[C3C] Wasted shields

[Duxer]

Good evening!
I just find out this forum and it is quite impressive how many information it contains. I used to be a civ5 player, but i would like to improve on civ3 considering it is, in my opinion, a more deep civ.
I honestly don't know how to menage efficiently with shield waste problem, it has a huge negative impact (at least 10 cities with 1 shield only) on production. Moreover, civilopedia is silent about this topic.
The only thing i figured out is capital (and forbidden palace) distance can deal with that. What else can i do? Please help!

 

[tjs282]

I honestly don't know how to menage efficiently with shield waste problem, it has a huge negative impact (at least 10 cities with 1 shield only) on production. Moreover, civilopedia is silent about this topic.

Yes, if you had to choose only one thing about Civ3 that really annoys even the most enthusiastic players, it's the corruption issue. This is partly hardcoded, part moddable in the .biq (using the Civ3 Editor), but can only be dealt with in a few limited ways in the standard epic-game.

First and foremost, you need to switch to a lower-corruption government ASAP after you begin a new game. You start in Despotism, which has the highest-but-still-functional corruption level of the 8 default 'govs' (only Anarchy's corruption is worse, but then you can't build anything), but if you 'beeline' to Republic (or Monarchy) in the Ancient Age, you can reach it in 5 techs or less -- depending on what you start with, what you unlock from goody-huts or trading, and/or whether you can reach Philosophy before any other Civ (if you do, you can choose 1 additional tech for free).

Although Democracy's corruption level is somewhat lower than Republic, it doesn't get unlocked until a lot later in the game, and you don't want to stay Despotic that long. If your Civ is Religious (Anarchy between govs is limited to 2 turns), you may want to consider switching govs a second time in the late game, to Communism (you no longer have a low-corruption core and high-corruption peripheries: instead, your total wastage gets shared out relatively evenly among all your cities). Under Communism, it becomes possible to hand-build stuff everywhere -- but at the cost of all your highly developed core-towns each becoming much more mediocre producers -- so switching to it is very situational.

To deal with corruption in your 'core' towns (those nearest your Palace), you can build Courthouses (needs Code of Laws) and later Police Stations (needs Communism). In more marginal towns, you can also assign citizens as Policemen (decorrupts 1 shield and one gold per policeman; needs Nationalism) and/or Civil Engineers (produces 2 uncorrupted shields for buildings only; needs Replaceable Parts).

Under non-Communist govs, though, it's not really worth doing any of those things in the >90% corrupt boondocks: just pack the towns in those areas as tightly together as possible (="Infinite City Sprawl", or 'ICS'), fully irrigate (and rail) the surrounding tiles, and use these areas to build Workers, Settlers and/or Wealth, while their excess citizenry (supported by the excess food supply) work as Taxmen (gives 2 gold per head), or Scientists (gives 3 beakers per head). This tactic is known as 'gold/beaker-farming'.

 

[Duxer]

To deal with corruption in your 'core' towns (those nearest your Palace), you can build Courthouses (needs Code of Laws) and later Police Stations (needs Communism). In more marginal towns, you can also assign Policemen (decorrupts 1 shield and one gold per policeman; needs Nationalism) and/or Civil Engineers (produces 2 uncorrupted shields for buildings only; needs Replaceable Parts).

In the >90% corrupt boondocks, though (under non-Communist govs), it's not really worth doing any of those things: just pack the towns in those areas as tightly together as possible (="Infinite City Sprawl", or 'ICS'), fully irrigate (and rail) the surrounding tiles, and use these areas to build Workers, Settlers and/or Wealth, while their excess citizenry (supported by the excess food supply) work as Taxmen (gives 2 gold per head), or Scientists (gives 3 beakers per head). This tactic is known as 'gold/beaker-farming'.

It looks like (in my opinion, as a newbie player) for "money waste" there are different solutions (courthouses, police stations, etc), while for "shield waste" i have less options.
I clearly noticed Republic and Democracy as the most efficient goverments, anyway dealing with war weariness (as a "militaristic" player like me) is a huge problem for me, this is why i prefer play on Communism.
I guess i will just leave that as is, relocating these cities on gold/workers/settlers production.
Thanks for your help!

 

[tjs282]

It looks like (in my opinion, as a newbie player) for "money waste" there are different solutions (courthouses, police stations, etc), while for "shield waste" i have less options.

Courthouses and Police Stations work to decorrupt both commerce and shields. But under a 'centralised' gov like Republic, the best result you can get from putting up a CH+PS in the '1-shield areas' is still 70% corruption/waste, i.e. if a town harvests 10 shields per turn, you'll only get to use 3 of them. But even with CivEngs working on the projects, it will still take a long time to get both those buildings up.

To speed things up, you can cash-rush (costs 4 gold per missing shield if you already have at least 1 shield in the production-box, otherwise 8 gold per shield), or disband units which were built in your core, but both of these methods are also quite wasteful (a unit disbanded in any town will put 1/4 of its shields into that town's current project; so to get just one Courthouse built, you would need to spend 4*80 = 320 shields in your core).

this is why i prefer play on Communism.
I guess i will just leave that as is, relocating these cities on gold/workers/settlers production.

Not sure if I've understood this right, but Communism works best when you have (or capture) large, fully developed Metropolises with 'Optimal City Placement', i.e. towns placed so that each town has near-exclusive access to 16-20 tiles, with minimal overlap (the way the AI founds its towns, basically).

Under this gov you shouldn't have nearly so many 1-shield towns, so little need to devote them to building only Wealth/ Workers/ Settlers.

 

[Duxer]

Oh, really? I tought courthouses (and so on) decorrupt only commerce (or at last, shield waste and money waste were separate). I have also noticed this problem on middle ages, especially with Monarchy. When i reach industrial age i have more tools to partially solve the matter.
Anyway for a militaristic player like me shields are very important, if i just can't deal with that (unless swapping for a "better" government, or wasting a lot of turns in order to build courthouses and police stations), i will use them for money.

 

[tjs282]

I have also noticed this problem on middle ages, especially with Monarchy.

Well, Republic does have lower corruption than Monarchy: that is, you get a few more potentially useful towns before you hit the break-point where corruption ramps up significantly*.

Warring under Republic is quite possible, so long as you're careful and systematic about it. Yes, you do then also have to deal with War-Weariness, but the increased commerce you get under Republic can usually pay for more LUX%-spending to make up for that. Building primarily fast (M >= 2) attack-units is also preferred, so that your forces are spending as little time in enemy territory as possible (units on enemy soil over the interturn adds to your citizens' WW).

Basically, unless you have a decent early fast UU (e.g. Celtic Gallic Sword, Iroquois Mounted Warrior, or Chinese Rider), then Ancient and early Middle Age wars should generally be restricted to smallish nibbles at neighbours' territory, taking a city here and there to grab control of Luxes/ Resources/ chokepoints, and/or to tidy up your borders; the best time to go all-out on Conquest is then in the late Medieval, once your core is fully developed, and you can build Cavalry (needs Military Tradition, plus Horses+Saltpeter), whose M=3 allows you to expand your borders fast — just before you hit the Industrial and obtain the various abilities to exploit all that new territory.

*Which reminds me, I forgot to mention something in my earlier post: playing as a Commercial civ also increases the number of potentially productive (pre-breakpoint) towns.

You might also want to look at a couple of articles in the Civ3 War Academy, if you haven't already:
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/game-mechanics/everything-about-corruption-c3c-edition/
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/game-mechanics/how-does-war-weariness-work/

 

[Duxer]

Well, Republic does have lower corruption than Monarchy: that is, you get a few more potentially useful towns before you hit the break-point where corruption ramps up significantly*.

Warring under Republic is quite possible, so long as you're careful and systematic about it. Yes, you do then also have to deal with War-Weariness, but the increased commerce you get under Republic can usually pay for more LUX%-spending to make up for that. Building primarily fast (M >= 2) attack-units is also preferred, so that your forces are spending as little time in enemy territory as possible (units on enemy soil over the interturn adds to your citizens' WW).

Basically, unless you have a decent early fast UU (e.g. Celtic Gallic Sword, Iroquois Mounted Warrior, or Chinese Rider), then Ancient and early Middle Age wars should generally be restricted to smallish nibbles at neighbours' territory, taking a city here and there to grab control of Luxes/ Resources/ chokepoints, and/or to tidy up your borders; the best time to go all-out on Conquest is then in the late Medieval, once your core is fully developed, and you can build Cavalry (needs Military Tradition, plus Horses+Saltpeter), whose M=3 allows you to expand your borders fast — just before you hit the Industrial and obtain the various abilities to exploit all that new territory.

*Which reminds me, I forgot to mention something in my earlier post: playing as a Commercial civ also increases the number of potentially productive (pre-breakpoint) towns.

You might also want to look at a couple of articles in the Civ3 War Academy, if you haven't already:
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/game-mechanics/everything-about-corruption-c3c-edition/
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/game-mechanics/how-does-war-weariness-work/

I am actually playing as Celts, i menaged to make gallic swordsman as useful as possible. The problem is i keep up on receving war declaration (perhaps i overdid it?) and i have a fair amount of "useless" cities. I tried to move the capital without results considering i got new efficient and inefficient cities.
Anyway i will check out your links as soon as i can. Thank you very much!

 

[justanick]

The problem is i keep up on receving war declaration (perhaps i overdid it?) and i have a fair amount of "useless" cities.

The amount if useful cities will more or less stay the same. Once R > Nopt rank corruption increases much faster, so that is about where the periphery of useless cities starts.

As the amount of useful cities is limited you need to max out the output of your useful cities. Essentially this means that you must choose a city placement where each metropolis can use about 16 tiles in addition to the city tile. Going for 20+1 tiles however is usually not a good idea as this will require to have tiles that cannot even be used once you have hospitals.

I tried to move the capital without results considering i got new efficient and inefficient cities.

In almost all cases it is best to keep the initial capital. Donnot change it unless you really know what you are doing.

Anyway for a militaristic player like me shields are very important, if i just can't deal with that (unless swapping for a "better" government, or wasting a lot of turns in order to build courthouses and police stations), i will use them for money.

You may want to reconsider the idea that shields are very important for you. In the long run commerce tends to be more useful than shields. Once you progress into the industrial age you can build railroads, hospitals and factories, all of them can increase your output of shields significantly.

In the late middle age you can build cavalry which is the first unit to give you a meaningfully greater military value per shield than earlier units such as knights.

While it is true that warfare is usually limited by shields this may easily lead to the wrong conclusion.

To speed things up, you can cash-rush (costs 4 gold per missing shield if you already have at least 1 shield in the production-box, otherwise 8 gold per shield), or disband units which were built in your core, but both of these methods are also quite wasteful (a unit disbanded in any town will put 1/4 of its shields into that town's current project; so to get just one Courthouse built, you would need to spend 4*80 = 320 shields in your core).

Still building units just to disband them elsewhere is more efficient(or rather less inefficient) than building wealth and using gold for rushing. Some disbanding of units tends to be come reasonable at some point in the game.

It looks like (in my opinion, as a newbie player) for "money waste" there are different solutions (courthouses, police stations, etc), while for "shield waste" i have less options.

Actually you can use the WLTKD in addition to the regular reductions in corruption. Corruption on shields is easier to combat than corruption on commerce.

To deal with corruption in your 'core' towns (those nearest your Palace), you can build Courthouses (needs Code of Laws) and later Police Stations (needs Communism). In more marginal towns, you can also assign citizens as Policemen (decorrupts 1 shield and one gold per policeman; needs Nationalism) and/or Civil Engineers (produces 2 uncorrupted shields for buildings only; needs Replaceable Parts).

I would like to point out that in the really marginal cities policemen have no effect as maximum corruption is applied after policemen.

Policemen are are useful in every city that has at least one shield and at least one commerce left to be uncorrupted. This means most of the inner core and the outer core, but not the periphery.

Courthouses and policestations are most useful in what one might call the outer core or the semiperiphery. There corruption can be reduced by about 30 percentage points. In the periphery it is limited to 10 percentage points per anti corruption building and in the inner core the is little corruption left to be removed.

Yes, if you had to choose only one thing about Civ3 that really annoys even the most enthusiastic players, it's the corruption issue.

Actually, i kinda like corruption in C3C. It is a challenge to be overcome by the means the game supplies you with.

Pollution however is an annoyance.

 

[tjs282]

Anyway for a militaristic player like me shields are very important, if i just can't deal with that

One other thing that I remembered too late to include above: once you've learned Nationalism, you can use the 'Mobilization' ability (via your Domestic Advisor, F1-screen; available under all governments).

When you mobilize your economy, every (worked) tile which already gives at least 1 shield, may now give 1 additional shield (like a Golden Age does), under some circumstances (see links below). Admittedly, this won't help you much in the totally corrupt towns, but since mobilization can increase the base shield-output across your entire empire, your core-towns may now be able to build more expensive attack-units in significantly fewer turns than they could before. In towns which have Factories and power-plants already, any additional (unwasted) base-shields will also be multiplied by those buildings, further accelerating production.

There are several caveats to bear in mind when mobilizing your economy:

• All your towns' build-lists will become restricted to projects with direct military value (non-military projects will be forcibly switched) — but not all the allowed projects will get the shield-boost
  • See this War Academy article — originally written for Vanilla Civ3 — for most of the details
  • See also this post in the article discussion thread for some significant updates/patches to those details for PtW + Conquests/Complete
• Cultural generation will be halved across your entire nation
• Although you can mobilize at any time, this will end automatically when your peace/war status changes, i.e.
  • If you mobilize while at peace, mobilization will end as soon as you declare war (or someone else declares on you)
  • If you mobilize while already at war, mobilization will end when you sign a peace treaty with (or destroy) any other Civ — even if your other wars are still ongoing

 

[Lanzelot]

I want to draw attention to one more important point: there are basically three resources in Civ3, which are used to create everything else: food, commerce and shields.

Of these three, food is the one that is not subject to corruption! So in order to make the most out of the fully-corrupted boondocks, you need to use food. Irrigate and rail all the tiles and then convert food into the other two resources. How food can be converted into commerce, has already been mentioned by tjs282: science farms (or less efficient: gold farms).

And food can be converted to shields in three ways:

• Once you know Replaceable Parts, you can use Civil Engineers, similar to how science farms work. E.g. in a town of size 6, three citizens work on the fields to provide the required 12 food per turn, and the other three can work as Civil Engineers, providing for a total of 7 shields per turn. This may appear not so useful at first, as Civil Engineers only apply to buildings, and usually you don't want any buildings in your boondocks, but with the following trick, you can also build units with Civil Engineers:
  Let's say you want to build Tanks. Build a Marketplace for 14 turns. Once it has collected 14*7 = 98 shields, finish the Marketplace by cash-rushing it (costs 8 gold), and after the cash-rush immediately switch to Tank. All 100 shields remain in the shield box and the Tank finishes next turn! (If you switch the Market to Tank without first cash-rushing it, the shields contributed by the Civil Engineer will disappear.)
  Of course this works best, if you have Sun Tsu's somewhere on your continent. (E.g. by courtesy of the AI, who left it to you... )
  
• In a government with "forced labor", you can simply pop-rush anything you like. (Except for Wonders, of course.) That way, one population (20 food) is converted to 20 shields. If you are lucky to have the Pyramids, the ratio becomes even better: 10 food yield 20 shields. If you setup your towns to have 5 fpt, you can grow every other turn, which means you have a shield-output of 10 spt.
  This is the mechanism used for ultra-fast 100K victories: Use Republic to quickly reach almost domination limit, plant towns everywhere and then switch to Feudalism to pop-rush Temples, Libraries, Cathedrals and Collosseums everywhere.
  For this another important trick is good to know: you can't sacrifice more than 50% of the population in one rush. So if your town has currently size 6, you have 1 shield in the box, and you want to rush a Library, you can't do it, because 79 shields would require 4 pop points, which is more than half the population. The solution here is to use "cascading rushes": first rush Barracks (40s = 2 pop points), then switch to Library and rush the remaining 40s (again 2 pop points). The population shrinks from 6 to 4 to 2. Similarly other projects can be rushed, if you have sufficient "intermediate targets". For this it is useful to have sufficient intermediate targets available in 20-shield intervals. This is more difficult than it at first appears. For example, the 60s target is often a problem: the Temple is often rushed as one of the first projects in a 100K game, and afterwards it is no longer available. And because this mechanism works best with the Pyramids, the Granary can also not be used... Sometimes the Musketman can be used, but this requires researching two techs which are completely useless for a 100K victory: Invention and Gunpowder. The gold needed for these two techs could (during the Republic phase) be used for cash-rushing libs and temples, and it is hard to say, where it is better spent... In other cases you may already be more advanced, so that the Musketman has already be replaced by the Rifleman. (But in that case the next point can be used as an alternative.)
  For this reason it is sometimes advisable to rush the projects "top down", even though from a "culture point of view" it would be better to rush the cheap libs and temples first, so as to get more culture quicker. But then you may end up not being able to rush the 160s Cathedral at all, especially in the later stages of this process, when already the second citizen is so unhappy, that it needs to be an entertainer and can no longer collect food... Then it's better to start with the Cathedral (using e.g. Barracks, Lib/Courthouse, Colosseum as intermediate targets), afterwards doing the Colosseum and finally Library and Temple.
  
• Once you know Nationalism, you can use "Drafting". Let the town grow to size 7 and then draft one unit, which can be disbanded for one quarter of the shields. This works the better, the more advanced you are: with Nationalism, you get Riflemen (80s), which converts 10 food to 20 shields. With Replaceable Parts, you get Infantry (yielding 22 shields) and with Computers, you get Mechanized Infantry (yielding 27 shields). Of course, instead of disbanding the units, you could also use them for warfare, but this pays off only with Mechanized Infantry. A 2-HP Rifleman usually dies in its first combat, an Infantry doesn't fare much better, but a MechInf is already a formidable weapon, even at only 2 HP. If the AI still has outdated units, the first victory is not so unlikely and will already promote the MechInf to "regular", and after 2-3 more victories it can be "veteran". Considering that you only need to pay 10 food for a 12/18/2 combat unit, this is really a good price...
  Of course, this requires the boondock cities to be able to grow to size 7. If you are lucky, you can found man of them on rivers, but if not, you will first have to rush an aqueduct, either by cash-rushing, or via one of the previous two methods.
  One of the extra charms of the drafting method is, that you can stay in Republic and don't need to switch to a mediocre government like Feudalism.

 

[justanick]

Those 3 methods all have their flaws, which limit their usefulness. Forced labour is the first one to become available. If it is not limited by food, than happyness will limit it. Each population point whipped away increases unhappiness by one and that unhappiness is reduced only by 1 every 20 turns. If you have floodplains to use, than whipping can help, but only to rather limited degree.

With nationalism you can draft and once you have rocketry you can draft TOW-Infantry for 120 shield which is the best choice for disbanding. Mechanized infantry is better for combat, so if you can draft mechanized infantry, than you cannot draft the TOW-Infantry. Removing rubber or oil from the tradenetwork can overcome that. Disbanding drafted TOW-Infantry can be a useful option. Using any drafted units for battle seems like bad idea to me. By the time you can draft your production is not very limited and you should have build up a proper military.

Pending details civil engineers are less food-efficient than drafting and disbanding, but they can be helpful to a limited degree, especially as drafting only works after reaching city size. The later can very well mean that civil engineers are more food efficient than "draft and disband". They can help for building needed buildings. Lanzelot also detailed, how they can be used for building units. But by the time you have replaceable parts you are likely to not need shields that badly. In the early to mid industrial age the industrial output increases by factor of about 4. By then 1 commerce will be more valuable than 1 shield.


The best government for production is communism as all cities will have an acceptably low corruption. The implication of this is, that forced labour is not a good idea because you whip away citizens whose yields are not mitigated a lot by corruption.

 

[Duxer]

Sorry for my late reply.
Anyway, i am aware of that (i read the civilopedia), but i never use mobilization considering i prefer to keep control of production queue. Maybe i should give it a try.
I partially solved the problem because i am actually playing under communism, i also built courthouses (and police stations), the worst i can have is 12 - 14 shields, even without factories. Looks like the biggest problem was the monarchy government after all.

Thank you for the hints!

 

[SuedecivIII]

I'd just like to add that the game overstates the importance of proximity to the Forbidden Palace in terms of corruption/waste reduction. It reduces corruption/waste across your empire as a whole, as well as massively in the city in which it is built. But the effect of proximity to the Forbidden Palace city is virtually imperceptible.

Here's an article on the subject:
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/game-mechanics/everything-about-corruption-c3c-edition/

Corruption is annoying. But it's necessary as a mechanism to prevent the civ with the most land from snowballing the game. I like it a lot better than, for example, Civ 5's global unhappiness from each additional city.