Why not the Big Easy?

[Mack the Knife]

i debated whether to post this or just go away quietly but i do like this game! i've not played the previous incarnations of civ and i'm trying to learn the ropes but the AI is always rubbing my nose in the yellow dirt. well i think i discovered why as i read this in a recent review:

Newcomers beware! You might expect the chieftain (easiest) level to be a cakewalk, but because the AI is fully enabled, the only advantage the gamer gains in this level are in lower production costs. Because of this, the chieftain level is probably the most difficult beginner level you can find in a strategy game.

does anyone have sage advice for a frustrated beginner or if there are firaxionians out there, will there be any patch that tones the AI somewhat on the easier levels, or am i just being a wuss?

 

[Psychlone]

Not to be rude, but you're just being a wuss! I'd never played a Civ game before this one, and after one walkthrough game to learn the basic mechanics, on my second game I soundly thrashed the comp so badly I jumped up to regent level right away.

There are numerous posts buried about here that can really help you catapult to the higher difficulty levels, just dig around. Here's one tip that might help you, it did wonders for me- don't bother irrigating grasslands under despotism government (unless you need to irrigate through to irrigate elsewhere) because it does you no good. Mine them instead for the shields, and convert them over to irrigation later as needed, after despotism ends.

One other quick tip, don't be afraid to trade technology to other civs. Seems a lot of new players think that by not trading tech they're impairing the computer civs, but they're not, they're only impairing themselves. If you don't trade it, another AI player will. You may as well get the money and other techs for yourself; you'll never outdo them going it alone.

I could go on with more tidbits, but they're here, just dig around!

 

[Grotius]

Well, the AI may be the same at lower levels, but production levels are a huge factor, so hang in there. My general advice is to remember that the other civs are not your friends!

In more concrete terms, you *must* develop a strong military to deter and repulse AI attacks. In fact, you need not just a strong defense -- a garrison of at least 2-3 units per city, and more in border towns -- but also a credible offensive retaliatory threat. I try to create one "offensive" stack on the border with every enemy civ. This stack is a combination of my best offensive and defensive units: offensive units (preferably mobile ones, like horsemen) to pillage enemy land and attack enemy units; defensive units to protect the offensive units during the bad guy's turn. I try to station this stack within my borders, but as close as possible to a vulnerable enemy position -- a city, or even a road network.

Don't get me wrong: Civ 3 can be played peacefully. If your military is strong, you will deter the AI for centuries and longer, and you can concentrate on developing your economy and culture. If your military is weak, all the economy and culture in the world won't save you. Hope this helps.

 

[sd5]

what im about to write may sound pretty obvious to those with more experience, but for a beginner i think one of the key things to do, is to find out what civilization is closest to you, and eliminate (or at least cripple ) it. once you gain more experience you will be better equipped to deal with a close and potentially hostile neighbor, but for now, your best course of action is to get rid of them and give yourself a buffer to grow. in my opinion, the best way to conquer a close neighbor early in the game is to:
1) trade technology until you get everything they have (this usually occurs before you get writing so you cant steal it).
2) trade for their territory map
3)acquire horses somehow.
4)build a bunch of horsemen (if you, for some reason, cant get horses, then build a archers)
5)mass your troops on your enemy's border
6)when you can do so, move all your troops right next to 2 or 3 enemy cities, and attack all at once.

this simple tactic is pretty effective early in the game. another thing i should note is that you should always remember to keep at least one defensive unit in every city, and probably 2 on border cities. this will prevent the enemy from suprising you and taking over one of your cities with a stray warrior.

by giving yourself some space, youll give yourself a chance to learn how to develop culture and science without the constant threat of somebody trying to invade you. hope this helps

 

[Feinder]

Having played all three civs (but still cutting my teeth on Civ3), there is some limited advice I can give tho...

Know that the bad-guys love and understand MIGHT. Even if you just want to be left alone, you'll need a strong defense. If you don't have a sizable army, he'll simply walk over you (think Hitler and the Sudatenland). You'll need a sizable army to simply keep him from thinking about attacking you, and if does, you'll need it to defend against him.

Build roads. Roads are wonderful. They generate income (to pay for your "defensive" army), and allow that army to quickly respond to threats.

You'd think that "tech (science) is key". It is, in the long run. But consider that, at least on the lower levels, the AIs production (and therefore indirectly : commerce) levels, are reduced somewhat. You can translate that into in LOWERING your science rate a little (perhaps to 30 or 40 percent), because it takes him longer to build the Libraries and such. You'll remain competitive in science (especially if take opportunites to trade and buy it), and have the funding for your army and cash to purchase tech. Note this may only be useful on the lower levels, I haven't played past regent yet.

You'll have to micro-manage your cities a little. Once a city is at the max it can before needing an aquaduct or hospital, move away from food production and towards shield production. Your city doesn't have to (it can't) be storing food if it's already at it's max size.

Just some tips.

-F-

 

[Psychlone]

One other thought I had since my original post. You might consider playing on one of the larger maps to give you some room to grow without butting heads right away. The downside is that the AI will probably outdo you to the point where the best you can manage is to be a second-rate world power or puppet state, but it does allow you to get a feel for the full-game dynamics by avoiding getting crushed due to AI's lust for territory on a smaller map.

 

[Cruiser]

Originally posted by sd5
what im about to write may sound pretty obvious to those with more experience, but for a beginner i think one of the key things to do. . . by giving yourself some space, youll give yourself a chance to learn how to develop culture and science without the constant threat of somebody trying to invade you. hope this helps

And what do you do about culture flipping towns and cities? Garrisons don't help. Do you raze them, or take your chances?

 

[Badluck]

In the beggining culture flipping VERY Rarely happen that why in the beggining you need to conquer at least one civ, which will give you an advantage on other civ.

But in late game you can either raze the citi and be ready whit a settler or destroy in 5 or 6 turn the other civ and if you do so keep 1 good attack unit near is high culture citi you have captured cuz theyre is more chance they flip back..

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Mack,

Just FYI, with the v1.16f patch, you can go into the editor and handcuff the AI even more while you're learning the ropes. All the difficulty level settings are fully exposed in the editor, so you can fiddle with difficulty settings as you please.


Dan

 

[Ironstone]

Hi Mack,

I don’t know where you found that quote but it’s not actually right.

Here are some of the differences between Chieftain and Regent levels:

The Opponent Build/Advance Rate is exactly doubled. A pretty crucial factor!
Barbarian combat bonuses are different by a factor of 4.
On Chieftain units don’t automatically disband when you run out of gold to support them (in other words you can run a deficit economy).
Chieftain gives you more initial units that require no support.
Corruption increases with difficulty level.
On Chieftain you are more likely to score good stuff from “Goody huts”.
Opponents are more lenient during negotiations on lower difficulty levels (not that you’d think so!!)
They are also less likely to be aggressive or break treaties.

However, in all other respects the AI plays at Regent level. (My source for all the above info is page 15 of the Official Strategy Guide).

It really is pretty confusing at the start, but I reckon that the biggest single thing to master at the beginning is city planning and development. Once you understand how to best place your cities and manipulate shields, cash and food you can pump out settlers, soldiers, workers or whatever you want at an optimal rate. Look for previous threads here about city planning, mining, irrigation, etc. – there are some good ones.

At higher difficulty levels you will usually struggle to outbuild the AI in the early years and will need to rely on building smarter rather than necessarily faster. On Chieftain you should eventually be able to achieve both, but smarter is still more important in the long run.

Picking a civ with attributes that match your playing style is also important, and choice of map size and number of civ opponents can make a big difference too. This takes a bit of nutting out, but sometimes trying to set up an easy run for yourself can play right into the hands of an AI opponent’s strengths (e.g. giving an expansionist civ a huge amount of room to do its thing).

Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

[Mack the Knife]

so you can fiddle with difficulty settings

well, thanks dan for taking the time to respond but as fiddle rolls off your tongue it poses quite a task for me! i've never messed with the editor, kinda leary of it and really wouldn't know where to begin.

and i certainly appreciate everyone else's attempt to help out but i have to ask do i get a merit badge or something for posting a question that Firaxis' folks responded to? i'd be willing to give that badge to someone who could elaborate a little on how to fiddle. thanks again!

an update: i took a look at the editor and found the "Edit Game Rules" section so i can look into that as dan suggested. quick question, if i continue reading will it tell me which files i should back up in case i pull the big one? or i guess i can ask that over in the mod/editor forum...

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Back up everything you mess with.

 

[Ironstone]

The file that you would be tampering with is called Civ3mod.bic so backing that up would be a good precaution. However, you could also just choose to save your changes into a new bic file under another name.

It's quite interesting to have a look through it anyway (there's a help utility that you can call on to give more info on each section).

To look at the rules go first to Tools and untick the line that says "Use default rules". Then go to Rules and click on "Edit Rules" (if you don't do the first step it's greyed out).

There's a heap of stuff to examine and change if you wish. However, I'd strongly urge that you play a few games first. It's not really all that hard on Chieftain, and without at least some knowledge of the game you may just screw things up by mucking around in the editor.

Good luck, whichever way you choose.

 

[LaRo]

I usually play peacefully. To avoid war: sell all your technologies to everyone as soon as you get them.
Sometime, a civ would want gold piece and/or maps to keep peace. When you think it's not bluff, pay because you may lose units that cost more that what they want and even lose cities.
With this strategies, you trade a lot and it help to win by diplomatic. Spaceship is another way to win but if your production is not higher than other civs, you'll need to sabotate their production.

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

With v1.16f, the "science advisor bug" has been fixed, so there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to mess with Civ3mod.bic. You can mess with mods all you want and save them out as whatever filename you choose, and then simply use the "load scenario" function from the main menu to start a new game.

Doing it the way I just described is the way to go especially if you're not sure what you're doing. As long as you don't overwrite civ3mod.bic you should be fine.

Dan

 

[Ripley]

Originally posted by Psychlone
You might consider playing on one of the larger maps to give you some room to grow without butting heads right away.

To me, this is the single best piece of advise that one could give to an absolute Civ3 (no previous Civ experience) newbie.

In fact, pick the large world map that comes standard. It's not particularly brilliant map, but is adequate for this purpose. It's the second Civ3 map that I played. I played it three times. Then I stopped playing Cheiftain level.

 

[Mack the Knife]

larger maps

this, in fact, is what started my frustration and prompted the post. i played a big map as the babylonians against, i think, just 2-3 other civs. i was enjoying myself, learning what to do in my cities when i eventually stumbled on the persians. they declared war, sent untold armies at me and i was toast.

but back to what dan said. i go in the editor and tweak things in my favor and save it as some file name, right? i presume it defaults to saving it in the right directory with the correct extension. so i then load that save to experience all the tweaks but playing a "New" game would revert back to the original game settings? i am learning a lot from you folks! and i thank you for your time.