spaceship help

[wdepner]

Hi Everybody,

My name is (Chieftan) Wolf and I hope to tap into the vast collective knowledge of this forum with a strategy question. Here is its premise.
While I am still learning the basics, I had a breakthrough this weekend when I am close to launching the space ship. I actually completed it, but well past 2050 AD in 2167 AD or so. So I could not launch it. So I am looking for some tips that can help me get through the final stages quicker. Here is some information that may offer some insights into my circumstances.

1. I played Germany (civ-specific abilities off) on a small against France, Russia, Japan, Rome and England which I conquered during the Middle Ages. At the end of the game, my number of cities exceeded 20, if not 30 cities.

2. I completed the Apollo program in the late 1900s.

3. During the final stages of the game (before 2050), I had built a lot of nukes.

4.While I traded a lot during the early parts of the game, I could not trade for higher technologies at the end of the game with the the AI. I had to research everything myself. (My science spending was at least 90 per cent throughout the game, but it took forever.)

5. I was a monarchy for most of the game.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Wolf

 

[GVBN]

At the end of the game, my number of cities exceeded 20, if not 30 cities.

you should build more cities

 

[AutomatedTeller]

a few things:

- leave civ-specific abilities on. Germany (and all scientific civs) get cheaper libraries/universities, plus a free tech in every ERA - these cut time to SS tremendously.
- Republic, not monarchy. Republic is much, much better for research games, as each tile will give you an extra commerce.
- modern era techs are *much* more expensive than industrial age ones - time Theory of Evolution to give you 2 modern era techs for free.
- I don't know if you in conquests, but if you are, your tech path should probably be alphabet/writing/CoL/Philosophy, which gives you a free tech for republic. You can get to Republic by the mid to late BC's this way, depending on the level.
- My guess is that you don't have enough workers, btw. Every tile in your civilization should have a road. roads = commerce = research.

 

[MAS]

Next time, go from despotism, right to republic, and stay in republic.

At the start, focus on expansion, expand until there is no more free land to settle. Your main priority is to build both settlers and workers. Get yourself about 2 times as much workers as cities and make an effort to road every tile on earth! (roads add +1 commerce to a tile, commerce gets devided according to the sliders in the [F1] screen, what matters isthe absolute amount of commerce going to science, a 100% of very little is still very little)

Past a certain distance from your capital, cities will be very corrupt, in these cities, build no improvements. Settle them as close to each other as possible, irrigate everything around them Let them grow to size 5 or so, and hire scientist specialist.

The cities around your capital should always work the land around them. Give each of your "core" cities, and "semi-core" cities 12 tiles to work on, assuming there is enough food around to let the city grow to size 12.

Your core and semi-core cities should only need a library, a market, and an aquaduct (if not near fresh water) The cities that you use to pump settlers at the early stage of the game should get a granary, the cities you use to build offensive military units should get barracks. some core/semi-core coastal cities may need a harbour.

Do not waste turns and shields building defensive units. Preferably, build horseman/knights/cavalry.
Do not waste your turns and shields building wonders. At least until you have 10 cities. And then only build a wonder in one of them, when you think you have a good chance to get it.

Idealy, you plan your military build up so that you shift from mostly settlers and workers to offensive fast moving unit (horseman) a bit before you run out of free land to settle. (you will have to develop a feeling for the exact timing)
Once you run out of free land to settle, start conquering.

Stop your expansion at it before you control 66% of the total land mass.
If you ever reach 66% you will win a domination victory, if you want to go for space race, you will have to prevent that, so stop at 65% or so.
At this point, you may invest in wonders if you like, as you don't need to build anything else.
At this point, you can build universities in your core and semi core cities. Not banks or stock exchanges, they are only useful if you have your sliders set to low science, and high tax.

Additional tips:
When you have scientific AI civs in the game, do not be afraid to just gift them to the next age when you reach it. They will receive a free tech of teh new age when they reach the next age, you can then trade for that tech (research an other tech yourself and then trade for it.)
Keep in mind to keep the scientific civ alive for this when you are conquering them.

 

[wdepner]

Hi Everybody,

Thank you for the help. I appreciate it. A couple of follow-up questions.

How do I create stacks of different units? Is there a specific 'stack' command or do you just move different units to the same spot? What about the order of the stack? And how does the stack move?

Also:

do not be afraid to just gift them to the next age when you reach it. They will receive a free tech of teh new age when they reach the next age, you can then trade for that tech (research an other tech yourself and then trade for it.

How do you know when to 'gift' so competing civs reach the next age? This raises another question. Does the game require that you research or trade for all (mandatory techs) or can you skip certain techs while still moving towards your goal of building and launching the space ship.

Thank you.

Cheers,

Wolf

 

[GVBN]

Pressing X or J moves the stack. I don't think it works in Civ3 vanilla

 

[MAS]

How do I create stacks of different units? Is there a specific 'stack' command or do you just move different units to the same spot? What about the order of the stack? And how does the stack move?

There are commands in the game to move a stack of units at once, these where added in patch V1.29 in vanilla (Civ3 without any expansions) and they also appear in any version of the expansions.
The GUI buttons for this appear above the little panel in the lower right side of the screen.

It should be noted that this "move stack" command is only to safe you time in giving orders. Game technically, it is just the same as ordering every unit to move one at a time! No additional advantages.

To create a stack, just move units in the same tile.
The one with the strongest defensive value (assuming he has enough HP left) will always defend when the stack is attacked, and units with the bombard ability will get a free shot at the attacker. (do defend artillery, they will be captured like workers otherwise)
But at lower difficulty levels, this is inefficient, all the way up to monarch difficulty, you will be better off to just building stacks of fast moving offensive units. (though, do experiment with different units, if only to find out how they work)

How do you know when to 'gift' so competing civs reach the next age?

I understood you where playing at chieftain difficulty.
There is a big chance that when you gift them up to the industrial age, the AI still has undeveloped size 4 towns struggling to even build pikeman. But at the industrial age, they will likely receive nationalism for free, then the cheapest unit they can build is the rifleman (the others become obsolete) at 60 shields. (and they need 120 as per their chieftain difficulty penalty)

It will take them ages to complete it, an the AI isn't smart enough to figure out to first build workers to improve their land. It will, as programmed, first complete its current type of unit in its build list (defensive unit) before building an other worker. So don't worry about them. You should have 100 cavalry by this point.

At regent difficulty and beond, the AI will be able to research at its own much faster, so you should have a better shot at trading, rather than gifting. Note that this gifting is only a trick to get you the space win faster. outside of this specific victory condition, you'll be better off leaving the AI behind in tech.

This raises another question. Does the game require that you research or trade for all (mandatory techs) or can you skip certain techs while still moving towards your goal of building and launching the space ship.

Tech with a little icon in the corner, a red circle with a red stripe across, are not needed to reach the next age. You can skip them, however, I'd advice you do research republic and literature among them. You can skip the rest.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

gifting is kind of an advanced technique. Just making sure you get into republic and keep the civ traits for scientific civs.

As a second trait, being industrious (faster workers) or commercial (less corruption/more commerce) will help more than militaristic.

 

[Redrake]

As a second trait, being industrious (faster workers) or commercial (less corruption/more commerce) will help more than militaristic.

As far as economy goes, France is a good choice, since they are both industrious and comercial. But militaristic might help you get and edge early on a larger territory. If you want to go for a spaceship victory a large empire is nice to have. Gives you boost to building capabilities.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

the king of fast research games is the scientific trait, though.

 

[wdepner]

Hi Everybody,

Thank you for help. Your tips have been really helpful. But I am still struggling with a couple of issues.

1. When I switch from Despotism to Republic, my bank account goes in the tank. Why? How can I avoid this? And should I even worry about this?

2. I trade, trade, trade like crazy with my surrounding civs to build up my account. But this only works for so long because the surrounding civs run out of money. This plus the government switch puts me in a hole. What should I do? How appropriate would be to launch a military campaign at that stage?

3. I try to manage my cities through the contact-the-governor function. How appropriate is this? How much should I meddle with the default productions settings? And I have this one city that keeps producing catapults even though I do not want.

4.As I pursue a spaceship victory, how much should worry about culture during ancient time? A couple of my cities have unfortunately "flipped." One poster has suggested that I build cities close to competing civs, then fill in the space later. How appropriate is this?

Thank you.

Cheers,

Wolf

 

[Aabraxan]

1. When I switch from Despotism to Republic, my bank account goes in the tank. Why? How can I avoid this? And should I even worry about this?

Should you worry about it? Yes. My economy undergoes strain every time I make that same switch due to unit support issues. Unfortunately, I don't know how to avoid it. But there are a couple of things you can do to ease that transition: (1) if you have CivAssist II, you can use the Economy tab to help you determine how hard the transition will be, financially (I don't know if Mapstat has this function); and (2) disband obsolete units to bring down your unit support costs. Remember that under republic, you won't have any MPs, so any unit that's just standing around trying to make people happy . . . gone. Regular warriors . . . gone (assuming you've got something better).

2. I trade, trade, trade like crazy with my surrounding civs to build up my account. But this only works for so long because the surrounding civs run out of money. This plus the government switch puts me in a hole. What should I do? How appropriate would be to launch a military campaign at that stage?

That depends on several factors. Have you run out of land? Can you expand more and plant more cities to help unit support? Does the AI have a lux that will let you drop your lux spending? What about strategic resources? Are you buying them?

3. I try to manage my cities through the contact-the-governor function. How appropriate is this? How much should I meddle with the default productions settings? And I have this one city that keeps producing catapults even though I do not want.

I do not use the governor. There's some debate about whether or not you should use it, but the consensus seems to be that you're better off controlling your cities on your own.

Meddle in the default production settings: emphasize production. (That's what I've been told and it's what I do, but I can't really explain the advantages of doing so in decent detail . . . sorry).

As to the city producing catapults, check your preferences. There's a button for "ask me for build orders" or some such. Make sure it's checked.

4.As I pursue a spaceship victory, how much should worry about culture during ancient time? A couple of my cities have unfortunately "flipped." One poster has suggested that I build cities close to competing civs, then fill in the space later. How appropriate is this?

Can't help you much on the culture question. On city spacing, I think that depends on difficulty level, map, who your neighbors are and how close they are. If you can claim a chokepoint on a map by sending the settler one more tile away, it's probably OK. If you have to send that same settler an additional 14 spaces to claim a tile next to them, I wouldn't do it. In the AA, it'll just take too long for reinforcements to get there. Generally, I keep my cities at CxxC until I hit a point where they're totally corrupt and will be turned into specialist farms. Then I pack them in CxC.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

1. to handle the economy: roads, roads, roads. In republic, every worked tile needs to be roaded.
2. Work high commerce tiles - luxuries, gold in hills, fish, whales, coast - build harbors.
3. Disband useless military.
4. Connect and trade for luxuries, and build markets.
5. Get towns to size 7 as soon as possible (gives more unit support)

You need lots of citizens working lots of tiles with commerce for republic to help, which means you need luxuries and markets to keep them happy. You can keep them content with temples/colloseums/cathedrals... but those 3 improvements give you 6 content faces, for 6 GPT, while a market and 4 lux give you 6 happy for 1 GPT. and 1/3 the shield cost.

The switch to republic usually entails a lowering of the science slider/raising of the lux slider right off, but you really need to make it, because you expand faster - you can irrigate grass and get your non-food bonus cities growing, you can pop out settlers faster... 5-10 turns after you switch, you will be in *much* better shape financially then you were under despotism.

On culture for a science game - you should build libraries in your core pretty quickly - those will provide you great culture, which will help reduce the chance of flips in your outlying cities. that's one reason why being scientific helps - you get those libraries cheaper. I usually use a barracks as a prebuild for my libs, trying to time them the turn I get literature (which is the next thing I research in a science game)

 

[gmaharriet]

Aabraxan and Automated Teller covered just about everything for getting your economy in better shape after switching to Republic, but here's one more thing that may help.

If your barb settings are set to at least "roaming" or more, you can send out units to disperse the barb camps for 25 gold each in the areas which still have "fog of war". You can set them to patrolling every 5 or 6 turns in each area...giving the barbs just enough time in the fog to build another camp. What level of unit you'll need depends on what level you're playing, since the barbs get stronger at each playing level you move up. Of course, this works in the Ancient Age as well, but by the time you reach Republic, you'll probably have better units to send out, and it can help your treasury until your cities are earning enough gold.