Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Why would you move your capital even further away from (what could become) your core towns? To minimise distance corruption in as many towns as possible, you want your Palace to be as central as possible...
Because of the location of my Forbidden Palace, is what I was thinking.

Yup. To be 100% safe from eruptions, you should leave at least one free tile between your town and a volcano.
Now that I think about it, I did see an AI city toasted by an erupting volcano.

What VC are you going for, in this game? 100K Culture?

But if rather Conq/Dom, maybe consider just switching the ToA-build over to SunTzu...
I like to go for the Space Race or Culture, but I'm thinking Space Race here. To that end, I like to have a decent military built up in order to get resources I can't trade for.
 
I would worry more about basic things such as the the lack of workers.
I know. Sometimes I have no trouble getting a bunch out, but I'm feeling sluggish this game.

The Maya are a great civ, but their UU is very bad(essentially a downgrade of the Swordsmen) except for triggering the GA early, which at least under some circumstances is a good thing.
I think my GA got triggered by the Pyramids.

Ideally the workers are recruited and have completed improving most tiles before the GA starts.
I didn't know that, but this time it came so early that I just couldn't do much about it. I wanted to get as many cities as possible (given the terrain), and so focused more on settlers than workers. I've hit the expansion limit, though (as far as overall territory), so now expansion will probably only happen with a war (probably against the Celts).
 
Nah. If you're staying in the same continent and don't plan to expand overseas then you should consider moving the capital to Carthage.
I would have to capture Carthage first ... I'm the Mayans, not Carthaginians.

Definitely. Make sure to make the AI go to war against each other rather than you until you're ready.
How do I make that happen?
 
Because of the location of my Forbidden Palace, is what I was thinking.
In Conquests, the FP has less effect on corruption in the towns around the FP-town, and much less effect on corruption across your entire empire, than it did in Vanilla.

Broadly speaking, what (all) it does now is to remove most of the corruption (though not to zero) in the town where it's built, and increase the total number of lower-corruption towns that you can own, but its actual location is now far less impactful: you can't use it to set up 2 fully productive cores any more.
How do I make that happen?
Simplest guaranteed method is to start a 'phony war' with someone you can't easily reach (i.e. who can't easily reach you!), then pay one or more of their neighbours (per-turn!) to fight them on your behalf. Once you've lit the first blue touch-paper, the AI-Civs will tend to start recruiting one another to keep the fireworks going. Alternatively, make yourself a less attractive target by building plenty of attack-units (and few if any defenders! ;) ), so that any of your more aggressive/ tooled-up neighbours will be less inclined to go to war with you, and more inclined to bully a softer target. Which approach might work most effectively depends on the geography — but also on what difficulty level you're playing at here (Regent? Warlord?).

If still Chieftain, you can probably just build a stack of attackers and roll over your neighbours one or two at a time. From what I can see in your screenie, most of your neighbours are even less developed than you are, with only Spears and Warriors visible (and of course, the Carthaginian 2.3.1 NuMercs defending their towns), although presumably Archers are also being built...? Javs can kill Warriors/Archers pretty easily in the open (on attack, less so on defence), and a tall enough stack of Javs will also have a reasonably good chance against Spears in towns -- but you're only 1T from Feudalism, and if you can then acquire some Iron, you'd be better off putting shields into MedInf than Javs.

On which subject, I assume you want to start with the Celts, to secure their Iron before they hook it themselves and start building GSwords (A.D.M. = 3.2.2)...? Otherwise, I can't see why you'd want to take Brennus on first, when Willy controls much more fertile territory? But if your Military Advisor already rates you Average to Strong against both, then why not go after both of them (especially if this is still Warlord or Chieftain)? DoW Willy first (before crossing his borders, if RoP-reputation is important to you!), use Utrecht as an invasion route, then also DoW Brennus, and Settle the coastal Hill 1 SW of the (currently) Celtic Iron. If Brennus hasn't got any Iron elsewhere (can you see it on his trade-screen?), then a line of Javs fortified/sentried along that Hill-/Mountain-range could probably topple most Celtic would-be-invaders, and might even net you some Workers(Celtic) into the bargain.

Stick to fending off Dutch incursions while pummeling the Celts, but once Brennus is pleading for mercy, you can start expanding into the Netherlands, aiming to get to Camulodunum, whose Horses will be very useful for the next war. Because until you get some better/faster attackers, there's no point going after Carthage: Javs aren't going to make much headway against Hanni's NuMercs, so you'll need Maces or Knights instead. (Your gold-pile's pretty healthy, so you could start stockpiling some vWarriors in Barracks-towns while you're getting the Iron hooked, then upgrade them: the 782 gold you have already, will upgrade 8.7 Warriors — and you'll have more than that by the time you need it).
 
I didn't know that, but this time it came so early that I just couldn't do much about it. I wanted to get as many cities as possible (given the terrain), and so focused more on settlers than workers.

So far this was the right choice. Forgetting to build enough workers once bulding settlers becomes less useful is what should have been diffrent.

I think my GA got triggered by the Pyramids.

This changes the picture. The pyramid do trigger the GA for the Maya. Delaying the pyramids would have been a bad choice because they help to increase the amount of citizens quite effectively. Spending the scientific leader on them was the right choice even though it reduces the value of the GA. Choosing when to build workers in a GA while having the free granaries is a difficult decision. Given that those granaries do also increase the rate at which new citizens need improved titles building them (almost) as early as possible would probably have been the right choice. This a strangly troublesome problem of the luxus having very high growth and very high production due to the GA. Also building the aqueducts early enough will be important with growth being very high.
 
In Conquests, the FP has less effect on corruption in the towns around the FP-town, and much less effect on corruption across your entire empire, than it did in Vanilla.

Broadly speaking, what (all) it does now is to remove most of the corruption (though not to zero) in the town where it's built, and increase the total number of lower-corruption towns that you can own, but its actual location is now far less impactful: you can't use it to set up 2 fully productive cores any more.

In the given situation the position is impactful. Given its location changing the position of the proper palace would in all likelyhood increase total corruption. Then the core cities around Chichén Itza would not only suffer from higher rank but also they no longer enjoy low distance corruption. The cities around Tikal however already enjoy low distance corruption. So why change anything at all?
 
My current game is a Huge Map and my Warriors, Archers, etc. have walked the entire Pangaea map. There's no Saltpeter anywhere. The only Horses, Coal, Rubber, and even Oil are so far away from my territory that it makes it very problematic to secure them. Luckily, there was an Iron deposit close enough to my territory for me to expand to and secure. (I haven't researched far enough up the tech tree to see Aluminum or Uranium yet).

I've even used the Ctrl-Shift-M to clear the map in-game and look around. (That's the only reason that I managed to find the Coal and Rubber). I mean, there has to be at least 1 Saltpeter somewhere, right? The game wouldn't generate a world without all of the Strategic Resources present, right? So . . .

My Question: Is there a way to load a savegame file into the MapEditor so I can see the entire map? I must have missed an island or something!
 
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I would have to capture Carthage first ... I'm the Mayans, not Carthaginians.
I know that, man, but if you want to win the game you'll need to conquer the Dutch, Celts and Carthaginians. I took it as a given that you'd be moving in sooner or later.
How do I make that happen?
See tjs282's excellent post.
My Question: Is there a way to load a savegame file into the MapEditor so I can see the entire map? I must have missed an island or something!
There's a savegame editor that came with Civ3 MultiTool IIRC. Unlike Civ2, Civ3 doesn't allow you to save a game as a scenario file.

Have you checked under cities? Given that the AI already knows where the resources are placed they might have simply built on top of those.
 
Have you checked under cities? Given that the AI already knows where the resources are placed they might have simply built on top of those.

Yup! Like I said, I used the Ctrl-Shift-M function to clear everything off the map except for Resources. I'll try the Civ3 MultiTool, and let you know.
 
Try C3MT, failing that, upload a savegame and we'll see.
 
Well, after straining my eyes until the wee hours of the morning, I finally found the Saltpeter!

Good news: It's located near the Oil resource that I found. (YAY!)
Bad news: It's located 6 squares from Gandhi's border. (UH-OH!)

Luckily, the Indian cities on that border are extremely far from the Capitol, so they probably aren't producing much. However, I think that I had better start building Galleons (There's a huge lake in the middle of the landmass. I have cities on the Northern shore, and the Oil and Saltpeter are South of the lake), Settlers, Workers, and plenty of Defenders. The Workers will build Fortresses and Barricades on the Oil and Saltpeter, and then I'll park at least 2 or 3 of my best defending units on each. Maybe I'll even put a couple of Artillery on each for Defensive Bombardment. :evil:
 
I've even used the Ctrl-Shift-M to clear the map in-game and look around. (That's the only reason that I managed to find the Coal and Rubber). I mean, there has to be at least 1 Saltpeter somewhere, right? The game wouldn't generate a world without all of the Strategic Resources present, right? So
No, I don't believe so: total number of tiles containing a specific Strat/Lux-resource is based on that resource's 'frequency of occurrence' (set in the .biq), multiplied by how many Civs are put on the map to begin with, plus/minus a random fudge-factor. But (I think) there's always an absolute minimum of at least 1 tile per resource-type, regardless of map-size.

So while a Huge epic-game map allows 16 Civs including your own, if you set most of the 15 'Rival Civ' slots to "None" during the game set-up, you're going to get fewer Strat/Lux-resources to fight over as well...
Well, after straining my eyes until the wee hours of the morning, I finally found the Saltpeter!
In addition to what Takh said, CivAssist (if you can get it working for you) will also tell you how many resources of each type are on the map, how many of those have been claimed, and (IIRC) who is currently claiming them.

Also, you have the Trade Advisor (F2) screen. While I don't often look at it myself these days (since I usually have CivAssist running anyway), it can also help you identify which (excess) resources the AI-Civs have hooked to their trade-networks, and hence give you some clues where those resources might be. Though this is not so helpful if the AI hasn't yet got the tech to see the resource(s), or has not yet got >1 of them hooked...
 
That´s about the appearance ratio of strategic resources in the CCM2 Ingame help:



In the Ingame help of that mod many formulas and helping articles about C3C are integrated, in that case it´s the description of the Civ3ConquestsEdit about that appearance ratio.

The appearance ratio for saltpeter in an unmodded C3C game is 120:



So in a standard C3C game with 4players, there should be three resources of saltpeter in the game.

That Retro Guy, in your case this means there should be more than 1 saltpeter resurce be present on the map. I´m interested in a save file of your game to have a look on it.

tjs282, is there a source for that random fudge-factor, so I can add this to the CCM2 Ingame help?
 

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tjs282, is there a source for that random fudge-factor, so I can add this to the CCM2 Ingame help?
IIRC, someone -- maybe @Oystein? -- did a study of resource-occurrence in Conquests (so, probably in late 2004 or 2005), prompted by initially anecdotal complaints that for any given map-size, (strategic) resources now seemed to be scarcer than they were in Vanilla/PtW, even though neither the number of resource-types, nor their appearance ratios, had been changed between the PtW .bix and the Conquests .biq.

And as far as I can remember, the general conclusion was that this was indeed the case, and that the Editor help-text (that you've copied into the CCMopedia), was now inaccurate. Unfortunately, I can't easily find the thread in question: it's not linked from the War Academy, and Google's not helping...
 
tjs282, you remembered very well, so now we have knowledge of that post! :high5:
 
That Retro Guy, in your case this means there should be more than 1 saltpeter resurce be present on the map. I´m interested in a save file of your game to have a look on it.

There have only been 2 Civs on the map since the beginning of the game (Germany (me) and India). That might be why Resources are so scarce.

I've claimed the Oil and the Saltpeter (Gandhi almost beat me to it). I'll take an in-game pic, upload it and the current savegame file sometime soon. I have to work all weekend.

And please, everybody, call me Retro. :D
 
Retro, in that case (only 2 civs in the game) I don´t need the save file... and what´s about naming yourself Retro? :D
 
what´s about naming yourself Retro? :D

I'm in my mid-50s, and I long for the good ol' days when MTV actually played Music Videos all day long, and life just seemed to be a bit simpler than it is today.

Here's a couple of pics from the game:

Coal Map.jpg

On the mini-map, I'm Germany (the Blue territory). You can see just how far away I am from the only Coal on the map.

And the CivAssistII Resource pic:

Resources.jpg

Just what do the brackets mean around some of the numbers?
 
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