Newbie - diplomatic relations problem

[Zima]

First, id like to say hello to everyone, since im new here.

I bought Civilization3 few days ago. I got the basics, felt very well in the game, and even wiped my enemies in my very first game,Yay. At the lowest difficult level of course . And then, i started playing at modified earth-like map(Honshu islands for japanese, british islands for english has been slightly risen, lots of barbarians has been added) and ive chosen a russians (im a fan of red alert series ) and began playing. Since i first wanted a game a little realistic i kicked few default civs (left those considered today as 'superstates') and tried to gain territory similar to today's russia. To do that, i had to focus on expansion, making lots of settlers. I behaved polietly, unlike my first game, and made friends with almost anyone, giving them cash and selling techs for almost nothing instead. Just about i was close to medieval ages things changed. Or should i say, they did not - Chinese, which seemed to be 'friendly' toward me all the time, kept sightseeing around my territory for a couple of turns. In my first game, my allies did so while passing my country, so did the neutral players, so i didnt bothered with them very much.Just few turns when i turned my goverment from 'despotic' to 'republic' - the chinesse declared war against me. When i changed gov to republic, i had to reduce the amount of soldiers...chinesse were around those unprotected parts its easy to predict what happened next - they destroyed(yeah, destroyed, not conquered) few towns.. Of course, they attacked me with 5 archers or so, their civ is in anarchy, and they have lots of weak points in their defense...but they just did too much mess. Here goes my questions: Can i avoid this war somehow? Are those AI players that smart and calculated to betray with a 'smile on a face' like that? Were i blinded with my arrogance or i made a mistake somewhere(or couple of them)? The game level is very low (the second from the left). If anyones interested, i can attach a save file.

 

[Gosnork]

Whenever the AI is wandering around in your territory, shadow them with fast units. What I mean is to keep a unit in the closest city to the AI unit. As soon as he moves towards another unprotected city, move your unit. I use Horsemen, Knights, Cavalry or whatever the fastest unit is that I have sitting around to do this. The AI sees unprotected cities as an open door, even if they are weaker than you they will still sometimes take advantage of the situation.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Yeah. If the AI thinks it can get away with something, it probably will - especially Militaristic Civs like the Chinese and the Germans. It actually looks (from what you've said) that you have a very good understanding of the game for only having it a few days.

You do not need to get rid of units when you switch to Republic from Despotism, though. It can get kind of tricky when you're starting out (or not used to it), but Republic is probably the best govt in the game (if you want help with it, go http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=261620).

Some things to keep in mind when dealing with the AI is that it isn't very smart, it just knows a lot more than you - it does, for example, know where *all* your units are at any given time. You can abuse this, however, by leaving a city in the middle of your empire empty, so the AI goes for it while you attack it with mobile troops.

Anyway ... Short answers to your questions: 1) Yes, you could avoid the war with China. It may hurt, but you can almost always buy off any civ, at least for a few turns. 2) Again, the AI isn't that smart, but if it sees an advantage it will likely try to take it. 3) You weren't blinded by arrogance, and I don't think you made any real mistakes - you just have to get used to the game's quirks (like changing the Lux/Sci sliders in Republic).

Also, congratulations on realizing that you should jump to Warlord quickly. The game is 'even' on Regent, so you still get bonuses over the AI, but Warlord will actually teach you things - Chieftain is not good for much besides letting you play around with the civs to determine preference for UU and such.

 

[Zima]

Thanks for the tips. I played lots of similar strategy games before (i never played civilization, i have no idea how in the world i never heard of it ). This site helped me a lot, too. Answers for most of my questions were in FAQ or certain strategies.

When i played with militaristic civ (japan+ facism) many civs did a lot to get in peace with me, altrough they all hated me (i 'razed' lots of towns and ignored their demands). I considered the game quite easy, thats why i moved to next level.

My main goal is communism (it says its the safest if i wish to conquer, not raze, every city in my way), but i tought Republic will help me with production problem (mass making of settlers is really painful, especially because production sucks in despotism).

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Chieftain is easy - often ridiculously so.

I haven't used Communism that much, but it is a really late-game govt to go for, same as Fascism and Democracy. Where did it say Commie was safest for conquering, BTW? Despotism does suck - the only thing worse than it is anarchy.

 

[Gosnork]

Communism is the best for conquering IF you want those cities to be like regular productive cities. Communism's corruption is the best in the game, and it has great unit support, so it's perfect for domination games. One thing to note, build Courthouses and Police Stations ASAP in Commie, and cash rush as many as possible before the switch. Temples and Cathedrals aren't needed, since you can have 4 MP and have 0 WW. Capture 1 of every lux and ajust the cities tiles so that they each support 20 citizens. Once you get factories and the Hoover Damn you should have droves of 70+ SPT metros. Commercial is a good trait for Commie because it adds 4 gold to the city square of all metros, and ruduces corruption. Another thing, give your cities as many of the 21 tiles as possible, when I use Commie I plant my cities CxxC and drop a city in the 4 tile excess in the center of every 4 cities. Once Hospitals arrive, disband those cities to let your real cities reach size 20.

 

[Zima]

Chieftain is easy - often ridiculously so.
Where did it say Commie was safest for conquering, BTW? Despotism does suck - the only thing worse than it is anarchy.

Obviously every system seems to be better than despotism, however i got used to it. Very good unit support means lots of units, strenght lies in numbers (at least at the beggining of the game) selling human to haste the production...i noticed some of my cities produce little shields, which usually they're wasted anyway however, they produce lots of food. This means the population limit is hit very fast...They're reproducing like rabbits, so i prefer to sacrifice a small group of people than spending 260 gold (or so) to speed up the creation of, for example, temple...

 

[MAS]

Why build a temple unless you are trying for a 100k culture victory?

If you build settlers and workers, you won't hit the pop limit.

Those far away corrupt cities can be used as specialist farms, there is no need to build anything in them.

 

[The Professor]

Welcome to the forums!

A lot of people really like Republic, because it automatically gives you one additional commerce for every tile that is already producing any commerce.

However, to get the most out of Republic, you need to use Specialist Farms. I suggest that you look at Bede's article, The Role of the Specialist Citizen in the War Academy. This will allow you to use those high-food, low-shield areas of your empire to increase your gold, research, or both.

Oh, and to add to what Gosnark said initially about Chinese troops in your territory, you can go to the Diplomacy screen (F4) and click on Mao, and tell him to leave. Usually, it will give you the option to tell him to leave or declare war. Then, either his troops will teleport out of your territory, or he will have to declare war on your turn, so if you've got some fast movers in the vicinity, you should be able to damage, and hopefully destroy, his stack before he has a chance to do any damage. Plus, your people will get war happiness.

Oh, and, welcome to the forums!