

Anyhoo, I have a new 17" PowerBook (first new computer in 7 years!) now and of course had to have Civ 3 with it. I downloaded the 1.21g patch prior to playing my first game.

Even though I am playing on the easiest level, I am getting ####-hammered by the AI and that ain't no joke. As soon as the other Civs discover each other, they declare war against me and all I end up doing is defending my 4-6 cities (thank god for granary or I wouldn't be lasting as long as I am) against as many as 4 other Civs, who either won't talk to me, want more money to settle up than I have (and the treacherous retches will only redeclare war in a few turns anyway, or so it has been so far) or are friendly for a few turns, get annoyed quite quickly and then declare war. I haven't so much "lost" as lost interest in these games as clearly they end up going nowhere. I can defend the cities against what they send, but can't really grow, search the map or really do anything but defend my cities ad nauseum. Considering that I'm not crossing anyone's borders, I'm lost as to how I am losing the attitude war so quickly, especially on the easiest setting.

So, what am I doing wrong? Do I need to build my cities closer together? Should I be building fortresses? I guess I am just at a loss. On such an easy level, it shouldn't be this much work. I'm not a completely inexperienced player, but this almost feels like I've come across either a bug in the game setup (I prefer Pangea as I was never a seafaring adventuring type) or else certain of combos of opponents in the default can really pose problems (i.e. the Romans have proven to ALWAYS break treaties, declare war and effectively will lay seige to whichever town is closest to their empire. I understand the whole "militaristic" aspect of things, but to that degree on the easiest setting? Is Civ III really that much harder than Civ II?

 

[wilbill]

It's not so much harder as it is different. The AI, though still fairly predictable, is more complex.
Sounds like you're building enough units to defend yourself, so when you get one of those "give me...or else" ulitimatums from the AI, try telling them to take a hike. Sometimes they'll back off. To stay on better terms with them, engage in trade. Trade techs, maps, luxuries, whatever. They like that. Also, build embassies. Sign ROP's with them. You'll see their attitudes improve.
And welcome to CFC.

 

[Hygro]

Trade with them is one useful thing to do.

You say 4-6 cities? How many cities does the computer have? Also, could you post a screenshot of what your city layout is like (you indicated they were spread out).

Also, if you post a savegame I could further analyze things.

The computer is far more willing to declare war if you don't have many units. But spend too much time on units and you don't have other imporvements... a save of your game would be quite helpful.

 

[Belisar]

Apart from being harder on the high difficult levels, the new Civ III AI is not 100% predictable. Remember Civ II where peace treaties were ALWAYS adhered by the AI,
now some civs will sometimes sneak-attack you or they will extort you.
I consider this as a major improvement, because it got very boring in Civ II, were the human player was able to predict every war decleration.
If you have only a few cities and a weak military, the AI will DEFINITELY attack you .
I never played on the lowest difficult levels, but your main goal should be: out-expand the
AI in the early stage of the game (pangea-setting is perfectly right for that, you don't want 4 cities, you want 40 )
If you are strong enough, you can play peacefully (trade with the other civs, a succesful trade raises yor reputation. If a civ attacks your military should already have an advantage in tech AND quantity, additional, you can 'buy' alliances with other civs against the enemy) or conquer the world, which should be no problem with superior military from all these highly productive cities.

 

[Hurricane]

There are 2 rules to remember when avoiding unwanted wars:

1) Have enough units. The AI compares strength mainly on number of units, not their actual strength. So don't build very many defensive units (like spearmen), instead build warriors (to upgrade to Swordsmen) and horsemen. Check with the military advisor; if he says "our military is weak compared to X" (where X is your neighbor), build some more units.

2) Always pay tribute if asked. It is a cheap way of avoiding war. Even if a remote and totally undangerous civ declares war on you, they will soon have dragged your neighbors into the war through alliances.

 

[Bamspeedy]

If you post a screenshot of your cities that would help. If you want to post a saved game, then you would probably get better help in the Mac forums, due to compatability issues with PC vs. Mac saves. (I'm assuming you are a Mac player due to the forum style you are using and I think 1.21g is the mac patch).

Civ3-Macintosh

For basics on AI attitude, I recommend this article:

AI attitude

P.S. You don't need to read all 5 pages, just the first post or two.

For improving your opening play sequences (worker tasks in the early part of your game to make your civ much more powerful), I recommend this article:

Improving Your Opening Play Sequences

You may eventually want spearman in your cities, but at the very start, you generally want to just pump out warriors. Warriors are cheap and work just as good for military police and exploring duties. Generally, I would recommend very little infrastructure until you have a few cities in place. 1, maybe 2 granaries may be a good investment early on. I wouldn't go heavy on infrastructure until most, if not all the land is claimed. The important thing is getting many cities built as soon as possible.

# of cities and territory size also counts towards your power ranking, so if you can get several cities built quickly and 2 warriors in each of them (for military police), you should have a reasonable sized military/power to make the AI think twice about demanding things from you. Usually, the AI does only demand from you what you could make in 1-2 turns, so it may be worth it to give into his demands, for now....(get revenge later).

Get contacts with other civs as soon as possible and trade techs with them, so they don't get the techs you have from other civs and leave you behind. They may get a nice little jump start when they trade their starting techs, and getting techs from goody huts, but they will soon slow down in tech research.

For science, I would recommend going as high as possible (100%), on chieftain. Which is kind of weird, because on higher levels, players go with 10% science gambits (minimal research, but still yield a tech every 40 turns) and they just buy (or trade) for the more commonly researched techs. Don't go with 20-50% science. When you play more games, you will find that the AI tends to avoid or put less priority on certain techs. You can research these, thus beating the AI to it and trading it for all their techs.

 

[skorn]

Nice job Bamspeedy. Excellent information there. I only wish I had asked for help when I first started Civ3. MacKeyser, I had a similar experience when I first started Civ3. Coming from Civ2, and spanking it on diety, I thought I could easily handle chieftain. NOT! Well, after months of play, and lots of reading the forums, I'm beating emperor now. I still think however, that the ONLY way I'll beat deity in civ3 will be playing on a tiny map and getting very very lucky
Anyway, good luck and cya

 

[MacKeyser]

First of all, thanks for the kind welcome to CFC. I find it (Civ III) to be a nice break from my other addiction, Diablo II (and better dreams, too...lol).

Okay. As to posting a saved game, that should be no problem, I just need to know where and how. I think I read it somewhere, but I can't remember now and this site is a bit overwhelming in its scope.

Bamspeedy - Thanks for the tips. Turns out that I already read those things links you posted, just ended up reading them after posting my question. Still, they only partially answered my questions. As well, I guess that I just disagree that unless I engage in tons of initial trade right away, I should end up in a multiple front war against several Civs. That isn't historically accurate at all. If anything, it actually took time for various civs to work out workable trading models, so if anything, setting up early, effective trade should be the more difficult thing.

Anyhow, I will save any other grousing until you all let me know where I can post my savegame and let me know what is up. Oh, btw, I have broken no treaties, paid off guys whenever possible, traded whenever possible (I always try to work on trade because it is easily the weakest part of my game, so I try to work on it the hardest) and basically done my best to be the best world citizen. That meant something in Civ II if I remember, meaning that other civs remembered what kind of player you were. Is it now much more of a "what have you done for me lately?", because that is SOOO French (not-French bashing, but certainly accurate since 1800). Another reason to love the game? I dunno, but not being a person who enjoys politics, espionage, or even winning militarily (funny coming from someone who was in the Navy), I find this change horribly distressing.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Go to the very bottom of this page (or any page), and you will see where it says 'upload file'. Click on that and follow the directions. Then after you submit the file, you will get a confirmation message (this can take a few minutes) and there will be some links of the different servers the files are on. Yours would be in the newest file server. Click on the column 'latest uploaded' or something like that so the files get sorted by date/time they were uploaded. (click on it twice, so that the most recent ones are listed first to find your file the easiest). Then right click on it and ask for properties. In the properties it will show the link. Copy and paste the link, and then post the link into your reply.

 

[Hurricane]

Or just use the "post reply" button. You will then note that under the text box you type in there is a small box with the title "attach file". Just click on browse, look up the file you want to upload, and it will automatically be uploaded when you click "submit reply".

The upload function in better if you want to be able to link to your file from several different posts, want to include several files in one post, or if the file is too big. None of those should come in question here.

 

[MacKeyser]

Well, here is my saved game. Hope I got the link right.

My Saved Game

Again, thanks for all of the help. I have bookmarked this site and once I get better, plan to do what I can to be a resource (that is, IF I get any better...LOL).

 

[Dwarven Zerker]

don't worry about not having experience to be a resource. I can assure you that if you are playing emporer level games you can be a resource already! I just started my first monarch game a couple of weeks ago (only get about 2 or 3 hours play time each week and love to play huge maps so a game will take 1 or 2 months to play) and don't think I'll move to emporer for a few games. I know I (and others as well) could benefit from the knowledge you already have.

Besides, if you keep playing at emporer you will get better. The human spirit can't stand getting beat and will strive to overcome any obstacle on its way to success.

Happy civving!