So I just lost a game on warlord ... it's time to learn some advanced strategy

[Omntiopian]

Alright, so I used to play Civilization III a lot back in the early 2000's (when my sister got it for her computer, back in junior high), and I recently decided to pick it up and try again. But my first game was kind of an unmitigated mess. I was on an island with 5 other civs, and I didn't have any iron or horses, so the early game was kind of rough. No coal either, so I couldn't build railroads. Also I didn't have a clear victory goal in mind, so I just meandered until the time limit and then lost to the Babylonians.

So I'm starting afresh. What I need to know is, what are the basic do's and don'ts of advanced play? I've been browsing threads and I've seen things like "don't ever build wonders," and "micromanage your city screen." It's pieces of advice like this that I need, any nugget of wisdom you can give me. Things I'm curious about are as such.

How far away should you generally build cities from each other?
How many units should you garrison in each city?
What's the actual difference between the different governments?
What's the best way to expand quickly, yet safely?
What are the best civilizations for the different play styles? Who has the best unique unit? Who should I avoid playing as?
Tips for conquest/domination/cultural victory conditions.

 

[CommandoBob]

Do you have a save from your last game? That would be a great help.

Best rule of thumb for me is 'Build everything you need, but remember you don't have to build everything.'

And it does help, much more than you might expect, to know how you plan to win. If you plan to conquer the world, you don't need cathedrals, ever.

My first few games of Civ3 I sorta fumbled around too, trying to get a grip on what was going on. I understand how you feel and what you want to do. There are plenty of people here that will be glad to help you improve your game.

 

[Elephantium]

I generally like to build cities about three tiles away from each other, like this:

CxxC

Given variations for terrain, you usually end up with enough space for your cities to put 11-12 citizens to work, and they're close enough to help reinforce each other in wartime.

For city garrisons, it depends. At the start of the game, I garrison cities with up to 2 units to prevent riots. Once I switch governments, that changes. In Republic, most cities get no garrison while my border cities get 1-2 units each (and I try to set up stacks of Horsemen/Knights as a "fast response force" to cover several cities simultaneously). In Monarchy, I'll do the same, plus put 2-3 units as MPs in my larger towns. It ends up being kind of a balancing act -- you don't want to drown in unit support costs just to have max MPs in every town, but you do want to use MPs here and there sometimes.

For governments: 1) Anything is better than Despotism. 2) Monarchy is preferable for Always War (and it's good for games where you're doing a *lot* of warfare but not "AW"). Republic is better 99% of the time because of the commerce bonus -- you just have to know how to manage war weariness.

For expansion, setting up a Settler Factory is a good start. For that, you need a city +4 or 5 food (e.g. Flood Plain with Wheat, a pair of grassland cows, etc) and some shield-rich tiles. You build a Granary in the city and set up the citizens on the food rich tiles and bonus grassland tiles. Irrigate the bonus food resources and mine the bonus grasslands -- you want the city to be growing in 2-3 turns and getting 6-7 shields at size 4 (or 5). Then you build Settlers. It'll take 4 turns to grow from size 4 to size 6, and you'll get more shields each turn (e.g. 6, 8, 8, 9 = 31 shields = Settler built in 4 turns). Keep that running smoothly and you'll get a lot of new cities built very quickly. Just make sure your city doesn't start working Forests and take longer to grow -- that will throw you off. In the meantime, your other cities can build military units and Workers to escort your Settlers and build roads for faster military reinforcements.

As for civilizations to choose, anything Agricultural is a strong civ. For unique units, I like Germany (Panzers), Persia (Immortals), Iroquois (Mounted Warriors), Celts (Gallic Warriors), Ottomans (Sipahi), and pretty much anyone who has a Knight replacement.

Tips for specific victory conditions ... that's a very broad topic, so I won't get into it in this post

Edit: I'd also suggest following some succession games. Those have always been awesome learning experiences for me.

 

[Omntiopian]

Another problem I ran into was this: I was at war with the Netherlands, and I was pretty close to destroying them, but at the last second, the Portuguese, who were on the complete other side of me (the undefended side) declared war on me after I refused to give them some stuff. So not only did I not destroy the Dutch, but I lost a whole much of cities. By the time I had everything smoothed over, my forces were really divided and I couldn't really afford a war anymore. And during all that, all the other civs were so far ahead of me scientifically that I had to halt war for about 1200 years in order to get back on track. How can you be at war and still advance scientifically?

What's a succession game?

 

[vmxa]

An SG is is just when a number of players join together to play a game. They tend to play for a set number of turns and then pass the save to the next player. They agree on an rules they wish to use in advance.

SG's tend to play about 1.5 levels easier than normal. That is to say an SG at Emperor would seem like Monarch. This is due to the fact that players collaborate on things and the extra "eyes" tend to catch missteps sooner or prevent them.

 

[vmxa]

There are some very good post on do's and do nots around. Too bad they are not collected. In any event the main cause of getting caught with our pants down is lack of experience.

After a number of games you soon learn when to expect the AI to take action. You also learn how to entice them into not taking the action, if you so choose. A simple rule is to not leave border towns devoid of units. That is going to be like waving a red flag at the perverbial bull.

Number one don't for me is to have too few workers, especially early when it really matters. One way to determine, if you are in that situation is looking at towns and checking to see how many citizens are working unimproved tiles. (workers are key)

At warlord make few to no spears, make warriors then swords, till at war or in the middle age.

As Cbob mentioned, make whatever you want as long as you need it and can afford it. To that end, keep and eye out for making too many temples. Making a barrack in places that are not going to make troops. Libs in places that are not making at least 4 beakers.

 

[Omntiopian]

At warlord make few to no spears, make warriors then swords, till at war or in the middle age.

Keep and eye out for making too many temples.

Why, to both of these?

 

[vmxa]

Simple:

Spears, the AI is weak at this level and is no threat in the AA. Spending resources (time, shields and gold) on spears to sit on their butts is not a good investment. The AI will not consider spears as adding to your strength.

Spear are defense 2 as are swords, but cost less and cannot attack. Warriors and swords are going to be counted by the AI as part of yor strength in deciding if it should attack.

Structures:
Same thing, shields, time and gold need to be used to your best benefit. Making a temple at warlord is seldom needed and when it is, it usually wil be long after you learn CB. Most struggling players can be seen to make a temple asap and in nearly every town.

This cost and slows your empire. Libs treated the same way as they rush to get one build everywhere. Many of the towns are long, long ways from making enough beakers to make this worth doing. You pay maint on the lib and if you make less than 4 NET beakers, you only break even.

Let that town get larger and then, if it is making 10 or more beakers go for it. The shields could have made settlers, workers or swords to make you stronger. Al structures need to be evaluated for need and effectiveness.

Yes there are situations where need overrides effectiveness and that is fine. However every time I load a warlord or regent game the first thing I see is all these structures in places that really cannot use them.

 

[Omntiopian]

But then what about culture? Do you just ignore having larger city boundaries for the early game?

 

[MysteryX]

But then what about culture? Do you just ignore having larger city boundaries for the early game?

Early in the game it's about priorities. If you have the Religious trait, building a temple early to take care of extra happiness and do some culture flips on your enemies could be good strategy, because you are building temples cheap. I like the Religious trait, I will go for temple early (playing on Monarch level without barbarians).

If it's just for expanding your borders alone, however, it's not worth it early because you are not going to have the extra population to work the extra land. You are better off focusing on growth and defense before getting to culture.

 

[MysteryX]

The single biggest difference between struggling early and outpacing your enemies early comes with having enough workers to improve the land. If you have citizens working unimproved land, you don't have enough workers improving the land fast enough. A good rule of thumb is 1.5 workers per settlement (1 per settlement if you have the Industrious trait works well enough).

Though it is important too to create as many settlements as possible early, a settlement with unimproved land is just a drain on your empire. If you are creating settlements faster than you can improve the land, you are slowing down the overall growth of your empire.

 

[CommandoBob]

Libraries cost more but give more culture. They also help increase learning.

Temples cost less and have less culture per turn. They help keep people happy or content.

Both cost 1 gpt for upkeep.

It took me a while to accept the fact that libraries are the better invesetment in most cases. Most cases is all of the victory conditons except cultural.

First, I had to learn how to manage citizes. That means connecting luxuries, working (in the city screen) tiles with high/higher commerce and sometimes raising and lowering the luxury slider. It also depended on the city. In a core, high production/low corruption city, it is generally best to keep all citizens working tiles. Out in the boonies, where corruption is 90%, hire a specialist instead, generally a scientist. A city at size 12 doesn't need 8 Happy citizens to be productive. As long as the unhappy citizens do not outnumber the happy the city will be fine. Simple though it is, that is the key: unhappy cannot outnumber the happy. Content citizens don't count, nor do specialists, in the unhappy/happy calculation.

All of which to say this: happiness can be managed by the player quite easily and the need for a temple is not that great. In a cultural game, the temple would help since it is cheapest culture producing building to build and any cultural building that has been around 1000 years generates extra culture per turn.

Libraries increase the science output of a city by 50%. If a city was generating 10 beakers of science per turn, a library would increase that to 15 beakers. The amount of beakers a city generates depends on the science slider. If the science slider is at 100% and the city generates a net of 20 commerce per turn, then 100% of those 20 commerce become beakers, in this case 20 beakers. Add in a library and that number increases to 30 beakers. Now, if the science slider was at 50%, then only 50% of the 20 commerce would be given to science, or 10 commerce for 10 beakers. The library still adds 50%, but now it is 50% of 10, not 50% of 20.

So, no, you don't ignore culture in the early game, but it just isn't that critical.

City Sizes
As Elephantium said, go for CxxC. This allows your foot units to reinforce quickly (assuming you have roads between your cities).

With the CxxxC spacing, no one city is going to be able to work all 21 tiles in their city radius. That is fine. Cities will grow to size 6 without fresh water and to size 12 with fresh water nearby. That is large enough in most cases. Cities at size 12 are easy to manage and easy to keep happy. A city at size 24 is much more difficult to keep productive. It can be done, but you have to babysit that city quite a bit.

 

[Omntiopian]

So I started a new game and am having some troubles. I'm doing a lot better scientifically, but since I have a lot of cities (I expanded very quickly), I'm having a real corruption problem. What's a good way to deal with far away cities wasting up to 8 shields, and 20 commerce? It would take forever to build a courthouse, and a forbidden palace would take even longer.

 

[vmxa]

"But then what about culture? Do you just ignore having larger city boundaries for the early game?"

I have no real intrest in culture. My borders expand by adding land. Eventualy you will have some temples and many libs and gain a little culture. The fact is that at Warlord I probably will make most of the wonders, not that I crave them, but because the AI is just so weak that I can with no lose of progress.

Towns pasts say the 3rd ring will not get any culture, except for rare situations.

"So I started a new game and am having some troubles. I'm doing a lot better scientifically, but since I have a lot of cities (I expanded very quickly), I'm having a real corruption problem. What's a good way to deal with far away cities wasting up to 8 shields, and 20 commerce? It would take forever to build a courthouse, and a forbidden palace would take even longer. "

Yes build nothing there and water all tiles worked. Then you can flip more citizens to being scientist. Do not worry about corruption other than in some srong cities closer to the capitol. Those places can make a court house and benefit from a little reduction in corruption (maybe).

Often I will not build courts either as war is the answer. Corruption is like the taxes in your pay check, not much you can do about them and it would take a lot of effort.

 

[Hellfiredoom]

The single biggest difference between struggling early and outpacing your enemies early comes with having enough workers to improve the land. If you have citizens working unimproved land, you don't have enough workers improving the land fast enough. A good rule of thumb is 1.5 workers per settlement (1 per settlement if you have the Industrious trait works well enough).

Though it is important too to create as many settlements as possible early, a settlement with unimproved land is just a drain on your empire. If you are creating settlements faster than you can improve the land, you are slowing down the overall growth of your empire.

^-- This. If I had to pick one strat that helped me move from Warlord to Emporer, it would be worker management.

Also, vmxa posted a thread/walkthrough on playing a full game a few years back (I believe it was a Warlord game). It's a great primer to understand the throught process that happens each turn. Hopefully he or someone can post the link to the thread.

 

[Hellfiredoom]

After much trepidation, I went ahead and searched for the thread (hey, vmxa's 13k+ posts is nothing to sneeze at!) and actually found it. It's Regent level, but the strats will be the same (if not better) for a Warlord game.

Here tis:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=296512

 

[PaperBeetle]

Others have already given more nuanced answers, so let me give the broadest rules of thumb!

How far away should you generally build cities from each other?

Use about twice the density that the AI uses.

How many units should you garrison in each city?

None.

What's the actual difference between the different governments?

For almost all games, Republic is better than any other government.

What's the best way to expand quickly, yet safely?

With lots of attacking units, you can expand quickly. With lots of attacking units, you are safe.

What are the best civilizations for the different play styles? Who has the best unique unit? Who should I avoid playing as?

You use the same core strategies with all civs. You could play a civ with no traits and no UU and not miss them much. Kinda like playing as America.

Tips for conquest/domination/cultural victory conditions.

You use the same core strategies with all victory conditions. But different victory conditions require you progress to different points in the tech tree. It's useful to plan your endgame right from the start.

What's a good way to deal with far away cities wasting up to 8 shields, and 20 commerce?

The question is not how many shields they are wasting, but how many they have left. Assuming we are talking about cities which are 90% or 95% corrupt, these are good places to build workers and settlers. These are your most important units, and they are cheap enough to build at 1 shield per turn.

 

[Spoonwood]

I pretty much second everything PaperBeetle says. However, I will comment on this one:

Tips for conquest/domination/cultural victory conditions.

For a 20k game up to basically Sid level, you almost always want your capital to put out a settler, maybe a worker or two, and then produce cultural buildings. You want to get that city to size 12 as quickly as reasonable and keep it building culture for the rest of the game. The rest of your empire should focus on putting in science buildings to speed your research and putting out enough military to fish for an MGL for the Heroic Epic.... artillery type units make for good friends!

For a 100k game you want to use CxC spacing everywhere and eventually revolt to Feudalism and whip in cultural buildings. The thread here might help.

 

[Cyc]

The very first Civ3 Game of Democracy turned out to be a 100K Culture Victory and it was far from being CxC. It was wide open, with most cities taking/using their full expansion. "Course we did a lot of conquering And a lot of Culture rushing mid/end game. The Democracy Game 1 ended with a Culture Victory one turn before we launched the Space Ship.

 

[Theov]

"Not any wonder" should be read as... "do not build wonders you're not going to need or don't do that much in the first place"
I often build Hoover's Dam, Leo's workshop, Darwin's Voyage, Magellan's, Mark Smith Trade... they have a lasting effect and are worth the price. Smith Trading is one of my favorites now - it saves a boatload of money every turn.
On the other hand - and trust me on this one - you're not going to need the Great Wall. Same shields can better be used on defensive units and eh... how much are you being attacked anyway? Fighting should not take place in your cities.
.
Don't play on Warlord. Just skip to Regent. You'll get beat maybe, but shine a light on the sadistic side of you and get through it. You'll learn faster and you don't get benefits over the AI. So a "win" is a "win" and not a "win*".
Build roads, workers and settlers. Road to fruitful places and settle there. You know the move the knight makes on a chessboard? There. (depends on terrain really, but that's about the distance - 6 tiles per city) Make more roads, workers and settlers. And more roads and workers. Until all that juicy land is taken and cultivated. With enough roads and irrigated land - the military can be made in a few turns. And before you know it, you've nuked your first enemy capitol.
If there's a neighbor nearby - don't let them become too big, grab all the land, but let them do some work. Let them have 3 or 4 cities. Trade science. Drain their money. And when they've roaded and irrigated their land, gained some population, some city improvements - maybe even built some Wonder you don't need - and did some work for you, you march in and kill them.
If you finish them straight away - you have to do all the work yourself.

* guy had a head start!