Strategy changes with 1.29 patch?

[Structure]

I don't have much experience with Civ3. I was an avid Civ and Civ 2 player years ago, but skipped Civ3 until recently.

So, I've been playing under the 1.29f patch and have a lot of difficulty implementing some of the strategies and ideas that I find here and elsewhere. I suppose that has much to do with my Noobness, but perhaps the patch has changed some things too.

For example, I don't get very far with diplomacy. I play at Regency level and rarely can induce another civ to sell me techs. If I do buy one, I can never recoop much, if any of its value by selling it to other civs. Likewise, I can't seem to sell a Right of Passage Agreement. Even when it obviously benefits another civ., they make me cry and pay to give them one...

The military side of the game is only sightly less frustraiting. In my current game (Regency, Large Map). I thought I would achieve dominance of my continent by taking out the second most powerful enemy. This gave me a large empire (about 40 cities...) and plenty of resources, but now the other two enemies on my continent are both being troublesome. If i go to democracy they war on me. If I gear up and go after them I can beat them, but my empire is too large already. One, the Zulus, is also annoyingly ahead of me in military techs too!.
On the other two continents are four advanced civs who are all, more or less, peaceful democracies. It's not looking good!

At anyrate, I just hoped to start a thread about useful strategic changes in the 1.29 patch. I can read the changes, but that isn't the same as having a good longterm understanding of the game.

 

[satchel]

I'm confused about your question - are you asking about the 1.29 patch versus earlier versions of Civ III, or are you asking about Civ III 1.29 versus earlier incarnations of Civ like Civ II?

Most of the strategies and comments you find here at CFC will work fine with 1.29; those that don't were generally considered exploits and were eliminated for that reason (e.g., trading cities). Corruption has been toned down a lot since the earlier versions of the game. The AI's response to trades has been tweaked with every patch, but trading with the AI is still a vital and crucial part of success at Civ III, regardless of what patch you are playing.

Perhaps if you were a bit more specific about what you are trying to implement, but finding ineffective, you would get more focused guidance.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Some of the strategy articles were written for old versions of Civ3, so may not apply to the 1.29f patch. Watch the dates on the articles. I don't remember exactly when the 1.29f patch came out, but I would say that any articles written, oh say 6+ months ago, probably won't apply very well to the 1.29f patch (not all articles, but many of them). There was a huge pile of changes going from 1.07f to 1.29f, but from one patch to another patch, you don't see that huge change.

On Regent, the AI researches at the same pace as you (well, it just needs the same amount of gold anyways). However, the AI to AI trade ratio gives the AI an advantage. They give each other discounts while trading. Techs devalue as more civs know that particular tech also. So it may be better in some situations to not buy techs until 3/4 of the world already knows that tech. If you are not the tech leader, you will not make much money at all trading techs because the AI will often have already given the other civ the tech if that civ had any decent money to pay for it. You can however, capitalize on situations where you see 1 civ has 1 tech, and another civ has a completely different tech. But once you bought a tech, the price devalues somewhat as now there are more civs (you and the civ you bought it from) with that tech. So it helps to know how many civs have a tech, and how much money the other civs have that you could trade it to, to try and make some money back.

ROP is based soley on size of your territory compared to theirs. If you have more land they will pay you for the ROP. ROP is not based at all on strategic uses. And if you have a bad rep, they won't pay for a ROP at all.

 

[Structure]

Thanks for the input.

Satchel: I'm playing Civ3 patched to version 1.29f. I have never played Civ3 with any other patch or in its original form. It crashed when freshly installed. The 1.29 patch fixed that. I was having difficulty with several strategies, but one in specific was Bamspeedy's Beginners Trading Tips. I couldn't replicate anything like the results he indicated. I figuered that was because I'm a noob, but maybe also because various patches had tightened up the AI trading system.

It also seems--as Bamspeedy indicated above--that corruption has been significantly toned down. On my current game with 40 cities on a Large map, corruption is only bad on some outlying cities and is...so far managable. So maybe I can safely swollow up a dozen more pesky Zulu cities?

As another example. It seems in most forumer's posts they talk about all the Wonders they build. I rarely get to build more than one or two Wonders as the AI beats me to it. Again using my current game as an example, I have only FP. (built it the hard way with shields and harvested forests) Despite a lot of fighting I only recently (around 1700AD) got my first leader. So now, if the AI will give me a chance, I might get a second Wonder.

Bamspeedy: Thanks for the reply. I will have to experiment with ROP and trading some more. So far it has been only minorly useful for me. Thanks!

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, I don't make tons of money from ROP, and that article was written with a previous patch (1.17f). In that game I did have tremendous culture (I was going for quick culture victory and had built many, many cities ICS style (cities 2-3 tiles apart) and building nothing but culture in all cities, so I had at least 5X the culture of anyone else), and I believe the AI does give you a little better deals when you have much better culture than them.

Luxuries are priced based on how many happy people it will provide to the recipient. So if gaining 1 more luxury will give you 50 more happy people, but will only get the AI 10 more happy people, the AI will ask for 5 luxuries to your 1 luxury.

Get contact with as many civs as possible, as quickly as possible. I buy contacts from a civ before I will buy techs. Don't sell contacts if you can. The more civs that YOU know that have a tech, it makes it cheaper for you to buy the tech. The fewer civs that THEY know that have a tech makes the tech more expensive for them to buy it from you. In most of my games, the AI simply doesn't have any money to give until the middle ages, and sometimes they don't have any money until the industrial ages. So early in the game, you're better off trading techs for techs or techs for resources. Also, in that game I had 2 continents all to myself so when the AI found me when they got Navigation I had a map of 2 continents that they hadn't explored at all, so the map was so valuable. Value of maps are based on how many tiles they uncover, doesn't matter if it's land or sea tiles, just the # of tiles.

Are you automating workers or manually controlling them? Don't automate at all until you are at least get out of despot, and probably not until somewhere in the middle ages. And even then, use Shift-A for automation, not just 'a'. Eventually you want at least 1 worker/city if industrious, more if not industrious. Use the palace as a pre-build to hoard alot of shields until a wonder becomes available, then switch to the wonder.

 

[satchel]

It is very hard to beat the AI to early wonders and it takes a lot of work. Several approaches that help are (1) carefully deploying your workers to optimize your land-use. cracker's much discussed early game strategy article can help you learn how to do this. (2) manage your citizens very carefully so as not to lose a turn to civil disorder. Use the luxury slider if you have to, to keep all citizens working in your wonder-building core cities. (3) prebuild with another wonder, small wonder, or the palace in preparation for switching to the wonder you want when you get the required technology.

On higher levels, though, you will find that many players do not bother with early wonders at all, because with the AI's production advantages there's no way to beat them to it. I play on Monarch and have mixed results with pursuit of early wonders. I can only rely on the expectation of a wonder once I have a tech lead (I usually achieve this during the industrial age) and even then I still prebuild.

You also mentioned difficulty getting leaders - this is true for me and generally as well. Leaders are rare. The only way to have ample leaders is to fight all the time, not a strategy I enjoy or have skill at. Some factors to consider that will improve your leader generation are (1) build barracks so that you are sending out veteran units rather than regulars. This not only improves your chances of winning battles, but will make it easier for you to have a supply of elite units handy for leader generation. (2) Use your elites wisely so they have a good chance of winning battles; use artillery or regular units to weaken the enemy first. (3) You can only have one leader at a time. So if you are hoarding a leader to build a future wonder, you won't get another one. If that wonder you want is a long way off in the future, use the leader to build an army instead, and then build the Heroic Epic small wonder after that army is victorious. (4) Even after you have used up your leader, the elite unit that generated a leader can't generate another one (unless and until you upgrade it to a more modern unit). Use other elites to try to generate more leaders.