Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[CKS]

Welcome to CivFanatics.

I don't think there is a way to stop growth except by fiddling with the tile outputs of food. Between irrigating or not and railing or not you can usually get to an even amount of food per turn. It doesn't really hurt to let a town grow and starve, though.

I wish there were a way to keep citizens working polluted tiles, but I don't think there is. You can manually put them back on a polluted tile, and they will stay there, but they still quit working any newly polluted tiles.

Unless a tundra town has a food bonus, just set the first citizen to be a scientist or tax man and forget about it (or civil engineer if you have replaceable parts and need a cultural expansion for whatever reason).

I think that all the resources appear in every game, but sometimes it is not easy to locate them. CivAssist II will tell you where they are, once they are visible to you. CRp MapStat will tell you where they are if they are inside your borders.

 

[Civinator]

Fourth: resourse randomness? Do all resourses appear with 100% probability? (not under my capital. just at least in one place in the world) It's my second play now and i'm VERY rich with resourses now, while my foes are not. During the first playthrough it was the other way around... Also I could not find any gems on the map during the first time. Can there be a world with no certain type of resourses appearing at all?

Rosie McCattail, unfortunately the appearance and disappearance ratio of strategic resources is not properly explained in the civilopedia of standard Civ 3.
So I don´t have to write too much, I show here the explanation of both terms in the civilopedia of my Civ 3 mod.

Appearance ratio:



Disappearance Ratio:



In standard Civ 3 only the strategic resources 'Horses' and 'Rubber' don´t have the danger of disappearing from the locations they were found on the map (and popping up on another tile of the map). The appearance and disappearance ratio of strategic resources can (and are) be set different in the editor of Civ 3. Luxury and bonus resources are not influenced by appearance and disappearance ratios.

 

[Takhisis]

About working polluted tiles, you could just automate some workers to have them only clean pollution. If you have a sufficiently extensive railroad network that will mean the problem is minimised to a hopefully tolerable minimum.

 

[CKS]

Unfortunately, citizens don't go back to work once the pollution is cleaned up, and the workers won't stay on pollution control if there is a turn without pollution. Automate with no altering can work for this, if you have no tiles that can be improved, but otherwise cleaning pollution gets the same priority as railroading a mountain four tiles from the nearest town. There just isn't a good way to automate pollution cleanup. In my usual 20k games, though, I try to keep a stack of workers by my 20k town to clean up its pollution and I let the automated workers take care of the rest of the empire. I don't care that they don't work optimally, since I don't care about the rest of my empire by the time pollution is a problem.

 

[Takhisis]

Eh? There's the extended automation orders in Civ. Including ones for roads, pollution, and so on.
If I were on Windows right now I'd look up the exact command.

 

[Vuldacon]

Shift D to clear Pollution. This is Automate

 

[Takhisis]

^There. Thanks Vuldacon!

 

[CKS]

Yes, but it only works as long as there is pollution to be cleaned up. If you have a turn with no pollution, they all ask for new orders.

 

[tjs282]

Yes, but it only works as long as there is pollution to be cleaned up. If you have a turn with no pollution, they all ask for new orders.

And in the mid- to late game, once AI starts building bombard-capable units which it actually knows how to use, <Shift-D>'d workers may also divert from clearing pollution to going off to repair cratered tiles, which (1) slows down the pollution-clearance and (2) puts them at risk of capture, if they end up near a war-front.

Not to mention that they will also run onto lava'd/polluted Volcano-tiles in absolute droves.

 

[tjs282]

I now have a question of my own:

Does anyone have any idea/suggestions why none of my wins on the Conquests Scenarios have been recorded in my Conquests Campaign Record?

Spoiler Details, details... :

I only recently discovered this screen, when I clicked on the 'Hall of Fame' option on the start-screen out of idle curiosity. (I was actually expecting it to show my epic-game results -- does anyone know where I find those, by the way?)

On this computer to date (and mostly before I knew about the HoF-list), I have won Mesopotamia (as Egypt, Babylon and possibly also Macedon [that one might have been on the laptop]), RoR (as Rome), FoR (Franks), Mesoamerica (Mayans), Middle Ages (Fatimids), and Sengoku (Ume and Mori[?]) -- but none of these victories have been recorded. All attempts have been made at Emperor difficulty, with my Civ randomly selected.

Yesterday I won Mesopotamia (again), as Egypt (again), got all the way through the victory-screens without the game crashing (again), and yet when I got back to the start-screen -- there was no record of it (again). I have attached the last save below (re-saved from the final autosave: Macedon will complete the GLight on the following interturn, ending the game) -- for anyone who's willing to test it (and/or add an easy win to their own Conquests-HoF )

While it isn't really important to my ego to have these wins recorded for posterity (or to beat my previous high-score), I am wondering why the game is not doing what (I assume) it is supposed to do.

Tech. specs are as follows:

• Game-source: C3C bought from GamersGate in 2013, installed on this machine in early 2015
• OS: Win8.1 (fully up-to-date, AFAIK), user-account has Admin-privileges
• Install-location: secondary HDD, D:/Games/Civ3, specifically to avoid problems with VirtualStorage (per @Puppeteer's advice-video)
• Misc.: @warpstorm's water-colour terrain added to the Sengoku Art-folder, Scenario .biq files have not been modded

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Any advice on playing Spain? Regent/Archipelago. Starting location on a far-southern island with mostly tundra, sharing with Celts (considering an early war to take over the whole island, but need more troops ... still in expansion phase ... it's only 2190BC).

 

[tjs282]

considering an early war to take over the whole island, but need more troops

Yup. The Celts (REL + AGRI) can be monsters, especially if Brennus gets his mitts on any Iron early enough.

So you should be seriously preparing to do unto them before they do unto you. If there's still expansion room, they likely won't have built much military themselves yet, so you should be able to cut them off at the knees if you go on the warpath early enough. Should be feasible at Regent, especially if it's just you and them on your island (i.e. Brennus can't buy anyone else in against you).

Build a stack of your best attack-units -- even if only Archers -- and go and whack them as hard as you can (aim to bring 4-5 vet-units to bear on each town you want to capture, follow up with 1-2 Warriors to garrison). And for best results, try and make sure they don't get their Iron hooked.

If you're interested, we're playing as Spain in our current SG -- going for 130K Culture on a Large Archi-Map (at Emp, but the example may still be useful).

 

[Takhisis]

If you've won Mesopotamia I recommend you go and play TAM.

 

[Vuldacon]

tjs282... Are you playing a Civ III game or a Civ III Conquests Game? The record only shows for Civ III Games.

 

[tjs282]

tjs282... Are you playing a Civ III game or a Civ III Conquests Game? The record only shows for Civ III Games.

The Campaign Record I'm talking about is specifically for the Firaxis Conquests: each Conquest is listed down the left side, with columns for 'Score', 'Civ' and 'Difficulty'.

For an example screenshot, see post #534 in @choxorn's 'The Conquests' thread in Civ3 S&T. The differences between that screenie and what I'm seeing, is that if I get to this screen from the 'Hall Of Fame' option on the main menu, all the entries say 'Not Yet Victorious' — despite my having won 6/7 of the Conquests one or more times already (all loaded via the 'Conquests!' option on the main menu) — and there is also a clickable box marked 'Next' in the 'Civilization' column, level with the 'Mesopotamia' line. If I click on the 'Next' box, the game then opens the Mesopotamia.biq directly.

Presumably, the 'Next' box always appears by the first Conquest that still says 'Not Yet Victorious' — and once that Campaign has been won, the box is (intended to be) moved down the list. But because none of my wins have been recorded, it's still stuck on Mesopotamia.

 

[Vuldacon]

tjs282... I do not really inderstad that because the Records you are wanting are recorded in CIV III, NOT Civ III/ Conquests.
Are you certain you are playing in CIV III ? NOT Civ III/ Conquests?

 

[Vuldacon]

Listen... tis282... I think I understand what you are saying. You must be playing with Civ III/ Conquests.., NOT Civ III.

This can be from the Steam version that is Civ III/,Conquests or something else.

The Only times I have ever seen the reoirds for Civ III is in Civ III... NOT Civ III/ Conquests, etc.
..
This is the same reason we do not use or see the City Screen or Palace Screen in Civ III/Conquests.

 

[tjs282]

Listen... tis282... I think I understand what you are saying. You must be playing with Civ III/ Conquests.., NOT Civ III.

Well, yes, obviously — since I'm talking about seeing the top scores listed for the Firaxis-supplied "Conquests" scenarios

"C3C" = "Civ3 Complete" in this context, but my copy was bought and installed before it also became available through Steam (or GOG), so it has never been subjected to Steam-mandated 'updates' (AFAIK!). And I installed the whole game in a custom directory, called D:/Games/Civ3/, rather than allowing the installer to use the default install-path in C:/ProgramFiles/. The installer then created the .../Civ3PtW/ and .../Conquests/ subdirectories (and sub-sub-...-subdirectories) as normal.

The Firaxis-Conquests Campaign Record (HoF) .txt(?) and .pcx files are presumably stored somewhere in the .../Civ3/Conquests/ subdirectory, though I haven't looked for them (yet).

The Only times I have ever seen the reoirds for Civ III is in Civ III... NOT Civ III/ Conquests, etc.

I'm not that fussed about getting access to the epic-game HoF, but (I'm pretty sure that) whenever I finish an epic-game using conquests.exe + conquests.biq (and provided the program doesn't crash on me during the victory-screen parade!) it does also show me a list of my previous epic-game high-scores and wins/losses.

So there is presumably also a 'standard' HoF .txt(?) file for epic-games, presumably also somewhere in .../Civ3/Conquests/

This is the same reason we do not use or see the City Screen or Palace Screen in Civ III/Conquests.

Yes we do, if we're playing any (unmodded) epic game, i.e. based on the civilization3.bic, civilization3X.bic, or conquests.biq rulesets! We just don't see those screens in mods: games based on rulesets with any other name (including the 9 Firaxis-Conquests .biq files). It's that simple.

e.g. if you play @Civinator's CCM (or your EFZI, come to that) as a scenario, installed in ...Civ3/Conquests/Scenarios/ and accessed through the 'Civ-Content' option on the main menu, you won't see the Palace/City-views. But if (as Civinator prefers to do) you rename "CCM.biq" to "conquests.biq" (and install all the CCM-files directly into the ...Civ3/Conquests/ base location) you will see the Palace-screen again (though IIRC, he's modded the City-screen to show a resource-list instead — at least when CCM is played as a scenario).

 

[vorlon_mi]

Hi! I'm new to Civilization as a whole, and I have some questions that I can't find answers to.

First: how do I freeze pop growth? The problem is that many of my cities are at max pop limit now with all the tiles around them being worked and no spare food remaning, so there is no growth, but some cities have their own squares producing 3 food, which leads to an uneven number of food being produced, so these cities enter a nasty loop when the last citizen appears after a long growth from a single food and the city immideately goes into starvation, since the citizen requires two foods.
I've figured out that some tiles produce uneven amounts too, so I was able to play with irrgating/mining deserts/plains a bit (or switching worked tiles) to get to the even number of total food produced, but some cities just don't have any tiles around them capable of producing an uneven number of food.
I'm aware that I can sell off the harbor to get the water squares to produce 1 food and that I can pillage my railroad to get irrigated tiles to produce 3 food, but are there other non-destructive methods to control the growth?
My culture is Agricultural, that's where the towns get their 3 food from...
I also know I can simply draft a citizen when the population spills over the limit, but that still requires attention and manual intervention. Which become hard with a large nation.

Second: is there any way to force the workers to keep working the tile when pollution spills over it? I have a lot of cities and they are just enormous, so i have to switch the tile working back almost every turn now (used to do it multiple times in a turn until mass transit).

Third: cities in tundra? What's the best approach? I usually place a city on the shore and just make some captured workers join it, because the amount of food produced is very low. So you can get as many citizens as you have water tiles (with harbor) plus three, since tundra provides 1 food and central square produces 3. A bir more if there's fish/game/whales avaliable.
What do you do with tundra tiles themselves? I've figured out that a tundra tile with a forest produces 1 food and 2 shields at all times, while a tile with a mine produces 1 food and 1 shield before railroad and 1 shield more with railroad. So it appears that it's just better to forest all the tundra and forget about it, since all the world map gets settled before railroads appear anyway.

Fourth: resourse randomness? Do all resourses appear with 100% probability? (not under my capital. just at least in one place in the world) It's my second play now and i'm VERY rich with resourses now, while my foes are not. During the first playthrough it was the other way around... Also I could not find any gems on the map during the first time. Can there be a world with no certain type of resourses appearing at all?

Hi and welcome,
1) In the early game, the population growth will freeze when you hit certain limits. If your town is not on fresh water (river or lake, not ocean) and does not have an aqueduct, it will stop growing at size 6. If your city has not built a hospital, it will stop growing at size 12. But in my experience, I might want to slow growth before that, since I don't have enough luxuries to keep everyone happy for size 7, 8, or larger. Convert some citizens to specialists, and play around with the tiles being worked until you get the balance just right.

2) Once the pollution happens, the citizens in the city stop working (as others wrote). I avoid cleaning up volcano pollution for 100s of years, because it takes so many turns and I usually have better things for my workers to do. Later in the game, as cities start producing pollution, I usually use "shift-D" to send a stack of 8 slaves to go clean it up. And yes, I have to pop open the city screen to make the city work the tile again.

3) Consider your intended victory condition. If you're going for either spaceship or cultural, those little tundra villages can contribute a little to the cause. Yes, putting them on the coast and building a harbor is what I usually do. Since oil may possibly be found there, you may want some cities in the tundra to claim the land; as others wrote, you can just set the first citizen to be a specialist and forget it if you want.

4) All the resources will appear eventually. On a standard or large map, each tribe usually has a luxury near its capital. On continents maps, some of the luxuries may be on the other land mass. I have often fought wars to get access to iron or coal, if I don't have it in my borders.

 

[jarred!]

@tjs282: is your game crashing whenever you try to access your hof or whenever you complete a game? I had an issue in which the hof for vanilla didn't install properly, and my game would crash whenever access to the hof was requested...(the fix was, once the "you're effed” pop-up popped up, to open the /conquests directory and delete two temp files (IN and OUT), and try again. It worked after two attempts, and hasn't crashed since. The hof was not being created apparently, and deleting these files fixed some unknown error.)
If this isn't what's happening to you, then I don't know how to help.

The hof file in conquests is called CampaignRecord.HOF, and seems to just be a text file, maybe creating one yourself (if you don't have one) would help.

As always, make sure the files are writeable and you're running as admin etc.