Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[vmxa]

Is any ships blocking the path to the other civs? Any barb gallies anyone hostile to the other and blocking?

You are probably using their routes and if they are fighting, the route may be cut off.

 

[Dirt Bag]

As Ginger Ale said you also need the strategic resource "Horses." Now if you have (a) Horseback Riding, (b) this resource within your cultural borders then all the cities that have a road connection to this tile can build horsemen.

oooh, thanks i get it now, so i have to build a city so the border is on a horse!, thanks dudes, great forum here, quick responses, ill resort here for my civ3 needs and opinions!

~Dirt Bag

 

[General_Chaos]

G'day all - my first post after reading quite a lot of the info here:

When is it worth building granaries?
I have always (which is not very long) thought that a granary was the most important first thing to build first as it is relatively cheap and will always(?) pay back that cost in extra citizens.

There seem to be quite a number of indirect comments here that would suggest that many cities do not benefit enough from granaries to warrant building them!

Can someone give an explanation of the reasons that would stop you building a granary.

Also... the above position seems to apply to most buildings, I have trouble seeing reasons not to build most things up until Civil Defense appears which has obvious limited applications. Aquaducts and Hospitals also are sometimes obviously not worth building - but everything else - why wouldn't you want it when in the long run it will pay for itself?

The only reason I can see for not building buildings is to build units instead. Which I do - lots of settlers and workers, minimal defence and then when I want something someone else has I build some offence. As soon as that is over its back to buildings. This strategy makes an early victory (seemingly) impossible and perhaps that is the catch. I usually have to wait until I get cavalry before I make any real attempts at war and that is usually towards the latter half of the game.

 

[gmaharriet]

I have trouble seeing reasons not to build most things

While it might seem nice to have all buildings in every city, there is a cost for maintenance every single turn you play. In addition, the cost goes up for more advanced buildings of similar types. For example, a marketplace costs 1gpt (gold per turn), a bank 2gpt, and a stock exchange 3gpt. Those 3 buildings alone in a single city would cost you 6 gold every turn. The same is true of temples, cathedrals and (I think) colliseums.

What happens is that most of your income goes to paying the maint expenses, and you don't usually have enough gold to also support your troops and scientific research, so you end up either bankrupt or unable to advance.

 

[Roland Johansen]

G'day all - my first post after reading quite a lot of the info here:

Welcome to CFC!

Can someone give an explanation of the reasons that would stop you building a granary.

Upkeep is a reason to not build some buildings in cities with very high corruption because they won't pay for themselves. A city left with 1 gold and 0 science after corruption is not a great city to build a university in.

Graneries are buildings that I (eventually) build in most of my not totally corrupt cities. They pay for themselves pretty fast. But they are not necessarily the first building that I build. The granary almost doubles the growth rate and this is effectively the same as doubling the excess of food in the city. If the city has only a food excess of 1 or 2 and I can build a city in a nice spot with 3 or more food excess, than that settler will gain more food for my empire. In the beginning of the game you want to maximize the number of cities that you have before all of the free land is gone. Sometimes the best way is to build a granary so that the city can spam settlers faster and sometimes you want to get a settler as fast as possible. Mostly this depends on comparing the new city spot and the old city spot. Sometimes the only way to claim a piece of land first is by directly building the settler (and not first the granary) because your opponents are also close to settling it.

Some other reasons to build a different building or unit first.
Your city is surrounded by mostly plains which need irrigation. If you build a granary first, it will not help growth a lot because the plains tiles cannot offer enough food without irrigation.
Your city has a very nice tile outside the first 9 tiles (grasland cow or something like that). It would benefit the city greatly to expand its borders to the 21 tiles. To accomplish this, you can best build a temple or library (scientific) before the granary.

There are probably more reasons to not build a granary first. In this game, there exists no absolute rule. A granary is a good building to build fast, but not necessarily the first building to build.

Some people also like to sell the granary after the city has reached its maximum size, because the granary still costs upkeep and offers no benefits anymore.

 

[eldar]

I hand-build at most 3 granaries, all in my core/early cities. After that, I go looking for whoever built the Pyramids, persuade them that they don't need them any more , and that solves the granary issue for the rest of my cities.

60 shields is a lot of shields.

 

[EMan]

@General_Chaos: Welcome to CFC.

...I have always (which is not very long) thought that a granary was the most important first thing to build first...

I'll build 2-4 Warriors, FIRST, in the Capital City for these reasons:

1. They provide MP Support (viz. "Force" the citizens to be Happy!).....up to 2 Warriors per city under Despotism.

2. They are cheap explorers.........for finding Goody Huts and other Civs, with which to trade and know where they are........and, of course to see the lay of the land.

3. To provide defense........at the higher levels, the AI will attack early if they are nearby.........and you might well be able to hold them off!

4. You can generate 3 Warriors for your Capital City and pay NO maintenance costs, under Despotism. (viz. Each city supports 4 units.)

However, you're right, Granaries ARE Great........Especially for producing 4-turn Settler & 2-turn Worker "Factories".

 

[thetrooper]

Bombers - what will they "hit"?

Kill citizens.
Production buildings.
Happiness buildings.
Military buildings.
Destroy naval units (if coastal).
Destroy air units.
Redline "foot" units.

Any rules/particular order?

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Sort of.

I know they will go after air units and naval units first until they are all dead in a city. Then, I think it is a random number to determine population / building / unit. Regarding buildings, I think they will go after military buildings like barracks, civil defense, walls, etc, first, but don't quote me on that. Regarding units, they will go after the best defenders first (you know, the unit that appears on top of the city - ie; a spear over a warrior).

Unlike bombers, artillery will just do units first, and then buildings/population.

 

[thetrooper]

Thanks Ginger Ale! Other comments, watorrey?

 

[General_Chaos]

Thanks for the welcome and all the replies - some very good things for me to take into consideration

Another question... I have made a few attempts at MM but inevitably my cities fall into chaos. Last night I observed that this happened on the turn where city growth took place.

What are the rules for managing citizen moods? I understand the need to change where they are working to avoid wasting shields and similarly using specialists to avoid the same but how will I know that the city is about to fall into chaos

 

[Ginger_Ale]

When more than half your citizens are unhappy (go to your city screen, and mouse over your laborer's heads. If 6/11 or 5/9, etc, are unhappy, the city will riot!), a city will riot until you fix the problem. Usually, the early game, since food and working tiles is important, you should use the luxury slider (the slider by the happy face on the F1 screen) - plus, this will affect all your cities, not just one city, like a specialist. Later on in the game, when changing a laborer to a specialist won't hurt the city, it is ok to use specialists. Lots of times cities will riot the turn after they grow since they now have more unhappy laborers than happy and content ones - so watch your cities every turn, especially ones that just grew, to make sure they don't riot.

PS: When using the luxury slider, the more commerce your city produces, the more citizens will be happy.

 

[Prof. Yaffle]

Hi guys, quick question... Can you ever get a science discovery rate less than 4 turns in Vanilla or PTW? The other day I had science at 60% with a 4 turn discovery in Modern times and when I moved tax rate up by %20 putting my science down to 40 I still had 4 turn discovery rate. Perhaps I have answered my own question but I would just like to know for clarification.

Thanks,

Yaffle.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Nope, 4 turns is the min in Civ3/PTW/C3C. 40 turns is the max in Civ3/PTW, and 50 turns in C3C.

 

[Prof. Yaffle]

Thanks for clarification

 

[Ansar]

How do people eventually dramatically increase their score throughtout the game(i dont mean miliking cause milking is at the endgame). heck , i cant get to the 1000's until the final score is calculated...

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Read this article on scoring by SirPleb. Really, you just want to get as much territory and population as soon as you can. Technologies, military, etc, don't matter.

The higher the level you play at will also give you more score.

 

[vmxa]

Mostly by playing at a higher level. The multiplier is too low at chief and warlarod to do much.

Then you need to have lots of land and pop (happy pop is best).

 

[Khan_Asparuh]

When more than half your citizens are unhappy (go to your city screen, and mouse over your laborer's heads. If 6/11 or 5/9, etc, are unhappy, the city will riot!).

Sorry for making this remark, but the rule is not half the citizens but more unhappy than happy citizens...

 

[10lire]

@Khan Asparuh:

Ginger Ale wrote, correctly:

more than half ... 6/11 or 5/9, etc