Conquered before the middle ages

[zaku]

Does anyone have any tips for surviving the first oh say 1000 years after BC? About an hour ago i started a game as Persia, i had one of the best resource layouts ive ever scene. floodplains on my east, mountains going west and south with 6 gold deposits and later on 5 iron deposits. 3 incene, 3 horses, 2 dyes, when i got gunpowder a decade before my collapse, i would have had 4 saltpeter deposits but greece stole those cities. Germany, Greece, Rome (a long time friend), and Babylon all allied against me, i had only been at war with France and Greece prior to this war. I traded goods with Rome, and Babylon for a good couple hundred years. And my culture was highest in what i was calling the Central East; all the euro countries were south, and everyone else central and east set up alot like the middle east was. I just need some help im still new to Civ3.

[Kloreep]

Had you refused demands? This will, of course, make the AI angry; and if the AI making the demand is powerful enough, and the demand small enough (a small amount of gold, say) you may want to cave in to maintain relations if you don't want a war.

Also, if you're in a potentially hazardous situation like this when an AI declares war, see if you can beat them to the punch by signing alliances with other AIs. This simultaneously lightens the potential load on your military and gives the attacking AI civ something else to worry about.

And finally, perhaps you aren't building enough military? It's a good idea to have some "camp" towns that just build a barracks and then do exclusively military units.

And one more thing I will mention generally, especially as you say you are new to civ3: One sub-optimal strategy a lot of new players use is to use "OCP" placement - keeping 3 to 4 tiles in between each city, in order to keep most of the 20 tiles in the radius exclusive to one city. While this allows your cities to grow in to quite large metros (metros=size 13 and up), remember that you won't be getting hospitals (required for metro size) until the Industrial Era, some time in to the game; until then, 8 of those 20 exclusive tiles will go unused. Also, if you use wide spacing early in the game, your cities will suffer from Despotism's horrendous distance corruption. In short: try spacing your cities closer, with only 2 to 3 tiles in between.

Oh, and build more workers. As many of the tiles being worked by your citizens as possible should be improved; ideally, your workers should only be concerned about improving tiles that will be worked in future as your cities grow.

Anyway, welcome to Civ3.

[vmxa1]

Ai will lean on you if you are weak compared to them or they want something you have.

The way to avoid this is to not be weak. Once you get into the middle ages and or rexing is nearly done, check the F3 to see if you are at least average. If not start making more troops.

[Ljube]

Perhaps you were playing at a high difficulty level.

After finding Sid level especially frustrating, I rediscovered the forgotten joy of defeating the AI every time at emperor.

[spy14]

[SIZE=1] One sub-optimal strategy a lot of new players use is to use "OCP" placement - keeping 3 to 4 tiles in between each city, in order to keep most of the 20 tiles in the radius exclusive to one city. While this allows your cities to grow in to quite large metros (metros=size 13 and up), remember that you won't be getting hospitals (required for metro size) until the Industrial Era, some time in to the game; until then, 8 of those 20 exclusive tiles will go unused. Also, if you use wide spacing early in the game, your cities will suffer from Despotism's horrendous distance corruption. In short: try spacing your cities closer, with only 2 to 3 tiles in between.

Surely this will be detrimental when playing in the modern era? I can see a big advantage if you want an early win but personally I prefer the modern era to any other.

[Krill]

Nah, you can disband the cities when you have built the hospitals, so the bigger towns can grow.

[Kloreep]

Like Krill says, you can disband some cities to make room for the others to grow. Also, while it's detrimental post-hospitals, it take a really long time to reach hospitals... and in pre-hosptial times, it is detrimental to use OCP because you aren't using your tiles maximally.

[zaku]

Ok, my cities are always a good distance apart. i learned in CTP2 the whole borders thing. My workers, i have 3-5 for each city. military...thats my problem. my citzens always complain about stuff and riot, so then i try and make the city bigger and the military goes down the whole. i loaded up Civ gold edition today, i forgot i had it...moved to korea for the army. im doing good in my first game as carthage, i owned greece in our war. they gave me 2 cities for peace. everyone else loves me because i own so many resources. im gonna take what i learn from the forums and everything else into my gameing.

[Kloreep]

Sounds like you have quite enough workers then.

If your cities are rioting, growing them bigger will only worsen the problem, as after a certain size, each new citizen is unhappy by default. (4 citizens are "born content" on chieftan, 3 on warlord, 2 on regent and monarch, and 1 on emperor and up.) Keep their populations low enough that you can maintain happiness. Don't forget to use Military Police to keep the peace under govs that allow it (pretty much any gov except republic and democracy). And during the early game under despotism, and if under Republic or Democracy later, consider using the luxury slider for some extra happiness. Better to use the luxury slider in the early game than to have to use entertainers; the luxury slider loses you commerce, but entertainers also lose you potential food and shields as well. And since Rep and Dem lose the ability to have Military Police but gain some commerce, they can better afford use of the lux slider.

[MoonWolf]

Also, I use to keep my border cities strong. Not only defence units, but also attackers ready to take out enemy units heading for the border cities or often trying to head for a weak city inside your land (they tend to go for the weakest city) or a resource.

Those border cities, I try to place on hills and/ or behind rivers. I also prioritize barracks and walls in them (walls if it'll take some time to get them size > 6)

[gunkulator]

I like to keep a small city near the border of a hostile AI with maybe just one unit in it. The AI will always head straight for it. Build and man barricades along the way to the city, right on the border even, and watch AI units suffer ZOC damage as soon as they step into your territory. Pummel the stack with the best artillery of the day. Attack the weakened units. Make sure a lone unit is attacked with a 2-mover, so it can move back into your city or barricade after the attack. If you leave any straggler units outside of foritifcations, the AI will always attack them first.

[Blademun]

Everyone says that you shouldn't space your cities to much, due to inneffcient use of tiles..

Bah.

I OVER space my cities. Land grabbing is your PRIORITY early on. If you build cities close to each other you arn't grabbing up a bigger peice of the pie. I'll build maybe 2-3 cities close to my capital, but from there all my other cities get placed Wayyy out. At least 15-20, even 30-35 tiles away. I place them in strategic areas, like hills and river valleys. These are my Fortress Citys. THey are built with a wall, barrack, and they basicly pump out workers to allow me to build Inward, and Outward, at the same time. I'll eventually fill the middle with a combo of ICS and OCP...According to the quality of the area I found my city on. High quality, varied terrain with rivers and hills gets special room to allow extra growth. Those miles of plain grassland get covered over..

Those fortress Citys also become great stageing areas for...outward expansion once my borders run up against the AI's...

As for dealing with the AI...heh, you need to learn how to grease a palm. Don't stick with some AI's and forget others. Play them all the same. As for me, I leave them all furious at me...but they are also alll eating outta my palm...Also, verrryyy important, save your gold. Gold is verrry valuable early on, and you can buy yourself a army in the form of several AI's.

Technology is also valuable, but you'll never beat the AI at tech raceing on their own terms. Leave your rates at 50/50 or even go heavy on gold. LAter on in the game the AI will give up on science because war is so expensive...THEN you can run circles around them in the science lab.

Btw, That AI you buddy up with, leaveing your border soft too..will just as quickly stab you in the back. Computers don't know morals or ethics. Donnn't trust them.

Thats all I'v got to say. Just speaking from my experiences..

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by Blademun
Everyone says that you shouldn't space your cities to much, due to inneffcient use of tiles..

Bah.

I OVER space my cities. Land grabbing is your PRIORITY early on. If you build cities close to each other you arn't grabbing up a bigger peice of the pie. I'll build maybe 2-3 cities close to my capital, but from there all my other cities get placed Wayyy out. At least 15-20, even 30-35 tiles away. I place them in strategic areas, like hills and river valleys. These are my Fortress Citys. THey are built with a wall, barrack, and they basicly pump out workers to allow me to build Inward, and Outward, at the same time. I'll eventually fill the middle with a combo of ICS and OCP...According to the quality of the area I found my city on. High quality, varied terrain with rivers and hills gets special room to allow extra growth. Those miles of plain grassland get covered over..

This is commonly referred to here as REXing and it is an excellent strategy. When people tell you to space cities closely, they mean do it in the context of REXing.

[vmxa1]

Blademun I admire you certitude, but I have to wonder what level and map settings you are talking about.

Thirty tiles away, sounds like large or huge maps with less than the standard number of civs. Believe me you will not have that much space to work with on std maps at high levels.

[spy14]

I try to place cities so that pretty much all squares on the map are covered by a cities radius, but with as little of the cities fouling each others radius as possible.

Although this might not be optimal in the early game, and may require me to be nice to the AI more than I would like, it is optimal for the late game when most cities are size 12 or more. This then puts me in a nice position to "right" any AI's that have wronged me. This also works for me personally as I tend to go for domination or space race victories.

[Blademun]

You would be right, sir. I play on huge-large maps. I recently started playing at monarch level. I always play with max players.

I'v had a run of bad luck lately in the start out. Mainly the poor placement of my first settler. Often on the very edge, instead of the center of a continent and/or favorable terrain. This ruins my strategy, since it forces me to spread in one direction. And trust me..that 30 tile distance dosen't seem like so much in those instances, when I have settlers easily crossing that distance just to get to the expanding side...

Thanks for clarifying what I was doing, is called. btw.

Also, I recently rethought it out. One could say all the time spent moving the settlers into posistion is wasted, since they are not in city-form, produceing something. I don't know. I find that placeing city edge to city edge ultimately ends you up with a very small empire. Since the AI is just soo good at expanding, your borders run into theirs too soon.. ¬_¬ Hrmm..

[vmxa1]

Everythig is a trade off. I just spent about two months playing Sid and before that mostly Demi and an occassional Deity. I cannot image moving a settler 30 turns at any point in the game.

You can get away with some loose or OCP placement up to Emperor after that, you will have your hands full on normal maps.

I would expect to have barbs take down a wandering settler if it took 30 turns to get to a spot. Above emperor, barbs can kill your warriors.

At deity and sid you have no bonus vs barbs. At monarch it is 100, 50 for emperor.

If you don't like the speed of the AI rexing at Monarch, you will really hate it at higher levels.

[Blademun]

Well, I looked at it more closely. It seems less to do with their speed and alot more to do with placement. Maybe I should start another post on this..but is it just me or does it seem like the higher you put the difficulty rateing, the more and more disadvantagious your spot?

At Regent I got started out in the middle of a huge green river valley with only some weak ole arabs to worry about...

At Monarch I get started out in jungles, forests, tundra or desert. After 7 attempts I got a peice of green....that was hemmed in within 10 squares by the Zulus, and 20 away were the egyptians... and this was on a huge map.

If I were a patient man I could sit through each difficulty level and repeatedly test to see if this is true. However I'm sure someone eles already has, and since I am a lazy man, I will let that someone eles tell me. Thanks in advance . LoL

[spy14]

You are a lazy man.

As am I.

But IIRC then yes the higher levels do give you more difficult starts overall

[Aeson]

Difficulty level has no effect on map generation or civ placement. You can test this by creating a map with a seed number, choose a difficulty, see what you get. Use the same settings for a new game (non-random! same seed, civ, AI civs (order is even important IIRC), barbs, water level, landform, mapsize, ect.) but a different difficulty level and you will get the same start.

[Solomwi]

This from the mastermind of "So Cold..."

[vmxa1]

Save your energy, the level has no impact on the map.

[Blademun]

Well, maybe not the map itself but maybe the placeing of your settler onto the map at the begining..?

[Ljube]

I haven’t seen any connection between the difficulty level and the start position.

And by the way, I just won a space race at emperor. With the weakest army, joining in MPPs with everyone but my sole surviving neighbours, the militaristic, armed to their teeth Mayas to prevent them from attacking and soon afterwards, inviting them all to assist me in my fight against distant Koreans who only once attempted lading with a single tank

The final 30 turns were filled with bribes towards the Mayans to appease them. Though not the most convincing performance of mine, I've achieved the victory I desired.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blademun
Well, maybe not the map itself but maybe the placeing of your settler onto the map at the begining..?

No. With the same settings, civs, and seed, you will start in the same place regardless of the difficulty level.

[Darkchampion]

I usually use this for my layout

X=cities
0=not cities

X00X0X00X0X00X00


if you disband every other city once your hospitals come in you have something very close to OCP

X0000X0000X0000X

and I do this for the capital and core cities (cities i use for improvements and wonders. dont build many troops with them unless im going for an early conquest. naturally i change the layout if i start on a river or lake as your capital will go to pop 12 soon)

C=capital

0000X00
0000000
X000000
000C000
000000X
0000000
00X0000