My first game...

[Ligur]

Hi everyone! I'm new as a poster too but not unfamiliar with the boards. Apolyton is a great resource.

Good to hear new players are finding the game easy enough to get into, and that they are interested in upping the difficulty to get a challenge out of the game. It wouldn't be that fun otherwise now would it I have laughed many a day reading amazon reviews of the game.

I might be some kind of a freak but I've never tried playing CIV3 below regent

I played my first game as the Romans on Regent when CIV3 was still pretty new but patched enough to actually work. From my long gone glory days of CIV2 I remembered that basically pop and commerce = power so I tried to expand fast... Hoo boy was a surprised at the speed of the AI expansion! And I thought I was doing it fast! Protected settlers EVERYWHERE! Spears and Settlers on land! Romping through MY land areas! Galleys with Settlers coming from every direction! Settlers raining from the SKY!

I ended up being in the same continent with Russia and the English I think, and was utterly amazed at the rate with which they filled all empty space on the map. My land area was too small in the end and I was left behind on the tech race... The AI also constantly wanted to kick me in the teeth, extorted and blackmailed me and was pissed off at my too-small empire for reasons I couldn't quite figure out... I don't think that game was winnable anymore with my skills. Using luxuries, the resources, corruption and all that still went a bit over my head. I found out I didn't even know what I needed to have to build certain units and so on. Wonders were totally out of my grasp. Culture flip, whats that?

Damn the AI. I restarted at pretty early point of the game and STILL couldn't figure out how the hell the AI expanded so fast while I got only crappy desert areas.

Restarted again yet earlier, figured out what REXxin really is, figured out city placing in CIV3 is completely different from CIV2, boxed my two neighbours leaving "only" 60% of the continent to them and won the ancient era defensive war when the continent was nearly filled and I had to defend my half, got Knights, used them to get a few strategically important cities and luxuries, practiced having a war, traded with the AI, practiced diplomacy in CIV3, figured out it really does matter and trading is a must, beelined to Cavalry and cut off Moscow from the rest of the Russian empire in a 3 round blitzkrieg effort and kept buggering them untill they called for peace, drifted into a war against the English, was almost surprised by a new attack from the Russkies who were now allied with the Brits (there were no good bottlenecks on the continent, the frontlines were REALLY long and I couldn't "defend them to death") and proceeded to take most cities from each in a long, prolonged and bloody war which ground my scientific research to a halt. There was another continent on the map that housed the Killer AI Aztecs and some of their punching bags. I got into the 19th century with thems factories, railroads and hoover dams when my attention was diverted to other things.

My HD crashed later and I never got to finish the game. I was too far behind the Aztecs I think though. I played a few more Regent games later but didn't finish them either.

After a hiatus of, err, two years I recently started playing CIV3PTW with a friend at work and some other guys (was winning with Egypt! Damn its a powerful one to pick compared to the Romans! then we stopped playing because few of the guys had trouble getting PTW stable) and started a Regent game of my own, again with Egypt. Both in MP and single player my starting areas were fantastic luxury and resource wise, and I REXed to get a sizeable portion of the continents, locking in most of the luxuries and later resources as they appeared.

By that time I had figured out you only don't need to expand fast at first to get the pop and commerce you need, you also need to control the luxuries and resources. Then you are king of the world.

I won the space race in the single player, mostly because I couldn't be bothered with conquering my own continent cause of corruption and the other since fighting a war with 200+ units is such a chore. The other continent was full of technologically advanced Arabs and Persians, I only secured a few coastal cities with airports there as beachheads if I needed to knock out any capitals or such.

Now I'm on my second game of Regent as Egypt. I started out in a really weird and resource/luxury poor mountain/jungle continent with Rome, Greek and Carthage. The other continent has Japan, Mongols, China and Korea. There is also an island that houses Scandinavia, those poor bastards. Korea has all the resources and luxuries in the world, beautiful land area of rich flat grasslands and gently rolling gem and ore encrusted hills, and just barely leads the tech race (I'll get Hoover before them though). I have just about all the wonders, AI got Oracle, HG, Colossus and Copernicus. Rest are MINE, MINE, MINE.

I kind of lost motivation to play the game to the finish though, since I'm pretty sure I'll win the space race if it comes to that or I could go for UN. Using my sizeable fleet I can go cripple Korea if I want to. What can the AI do about it? Mostly nothing. Sure, I'll lose some units, but I can take away some of their resources and luxuries and deny them from Korea or others for the rest of the game.

I already took away everything nice from the other civs in my continent. The best unit Carthago can build is musketmen, the others can'd do even that and never will.

I guess I better start Monarch this weekend, or play a warmonger style of game on Regent where I concentrate on laying the smack down on the AI before they grow too big, even on the other continent.

I think that would be more difficult than the Space Race or UN win.

Hmm, that was a long post, I started out to write a few lines only

So, I don't have that many games of CIV3 behind me, but what I have learned:

- Expand Fast
- Expand Faster you jerk!
- You MUST Trade with AI Luxuries, Resources and Tech
- If Angry AI Threatens you when you are still weak, give what they want
- Get them later when they are not watching
- Don't obsess about the wonders, you don't NEED them, they are just nice to have
- Deny AI land (block bottlenecks whenever possible, fill in afterwards at your leisure), Luxuries and Resources
- Get all the Resources and Luxuries you can, use force when necessary
- City placement goes as follows: Found cities anywhere you can, don't care about overlapping (cxxxc or even cxxc type of placement is ok).

IMHO anyone who REALLY gets the above, uses workers enough, keeps folks happy and plans a bit in advance etc basic things will do just fine in CIV3 at Regent.

[Proserpine]

Thanks Ligur. Welcome to the boards. An excellent & interesting post & you're right of course - there is no excuse for not expanding fast, and the rest is pretty basic.

As I said I have been playing off and on since Civ3 came out and am only just now moving up to regent. I have to say that I'm finding it easier than expected & I think I know why.

I was a major fan of SMAC & SMAX (still am - they are sublime) and Civ 2 (which I now find almost unplayable, the graphics are so old skool) and I think I had a hard time adjusting my thinking. I got the similarities, but didn't appreciate the differences if you know what I mean, like:

- tile- and turn-based, check
- commerce, science, entertainment = minerals/
nutrients/energy, check
- settler/citizen = colony pod, check
- tech tree, check
- reserch vs happiness vs economy, check
and so on

Anyhoo, I seem to have made a breakthrough and will probably move up to Monarch pretty quickly. I am replaying the Conquests (that makes a nice comparitive challenge between levels) and will try a couple of epics before I decide.

Unlike many people I do like to finish a game, even if losing badly, so I tend to play everything out to the bitter end - I hate leaving an unfinished game.

[Ligur]

Thanks for the warm welcomes Proserpine!

Now to something I've noticed with my friends who play CIV3 but hardly well (refuse to even try Regent), they all know the basic fundamentals but are unable to execute. Its a head thing of course. By expanding fast they think its cool to found a city, improve a bit around it, build a granary, some spears, a temple, some wealth for a few rounds and maybe then a settler.

By expanding I mean pumping settlers everywhere abandoning improvements untill there is no more space or using a settler pump or two at the least (good pump being more effective than keeping your cities at size 1 or 2 all the time).

They also often refuse to trade with AI's, get mixed into wars at the wrong time because the don't give some little tech to the AI and never initiate trades to secure luxuries.

Securing luxuries and resources is a simple thing, but you have to be REALLY target oriented to get them all and refuse the AI access. You might want to improve a city a bit but if getting some luxuries means you have to build units first and improve later, you build units first.

Blocking AI land is not a game of luck, its a game of will. Or a game of shields. You have to want to deny the bugger any open terrain, and do everything in your power to do it. This usually means abandoning improvements somewhere for a while.

Also some players try to balance out development in their cities. No no no, use military and settler pumps and maybe one or two Shield cities if you have them to spare for wonders.

The damn workers should be building roads to pave way for your expansion and invasions, many people don't use them enough even if they mean to.

And so on.

[vmxa1]

Sounds like Monarch is not going to be a big problem. Hope to hear some reports on the progress.

[Proserpine]

Ligur, you are so right. I used to build a lot more improvements early. Trading and warring are arts, there's loads of good stuff on them on these hallowed boards.

[ceroomaster]

Re: My first game...

Originally posted by Gamecube64
2. They suck.

Probably.
Either that or they all work on a rival title.

Actually, I bet all the people who posted those reviews are the Age of Empires development team...

Micro$oft

[Gamecube64]

I'm progressing nicely, beat Mesopotamia on warlord so im going up to regent. I decided to do a tiny map with two rivals. I'm trying to do a peaceful builder game with little conflict, but inbetween Carthage and I is a very productive looking large peninsula. I may have to take some of their cities that they have there already to make room for me... or I could bring culture to them with my Babylonian touch. This would probably be easier since the nearest iron is quite a bit away, and they have Mercs. Though I could put a colony on it, set up a city on the coast, and build a harbor in the city so I could send it to my lands, but that would take a while. I am 5 tech ahead of the lowly French, and 2 ahead of the Carthagians. I would have 4 more but I wanted The Wheel and their 50 gold. They know nothing of eachother, I'm sitting pretty right between them.

BTW, how do you take screenshots? I tried printscreen but it doesnt do anything. The manual and control guide says nothing about it

[vmxa1]

That should work, but download Irfanview (free). It works great and you can resize to 800 and save as jpeg then they can be posted with ease.

[Rommel2D]

After using printscreen, go into Paint and select paste...

[lmtoops]

The confusing thing about the button/command is that it gives you no feedback regarding the outcome. So you think nothing has happened, but actually the screen has been copied.