Newbie Help

[Maximus07]

I just got the game (civ 3) a few days ago, and after reading the manual somewhat and playing a bit I'm quite confused. First of all, I'm having problems with getting iron. It seems crazy rare to find, and when I do find it, its 20-30 turns away. I send a worker to build a colony on it, but I don't seem to be getting the iron. Do I need a road connecting the colony to my city? I set the workers to auto and they are not building a road to it...I tried manually getting them to build a road, but it doesn't seem to be working.

I also don't understand what you're supposed to do in the begging. Turn after turn passes without me doing anything but waiting...is this right? Coming from real time strategy games, this seems odd.

Any tips/help appreciated, thanks!

 

[Maximus07]

For some reason one AI player declared war on more (for no reason),and 2 other AI's joined in an alliance? Thats really unfair, there is only one other AI. How can I make an alliance with an AI, or bribe the others to join my side?

 

[Tone]

I send a worker to build a colony on it, but I don't seem to be getting the iron. Do I need a road connecting the colony to my city?

yes. You need a road connecting any resource to your cities forthose cities to use the resource. Don't rely on a colony long term, as the AI can build a city there and then you lose the resource. Build more settlers and claim the lands yourself. Just be aware that the city itself will be next to useless if it is far away from your capital due to corruption but the iron will make it worth sending a settler this far away.

And don't set you workers to automate as they do stupid things. There are so many things I could say but you might be better off reading some of the threads in here that deal with this type of thing. All I would say is that you start the game in despotsim, which carries a penalty of -1 food/shields/commerce on any tile. This means that it is not worth irrigating a grass tile (unless it has a food bonus such as a cow or wheat) during despotism but automated workers will do such things.

I also don't understand what you're supposed to do in the begging. Turn after turn passes without me doing anything but waiting...is this right? Coming from real time strategy games, this seems odd.

Get a couple of warriors built and explore your surroundings and go looking for contacts. Getting contacts enables you to trade techs and multiple contacts with the same techs make those techs cheaper for you to buy. It also helps you find potential victims for later on! The game can be slowish early on but the decisions you make can affect how your game progresses. If you don't build settlers and workers very often and start by building every improvement in a city first (temples, barracks, etc), the game will remain slowish. Build settlers whenever possible (especially in food rich cities), try to have 1-2 workers per city, develop your core lands, build the odd barracks in high shield/low food cities and then build some units and conquer is what I'd suggest.

Re alliances: you need the Writing tech and have established an embassy with any potential allies. The AI will look to dogpile, but that can apply to AI vs AI conflicts as well so it's not really unfair, just survival of the fittest. You can prevent this by getting an ally (or even several) early on in the conflict as the AI very rarely does this in the first few turns or you can have a 'Bring It On' attitude and accept the war happiness that comes with the civs declaring on you. It all depends upon how strong you are. Razing or taking a couple of AI cities will bring them round to the negotiating table without wanting an arm and a leg. Razing has more effect but you are more likely to be hated after the conflict ceases.

If it helps, post a save here and someone will look at it and give you some more specific advice.

 

[Maximus07]

Thank you for that excellent post, I appreciate it. I was owned in the end, because even after making peace deals everyone always combined and went against me (i'm assuming thats what you call "dogpile"). Sort of unfair, especially for a beginner, but I have learned from it. I had very few cities and only concentrated on getting culture up.

Thanks!

 

[ecuwins]

War Academy is very useful starting out:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/

 

[Rising Star]

First of all Maximus, welcome to the forum.

That sounds like the AI is really giving you a fair bit of trouble. I never got dogpiled in the lowest difficulty settings, which I'm assuming you're on as you're a beginner. You may want to check and make sure you haven't defaulted it to a higher one by accident. Deity will murder you even after months of play.

As Tone said, you need to road all the way to any luxury/strategic resources in order to get their benefits. You're far better off building settlers and getting the resources inside your culture zone than building colonies. I almost never build colonies, except in times of desperation where, I really need something like Iron, or later in the game Rubber. And automating your workers is a bad idea, as Tone said, they do many stupid things.

I'd suggest going to the War Academy here, and reading some of the introductory articles, likes Cracker's Opening Play Strategies and Bamspeedy's Settler's. I'm only new here myself, and aren't sure how to provide links to those pages yet, so if anyone else is reading, I'd appreciate it if you could link Maximus to them for me. They helped me a lot, and I've owned the game since shortly after it came out, which was about five years ago I think. If they helped me, they can help you. There are also many tips threads here, such as the Single Player Tips thread stuck to the top of the page.

 

[Tone]

I'd suggest going to the War Academy here, and reading some of the introductory articles, likes Cracker's Opening Play Strategies and Bamspeedy's Settler's. I'm only new here myself, and aren't sure how to provide links to those pages yet, so if anyone else is reading, I'd appreciate it if you could link Maximus to them for me.

Links added to the quote above. Note that these are just two of the articles in the War Acadamy that ecuwins has already linked you to.

@Rising Star: to provide a link, first copy the URL then when you make the post just click on the Insert Link option and then paste your link into the pop-up box. To insert a word to the link, just quote this post and see what is typed in. Hope that helps.

 

[Rising Star]

Thanks Tone. No need to quote you, it shows up on the email the site sent me.

 

[Quintillus]

You'll want to focus more on getting lots of cities than getting culture early on. Culture does become important later on, but early in the game you need to claim all the land you can through more cities. This gives you more commerce (gold []) and shields (production []), of which you'll need all you can get. Once you've claimed most of the land between you and the nearest AI's, you can focus more on culture and be confident the AI's won't have an overwhelming number of cities.

I have been dogpiled at Chieftan. In my first game I was at was with a good 7/17 of the world at once. So it's certainly not impossible. Once you discover writing and build a few embassies you can turn the table and dogpile your enemies (provided you have enough gold/tech to get allies, of course).

 

[King Hannibal]

At the start if you build a warrior or have a scout from the start press "E" as that will send it off to colonys wich may give you techs, gold, warriors, nothing or settlers.

My startting moves are build settler then warriors from capitol whilst building setlers from the second town. Third town i build workers this will get you up and running.

 

[Rising Star]

You'll also need granaries, to create the settler and worker factories that KH mentioned. They halve the amount of time needed for city growth, which means you can have a never ending cycle of a new settler every four or new worker every two turns with a steady population.

 

[Tasslehoff]

Depending on your civ version, you might be able to (and want to) lower the AI aggressiveness, at least until you get used to building infrastructure, military, and other sections of the game. Make sure you understand the uses and abilities of each building or unit before you build it, and take a look at the war academy linked to earlier. Good luck!

 

[LowEndUser]

For some reason one AI player declared war on more (for no reason),and 2 other AI's joined in an alliance? Thats really unfair, there is only one other AI. How can I make an alliance with an AI, or bribe the others to join my side?

One of the many _undocumented features_ of the Game is that the AI Civs know your unit strength, in each City, and often, but not always , will gang up on you early Game if you don`t maintain a strong Military from the get go. I usually have a warrior/spearman in each city, with a barracks in the city near the expected direction of attack, and build at least 2-3 Archers as soon as I meet another Civ for counter attacking before they get to the City.

Usually they will just send a few warriors against you, however this can distract you from building /roading up your core.

When I can I`ll establish Embassies. IMO this is $$ well spent, because it allows you to form alliances, show you where their Capitial is, what their building in it, and an indication of how long it will take for them to get troops to you if they DOW.

However, IMHO, unless your on an island with one or two other Civs, an extended early war is a Game Killer because while your fighting & spending $$$ maintaning - building units another Civ is running away with the Tech Race and expanding Cities.