Post short tips here!

[Ozymandius]

Civilization III should really be called Conqueror III or Genghis Khan wannabees, or maybe "Atilla's Horde gets revenge on the civilized world."
Make peace, re-organize your troops and stab em in the back till their presence has been cleansed from the map. Genocide, not culture, is the final solution to flipping cities and a high score.

 

[aofl]

Originally posted by Ozymandius
Civilization III should really be called Conqueror III or Genghis Khan wannabees, or maybe "Atilla's Horde gets revenge on the civilized world."
Make peace, re-organize your troops and stab em in the back till their presence has been cleansed from the map. Genocide, not culture, is the final solution to flipping cities and a high score.

Yeah Baby! Yeah!

 

[Forthoffer]

You can find the answers to many of your questions about government types, costs of advances, units, terrain, wonders, etc. by launching the Civ3Edit app that came with Civ3, opening the Civ3Mod.bic file, and doing Edit Rules. You can see what's happening without actually editing the file.

If you want to actually change the rules, make a backup of the Civ3Mod.bic file first.

Note that with patch 1.21f, changing the Civ3Mod.bic file does not change the rules of any saved game.

Tip: The fastest way I've found to crank out settlers at the beginning is to,
1) Set Science to 100%, researching Pottery.
2) While building a warrior, have your worker build a road, then a mine on shield-producing grasslands.
3) After the warrior is built, send it exploring nearby while starting on a Barracks. Make sure the warrior comes back in time to keep the city happy when it grows.
4) When you get Pottery, switch to make a Granary.
5) When the Granary is made, start on the Settler, and have your Worker head toward the previously-scouted second city site.
6) Time pop growth and construction so you get pop 3 just as the Settler builds (important if you're playing Diety level).

The difficulty level and civ-specific abilities can affect details, but the principles remain the same.
a) Pre-build Barracks so you can build a Granary ASAP after getting Pottery.
b) Decide whether to build roads first versus mines first so that Barracks will complete shortly after you get Pottery. This may mean building roads on two tiles before building mines on either tile.
c) If you have special resources nearby, you can pause with paper and pencil to figure out what is going to happen for different choices. You know exactly how much science and shields will be produced until your city grows. You know when your city grows, and you can figure out how much science and shields will be produced when the population increases. It's just a little bit of arithmetic. It's not hard at all. Try it. You'll like it!

 

[sutton]

This tip is for beginners (or perhaps those new to the conquest goal, like myself).

Somewhere in the course of your conquest you may find yourself in a somewhat prolonged calvary vs. rifelman situation. And defeating several 12 sized cities, each with a few fortified riflemen can leave you wondering if you'll ever have enough to do the trick (I oncle lost an army of calvary, attacking with full strength, without putting one hit on such a fortified rifleman!).

Particularly when the enemy is rocked back on its heels, incapapble of a sizeable counter-attack into your territory, there is a temptation to limit ones production to offensive units (in this case calvary). This is particularly true if you are razing rather than trying to hold conquered cities.

But resist this temptation.

Calvary have horrible defensive properties (d=2), and even a large column of calvary is vulnerable, as an opponents calvary will usually destroy any vulnerable calvary (ie. on squares without defensive bonus, a hit or two down).

A simple solution requires a small amount of planning. First, produce a reasonable number of riflemen (1 per 4-8 calvary perhaps). Send them a few turns ahead of the calvary so as they arrive more or less simulateously. These riflemen can help reduce the enemy's production capacity by destroying mines, roads etc. But this is not their primary goal. Fortified near the city, ideally on a square with defensive bonus they serve as a staging ground for offensive operations. Calvary can wait to attack protected my riflemen, can retreat to them, can can have riflemen run to cover calvary that can't make it back.

For a more ambitious staging ground, bring along a settler, found a city, rush barracks and you've got a real nice staging ground. But this may serve short term goals better than long term ones. Riflemen (really any slow defensive unit of its era) can be used and reused long as a little planning is use.

Sutton

 

[Japher]

A few tips I have learned in my first few games:

1. Never play while under the influence, you will come back to your game with an army of spearman and one swordsman, and all your towns will be making the palace. (It sounded kewl at the time?)

2. Trade, trade, trade!!! Always trade for tech. and maybe lux. never trade away iron, and if you can buy techs, don't swap. A world map can go a long way on a trade, even if you have already traded it to them like 100 times and still haven't found anything new.

3. Location, location, location!!! Build and spots that are optimized for large cities, preferable on rivers. Yet, never underestimate the need for a strategic location, hypothesize if you can accomplish the same feat with well place archers or spearman though.

4. Roads!!! Always build roads where ever you can.

5. Flood Plains + Wheat = AWESOME. I would start a war with my neighbor for it!

6. Lux. resources are more valuable than you think.

7. Get your towns locked on growth, and stay in depotisim as long as you can afford it, and don't be afraid to use the whip.

8. If you are at war and someone else demands something from you, give it to them... Then give them 20 gold or so the next round. You won't hear from them ever again.

9. Ghandi is a prick.

10. Settlers! Build them fast and build a lot of them... Or, build a lot of warriors and take other peoples towns, and if you can settlers. Ain't nothing like free workers!

11. Have 4-infinite workers working a tile at once. Clearing jungle takes a long time!

 

[Lostman]

Build quick and automate workers right after a city is built.

 

[Forthoffer]

I never automate workers. They do too many stupid things. Even after all the work is done that I want, I'd rather fortify them (waiting to clean up pollution) than to automate them and have them wander off to annoying places, or build smaller cities with them.

P.S. An industrious worker in a democracy after Replaceable Parts rocks! It works six times faster than a normal worker.

 

[Ozymandius]

I can't understand why so many people don't like democracy. The output of 150 workers working twice as fast and later after replaceable parts even slave labour, oops "guest labourers" work twice as fast ie' roads in one turn, irrigation in two.
Automated workers are like city employees, they spend too much time leaning on their shovels or taking off to the jungle rather than improving the most important cities.
Firaxis should have a hot key for automating railroads only, or irrigation only or mines only. A hot key for stacked workers to enable them to build a railway net from A to B would be wonderful. Those automated guys are always mining my irrigation areas or irrigating first and going back to build roads later.... You know just like those guys who pave your road this week and comeback next week to put in sewers

 

[WoundedKnight]

>P.S. An industrious worker in a democracy after Replaceable >Parts rocks! It works six times faster than a normal worker.

Six times, or eight times? Should be eight times. 2x2x2. Right?

 

[Forthoffer]

Originally posted by WoundedKnight
Six times, or eight times? Should be eight times. 2x2x2. Right?

Six times.

Workers in a Democracy work 150% faster. 2 x 2 x 150% = 6.

 

[JackRules]

Can anyone tell me how exactly do I end an agreement? I've been trading furs for saltpeter with the Persians for so long, saltpeter is gone out of style, and I want to cancel the deal, like the AI always does to me, after 20 turns. How do I do that? Thanks for the help.

 

[Ozymandius]

Contact the Persians, tell them you want to present a deal. When the screen opens up, you should see the words NEW and ACTIVE at the bottom. Click on active, your trade agreement should be there. Click on furs and it should cancel the deal.

 

[Ozymandius]

When you are about to build or capture the Pyramids don't forget to sell all your GRANARIES for 7 gold each. With the Pyramids you will get them back free. The same goes for BARRACKS: if you are about to build Sun Tzu' wonder. Sell your baracks for 5 gold and save the 1 gold per turn cost.

 

[JackRules]

Thanks Ozymandius!

 

[Ozymandius]

Anytime

 

[murewa]

On the military advisor screen click "The Army of (Civ) - (Government)" on the right part and you can select the civ you want to see. on the bottom part of that window you'll see a "Units captured" bar. Use that to evaluate the status of a civ - what civs he has had major conflicts with (the more workers captured = more conflict most likely) and what civs he may be peaceful with. Use that information in giving military alliances, MPPs, and trade embargoes. You'll need to know if the two civs you have MPPs with are actually rivals and will force you to break your treaty with one.

 

[Ozymandius]

After capturing enemy cities close to the capital one of the cities revolted, killing my four units stationed there. I reloaded and moved in another eight units and it still revolted. I reloaded and, to prevent the loss of my troops, I moved them out of the city to retake it on my next campaign. Without my garrison, it did dnot revolt. This happened again against another civ several turns later Has anyone else had a similar experience? .... ie. Saving a city from flipping by moving troops out It sure beats destruction and cleansing...

 

[murewa]

Start a very early war with each and every civ that tries to move his spearman/setter to build his cities. Kill the spearman and liberate his settler into workers. Do this without remorse to your continental neighbor and those civs that try to plant cities on your continent. Do this especially if:

1. You feel that there are quite a few civs on your continent.
2. You discern that you can expand fast and early to hold on to one end of the continent.

Don't worry about those civs you get into trouble with. Those foreign(not local to your continent) civs that you do early wars against are the ones closest to you. Those civs at the other end of the world will most like not try to expand on your continent so you'll be on good terms with them. There are a few consequences of this.

Locally:

1. You'll have quite a bloody conflict with your continental rival/s.
2. The civ sandwiched between you and another civ on the same continent (if there is any) will die to your forces quite easily and very early (horsemen and swordsmen era).
3. After the 'middle-man' is toast you'll continue with your bloody war with the other civ who holds the other end of the continent.
4. You will win lots of battles defensively and may produce several GLs to hurry up wonders. A good offense greatly depends on techs and resources so hold back on totally conquering the continent until you have the numbers and the power. Just build lots of catapults and station them in the border cities.

Internationally:

1. You'll make lots of enemies since you stole a lot of their settlers/workers very early in the game.
2. The other civs that didn't land on your continent (hence on good terms with you) will easily become your allies because they themselves most likely are at war with your enemies(land grabbing).
3. Your foreign enemies will lose all their battles against you since they generally will land very few units on your beaches to be of any threat (just be on the defensive and you'll be okay).


Emotionally:

1. You relieve yourself of the headache of rationalizing if you should keep peace with the settler's owner). Just make war and claim the settler/worker for yourself!
2. You don't feel claustrophobic knowing that you only have very few borders by land.

Against your continental rival, keep the war going infinitely. There is no point going for a peace treaty since you want them to focus on the war. They'll lose a lot of units and you'll gain several GLs. You essentially are milking them while their economy gets screwed trying in vain to build forces to kill you.

EDIT: excessive use of smilies.

 

[Askan]

If u are crushing another civ and u have arrived with a lot of forces in front of their capital don't just rush in. First demand them the remaining cities so they won't move their capital then declare war again and take the city. This tactic will work only if they are close to total defeat. If u don't do this u'll have to run after their other cities after u take the capital.
Listen to me! I know what i'm saying!

 

[Lostman]

to elaborate on the above, also make sure you take everything else they have. Clean them out.