Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[timerover51]

Thanks to both of you.

I just found out something interesting. Air superiority does not work on the tile the airplane is stationed on. So if a city is being bombed, it will need aircraft stationed nearby to intercept or the flak to intercept or the planes will be destroyed as air rates target planes first over any land units.

The same concept works for carrier based planes, except it will depend on the stack's AA defense, to intercept or nearby planes from land or another carrier.

That is very good to know, Dexters. I wondered how air superiority worked, having tried it in the Pacific War scenario with not a lot of results. Thank you.

 

[Calis]

Does air superiority missions work on fighters based on carriers?

I recently placed a stack near an enemy stronghold. Waited till the Carrier moved into position, woke up the fighters and give them their orders but in the IBT, the stack got bombed, and no fighters came to intercept.

Basically carrier based fighters can intercept, yes. This is sure. but they do not have a 100% chance to intercept.

Saying this, I have my doubts that a fighter can't interecept when the tile it is located gets bombed. How often did you try that to prove your theory?

 

[TheOverseer714]

The enemy bombers target your fighters in a town, so they rarely survive the first turn, but they will defend that town if they do survive. I have never seen the AI bombers target an airbase, so it is better to build one near the targeted area and load it with fighters set to air superiority and watch their bombers go down in flames.

 

[timerover51]

The enemy bombers target your fighters in a town, so they rarely survive the first turn, but they will defend that town if they do survive. I have never seen the AI bombers target an airbase, so it is better to build one near the targeted area and load it with fighters set to air superiority and watch their bombers go down in flames.

Hmm, that makes sense, Overseer, I will have to try that in my next Pacific game. I do tend to load cities with flak units, since I have the Civil Defense building autoproducing them on a regular basis in my modification of that scenario. I also have made the Netherlands an active human player for hot seat games.

 

[thetrooper]

@timerover51: how do you make the Netherlands playable?

 

[timerover51]

@timerover51: how do you make the Netherlands playable?

I will need to get my Windows game editing box set up so that I can figure out how I did it. I will get back to you tomorrow.

 

[lizard72293]

Could anyone tell me how to put in custom units that i DL into Civ3?

i have tried placing them in the "units" folder... this doesnt work.
i attempted to "add" them from the "edit:units" toolbar in the Civ3QEdit program, but i'm stuck when it comes to giving them an icon. If anyone could help me i would greatly appreciate it, i want to play with these new units.

 

[timerover51]

Could anyone tell me how to put in custom units that i DL into Civ3?

i have tried placing them in the "units" folder... this doesnt work.
i attempted to "add" them from the "edit:units" toolbar in the Civ3QEdit program, but i'm stuck when it comes to giving them an icon. If anyone could help me i would greatly appreciate it, i want to play with these new units.

You need to look in the Creation and Customization Forum.http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=57

 

[timerover51]

@timerover51: how do you make the Netherlands playable?

You open the Pacific scenario in the editor, after first unlocking it so that you can save any changes. You choose Player Properties in the menu bar. When that opens, Player 1 is the Netherlands. You check the box for human player, and uncheck the box for miss first turn as none of the other Allied players has that checked. You then do a Save As and save the file as something like MyPacWar. I do not think that you can retain the scenario name and have the changed file count toward the Hall of Fame. It is possible to play all of the Allies Hot Seat verses Japan, but it is a lot of work.

 

[The Mistrel Boy]

Hello there, although I dabbled in 4 my computer couldn't handle it, so I've started 3 for the first time ever

I seem to be doing alright at the moment, although only playing on Chieftain. MY first of probably many noobish questions is: how to deal with enemy/allied settlers.

I had a peace pact with Lincoln, and I had a wee bit of spare land deep in my territory (as your cultural influence sometimes misses out areas around lakes or whatever). I saw his settler head straight for the random bit of space, and being more powerful than him I killed the bugger and stole the ensuing slaves to use as my own.

The question is, against a far bigger opponent that I don't want to anger... Should I be letting the settler through into what is *really* my land. It annoyed me that I had to end the pact.

---

Another thing is garrisons. I left 2 spearmen in every village near enough.. Is this by rule of thumb too much or not enough to prevent riots. I know this may sound a bit silly, but I had something like 20 towns to take care of, so couldn't particularly pay attention to the specific needs of every town. One day they're just going to riot and cause me pain in the arse.

Oh and noobish behaviour of the day - I got my first hero/leader and because it was in a kind of choke point, I noticed "rush building". I didn't realise was only due to the fact that the leader just appeared. I ended up rushing the build of walls. Pah!

 

[vmxa]

The best way to deal with the wandering settler is to not let them have your map. Not let them send in scouting units. You cannot stop them from scouting the coast, peacefully. If they have not see the map, they cannot send units to the spot, even thought they knwo the spot is open.

Failing that, use a few units to block movement. That will get them to turn back with a settler combo.

Yeah that is not a good use of a leader.

If you are in a despotism, you can only use two MP units for happiness. A few governments allow more than two and some allow none. My rule is no spears on levels like Regent, unless in a at risk town.

Archers or swords are better at they can attack. Use Civ Assist or F1 at the end of the turn to check for unhappy towns. Get a pop head mod to let you see the happy faces easier. Never go to the next turn with unhappy towns.

Take a look at my tutorial for some ideas.

 

[Spoonwood]

I wouldn't worry about the wandering settler phenomenon. Sometimes it might make sense to block it, but in general not so much. Warriors work just as well as MPs, although in general, it's better to become a Republic, hook up luxuries, build markets, and just use the luxury slider to keep your citizens content.

 

[vmxa]

"Sometimes it might make sense to block it, but in general not so much. " Why would it make sense to not block a settler heading for a hole in your empire? I could understand not being able to block it, but no way would I let them found a town in my land, if I could prevent it.

 

[timerover51]

I wouldn't worry about the wandering settler phenomenon. Sometimes it might make sense to block it, but in general not so much.

I would go with VMXA on this one. Even at the lower levels, letting the AI get a foothold in your area is a huge headache, and you need to do whatever you can to block it. The other option is, if a city is founded, attack it immediately, before it can build defenders.

 

[EMan]

I don't think there is a simple strategy..........There are many ways to win.

At lower levels I don't build defenders, which is what Spearmen are. If you need MP's, Warriors will do.........But getting quickly to Republic or Monarchy is usually a good strategy for longer games.

I don't worry about what the AI is doing. When you have enough Veteran Horsemen, it will be easy enough to wipe them out and probably convert many of their cities to your own.

It's unlikely the AI will capture your undefended cities or declare War early on if you settle cities, discover Techs and Trade with other civs.

1 piece of advice I can give you: Decide before you start the game what Victory Condition is your objective. The experts here can give you a more black-and-white strategy if they know the answer to that question!

 

[The Professor]

As VXMA said, you can block AI settler pairs by using spare units. At a minimum, you need 3 units in a V formation on the 3 squares that are between the settler and its destination. This will force the settler to move side-to-side, so that you can use your 3 units to move along with it, and continue blocking.

This works best if you already have roads between most of your towns, so that you can draw from the units you have in several towns.

In the long term, the best way to discourage those settlers is to build a town in that location yourself, so that the settler turns around and goes home.

 

[The Mistrel Boy]

O.K. another absolutely noobish question. Do you need a leader to stack armies onto the same tile?

 

[splunge the 2nd]

You need a milatary leader (or the milatary academy) in C3C to build an army. There's a nice article in the War academy on the basics of armies. You can stack as many units (including armies) as you like on a tile with no preconditions.

 

[vmxa]

The term army is a bit confusing for Civ. People use army to mean a bunch of troops at times, but it also represents a specific unit called an Army. I only use the term army to mean the later, a unit that will have 1 to 4 troops that can not be removed from the Army.

A single tile can have any number of units or armies or any mixture of them. The only consideration is that once you get to about 140, you can no longer scroll down the stack.

 

[Spoonwood]

"Sometimes it might make sense to block it, but in general not so much. " Why would it make sense to not block a settler heading for a hole in your empire? I could understand not being able to block it, but no way would I let them found a town in my land, if I could prevent it.

As The_Professor points out, it takes units to block settlers. In the ancient age I usually have warriors or scouts to get contacts, workers to develop land, and settlers to found cities. I don't want to mess up my worker development in general for blocking, as I want my cities to develop well. I want contacts ASAP, so the warriors need to go exploring. More warriors to block units would mean later builds on markets, libraries, great wonders, or barracks whatever sort of infrastructure I want to get up/pre-build for (temples pre-build libraries for example). So, how would blocking settlers really come as worth it when it delays my civilization's development in general? And where would I block AI settlers?

The first ring of cities will produce well, and there exists no need to block AI settlers there. That's already 7 to 9 cities, which will give me most of the commerce and probably production for most of the game (notice how 5 CC games compare to regular games). The second ring sort-of works out productive, but given 6 to 8 cities in the first ring, I'd estimate there's *at least* another 8 spots for cities in the second ring. That's plenty of spots to grab without blocking.

19 settlers or so from your capital keeps it as a settler factory perhaps for too long. 15 cities on a standard Deity map comes as a fair number (before any wars, if that happens) for an agricultural tribe with a cow and 4 BGs in the capital. And to grab all of those spots via blocking requires extra units, which slows down your cities development (even if you want to go barracks-horseman/swords). Second-ring cities also often require extra time to develop. So, I don't see AI settler blocking paying off. I can't see blocking for 3rd ring cities paying off, since it takes quite a while to develop those cities into something useful. May as well let the AIs settle, grow and build things for you, and then capture them.

That's for upper levels. For lower levels, the AIs produce settlers slower, so there exists fewer settlers to block. And often enough you can settle CxC from the AI, put in a library or temple and get the border squares fairly easily. So, I don't how settler blocking with units pays off in general, though of course play as you like. Settling near or on a luxury ASAP comes as another story.

EMan perhaps put things best.