The "I think I might be losing this one, what do I do?" thread

[petermarkab]

finally, here's the Western Russian Empire.

Hope these screenshots provide enough incentive to download the save and give me lots of fabulous advice.

thanks,

Pete

[Primative1]

Thanks vmxa1 - first off let me say in my defence that this is my first game and I havn't read the civopedia - i'm just discovering it as I go - I will be switching my research to go for the Hoover Dam tho.

I switched to Communism because my far flung cities were crippled by corruption to the point of not being viable. How does one overcome this? City improvements arnt the answer - it was taking 80 turns to build basic stuff.

Whats my 'RR'?

Thanks for your time and efforts v, and for not dumping on me *L*.

[vmxa1]

RR is railroads. They allow you to move units at no movement cost. This means you can send defenders anywhere you have rails and then still have all you moves to fort up or attack or whatever.

You also get food bonus, so you can get by with less irriagtion.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Primative1

I switched to Communism because my far flung cities were crippled by corruption to the point of not being viable. How does one overcome this? City improvements arnt the answer - it was taking 80 turns to build basic stuff.

To some degree you will have to accept corruption for a time. You do not want to sacrifice you core or producing cities to get a bit out of those far away and weak cities. You will not gain back enough to pay the bills.

I don't recall if there was an FP (forbidden palace) or not and where it was. One way in CivIII or PTW (not C3C so far) to get some help is to build the FP out in the middle of those far flung cities. It will act as a second palace and those cities will have corruption ranks as if they where around teh palace (more or less).

If you have an FP and it is well placed, then you can try to rush some improvements with cash (depending on the form of gov).
Weither this is a good plan or not is dependant on many things and is sort of a specialty. Look for threads on corruption from Alexman the corruption nazi to get the real scoop.

If you are stuck with those 1 shiled cities, you can use them to crank out workers or settlers. You can set pop to taxmen or scientist to get some value. In C3C you have other specialist called civil engineers.

The thing is, communism is worthless in Civ3 or PTW (IMO).

[UnityScoutChopper]

Hi Peter,

I'll leave it to other players to make a more in-depth analysis; I'll just get a few "basics" out of the way.

CITY DENSITY

A key problem visible in your screenshots is low city density. I realize that knowing a city will never be able to work its maximum of 20 squares is irksome, but the problem with giving cities enough space to reach or approach their maxima is that for most of the game -- all the way until somewhat into the industrial age, when you can build Hospitals -- you will have squares that will never be used. In other words, you will be producing fewer shields and less gold than you could be. In some cases, like the one shown above, the effect can be dramatic. As a rule of thumb, you should provide each city just enough space to have 12 workable squares for itself, i.e. the maximum size pre-hospitals.

Higher city density:
- increases your worked tile count to total territory tile count ratio
- just plain gives you more food, shields, and gold
- gets your cities built faster
- reduces border gaps without requiring culture production (a biggie for non-religious civs in despotism)
- often increases the rate of your territory expansion despite the smaller jumps each time, since you will have more places from which to produce settlers (and workers to speed them on)

As an example: in "North Russia," I could envision (if we ignore military threats) placing new cities:
4 squares NE of Moscow
2 W + 1 NW of Moscow
on the tobacco E-SE of Moscow
in the middle of the minimap :-)

I may have ignored crowding from some West Russian cities in this; if so, my apologies.


WORKERS

All in all, your territory seems a bit underdeveloped. Since you are currently at war, you probably will not be able to afford to build many workers. But once the war is over -- and from the start in future games -- they should be a higher priority. "How many workers" is always a tough question to answer; the general answer is "enough that your cities are never working undeveloped tiles, all your cities, luxuries, and resources are connected, and your settlers are sped towards their destinations." This is actually usually unattainable if you are expanding quickly, but you get the picture. The short answer is "twice is many as you think." The shortest answer at ANY GIVEN MOMENT is "more."


GOVERNMENT

As soon as possible, switch out of Despotism. I'd recommend Republic despite its disadvantages in war, because it is a better government in the long run than Monarchy (and eventually becomes better even during wars), and as a non-religious civ, you don't want to switch twice.

USC

[Cerbykins]

Governments

Communism in this game, is much like in real life: in PRINCIPLE it's great, in practice it's a heap of junk
In the older civ games, I remember it being of some use - but as it stands in Civ 3, even democracy works out better. The down-sides there are, if you wanted to use forced labour to rush build - democracy can't and if you fight wars, you'll have to keep them short and sweet. But in trade terms, the corruption is actually less than in communism.

This may have been cured a bit with the new Secret Police HQ in C3C, but we'll have to wait to find out about that

I did test this a while ago - Ottomans, chieftain, in a bid to see what I could get out forced labour and communism in general. And democracy was STILL better for world domination :P

[petermarkab]

thanks for the tips USC

A key problem visible in your screenshots is low city density.

All in all, your territory seems a bit underdeveloped.

I agree - I think i've attended to my expansion and military while neglecting core infrastructure. Will do better in future.

As for the remedy, I had a hunch i should be filling in the gaps so will do so while stalling the war. In twenty turns I should have enough 5-plus shield producing cities to resume the Portugal war.

"How many workers" is always a tough question to answer

IIRC, I've currently got about 6 workers and 20 captured workers - they're all working on Moscow's shield production in the mountains. Will reassign to new core cities ASAP!

As soon as possible, switch out of Despotism.

Can't see this happening for at least 40 turns, but my preference is for Despot -> Monarchy -> Democracy (haven't tried Fascism or 'New Communism' - hehe, very May 1997!)

I guess its like the "two pit stops vs one pit stop" argument in F1 - will the extra set of new tyres allow me to make up the extra 8 seconds?!

Regards,

Pete

[UnityScoutChopper]

Hi Peter,

I don't know about Monarchy --> Democracy, but I remember someone -- may have been WarpStorm -- investigating semi-scientifically the effect of the "pit stop" between Republic and Democracy, and coming to the conclusion that the loss that a non-religious civ incurs from anarchy is only recuperated many dozens of turns later. I would assume that Monarchy/Democracy would be the same. In anything but the most warmongering of games, my personal recommendation would thus be to make a single switch -- to Republic. It's nice in that its war weariness is low enough to make war feasible throughout the game, yet it still have the tremendous commerce boost shared with Democracy. Well... try a "single-switch" game out for a test run with a non-religious civ sometime and come to your own conclusions, not mine.

USC

[vmxa1]

I would only make one switch if not religious. It will be very hard to recover the lost production. As you already are finding it hard to switch once, how can you find a time for a second one?

Republic is a more problematic than it was in PTW as the support cost can be a killer, if you have a large army. If you expect to fight, Demo will be harsh, unless you can do it quick and or have many luxs.

Workers should be at least 1 per city and more is even better. Slaves only as half.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by UnityScoutChopper
CITY DENSITY

Higher city density:
- increases your worked tile count to total territory tile count ratio
- just plain gives you more food, shields, and gold
- gets your cities built faster
- reduces border gaps without requiring culture production (a biggie for non-religious civs in despotism)
- often increases the rate of your territory expansion despite the smaller jumps each time, since you will have more places from which to produce settlers (and workers to speed them on)

Also, and I think this is REALLY important, it lets your cities share improved tiles. This is critical in the early game, especially if you have some nearby cities fluctuating in size due to Settler and Worker builds. Remember: The name of the game is to maximize food, shield, and commerce production from tiles actually being worked... thus, improving and SHARING the best tiles goes a long way.

One more: From a military perspective, using 3-tile city placement (CxxC) and having a good military road network go a long way towards enhancing your defensability, due to 3 and 6 tile movement on roads.

[Cerbykins]

Curiously, this latest game at Monarch level (which for some reason I keep calling 'Governor' ) - my first for a long while there - Persia's busy trying to pull the 'killer civ' trick. Anyhow, as you can probably guess, they wanted war... ...and the odd part - it's been going on some considerable length of time, with little combat taking place - yet no sign of the usual war weariness under republic...is this new patch's doing?

If this is true, it suddenly makes republic/feudalism much more viable...!

[Jaguar]

I'm playing on Sid level. I have three cities, and no iron. The Ottomans have 8 cities. They just declared war on me. They have riflemen defending their cities and they have Sipahi as well. I am working on discovering feudalism. What should I do?

[vmxa1]

JW resign. Three cities in the middles ages? You are funny.

[Cerbykins]

Even from a coward like me...sounds too late to make a comeback

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Aeson
I forgot to mention this on asking the AI to remove troops. Even if you are much more powerful they will always declare war if at a certain level of furious. To take advantage of this, just demand something from the AI you want to declare war on you numerous times until they are very furious(after they get to furious, keep demanding a few times), and then demand they withdraw their troops. They will declare war, even if they're on their last city with no military to speak of.

i do this too and maybe i'll be burned as a heretic...
but isn't this an exploit?