Newbie is getting spanked

[cheshire_cat_sf]

I've just begun playing Civ 3 and I'm getting beaten at it pretty badly, even on the second easiest difficulty level. My tactic has been to crank out as many settlers as I can so I can get as many cities as possible. I'll plop down a city anywhere there's room for it.

Once most of the available land has been seized, I'll start going for the culture: Building temples and such. Eventually though what'll happen is someone will declare war on me. Since I've spent all my time on culture, I have almost no military and consequently get steamrolled.

If I try to amass a military, it seems like I either begin to run out of gold or else the other civs begin to overwhelm me with their culture.

So...what am I doing wrong? Any good, basic newbie tips are especially appreciated as I'm kinda new to the whole Civ world (but loving it!)

 

[Polonius]

The first tip is to simply start on the easiest level - Chieftain. It might sound like a dumb tip but there's a lot to master in the game and initially you get the balance wrong (well I certainly did)

The "benchmark" level is Regent, as far as the AI build speed goes. Harder than than that the AI cranks out stuff like rabbits breeding, but on easier settings it slows down. OK, pretty obvious stuff perhaps - but look at the figures:

On Chieftain the AI takes 200% of the Regent build time.
On Warlord (2nd level) it takes 120% of the Regent build time.

When you first start out you will be unlikely to match the AI for build speed as you will be doing it in an unbalanced and inefficient way (and you'll swear blind that you're doing as well it can be done!). Playing Chieftain for a while just allows you to suss out a whole bunch of management and balance issues without the AI pestering you. or wiping the floor with you, too often!

There's a whole bunch of stuff that you need to master (and I still need to master, come to that) about how to optimise your build sites, development strategies etc so that the cities grow in a fast but stable manner.

Good luck and have fun!

 

[Polonius]

Oh, and it's probably best not to overdo the culture initially, as culture victories are a bit of an art in their own right. I started exactly like you - leaning towards the culture idea - but didn't get a culture win until my 6th victory. My first game I had to switch to attack mid-game when i started to run into similar problems to you. Fortunately, on Chieftain, that was possible.

Others might disagree, but I found that going for a Histographic (points) victory on Chieftain level with a mixture of modest Culture and a bit of general attack/defence/trade etc was a fairly achievable goal. I'm crawling before I run, so started on easy settings and modest map sizes. This way I won my first 6 games straight so it wasn't so painful!! (1 by Culture, 1 by Domination and 4 on points). I'm now cranking it all up and trying more ambitious stuff.

 

[eMarkM]

If the AI is declaring war on you it's probably because they view your military as weak. They almost never get aggressive if you have a lot more units than they do. Don't be afraid to sacrifice some population under despotism (aka pop rush) to get military parity if you're behind. This way you don't use up gold. Post your save game to the forum and we can give more detailed advice.

e