Some newbie help please?

[unknown.exe]

Sup, I just got Civ III for Mac and I need sum help. How in GOD'S NAME DO I PLAY?!?!?! Really I've got the REALLY REALLY basic stuff down, but how do mines, taxes, expenses, gold gain per turn, and all of that sort of stuff work ? Like how do I win is the question... I can't even beat the tutorial because I run out of gold due to the gold-per-turn thing, even w/o science or happiness percentage, and that pretty much keeps me from winning. Also, how do you enforce taxes and other such ways of keeping your gold-per -turn in the positives? I need sum help with my strategy, which is build a few cities, connect them all by roads, trade w/ some other civs, make a wonder, build an army and attack. I havn't even gotten into the ADs yet!!! HELP!?!?!?!??!?!
PS: Ive tried tons of pages and tutorials but they are all confusing and don't address my probs.
PSS: The in game tutorial helps you for like two minutes then leaves u hanging, even w/ tutorial game mode on.

 

[vmxa]

Too much to cover, but I chip in a few concepts and other will as well.

Taxes are control by the slider in the F1 screen. You have one for research and one for lux and what is left is for taxes.

Mines are worker task. Move a worker to a tile and it has list of actions, one is mining.

Income is increased by some structures, the tax rate and roads being worked as well as any bonus the worked tile may have.
Trades can bring in income as well.

Expenses are shown in F1.

 

[unknown.exe]

but how do you profit from mines?

 

[vmxa]

A tile start with a set of attributes. Look at a tile that is a grassland, not on a river. I yields 2 food, 0 shields and 0 gold. If you have a road, it yields 1 gold.

If you mine it it yields 1 shield. Mines add shields to the tile and that increases production. Example, you have a 10 shield worker being build. You have 1 shield net currently.

If you mined a worked tile and corruption was not a factor at this point, you now have 2 net shields and the worker will be completed in 5 turn, rahter than 10. Of course that presumes you have the pop you create the worker in 5 turns.

A common example is you are making a sword at 30 shields and are netting 9 shields. If you mined a tile that was worked and corruption did not take the new shield, you now net 10 and will finish swords in 3 turns and no loss or waste of shields.

At 9 shields you would need 4 turns and have an overrun and those shields are lost.

 

[unknown.exe]

Oooookaaaayyyy... that makes sense... but what is the average gold-per-turn for you? Mine is +3... I'm guessing that most semi-experienced players should be getting around 10... am I right?

 

[vmxa]

It is impossible to say with so little information. I often will run will a deficit late in the game. If you have 4 towns and all are size 1, you will have very low income, even if you have no structures.

If you have 4 towns and a worker for each and they are size 2 to 5, you will have a decent surplus. Note that for the first tech or two, you probably should run at the minimum research to keep it moving. 10 or 20 percent.

Once you get to where you can increase research and reduce the time frame, then run at the highest you can stand.

 

[brennan]

Gold Per Turn (gpt) will be low for almost anyone at the start of a game. It isn't until you get a good number of cities that have grown a bit (say to around size 6) that you'll start to see a decent amount going into your treasury. At this point it's a good idea to switch your government from Despotism (which is a wasteful government type that you start with) to monarchy or Republic, assuming that you have the technology to do so.

There are phases the game goes through: at the start is the expansion phase, where it is important for you to grab as much land as you can by founding new cities. Since you are new, i'd guess that you have a couple of cities by the time the game goes into AD years, that you don't have much in the way of roads,irrigation and mines. this is fairly usual. A good experienced player can end up with 30-40 cities (on a larger map size) at this stage, with maybe 40-50 workers laying roads, building mines and irrigating.

A good guide is to build a minimum of military units early on, restrict yourself to a warrior per city and concentrate on getting settlers out. Many new cities will start off fresh telling you they will grow in 10, build warrior in 10. Build a worker instead, having those roads etc is important.

Right at the beginning it's a waste to put a lot of effort into research, you don't have enough of an economy to support it. Oddly the game mechanic works that so long as you have just 1 unit of research happening in a turn, the game will credit you with 1/40th of the research required for the next tech. So right at the start of the game put your slider to 20% and take advantage of this to research at very little cost to yourself - you'll see that this lets you accumulate a fair amount of gold in your treasury which will come in useful later. Research your first few techs like this (you'll be able to put the slider down to 10% science by the time you have a second city).

When all the available land is pretty much used up the expansion phase is over. Experienced players will go straight into what you might call the 'conquer everyone' phase - because they know how, but you'll be in a 'builder' phase, where you can build city improvements, increase the size of your army and so on. Use this to get a feel of how to run your economy and cities.

Try to look at FAQs here on how your AI opponents behave, understanding them is important.

 

[MAS]

The things you ask about are the basics, you can find the answer to your questions in the manual.

Your cities have citizens, those citizens work the tiles around the city. They produce the production-shields and commerce that the tile they work on gives.

All the commerce that all citizens plus the center of a city produce is added together, then the corruption (if present) is detracted. After that, it is split up according to the sliders in the F1 screen.

So if you have 50% science and 0% lux slider, then half of the commerce in each city will in the city will become science beakers, and the other half will become gold per turn income.

At the end of each turn, all the gold per turn income from all cities in your empire are added together. And all the maintenance for city improvements and unit support, and payments to other civ (if you are trading with them) are detracted. What is left is added to your treasury.

My advice: keep the science slider as high as possible throughout the game, only lower it if you need to avoid negative income.
To avoid being forced to lower it, you should try not to build things that cost maintenance. Only build them if they have a good return of investment value.

To increase the amount of raw commerce, you need to expand, build lots of cities, then let those cities grow big. Also build a lot of roads, they increase the commerce a tile gives by +1. So build enough worker units to build those roads quickly.

 

[Aabraxan]

Welcome to CFC, unknown.exe!

As to your question of "How do I win?," there are several ways: (1) Conquer everyone; (2) Dominate (own 66% of the people and land tiles (?) on the planet); (3) launch a space ship before anyone else; or (4) get yourself elected Secretary General of the United Nations.

The commerce bonus of roads has already been mentioned, but roads do several other things: First, they allow for faster movement. A warrior on roaded plains can move 3 tiles rather than the usual 1, assuming that no rivers block his path. Second, they are necessary to hook up luxuries (silks, dyes, wines, etc.) and resources (iron, horses, coal, etc.).

A visit to the War Academy would probably be in order. Some suggested reading, in no particular order: (1) Cracker's Opening Plays; (2) Bampseedy's Deity Settlers; (3) Warmongering 101; and (4) The Four Rules of Wonder Addiction by Ision.

 

[ALA Gator]

Read the war academy articles first.

 

[scoutsout]

First off... welcome to CFC!

My advice, play a bit on chieftain to get the feel for the mechanics of the game. Here are some things that will help:

• Play
• Don't build any wonders
• Play
• Do NOT automate your workers.
• Play
• Learn the basics of the combat system.
• Play
• When you get to the point you can develop a game, you'll have better questions for improving a game. Come back here, post screenshots or saved games for others to look at, and you'lll get better advice.
• Play.
• There's a short answers/newbie questions thread stickied at the top of this forum. It's a great place to ask one-off questions. Lots of strong players subscribe to that thread.
• When you win ONE GAME on Chieftain, play a higher level.

 

[unknown.exe]

Thanks for the posts guys... do you need to connect mines with roads to your city, or does the mine just have to exist, or does it have to be in range of your city? Also, how do you increase the size of your city?

 

[Aabraxan]

Thanks for the posts guys... do you need to connect mines with roads to your city, or does the mine just have to exist, or does it have to be in range of your city?

The mine has to be (a) in range of the city; and (b) worked by a citizen. Each of your citizens (who live inside your cities) works one tile, or is a specialist. In order to get the benefit of the mine, a citizen has to work that tile. However, you'll want roads on your mined tiles anyway, because a road adds +1 commerce to the tile. So a tile that is both roaded & mined is worth +1 commerce and +1 shield over its base value (disregarding corruption for now).

Also, how do you increase the size of your city?

Provide excess food. Each tile has a base food value and a citizen working that tile produces that much food. The citizen (whether working or specialist) also eats 2 food per turn. Over on the right side in the city screen, you'll see the food bin. When the bin fills up, which requires 20 food (or 10 if you've built a granary), a new citizen is born. So a size 3 town must produce at least 7 food per turn to grow. The first 6 food are eaten by the 3 citizens, and the seventh food goes in the bin towards growth. Get 20 extra food (without a granary) and the town grows to size 4. Now it requires 9 food to keep growing, and the cycle continues. Make sense?

 

[unknown.exe]

OK, that makes sense.. I just played a game and I was stuck on an Island w/ China. I beat China and that island was all mine, except for Hammurabi who kept coming over, builing cities, and me destroying them . I had Despotism, Republic and monarchy. But no matter what my gov. was a few cities were always in civil dissaray until I placed a rediculosly large ammount of soldiers on it. How can I prevent this? Also, how can I prevent peeps from being born in my cities? Because all of the food goes to them and I got 0 growth.

 

[Aabraxan]

OK, that makes sense.. I just played a game and I was stuck on an Island w/ China. I beat China and that island was all mine, except for Hammurabi who kept coming over, builing cities, and me destroying them . I had Despotism, Republic and monarchy. But no matter what my gov. was a few cities were always in civil dissaray until I placed a rediculosly large ammount of soldiers on it. How can I prevent this?

Happiness is controlled by some combination of the of the following methods: (1) Military Police (MPs); (2) luxuries (silks, dyes, wines, etc.); (3) happiness buildings (temples, cathedrals); and (4) the Luxury Slider (found on the F1 (domestic advisor) screen). MPs are not available for all governments. Were you in Despotism, Republic, or Monarchy? Republic has no MPs, and Despotism and Monarchy only allow 2 or 3 MPs per town, respectively. So any military units over 2 or 3 MPs (depending on whether you were a Despotism or Monarchy) weren't doing anything for happiness.

Also, how can I prevent peeps from being born in my cities? Because all of the food goes to them and I got 0 growth.

As a general rule, you won't want to, at least throughout most of the game. You'll want to produce settlers and workers and keep your cities growing. Eventually, though, most cities are going to stop growing just because they run out of excess food. If there are still a few 2-food tiles available, you can join some workers to boost the pop.

 

[scoutsout]

But no matter what my gov. was a few cities were always in civil dissaray until I placed a rediculosly large ammount of soldiers on it. How can I prevent this?

Keeping cities out of disorder is simple. The number of Happy citizens must outnumber the number of Unhappy citizens. There are a couple of utilities available for downloading on this site that will warn you if a city is about to riot. CRPSuite/MapStat and CivAssist are two good ones. I recommend you start with MapStat... CivAssist gives more information than you are ready to use just yet.

Soldiers in cities ("MPs") do not help happiness in Republic. Only the first 2 help in Despotism, and Monarchy only gives you 3 MPs.

You can hit the F1 (Domestic Advisor) screen and increase the amount of your budget spent on entertainment. (Some call this luxury tax)

The best way to keep the people happy is to connect luxury resources within your borders (wine, ivory, gems, silks, spices, incense, dyes, furs) to your road network, and make sure all of your cities are connected to each other, and your capitol. One luxury resource will make one citizen happy in each city. Marketplaces have a multiplier effect on this happiness once you get a 3rd luxury connected.

One resource will serve an empire; any additional resources of the same type can be traded or serve as "backups" (some of the strategic resources become "exhausted" and go away).

 

[unknown.exe]

mmmkaayyy... thanks for that advice. My peeps asked for republic govt., I gave it to them, the cities stayed fine for a few turns, then one by one they fell into dissaray. When I changed my govt. back to despotism, the cities went back to normal....WTH ?

 

[Aabraxan]

If you still had military units standing around in your cities, they would have become MPs on the switch back to despotism. Also, if you'd been at war and losing units, war weariness may have had something to do with it.

 

[MAS]

Your peeps don't ask for anything, they only want enough sources of happiness, or contentness, to cancel out their unhappiness.

When you discover a new government, your adviser asks if you want to switch, or not. Its your choice.

Despotism is the worst government in the game, not counting anarchy. Republic is usually the best, but its a bit more difficult to handle for a new player, so I suggest you stick monarchy for now.

Growth is good, more citizens, and more cities means more power.
Expand until you win.

 

[scoutsout]

...I suggest you stick monarchy for now.

That's pretty decent advice while learning to play the game. You can learn how to play in Republic when you're ready for Regent level.