Need strategic advice/pointers

[Melboz99]

Hey all.

I played Civ2 for a number of years, I also played SMAC and SMAC-X for a number of years. I preorderd Civ3, and bought PTW almost as soon as it came out. Somehow though, what with all the bugs with PTW and all, I fell out of touch with Civ.

I got into C3C when I decided to play a PBEM game. I'm doing okay, I have a score above 800 at 420 AD on Monarch. But the thing is I have never been successfull on any difficulty level higher than Regent. Even at Regent I'm often way behind for the bulk of the game.

Anywho, I decided to play a single player game agian. I hadn't played singleplayer in while, actually, quite a long while, so I knew my skills weren't going to be up to par. So I played on Warlord. I played as the Americans, just to try out an expansionist nation for once. (My freind is creaming me right now on a hotseat game, mostly because he had a great start as an expansionist civ)

Anyway, I went with a somewhat random map. Huge map, Continents, 60% water, 4 Billion years old, Mild, Temperate.

I chose to have only 3 opponents, as I like having huge builder civs. I am finding though that this makes finding resouces a lot more difficult.

I'm attaching the game as it was in 1979, one year before space race victory. I figured that way you could watch the replay if you wished. I wouldn't count the game time as accurate. I let the game run while I was off at class a few times. (about 6 hours a time).

Anyway, I was looking for any pointers, tips, advice, etc. I have already been told that my city placement could be better if I used the OCP city placemtent. I had no idea such a thing existed.

Well, let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Dan O.

PS. Sorry for using a RAR file, the original file size was 5.4mb.

[mudfoot]

First off, I didn't open the save.

It seems you ran into something they (Atari) changed in C3C. There are a lot less resources now and AFAIK they are linked to how many civs are on your map. In your case, 4 civs (you included) on a huge map would make resources very very scarce!!

On city placement, I've got to admit I probably read all about the best way to place your cities, but I don't take it into account. I just look for places near rivers or lakes and then look for a place where I get the most BG (Bonus Grassland) and the most out of any available bonusses (cows and stuff) and luxuries. All that ofcourse without spacing my cities to far apart. In fact, I usually don't have many cities who don't share tiles with each other!

I would suggest more rivals in your next game. Eliminate a few early on in the game if you like to grow big and do the builder thing.

Also as expansionist civ, I hope you enabled barbarians! (You didn't say, I think ). You should run out with your scout (and make more immediatly) and grab as many goody huts as possible. Nothing but good stuff in them as an expansionist civ!!

I hope this helps! I'm not the best nor the most experienced player around, so if you look around this forum (or wait for them to post in this thread) you'll get plenty more good advice!! One thing you also could try, is the War Academy at CFC

[vmxa1]

I DL it, then realized I do not have WinRar on this PC, oh well.

I would think it is too late to get much information about the way thegame was played, other than city placement.

3 rivials is too few for a map this size, I would say 8 is min number. I would not use Exp trait on a huge map with only 3 other civs. You would have to have very bad luck to run into other civs very early. You should have plenty of time to pop huts. Go with Commerce to get the bump on OCN.

[Melboz99]

Thanks guys. I did have barbs turned on, but only to sedentary.

I think next time I will try a com/agr or ind/agr civ. I've never played an agr civ, I guess I was looking at how much more a city could grow (1/2 citizen without desert) than how much faster it could grow.


What date do you think would be good for me to upload? I have saves from 360 AD and 1460 AD, and then a whole bunch leading up to the 1900's.

I suppose I will add more opponents next time as well.

Thanks for the replies,
Dan O.

[vmxa1]

With Contients and only 60% water you can expect to have a large amount of land to develop. I would use a semi loose pattern of CxxC. Use a few cities to pump out workers and settlers to rex and improve tiles. You should be able to get very powerful.

Do not build the GL as you will have a hard time getting much from it other than denial.

Do not use autosave to post a save as they are larger than a std save. Not saying you did in this case, just FYI.

To get more feedback, use std size maps or large if you must. It is not much fun to load a late game save for a huge map.

Make the post in the ancient age to allow people to see the game when it matters.

[Melboz99]

Well, I'm not sure how ancient this game is, but here is the year 360 AD.

Thanks,
Dan O.

[Aqualung71]

vmxa1's comments are all spot on as usual.

I would highly recommend you start playing standard sized maps, with all standard conditions, especially the number of civs. Changing the number of AI civs, especially to the extreme you did on such a large map, will totally change the feel of the game, in the way you interact with the AI's (very important part of the learning process) and as you've found out, will seriously change the resource distribution.

I used to play huge maps and opt for the large city sizes too. It took me a while to really "get" the key ingredients of this game, which are city spacing/placement, tile improvement and population growth (plus a lot of other stuff). Everyone loves building temples and markets, etc, but in the end these buildings are really just support mechanisms for your most important infrastructure, which is the city itself.

Playing huge maps feels nicer, but the endgame is a real drag. It just takes too long to do anything. Also, the game is really won or lost in the first two ages, so you want to get out of your REX mode and consolidate as soon as you can.

On city spacing.....most human players once they get to the Industrial age can usually win one way or another. For most of this time your cities will be restricted to size 12 or less. Spacing them so that they can cater for the full size 21 means that for the large majority of the game around 40% of your empire is not worked by your city labourers. This means less income, which translates into lower research. Having the same number of cities spread out further also gives you higher corruption, since one component of corruption increases in proportion to distance from the capital.

Sorry about the jumbled thoughts....it's late and it just came out that way

[Zero]

ICS > OCP!!!1!!!!

[Goethe80]

Well, I'm no strategy guru, but what you can do is to post an interesting start save file (4000BC), together with the screen shot of the start, and ask ppl for comments on starting moves, etc.

From my experience, the ppl here are quite happy to play along (at least for abit), and you'll get lots of insight into how other ppl approach the same issues.

*on an entirely unrelated note, from what i've been learning here, I've managed to get to a stage where I win 2/3 on emp, which is a big step up from when I used to play at regent so thanks to everyone! *