Post Short Single Player Tips Here

Are you sure about pint 2? In real life yes, but I have done that trick a few times on different opponents in the same game when they new each other.

The links i provided describe the mechanism in greater detail. Those articles are a great reference. Usually i avoid getting into a situation where a trashed reputation becomes relevant, thus i cannot offer comprehensive first hand experience.

And personally I think the Temple of Artemis is worthwhile.

With 500 shields it is the most expensive wonder of the ancient age. Using a Great Scientific Leader for it may be convenient. But else it seem a lot wiser to build 17 horsemen for those shields and conquer cities, possible containing that wonder. At emperor and above AI tend to finish wonders in a timely fashion. It is somewhat helpful if AI wastes 500 shields for that wonder instead of building an army worth of 500 shields instead.
 
I consider the Temple of Artemis a HUGE cheat, in favor of the player. If you really want to attempt SID, use the editor to get rid of Artemis. It makes it way too easy for the player.

My tip: keep unfortified units in cities or locations you wanted/need to be reminded to examine every turn, such as a city that you want to keep an eye on laborer distribution in as it grows/expands. Forgetting to do something, even if only for a turn or two, can be very costly.
 
The usefulness of ToA also depends on the map. On archipelago it's hardly worth the effort.
And on Sid I disagree with agonistes: removing it from the game makes it easier for the player, not harder: On Sid the AI usually builds it long before the human player even has the required tech...
 
And the ToA helps the AI get a boost to their already massive culture growth rate.
The ToA as far as I'm concerned is good only when going for domination or 100k. Otherwise it isn't worth the effort.
 
Why do you consider it a cheat?

No, you've got it all backward. Its a cheat because the AI wastes time trying to build it and its so expensive. It makes it much easier for the player to gobble up land.
 
Agonistes, so you're basically saying its so crappy that its just nice to have the AI waste his time on it ?
(which is probably right)
 
Agonistes, so you're basically saying its so crappy that its just nice to have the AI waste his time on it ?

I'm going beyond that. I'm saying the only rational explanation for its existence in the game is that the dev who created it kept losing on SID, and the other devs were laughing at him, so he (or she) created it for the sole purpose of increasing a player's chances of winning - hence, a cheat. Its cost is nowhere near its value, and the negative margin between its cost and absolute value is greater than for any other wonder by a considerable amount. For such a pile of crap, it comes very early in the game, and most of the AI civs seem to attempt to build it, thereby wasting a heap ton of shields during the most critical age of the game - when the early expansion is still occurring.

Even if its effect was permanent, it would still cost too much.

If you doubt me, play 20 SIDs with it, and 20 without, in that order, just through the first age, and take note of the difference in rate of expansion for the AIs. In the 2nd 20, you will find yourself having opportunities to settle in spots where you did not before, and catch yourself thinking, "I can't believe I beat the AI to that spot with a settler."

Now, its been my experience that the Native American civs are the quickest expansionists. Playing with 31 civs consistently for a number of years, before I tweaked the game to eliminate them, without fail, but with the exception maybe of the Aztecs, the NA civs always had the largest civs following the end of the expansion explosion. So its possible that the ToA was an effort to slow down those particular civs. Which of course didn't work - it slows down every civ. Except the player's. So I guess there are two possible reasons for its existence. Either way, it gives such a boost to the player's chance for success I consider it a cheat.
 
Stumbled across this keyboard shortcut I don't remember encountering before. Most people know to use Clean Up Map (Ctrl-Shift-M) to hide man-made structures (cities, roads, units, etc.) on the map, thus making it easier to spot those elusive resources. By default, everything gets hidden but did you know you can customize the settings?

Press Ctrl-Shift-N to open a Clean Map Preferences window. This enables you to set what items are hidden when you use Clean Up Map. Want to hide the mountains? That's a choice. For me, I turned off Hide Territory Boundaries, making it easier to see if a resource was within my reach or not.

Pressing the OK (O) control executes Clean Up Map. Press the Cancel (X) control to exit without saving any changes.

Not sure how I missed this nor could I find a reference to it anywhere. Hope this tip is useful to someone somewhere.
 

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Stumbled across this keyboard shortcut I don't remember encountering before. Most people know to use Clean Up Map (Ctrl-Shift-M) to hide man-made structures (cities, roads, units, etc.) on the map, thus making it easier to spot those elusive resources. By default, everything gets hidden but did you know you can customize the settings?

Press Ctrl-Shift-N to open a Clean Map Preferences window. This enables you to set what items are hidden when you use Clean Up Map. Want to hide the mountains? That's a choice. For me, I turned off Hide Territory Boundaries, making it easier to see if a resource was within my reach or not.

Pressing the OK (O) control executes Clean Up Map. Press the Cancel (X) control to exit without saving any changes.

Not sure how I missed this nor could I find a reference to it anywhere. Hope this tip is useful to someone somewhere.
yuas, uxtrimlee handy to spod them rivurs, to prevend yu from attack from across of them
 
Found another one.

Press Ctrl-Shift-L to open a Locate City window that lists all the cities in the current game. Italics indicate cities owned by other civs with the appended civ name.

To use, select a city name and press the OK [O] control or double-click the city name to jump to that city on the map.
 

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Found another one.

Press Ctrl-Shift-L to open a Locate City window that lists all the cities in the current game. Italics indicate cities owned by other civs with the appended civ name.

To use, select a city name and press the OK [O] control or double-click the city name to jump to that city on the map.
According to the cheat-sheets (Civ3data.zip and Civ3C3Cdata.zip; both unzip to PDFs) which you can download from this page on CFC, the 'locate city' command is actually just 'Shift-L'.

That's assuming that the command-lists are accurate, anyway. Admittedly, I haven't checked every detail, and I do know that the Conquests PDF wasn't 100% updated from the PTW-version. For example, it still includes Radio in the Industrial Age tech-tree, lists the HooverDam cost as 800s,* and indeed, omits the 'Ctrl-Shift-N' command (I also found that one by accidentally mistyping N for M one time!) -- but most of the other info seems to be good.

*EDIT:
My mistake: 800s for Hoovers is correct. I had always assumed it was 1000s (maybe it was in Vanilla...?)
 
SO much amazing advice in this thread :) I think my favorites were
Spoiler :
1) if you find a 1-space wide land bridge between two large portions of a continent, build a city so that your ships can go right through

2) turn everybody in a conquered city into specialists so you can starve them out and replace them with your own more loyal citizens

3) make sure you turn on the "Pause at End of Turn" setting that defaults to "Off,"

4) in the Three Sisters scenario, move your first Settler as close to the volcanoes as possible


Though I did notice the conspicuous absence of what used to be my own favorite for PTW/Complete specifically: turn on the Mass Regicide option but not the Regicide option.

By keeping one King unit defended in your capital, all of the others will be free to explore the map as a large number of first-turn Scouts who can defend themselves (by the way, use them to look around for a bit before Settling your first city). The AI will have the King units too, but in my experience will keep all of them in their capital and leave you with the advantage in collecting all of the goody huts for free technology, Workers, and the occasional Settler.

It's like if you alone, out of everybody on the map, get to have Expansionist as a third civilization trait, only better :)

EDIT: just came up with another one after looking over the difficulty charts, but it doesn't look like anybody's mentioned it before, so

Don't play against Scientific and/or Militaristic AIs on the highest difficulty levels. Scientific AIs get extra spearmen on their first turn and Militaristic AIs get extra Archers, but everybody else only get a bunch of Warriors.
 
Does anybody ever use this Middle Ages war tactic for India? I've never actually done this myself, I just got the idea from watching a Let's Play series on Youtube.

Build a large stack of War Elephants, send them through AI territory, and capture a small town far from the closest border of your own empire (possibly dead center of their empire, possibly on the opposite side from yours). After crushing the resistance, rush production of a Temple and Cathedral (easy when you're Commercial/Religious) to minimize the chance of the town culture-flipping back, then start building Elephants, Elephants, Elephants. Don't even worry about rushing barracks first.

Now start expanding from there. The AI now has two fronts to fight in, and one of the two fronts is able to build extra-HP Knights inside enemy territory with no access to Horses or Iron required.

So far, the two problems I'm seeing are
  • It would get very expensive very quickly having to rush production of everything, seeing as you will only ever be making 1 shield per turn regardless of what you do
  • Even with religious buildings, you have set up a very strong chance of culture flipping just by being so far from your own capital and so close to theirs, so you would want to keep most of your units outside of the town in case they need to take it back
 
After crushing the resistance

I never try to crush resistance until a war has ended, except on the turn I capture a city. No, I haven't tried that approach. On a higher level, if they have horses, you won't keep that far away city and you'll probably lose military in the meantime. I suppose you might capture it, gift it away, and use the teleport to save your troops.
 
I never try to crush resistance until a war has ended, except on the turn I capture a city.
Huh, really? Even if the town is really small, like maybe just 2-3 people?

No, I haven't tried that approach. On a higher level, if they have horses, you won't keep that far away city and you'll probably lose military in the meantime.
True, but you are diverting their troops away from your own border at the same time.

I suppose you might capture it, gift it away, and use the teleport to save your troops.
Oh, that is brilliant. Capture a town, gift it to a third party, capture another town, gift it to a fourth party, possibly recapture the first town if it culture-flips from the third party back to your enemy, but gift it to a fifth party instead of giving it back to the third... Obviously, you would need to start out with a lot more Knights (or any UU variation thereof) than you need for the home front, but if you do, then you'll never need to worry again about going into a war alone.
 
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