Today I Learned (about Civ3)

[Lanzelot]

Kind of awkward because it meant I could never link up the two portions of the island by road.

I once had a similar case, where my only source of coal within reach was located on a small island (2-3 tiles) which consisted entirely of mountains. I was able to build a road and even a colony on these mountains, but no settlement; so I was unable to connect the coal to my trade network. (No harbor, no airport....)
Once I discovered Flight, I put an airfield onto that island, but that didn't help either. (Lesson learned: airfields are cheap replacements for airports in almost all respects, but they don't provide a link to the trade network, as airports do.)

 

[timerover51]

Hmm, in the standard game, as long as a civilization still has one settler, it is not destroyed. (Which is the cause for the common "settler on a boat" problem.) And as far as I know, the workers disappear just like the military units, when a civ is destroyed.
Perhaps this is caused by a side-effect of the modding you did?

I have no idea if my modding effected it, but I have a lot of workers from civilizations no longer in the game.

 

[tjs282]

Any Workers+Settlers(Foreign) which you captured in the field, or built from captured cities, are counted as your units, so they will not disappear just because their original parent Civ has been knocked off the board.

 

[timerover51]

Any Workers+Settlers(Foreign) which you captured in the field, or built from captured cities, are counted as your units, so they will not disappear just because their original parent Civ has been knocked off the board.

Thank you. Can I safely use the settler units to build cities without the city promptly revolting?

 

[justanick]

Thank you. Can I safely use the settler units to build cities without the city promptly revolting?

Once their home civilization is gone they can no longer revolt to their home civilization. So in that sense it is safe.

Even before that the risk is very manageable. If one foreign citizen is the only reason for a flip risk, then the flip risk is very limited and can be reduced to zero by a few units military police or just one unit military police, depending on culture ratio.

 

[Lanzelot]

There is one big advantage of settlers built/cash-rushed from cities with a different nationality (no matter whether that nation still exists or not): they do not cost unit maintenance! Therefore I tend to build a few, even if all territory has already been settled, and then keep them in stock for the next war to be used as "combat settlers".

This is similar to how captured catapults, cannons etc. with foreign nationality don't cost unit upkeep. If you manage to capture lots of artillery type units from the AI (and then upgrade them), this is a good way of keeping a large standing army without having to pay an arm and a leg in upkeep. (And contrary to captured workers, which only work at half speed, captured artillery attacks at full strength... )

(Though this may be a significant factor only on the upper difficulty levels, where the AI actually manages to built enough artillery that the human player can capture...)

 

[Spoonwood]

There is one big advantage of settlers built/cash-rushed from cities with a different nationality (no matter whether that nation still exists or not): they do not cost unit maintenance! Therefore I tend to build a few, even if all territory has already been settled, and then keep them in stock for the next war to be used as "combat settlers".

Another strong advantage lies in that you can produce settlers while your core cities focus on military production.

In high scoring histographic attempts/completions it also allows for moving some population around while having settlers to put in better spots for score than where AIs put their cities often.

 

[Marcitko]

A situation that often occurs in the early game, at least in my games, is to have an outer-ring city corrupted to 1 shield and having 2 extra food. So, previously, I would put it on a 10-turn cycle of making workers. This is good because we very much need workers in the early game, and we are reluctant to spare either food or shields in our core.

But yesterday I figured out a slightly more efficient way.

We build a warrior for military police and let the city grow to size 2 without rioting. Then, we make the second citizen a scientist. This is enough for the 50-turn min-teching we do on higher difficulties - so we set the science slider to 0%.

In terms of gold, this is more efficient than having the science slider at 10%. A small difference, 1-2-3 gold, but in the early game that is a meaningful difference.

The city is still put on a 10-turn worker production cycle. Once we have enough workers, we can revert back to growing the city normally.

 

[Buttercup]

Thought I'd have a go at maxing out gold production and happiness.

It got a bit ruined at the start due to having to share my starting island and all of the resources being in their half, so an early war took me into the AD time-zone and drained most of my early gold gains, but the remaining few hundred turns were quite revealing.

For this roleplay/mechanics test, I built Temples until the town expanded, then sold them, then no other happy buildings. I built no Libraries and no further tech buildings. I only built Aqueducts, Harbours where actually needed to get to size 12. I built Granaries but then sold them when the town hit size 12. I built Courthouses everywhere apart from the capital. Everywhere had a Marketplace and any further gold multiplier building that doesn't generate pollution. I did build a couple of Culture buildings next to an AI city to prevent any flips and to secure resources. I secured Barracks everywhere with the Sun Tzu.

So after I secured Smith's Trading, my island only had Maintenance costs of 34 per turn.

For most of the game I set the Tech slider to 30% after learning Republic and Currency and was still able to outpace the AI until around the turn of the Industrial age, when one AI, Portugal, actually started outpacing me, forcing me to increase the slider to around 70% initially, then 100% as I closed in on the Modern Age.

Having the luxury slider at 30% without imported luxuries kept most people happy. As I increased the Tech slider I had to increase luxury trading to replace the luxury slider. I didn't build any Hospitals so as to maintain the ability to keep everyone happy. One town went to size 16 via Shakespeare.

I discovered that this playstyle is perfectly feasible on a Huge Regent Archipelago map and that Happy faces can and do build-up a good end-game score over the long term, and, for the 1st time, for me at least, the happy faces score even outpaced the landmass score:

I didn't have the patience to test this method in a military campaign, but it seemed good enough for that. I chose to ease out the game at Fission via the diplomatic victory condition, which, thankfully, I was patient enough to be successful at.

 

[Bralvodrenak]

(comment number 4)

A few days ago, when I was trying out different frame rates to make tank tracks visible in the game, I learned that there are two types of animation speed. One is the frame rate speed, and the other is how fast the animation moves from the center of a tile to the edge. When I experimented with different frame rates (the normal speed in the .ini file), the track rotation wasn’t visible. But when I lowered the animation travel speed (the fast speed in the .ini file) to 80, the tracks showed up.

 

[Aabraxan]

TIL: That I am really, really out of practice at this game. Actually, it started about a week ago, when I looked into Steam for the first time in several years, only to discover that I apparently bought C3C there at some point. I figured, “OK, cool. China, continents, Emperor. Should be fine.” Narrator voice: It was not fine. I had my head handed to me a few times, and backed it off to Monarch, took the Ottomans instead, and am relearning lots that I had forgotten.

 

[vmxa]

Hey Aabraxan glad you are still at it.

 

[timerover51]

TIL: That I am really, really out of practice at this game. Actually, it started about a week ago, when I looked into Steam for the first time in several years, only to discover that I apparently bought C3C there at some point. I figured, “OK, cool. China, continents, Emperor. Should be fine.” Narrator voice: It was not fine. I had my head handed to me a few times, and backed it off to Monarch, took the Ottomans instead, and am relearning lots that I had forgotten.

I have discovered that the Steam version plays a little differently than the CD version.

 

[Lord_Hill]

That's interesting. In theory, the only changes for the steam version are removing the safedisc copy protection stuff and replacing gamespy multiplayer with steam (not to mention just getting rid of the vanilla and ptw exes much to everyone's annoyance!)

 

[Civinator]

That's interesting. In theory, the only changes for the steam version are removing the safedisc copy protection stuff and replacing gamespy multiplayer with steam (not to mention just getting rid of the vanilla and ptw exes much to everyone's annoyance!)

The steam version plays havoc with the labels text files of normal C3C mods and scenarios, as it added in an absurd way an additional text line into the labels text file.

 

[Lord_Hill]

It's off topic, but I always thought it's a shame that firaxis haven't touched civ 3 since that steam multiplayer patch. Clearly they still have the source code otherwise they wouldn't have been able to make that change. So why not just give it to one dev as a little background project. Slowly fix up all the annoying little things. Could even come on here and ask us what the annoying things are.

I know, it's just not how companies work these days, because there's very little profit in it. But I think the goodwill generated from that would maybe convince a few more people to try the newer games.

 

[WildWeazel]

The steam version plays havoc with the labels text files of normal C3C mods and scenarios, as it added in an absurd way an additional text line into the labels text file.

It's a side effect of the multiplayer server switch though. AFAIK there's been no documented functional changes to the gameplay. It still reports as Conquests v1.22

It's off topic, but I always thought it's a shame that firaxis haven't touched civ 3 since that steam multiplayer patch. Clearly they still have the source code otherwise they wouldn't have been able to make that change. So why not just give it to one dev as a little background project. Slowly fix up all the annoying little things. Could even come on here and ask us what the annoying things are.

I know, it's just not how companies work these days, because there's very little profit in it. But I think the goodwill generated from that would maybe convince a few more people to try the newer games.

That's practically a Civ3 FAQ and there is a long story of business acquisitions, IP law, and lack of incentives behind it. It's never going to happen, not for lack of trying. But that's why we have C3X and OpenCiv3.

 

[Civinator]

It's a side effect of the multiplayer server switch though.

Yes, but wouldn´t it be much better if the additional line would have been added at the end of the labels text and not in the middle ?

 

[Lord_Hill]

Oh yeah, definitely one of those situations where if it was going to happen, it probably would already have happened. It's a similar argument with just releasing civ 1 packaged with dosbox digitally. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world. Take 2 did it with the old x-com games, they even did it for free with railroad tycoon deluxe. But civ 1, nope. Maybe there is something funny about the deal with Atari/Infogrammes to get the IP that stops them being able to do stuff with the older games.

 

[Aabraxan]

Hey Aabraxan glad you are still at it.

I’m rusty as all get out, but somehow managing to survive Monarch! And glad to be back.