What am i doin' wrong?

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

Ok... I must admit that after playing Civ3 a few times, the gaming issues that I'm sure everyone is familiar with, generally made me feel like not playing. But I'm thinking of giving it a second chance....

So there are some things I REALLY need advice on.

Now when I started, I decided to play chieftan since I just wanted a feel for the game and ... ok... after a rough day at work, sometimes I just want to STOMP.

So in Civ 1 & 2, on chieftan I could tech VERY easily. It seems to me that I MUST be missing something in Civ3. I couldn't even get all the modern techs by the time the endgame date came around (2100) and I'm sure I was in 2000 before I even got flight. This is even with science at 70% to 80% as often as I possibly could, and going to Democracy ASAP.

I'm I missing something fundamental here? Can anyone get high level technology early on in the game?

Do I just have to have a ridiculous amount of cities? I usually play archipegalo (makes strategic resources much more interesting) and once I fill my island, and maybe one or two smaller neighbours I have a pretty decent amount of cities.

Also... has anyone been overcome by purely ridiculous amounts of enemy AI naval units? I was playing against Aztecs (on Chieftan) and had just declared war (bastards kept trespassing through my land and building cities on the ONE square my culture didn't cover). Anyway... once I declared war they tore apart my 6 battleships, 6 destroyers, and 2 aircraft carriers in about two rounds, plus pounded my coastal cities pretty hard and took out a LOT of terrain improvement.

What did they use? Galleons. Wood and cannons. But they must have had over a hundred. Anyone seen anything like that?

Ok, this leads into my next question. Do you guys try and match the AI's propensity to build new cities? Do you build them anywhere for the sake of building them? Or do you put more planning into city location. I'm usually ahead by a few cities until the late part of the early game and then the AI seems to go crazy planting cities anywhere it can. I'd like to try a different map than archipegalo ... but I'm worried that this will only feed the AI's insatiable hunger for more cities.

 

[NetDanzr]

Many people will tell you that you'll have to buy tech advances. However, on a Chieftain level, you'll have very hard time to find civilizaitons that are more advanced than you.

After building 2 or 3 cities and putting roads everywhere, I usualy have enough income to switch to 70% tech. This way, I can considerably decrease the time it takes to research the first technologies for a marginal amount of money. As a consequence, I usualy get to modern age around, which gives me enough jumpstart. It also helps to get banks, Wall Street and Smith's Trading company ASAP, so that you can maintain your 70% tech during the modern age (or at least till you switch to Democracy).

 

[eMarkM]

I've won a few games on Monarch, so I hope I can help.

I'm I missing something fundamental here? Can anyone get high level technology early on in the game?

Hard to tell why you might be lagging, maybe you can zip up and post a save game for analysis.

Do I just have to have a ridiculous amount of cities?

How many do you have and on what type of map? I expand until I run into other civ borders (don't know how this works on archpeligo, haven't played that yet). Or until corruption starts becoming a major issue. I've had 40-50 city empires after conquering a civ or 2 with a well placed Forbidden Palace helping w/ corruption. You're hard to beat then.

What did they use? Galleons

That's hillarious.

Do you guys try and match the AI's propensity to build new cities?

Basically, yes. The best way to counter their expansion is to expand yourself to stop them. They NEVER quit trying to found new cities.

Do you build them anywhere for the sake of building them?

Desert, Mountains, jungle, I'll build them anywhere. My core high growth cities, of course, I try to find grassland squares with rivers, but eventually I'll plop em anywhere. The reason--strategic resources. Claim desert, jungle, mountains, anything because that's where the iron, saltpeter, coal, rubber, oil, aluminum is. None of those are found in grasslands. Stake your claim in "crappy" city sites to expand to potential resource areas or you'll get left out.

I'd like to try a different map than archipegalo ... but I'm worried that this will only feed the AI's insatiable hunger for more cities.

Yeah, count on it. But on continents or pangea you can employ strategies where you plant cities on their borders and check their expansion and even hem them in. You some control over the situation.

e

 

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

But still... even when going democracy ASAP and maintaining a pretty good avg science rate... I still seem to be a tech sloth.

I'm way ahead of everyone else... don't get me wrong... but shoot... on chieftan level I still can't get techs to match their real world discovery times.

Is it just because I suck so bad?

 

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

Thanks for the suggestions eMark.

I'll try being one of those "ruthless expanding ba$tard$"

Yes.. having my modern fleet destroyed by galleons IS hilarious... but at the time it was disturbingly frustrating. I mean come on...
Anyway... I won't get into how many times the underdog comes out on top. One thing I'll say is that there MUST have been over a hundred of the damn things. I still say that shouldn't be enough. 100 ironclads... MAYBE... but not 100 galleons. No way. Technology simply isn't there.

To answer a few of your questions ... I probably had around 30 cities on a huge archipegalo world. Don't know if thats low or high. My two main computer competitors had more cities than me .. thats for sure... but thats because they were building cities 3 and sometimes 2 spaces away from others.

 

[Dwarven_Megalomaniac]

Thanks for the suggestions eMark.

I'll try being one of those "ruthless expanding ba$tard$"

Yes.. having my modern fleet destroyed by galleons IS hilarious... but at the time it was disturbingly frustrating. I mean come on...
Anyway... I won't get into how many times the underdog comes out on top. One thing I'll say is that there MUST have been over a hundred of the damn things. I still say that shouldn't be enough. 100 ironclads... MAYBE... but not 100 galleons. No way. Technology simply isn't there.

To answer a few of your questions ... I probably had around 30 cities on a huge archipegalo world. Don't know if thats low or high. My two main computer competitors had more cities than me .. thats for sure... but thats because they were building cities 3 and sometimes 2 spaces away from others.

 

[Ferd]

Part of the problem is that you're playing on the easiest difficulty setting. It's hard to use your worldmates to help do the research. If you keep them somewhat up-to-date by giving them lots of tech advances, and if you guess correctly which advances they're going to research, you might be able to get some concurrent research in.

Make sure you don't sell them the tech advances for per-turn gold, or they won't be able to spend their resources helping you research. (See the post on crippling the research of the AI)