I recently picked up Civ 3 to give it a spin again and had lost track of a lot of the stuff I once knew. Over the last week or so I added on to some rudimentary notes I had saved on my computer and (slightly) reworked a bunch of stuff from this forum (and elsewhere) so I could have a handy, at hand reference guide to the game.
I'm aware there's already a somewhat similar reference guide elsewhere on the site. I actually completed this one before stumbling across that one. The main difference between mine and the one that's up is that I've included a lot of details and notes in my tables (they have some) and have cross referenced and made footnotes about many of the finer points that got left out there.
In any case I'm making the document available to you guys. The links are at the bottom of this post. What follows is a screenshot of the Table of Contents and a few example tables.
If you guys can find some of the links I lost track of (mentioned in the notes) I would appreciate it. There are a lot of dead links online to material about this game and it made sourcing my work difficult after I'd already finished it.
I like your compilation about Civ 3. In my new mod CCM2 I made such a compilation for that mod by editing and listing the concept entries so they are present during the gameplay in form of a manual (and not any longer as randomized catchwords).
I like your compilation about Civ 3. In my new mod CCM2 I made such a compilation for that mod by editing and listing the concept entries so they are present during the gameplay in form of a manual (and not any longer as randomized catchwords).
I DL'd the A4 version, and it's pretty good overall.
The only criticisms I would have are that some of your tables are too 'wordy', and/or contain overlapping information, and/or information that may need to be double-checked for accuracy with respect to C3C v.1.22 (since some of your sources may have been written before the final patch(es) were released). If you pared the Tables down to just the interesting/useful data, and removed the redundancy, the PDF would become (even) more useful as a quick-reference source.
SpoilerRetentive nit-picking :
Your Civilizations-by-traits table (screenshotted above) has needless (and also slightly cryptic) overlap with your Civ-UU table.
Your Trait-bonuses table could also have the last column split into 2 columns, e.g. 'Cheap building(s)' and 'Other notes', which would emphasise that the COMM, EXP and IND traits provide no cheap buildings.
Also, the UU-table contains overlong text descriptions, e.g. "American, F-15 8,4 with 6 range, 4 bombard at 2 rate of fire, [Replaces] Jet Fighter 8,4,6, 3 bombard, 1 RoF" rather than, for example...
*No need to include Civ-traits again in this table!
**To minimise repetition, parenthetical note(s) in this column specify the difference(s) between the UU and the replaced unit
***According to my cheat-sheet (which may not be 100% reliable)
****Cost for the F-15 was not included on your table, though you did include it for the other UUs
Just a suggestion: Maybe (also) sort the City-improvements, Small Wonders and Great Wonders tables by era? (And the City Walls/ Coastal Forts descriptions are also inadequate/ misleading: these improvements add a 50% defensive bonus to land/sea units sheltering within the town against land/naval attacks.)
Random notes:
Re. Build orders
I think this paragraph is overly prescriptive, and thus not necessarily helpful. Build order will depend on far too many factors for any given sequence to work reliably every time, or even most of the time: map-size and -type, difficulty level, Civ played (i.e. starting techs and traits), starting terrain, number, location and identity of opponents, intended Victory Condition, all have a bearing on what you'll want and when...
SpoilerBabylon Deity Settlers game digression :
NB That game was played in Vanilla, so the Republic-slingshot (which you don't specifically mention anywhere, though you do note the free tech from Philo) was not even an option—not that @Bamspeedy prioritised Republic anyway, since he could gov-switch as he wished with only 1-turn anarchy via the Bab's REL-trait. He also had a pretty damn good starting position (3 food-bonuses in Babylon's BFC!).
So while that writeup provides a good overview of general strategies (terrain improvement priorities, rapid expansion, minimum science gambit, resource denial during early warring, diplomacy and trading, etc.) it is not necessarily a useful template for every game.
Re. Settler-pumps
I would not regard the 'free shields on growth' as a 'glitch' per se: city-yield processing (commerce-conversion, then food/growth, then shield-harvest) was after all deliberately programmed in that order.
Re. Armies
"The units in an army should be able to gain experience but there is a bug where often (always?) only one unit can do this."
Not a bug, it's just that the most experienced unit in the Army is always the first unit to fight per each unit attacked, with the lower-ranked unit(s) only being used if the higher-ranked attacker(s) retreats. And while I don't know about other players, I usually load my Armies with all vet Units, or load the e*Unit that generated the MGL as the first unit, and then 'top-up' with v- and r-Units of the same type.
SpoilerFor your consideration... :
In a (generic) Cavalry Army consisting of 1 e*Cav + 1 vCav + 1 rCav (i.e. total HP = 12), the e*Cav will always lead the charge. If the Army wins any fight before it's lost 4 HP (i.e. the e*Cav's HP, minus 1), then on any subsequent attack(s), the e*Cav will be sent in first again, 'borrowing' any HP that it 'needs' from one or both of the other 2 units.
Once the Army loses 4 HP during a single attack, then the e*Cav will retreat, allowing the vCav to fight. If the vCav also fails to win before the Army loses another 3 HP (vCav's HP, minus 1), then it will retreat in turn, giving the rCav its own shot at glory—but by this point, the Army will be down to 5 HP. The rCav can only lose 2 HP before retreating (Army now has 3 HP), allowing the e*Cav (and then the vCav, and then the rCav) to re-enter the fray on its 'last' HP. While an e[*]Cav obviously can't be promoted further if it wins, if either of the less-experienced units of the Army is responsible for administering the coup de grace, they can get promoted.
The Army would now consist of 2 eCavs + 1 rCav, or 1e*Cav + 2 vCavs (either way, Army's total available HP = 13), so would now have to lose 8 HP before the rCav (or 7 HP for the second vCav) was used. And if the last v/rCav wins (whether or not they got promoted), a prudent player would be unlikely to risk making a second attack with that (redlined) Army; rather, they would retreat/fortify it to heal.
So the most 'junior' unit(s) within an Army rarely have any opportunity to fight to begin with, and every unit-promotion that does occur, makes another promotion within the same Army that much less likely.
I like a certain amount of redundancy and wordiness in my tables. My approach is that each table should be on its own fully utilize-able. So if I'm trying to compare civs I want to know about their unique unit (in a certain digested form) and not have to flip back and forth to another table. There are considerations for compactness as well because I primarily use them in a printed format instead of on a screen (I have two monitors now but old habits die hard).
There will be a 1.1 eventually and I'll deinitely make some of the changes you suggest. Very helpful, thanks.
Re. Armies
"The units in an army should be able to gain experience but there is a bug where often (always?) only one unit can do this."
Not a bug, it's just that the most experienced unit in the Army is always the first unit to fight per each unit attacked, with the lower-ranked unit(s) only being used if the higher-ranked attacker(s) retreats. And while I don't know about other players, I usually load my Armies with all vet Units, or load the e*Unit that generated the MGL as the first unit, and then 'top-up' with v- and r-Units of the same type.
If you play into the modern age, conscript mech infantry make great armies - 4 mech infantry with 2 hp each makes a great 8-hp army with lots of room for promotions. Because it starts with so few hp, lots of the mech infantry end up getting promoted, not just the first one. It is not unusual to move to the 2nd or 3rd mech infantry before winning, and they are cheap enough that I'll risk using them to attack again against weaker units when I have a bunch of tanks generating leaders. (I like to make these, because, unlike tanks, they don't give up much in terms of attacks when joining the army and I have cities that can't grow past size 12 to draft from.)
If you play into the modern age, conscript mech infantry make great armies - 4 mech infantry with 2 hp each makes a great 8-hp army with lots of room for promotions. Because it starts with so few hp, lots of the mech infantry end up getting promoted, not just the first one. It is not unusual to move to the 2nd or 3rd mech infantry before winning, and they are cheap enough that I'll risk using them to attack again against weaker units when I have a bunch of tanks generating leaders. (I like to make these, because, unlike tanks, they don't give up much in terms of attacks when joining the army and I have cities that can't grow past size 12 to draft from.)
That's a tactic I never thought of -- drafting units from cities (which are always "conscript") to put into armies. I would get the occasional conscript warrior from a goody hut, but that happened in the early game. I have often battled AI conscripts, that the AI drafts in a vain attempt to hold off my stack of doom. But I rarely draft from my own cities, since I usually have sufficient garrison troops to defend them.
If you play into the modern age, conscript mech infantry make great armies - 4 mech infantry with 2 hp each makes a great 8-hp army with lots of room for promotions.
True, but there's not much (gameplay) benefit in promoting Army-units, since you can't get MGLs from them. Get 'em promoted first, then stick the (not immediately upgradeable) e*Units into the Armies, that's my philosophy.
And if I've gone as far as the Modern Age, it'll usually be because I'm going for Space on a Std map (or Dom/Conq on a Large/Huge map), so my core's productivity would (should!) be high enough by that point, that I don't have any need to draft. And although I would usually rather fill my Armies with Tanks (or ModernArmor), if one is going to make MechInf-Armies, then 12-16HP for 3-4 vMI straight off the bat is surely preferable to 6-8HP for the same number of cMI, yes?
Finally, I try to avoid using conscription altogether in my games, because I usually play at all-Random Emperor (still struggling to get off to good starts in all-Random DG), and I almost always run a Republic for the entire mid-to-late game. So keeping a lid on unhappiness** is generally already difficult enough, without my deliberately adding to it in such an entirely avoidable fashion (and even if my Civ is Religious, allowing me to switch to Communism to avoid War Weariness, I still won't be immune to draft-unhappiness).
**
SpoilerWhinge, moan, bellyache... :
I also think it kind of sucks that when my benevolent Republic liberates a Communist/ Fascist AI city, I still have to deal with the whip-/draft-unhappiness incurred by the previous regime; unfortunately there's no way to prevent this, other than capturing the town before the AI has had time to do too much damage to it -- or ideally, before they've learned Nationalism...
If I'm doing serious warring in the modern age, I'm not going for space, I'm going for domination (which I stink at) or histographic on demigod or higher. My core will be plenty productive, but I don't really build hospitals (except for 5 for Battlefield Medicine), so I might as well draft at size 12. If I'm having happiness issues in republic at this point, things are going really poorly - I either have lots of luxury resources myself or my allies do, and I'll rotate enemies to avoid war weariness.
While mech infantry armies with 16 hp are great, conscript mech infantry are only useful for moving shields to corrupt towns (which I also do). An 8-hp mech infantry army can cover a stack of artillery or tanks, it can confidently attack tanks and cavalry, and it can pillage freely. If the enemy has bombers, you need to walk some anti-air units with it, and you have to be careful about going close to cities with artillery, but otherwise it doesn't get attacked. (I once built a wall with them across a continent to confine fighting to the enemy's land.)
I hate putting tanks and modern armor into armies, as they give up so many attacks. If I put 4 tanks in an army, it gets 3 attacks instead of 8. If I put 4 modern armors into an army, it gets 4 attacks instead of 12. If I'm attacking TOW infantry or mech infantry in a metropolis, I may need the extra attack power, but mostly the tanks or modern armor are plenty powerful by themselves. I take lots of artillery with me, so my tanks are attacking red-lined units and getting two attacks per turn, giving lots of promotions. I'd rather have more attacks and risk losing a few units along the way than bundle my attackers into armies. Cavalry armies are different, of course, since cavalry don't lose attacks as they join armies. A cavalry army with 18 hp almost always can beat a 1-hp TOW infantry in a grassland metropolis, so they are still useful in the modern age, but I'd rather use an 8-hp mech infantry army for that.
In the modern age produktion tends to be plenty and hardly a bottleneck for tanks or modern armour, at least in the mid run. What is a bottleneck is unit support. Simple put it is better to have 400 modern armour than 200 modern armour and 200 conscripted MechInf.
I would hate to put anything less than modern armour in an army as that would be a waste of an army and you can only have one army for every fourth city. The total amount of attacks in one turn may be lower, but as less hp are lost the army can be used 2 turns in a row instead of needing to heal. Also using modern armour more than 2 times a turn is not sensible, because there is no guaranted promotion after reaching elite level, thus the risk is not warranted by gains.
The availability of modern armour makes other fightable land units short of 4 anti-air units per stack somewhat obsolete. Modern armour can easily be promoted to elite which make it a better defender than a veteran Mech infantry.
Conscription is best used for disbanding the new units to create 30 shields per disbanded tow-infantry. It can be meaningful to cut of oil or rubber for that as disbanding MechInf only gives 27 shields.
I can't imagine even coming anywhere close to the army limit in my games. I bet I've never had fewer than 10 cities per army. (Nor, for that matter, has unit support ever really been an issue for me once I got out of the ancient age.)
Even when fighting wars during the modern age, I've gotten to the modern age because I have some other goal in mind, so rarely do I head for modern armor very quickly. My choice is not usually mech infantry or modern armor, but mech infantry or tanks.
Regardless, if you are doing significant warring in the modern age, take justanick's advice rather than mine.
One of the general rules for armies that I've read here is, "fill it with the strongest offensive unit you have at the time." So, depending on the timing of an MGL, it might be swordsmen, knights, infantry, or tanks. By the time I can build armies from the academy, my strongest offensive unit might be cavs, infantry, tanks, or mech infantry. I also tend to go for space victories, so I will get to modern armor eventually, but it is not guaranteed that I will generate an MGL or build an army during the time between finishing the research and building my last spaceship parts. It's not the army limit that constrains me, but the number of armies, period.
I like 20k. On higher levels/bigger maps I may run out of culture builds before reaching the modern age, in which case my 20k city will build armies, first to get to the pentagon and then for lack of anything else to build. If I'm not at war, I won't fill the armies, and they'll just sit there, waiting.
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![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
In my new mod 
