What I love/hate about CivIII

[undertoad]

I was reading this very old thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=83725&page=2

about corruption in CivIII, and it got me thinking about things I love and hate about CivIII, as an ex-CivII addict who's just come to CivIII. So I'd like to first take my hat off to the very interesting arguments put on all sides in that thread; and then put my own thoughts on it and other things.

I've realised from reading these boards that my play-style is relatively non-competitive (Regent/Monarch is as high as I go), and includes - a habit from CivI and CivII - what I believe you call an "Infinite City Sprawl" city placement. I'm a builder, really - more interested in acquiring a huge empire for the fun of managing it properly (apart from the pleasure in getting hold of it), a sucker for those throngs of happy faces - rather than interested in winning in the fastest and most efficient manner. Spaceship-win is generally my aim, with Conquest being my get-out if I get too bored. So if anyone's interested enough to read this, bear in mind that that's my approach - I may well be missing out on many subtleties of CivIII through my playstyle, but that's my choice.

However, CivIII has knocked a few habits out of me, and I think it's a fantastic improvement over CivII in many ways, which has forced my play to become more subtle and much more enjoyable:

1. My old CivI-style 'overwhelming tech-advantage/science at 90-100% from the start/income 0/Colossus + Copernicus in the capital/declare war on anyone you meet' strategy (i.e. "we have the Maxim gun and they do not" as the principle of survival right from 4000BC) no longer works. The advantages of at least temporising diplomacy are huge in terms of tech-brokering, especially in the early game.

2. The additional complexity of diplomacy - along with the concepts of strategic and luxury resources - is a stroke of genius. Resource-wars, but also forced resource-peace (because you rely on your powerful neighbour for Iron/Horses/Saltpetre) become a reality. In my current game I was ahead of everyone on Navigation, so I've discovered the obscure island which is the only source of Silk and sent a task force to settle and secure it, cornering the market. Resources are a fantastic addition to the game.

3. The concept of "cultural borders" defining what can constitute trespass on your territory is another fantastic improvement. This, along with the "culture-flip", makes culture a strategic map-control tool, which forces me to divert resources from my (frankly, pretty boring) "crank out military units" habit. (Playing Greeks, I've got so used to the "insta-culture cheapo prefab Library" tactic that I've made myself an avatar - attached - which turns out to be far too big to use!)
Cultural borders have made me think again about my ICS habit of city placement - I now have to think about covering my coasts with unbroken borders to prevent settler landings in peacetime.

4. Right-of-passage, along with the gpt deals and the need to honour them if you don't want your reputation trashed.

5. Bombard units. No more cranking out Catapults/Cannons in every city - if you're careful and look after them, you need never lose a bombardment unit. The "bombardment failed" aspect can be infuriating, but seems a fair exchange. (And the Byzantine Dromon animation is spectacular!)

6. Great Leaders and Armies. Another fantastic innovation.

Now onto what I hate: corruption. So much so that I play with modded rules bringing corruption down to about 70%, and the optimum city number disabled by setting it way high.

There's a lot to think about in that old thread I linked to; but I still think corruption is way too high in CivIII unmodded. As Halcyon said in that thread, what is most annoying is not corruption itself (I'm used to the idea that you won't get much income/research out of faraway conquered cities, at least in the short term), but waste. This makes conquered cities absolutely useless in terms of production, which makes it hardly worth even conquering them unless you're going to raze them. Try to build a Marketplace to introduce the unhappy inhabitants to your empire's sybaritic lifestyle? Or a Temple/Coliseum/Cathedral to make them happy? Forget it, it'll take 40 turns just for a Marketplace - in a size-10 city!

This means that you either end up with a city in constant civil disorder, with no possible remedy beyond military police, or have to raze/starve the conquered city down to a tiny size.

I'm already hinting at what I'd prefer as a better solution, which rests on a distinction between construction of city improvements and construction of further military units.

I agree that conquering a widely-spread empire should introduce problems, which act as a brake on runaway expansion. But the default level of corruption and waste seems a very blunt tool to achieve this. Its effect is to make a widely-spread empire not just difficult to manage, but impossible to manage, and not even worth going for.

I take the point in the thread referred to, about how it's interesting and challenging to have to find different winning strategies which don't rely on expanding to cover most of the globe; as a CivIII newbie I have no experience of this, but I am already getting a bit frustrated (given the fantastic complexities of CivIII diplomacy) to find that by now, in 1400AD, the other Civs have nothing apart from luxury resources to trade with me for my wonderful techs. I've already pretty much given away Saltpetre, Iron and Metallurgy to the lesser threats, hoping they'll use them against my main rival Carthage - but it gets pretty boring going to the trading screen (or to Trade Options on CivAssistII, a really excellent utility) and see that all the AI civs - again! - have no gold. Maybe my expansion shouldn't have been so easy - maybe the AI is just not good enough - or maybe I'm just playing on too low a level to get really fun diplomacy.

However, the OCN and the corruption model, far from opening up much more choice and challenge in how to win, seems to me to reduce the options, by making large empires impracticable; not a less attractive option, but just not an option at all.

I know this is just vapourware talk, but I see a much better solution in a partial revival of the old CivII "unit is owned by a city" model, for conquered cities only. I like the way CivIII limits the size of your army, through unit support costs rather than support as a deduction from the home city's shields - so I'm not proposing going back to the CivII model wholesale.

No, what I'm talking about is something to prevent you from building offensive units (or, maybe, any military unit at all) in conquered cities, until a certain "naturalisation" period has elapsed - a bit like the time taken to quell resistance, but much longer - e.g. 40 turns. This has a RL appeal - you wouldn't expect citizens of a conquered city to immediately go out and fight for you. And it would prevent conquest from contributing to a runaway situation, by forcing you to continue your expansion using only units produced in your core - or at least, in cities which were originally yours, or have been yours for a long time.

There are already things that make conquest more difficult in CivIII: resistance, culture-flipping, and unhappiness caused by "stop the aggression against the mother country". I like these innovations. On top of that: high corruption in conquered cities I can live with (I'm a big fan of Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" and its description, among many other things, of the black market in occupied Germany in 1945) - but crippling, permanent wastage of shields is just way over the top, to a builder like me.

My preferred solution would be:

- Dramatically reduce the level of corruption and waste for far-flung cities that you build.
- For conquered cities, leave corruption as it is in unmodded CivIII, as an initial, very high level; but make shield-waste far lower.
- Make it so conquered cities can't build military units (or can only build defensive units, which can't leave the city), until a certain "naturalisation" period has elapsed.
- You can minimise the "naturalisation" period by having a high culture, and especially by building cultural improvements in the city; or by ending the war/completely defeating the other civ. You make naturalisation slower by razing other cities of the same civ, enslaving their citizens, or allowing the city to fall into disorder.
- Naturalisation proceeds citizen by citizen. Let's say you're the Greeks, like me. Each citizen in a conquered e.g. Japanese city then goes through these stages:

a) Resisting
b) Non-resisting Japanese (happy, content or unhappy)
c) Naturalised Greek (happy, content, or unhappy)
Citizens will also naturalise more quickly if happy, less quickly if content, and not at all if unhappy.

And the reason for all this is that a conquered city will only allow construction of e.g. 1 military unit per 2 loyal (naturalised) citizens. (You could even make production of Workers and/or Settlers subject to this restriction - or make any Workers produced without naturalisation 50% efficient like enslaved ones).

So there's my thoughts on corruption. Feel free to comment!

Finally, another thing I'd love to see in CivIII: an extension of the idea of "cultural borders" to "first-seen territory". Something like the classic explorer's phrase "I claim this land for the King of XXX". At the moment I get annoyed with AI civs landing settlers on non-cultured parts of my continent - but there's no way to express this annoyance, short of a full-on DOW. This is my land, I feel, and I don't want dirty Carthaginians settling it. I'd like some form of diplomatic protest to be possible in this situation, where:

- The land is not within my culture, but is "mine" in some sense. Maybe: it has a land link to my capital, and/or my land units saw it/passed through it before their units did.
- The intruding unit(s) include a settler.

I'd like to be able to tell the other civ "Get off my land! You might or might not have a ROP - so send units out to have a look by all means, but don't build a city there or I'll be mighty pissed off". (The other civ can of course then withdraw, demand money/resources/techs/cities in exchange for withdrawing the settler, or just tell me to go do something to myself).

 

[darski]

Good article. I agree pretty much with what you said. I have modded my game so that buildings reduce corruption - I still have to get the building built of course.

I have always wanted a "shot across the bow""as an action instead of the would you terribly mind getting off my land/ move or declare options.

edited to add: too bad about the avatar - it would have been nifty.

 

[criminiminal]

i agree w/ much of what has been said. i can't stand having to declare war to get some meddling unit out of my territory. the ai should be penalized more harshly for border infractions. it also drives me nuts when they build cities in what is very obviously my surroundings. i have fun making up my own penalties for perceived slights & dolling them out accordingly.
as for getting that temple build in a newly conquered city try disbanding old units/slaves within it. i use this tactic a lot when its time to put my military on a diet and/or upgrade to newer units when i dont have the $$.

 

[hsy]

i hate 4 things about the game:

1.RNG (It's just evil)

2.Spearman

3.Cheating AI

4."It's way too crowded.''--the LAMEST excuse EVER

 

[undertoad]

it also drives me nuts when they build cities in what is very obviously my surroundings. i have fun making up my own penalties for perceived slights & dolling them out accordingly.

This is exactly what drives me nuts! Why I was arguing for a "settler on your not-quite-claimed" territory mod; any other unit can come and go as they please - even within your culture if they have a ROP; but settlers should be subject to a "I claimed this land, butt out!" diplomatic squeal.

A good trick for when the AI plonks settlers on that part of your continent you're just about to settle yourself: wedge them in. Use the workers/settlers you have there preparing the ground to stop them moving where they want to go. Horsemen/Knights/Cavalry are useful for this as well. Eventually you can force them up against the coast/your culture so they have nowhere to go. (Against a human player this would be infuriating, cause for war for definite).

Funny to read about you making up penalties! I do exactly the same.

When the Carthaginians build some smelly little hovel up on the end of my continent, that's just one score against them. Carthago delenda est , like that man whose name I forget used to say.... constantly.

I build up grudges, when civs are doing this "settle my continent" thing, refusing to pay ANYTHING for my perfectly nice silks and spices, coal and saltpetre, even though they do want them - or refusing to give me Medicine for any price (I usually let them research that one); then let it all rip in a giant warstorm.

In my current game Carthage has just been - without me lifting a finger! It's gone from 2nd in power to me to 5th, in about 10 turns...

What? Me? I had nothing to do with it, honest...

I just "helped" the Romans, Babs, Germans and Koreans come to the conclusion that that great expanse of Carthaginian cities would be much better off under their management... I'm so thoughtful, I even gave the Germans some Iron and Saltpetre at the same time...

Never trust Greeks bearing gifts!

(What the Romans and Babs don't know is: this was so much fun that I'm just going to rinse and repeat in a few years, with one of them as the target)

 

[darski]

I recently played a NOW (non-oscillating war) game and my reason for going to war was based entirely on their insults to my sovereignty. Primary was daring to even think of sending a settler into *my* area. Then came sending troops into my territory in such a way as to annoy me (their existence is annoyance enough)

That was pretty much how that game went. It's a great way to organize a war game.

 

[criminiminal]

a lot of the time i will give in to enemy demands at first because i am organizing a troop set to engage their front lines. but even if i am too weak to fight or busy in a another campaign i will remember their "demand" for the entire game. the second i get my troops, resources, research, whatever in order i bring it to the offending country like nobodies business. i like to toy w/ them sometimes...send in large amounts of troops and just pillage EVERY square they have...for the rest of the game.lol. i'm vindictive that way.

 

[undertoad]

I recently played a NOW (non-oscillating war) game and my reason for going to war was based entirely on their insults to my sovereignty.

What's a "non-oscillating war" game?

 

[darski]

In a NOW game you are always at war with someone but you take out the Civs in order. The most basic order is that you take them out in the order that you meet them but you can choose any order you like.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/variants.php

scroll about half way down the page for the official definition.

 

[TheOverseer714]

It's a variant where you annihilate enemies one by one until they are all gone. Once you declare war on a target, they must be destroyed, no peace treaties with them. My current SG(SGFN-05) is using that variant. It's been pretty cool so far, and we are closing in on victory.

 

[undertoad]

Interesting variants. Makes me think about my own usual strategy.

I used to be an Always War player in CivI/CivII - the way I play now (given CivIII's fantastic diplomacy options) is close to NOW; but with tactical temporary peaces signed every so often.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with "my continent" syndrome! I was starting to think I had some kind of over-possessive disorder

So, since this is a what I love/hate thread, I'll put in a guilty pleasure of mine. If I find a nice useless little island somewhere, I'll plant a city down and name it something like "Stenchburg" or "Anustown" or "Cleveland", y'know, something vile like that. Later in the game, I'll gift it to a civ that I don't have any particular grudge against, but whom I simply have to eliminate because they had the misfortune of sharing a border with me. After the rest of the culture is wiped off the earth, only Stenchburg remains of a once great civ, and then I can keep an eye on them by completely blocking them in with my navy.

If it happens to be a big enough island, I'll plop down two cities and gift them to two different civs and do the same thing. Its always amusing to see two capitals, two squares apart culture-sqeeze each other for the rest of the game. It also keeps each one from attaining as large a culture spread as they would if all by themselves.

 

[Loki130]

I have gone to war over people colonizing my land, and other times I've put up whole walls of units on borders and coasts, with barricades built and all. I once even openned a corrider through my land because an ally of mine had most of it's army in a colony in my land and it's navy was destroyed.
Which brings me to the subject of guilty pleasures: Abusing allies: cutting them off from the world, making them dependent on me... love it.

 

[Hynsterider]

Greetings, Undertoad. Thanks for your notes on the game. Some remarks from me:

Now onto what I hate: corruption.

Since you said you just started playing CivIII: is this hatred really based upon playing Conquests 1.22; the fully patched up version of the game? Corruption was worse in the first version of Civ, and there's even a big difference between an unpatched and fully patched up Conquests. Since you're mentioning the Carthaginians, a Play the World civ, and CivAssistII, which only runs on fully patched up versions of the game, I do have a feeling you're running a decent version of the game just now. I'm actually quite happy with the corruption model in Conquests 1.22. Could you confirm that this is what you're playing?
You're saying that you're using a lot of 'Infinite City Sprawl'. Is your spacing that tight in the core as well? A lot of cities will increase corruption, of course.
I'm not sure if you can be described as a 'builder'. This usually means: building lots of culture, and using wider spacing. Less war mongering.

This means that you either end up with a city in constant civil disorder, with no possible remedy beyond military police, or have to raze/starve the conquered city down to a tiny size.

Yes, most players will starve conquered cities; less unhappiness and flip chance. From Demigod up razing becomes a more common practice, because of the bigger flip chance.

I agree that conquering a widely-spread empire should introduce problems, which act as a brake on runaway expansion. But the default level of corruption and waste seems a very blunt tool to achieve this. Its effect is to make a widely-spread empire not just difficult to manage, but impossible to manage, and not even worth going for.

Most players do 'science farming'; irrigating everything in those corrupt areas, and putting as much citizens as possible to work as scientists. This might not be elegant, but it is an effective way of management.

I am already getting a bit frustrated (given the fantastic complexities of CivIII diplomacy) to find that by now, in 1400AD, the other Civs have nothing apart from luxury resources to trade with me for my wonderful techs... maybe I'm just playing on too low a level to get really fun diplomacy.

Probably. You'll be surprised by the loads of money AI civs have on the higher difficulty levels; tech trading becomes a lot more interesting there. Military alliances also, because of the increased AI military. Going up a level might be fun for you.

 

[criminiminal]

So, since this is a what I love/hate thread, I'll put in a guilty pleasure of mine. If I find a nice useless little island somewhere, I'll plant a city down and name it something like "Stenchburg" or "Anustown" or "Cleveland", y'know, something vile like that. Later in the game, I'll gift it to a civ that I don't have any particular grudge against, but whom I simply have to eliminate because they had the misfortune of sharing a border with me. After the rest of the culture is wiped off the earth, only Stenchburg remains of a once great civ, and then I can keep an eye on them by completely blocking them in with my navy.

If it happens to be a big enough island, I'll plop down two cities and gift them to two different civs and do the same thing. Its always amusing to see two capitals, two squares apart culture-sqeeze each other for the rest of the game. It also keeps each one from attaining as large a culture spread as they would if all by themselves.

and i thought i was vindictive. i like that.

 

[Snarkhunter]

Someone's already mentioned science farming for hopelessly corrupt cities: get as many citizens as possible off the land & turn them into specialists, either scientists or taxmen. The beakers/gold they produce is not corrupt, and quite useful in a big empire--often you can cut your research budget to nothing, letting the beakerheads do it all for you, & dumping massive amounts of gpt into your treasury.

Another possibility if you've a yen to build is to make use of civil engineers, which come with replaceable parts or some such tech in the IA--forget exactly which one. A specialist who becomes a CE gives 2 uncorrupted shields pt IF you are constructing a building of some kind (no military units). The average 6 pop town will give you at least 3 specialists, often 4 once you rail the territory, & I frequently manage 7 from a pop 12 city, sometimes 8.

kk

 

[undertoad]

Hi Hynsterider. Thanks for your interesting comments.

You're saying that you're using a lot of 'Infinite City Sprawl'. Is your spacing that tight in the core as well? A lot of cities will increase corruption, of course.
I'm not sure if you can be described as a 'builder'. This usually means: building lots of culture, and using wider spacing. Less war mongering. Yes, most players will starve conquered cities; less unhappiness and flip chance. From Demigod up razing becomes a more common practice, because of the bigger flip chance.Most players do 'science farming'; irrigating everything in those corrupt areas, and putting as much citizens as possible to work as scientists. This might not be elegant, but it is an effective way of management.

Yep, I'm using Conquests as it comes in CivIIIComplete - with "1.22" on the title screen.

I think I may have confused the issue by using the wrong term. Maybe it isn't "Infinite City Sprawl" that I practice. What I do practice is: lots of cities, but always placed with a view to their becoming effective megapolises far in the future - minimal competing claims on the same squares, good balance of food and production squares, minimal work required to establish the city (e.g. if it's all Jungle/Desert, it'll wait until later in the game when I can spare Worker resources to prepare the land a little). But I do like having this habit challenged in CivIII by strategic considerations - especially the need to establish good continuous cultural borders. (What would be the correct description of my habit - OCP?)

So I am a bit of a "builder", though I do like wars, if only to acquire more cities to bring to perfection. But liking war, am I a warmonger? Neither one nor t'other, really, which I accept means that I'll never be successful at really high levels, because I play as a bit of a compromise.

I think this is what makes me object to the high levels of corruption (actually, it's more waste than corruption that annoys me) for conquered cities. To me, that lovely fat size-12 Nuremberg or Inch'on or whatever isn't something to be destroyed as part of the process of destroying the Germans or Koreans - it's a prize I want for myself, which I know I can manage better than the AI! So, though I accept that it'll probably be down to size 8 by the time resistance and unhappiness have been sorted out, I don't like razing big cities or radically starving them down e.g. 12 to 3.

But I do accept that it should take a lot of time and effort to make conquered cities productive - especially militarily productive, which is the reasoning behind my thought-experiment "naturalisation" model.

Your post and snarkhunter's made me think, though. Maybe I'm just familiarising myself with CivIII, and I should give it a go unmodded next game or the game after, taking your advice about "farming" into account (and snarkhunter's interesting advice about Hardhats, which I'd never thought of). Up one level to Monarch as well.

I guess I'm just a sucker for big size 12-15+ cities everywhere, all boasting the full panoply of Library/Uni/Coliseum or Cathedral/Aqueduct etc (+Marketplace/Bank/Hospital if appropriate), all using every square they can, fulfilling the promise of the extreme care I took in city placement back in 3000BC (I placed city X one square to the left so that that Gold would be caught at the edge of the radius, and now, finally, the plan has worked out), all running smoothly thanks to MY fantastic management (mwuhahaha!). It's a bit depressing when all those lovely resources (whether food, production or trade) I can see on the map, at the edges of my empire or in enemy territory, which I'm itching to put to use, turn out to all go to waste. Maybe the most frustrating thing is the minimal effect of Courthouses/Police Stations. I am used to far-flung cities being corrupt, but I console myself with the thought that once I put the time and effort into building a Courthouse it'll all be all right. So maybe a mod with original corruption left as it is, but with Courthouses more expensive and much more effective, would do the trick for me.

I guess it comes down to mood - do I want a relaxing, enjoyable game of gradual, unstoppable progress, with plenty of minor setbacks from other civs, but not too much real challenge - or do I want to really test myself? Right now it's the former. I will give the unmodded corruption rules a go when I'm in the mood for a challenge - but I'm not sure I'll enjoy it, as it goes right against something pretty fundamental about what I love about the game - the pleasure of finally carrying out city-building plans you made 3000 years before, when you have a chance, and getting a big payback, rather than just a city that has to remain a relatively small "farm".

Definitely worth a go though - so thanks for your comments.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Corruption is a "brake" to slow down the building of huge empires by the AI or human. However, the game has rewards for building big empires, also. Undertoad, you seem to be more of a builder, but you aren't afraid to war either. Here is what you do to satisfy your proclivities: Build a small/medium sized empire, 12-20 cities under a Republic government. (If Republic is too finicky to manage, Monarchy is ok too, but your tech research suffers a bit). Build a small but high quality military with up-to date units. Emphasize efficient research and trading so you reach the early industrial as fast as possble. Limit your wars to resource acquisition and self defense. Now you shift gears: research or trade for Communism. Revolt to that government. Begin a military buildup with all the units you can suddenly afford. Begin some targeted wars to increase your land area and cities. When you feel ready, take over as big an empire as you want. Under Communism, corruption is low, so your captured cities are going to be productive(once pacified), allowing you to enjoy being a builder and a warmonger at the same time. Make sure it is fun, and play it how you like within this basic structure. Success is in the enjoyment of things.

 

[criminiminal]

I guess I'm just a sucker for big size 12-15+ cities everywhere, all boasting the full panoply of Library/Uni/Coliseum or Cathedral/Aqueduct etc (+Marketplace/Bank/Hospital if appropriate)

i used to do this too. i thought that it was like RL & that i should build everything i could. then i was schooled. ends up costing you & holding you back.

 

[undertoad]

Thanks for that idea, Overseer714. I'll give it a try next game. I was put off Communism, which I used to use like that as a habit in CivII, by some idea that the rules had changed, and corruption was actually worse under Communism than under Monarchy. Seems I'm wrong.

Criminiminal - yep, it is tempting to give cities "all the bells and whistles"! It's something I save for later in the game though, having figured out the benefits of reining in this temptation earlier on. Paving my cities with gold and looking at all those smily faces (Awwwwww!) is my reward for the end of a victorious war.