Emperor Mahatma Gav and the Holy Buddhist Spaceship

[QuestGAV]

Mahatma Gav and the Holy Buddhist Spaceship

I started this game for two reasons: for starters, I wanted to get practice playing in a more peaceful manner. More importantly, I wanted to create a game that would allow me to illustrate some of the great pointers I've picked off Apolyton. Hopefully with screenshots and game situations I can show the applications of some of the more common themes you'll hear in this forum. I would love to see other people expand on the ideas I put out there and point out things that are important to see that I missed. My goal, and I'm not sure I'll have the stamina to entirely reach it, is to create an archive of tips and tricks that aren't immediately obvious that will help people pick up the nuances of Civ3.

About the game setup: The game is a standard map, 8 civs, 60% continents, 5 billion years old on Emperor level. I hand selected the other 7 civilizations to avoid playing against Agricultural, Expansionist, Religious, and Scientific opponents, though the Byzantines are in because you can't pick 7 civs which include none of those traits. As you may have guessed from the title, I'm playing as the Indians, though I modified them. The Indians now possess all of the Civ traits. Because I'm challenging myself to play a more peaceful style that's going to handicap me, I wanted the extra oomph. Obviously, taking all the traits is quite a bit of oomph. Having all the traits lets me go further with my primary goal in the game though, in that I can show applications of each of the traits. I don't have much experience with some of the traits so perhaps others will chip in when you see places a trait can be better utilized to strengthen the Civ as a whole.

Tips:

City Placement
-City squares will normally have 2 food and 1 production regardless of the square underneath. Food and shield bonuses are ignored. Commerce bonuses are applied as will as bonuses from Civ traits.
-Defensive bonuses from city placements still apply, so founding cities on a hill can be helpful in that respect.
-It is almost always beneficial to build your cities in a CxxC pattern very close together. Your cities grow more quickly and use your land more efficiently, allowing you to grab more land in total.

Workers
-Build more workers! And then build some more. You want at least 2 workers per city.
-Any time a city is working unimproved tiles, build more workers.
-Any time a settler/unit has to pass through unroaded tiles, build more workers.

REXing Tips:
-If you find a spot that can generate +5 food and 7.5 shields, you can create a 4 turn settler pump that greatly increases your ability to out-expand the AI. Read below for details, or better yet read the following threads which do the concept greater justice:

The Case For Food

Ducki Does C3C at Emperor

Trade
-Become the global tech broker early
-Take tech for tech when it's available and their gold as well
-As economies grow, get what you can from them in terms of gold per turn (GPT) deals. You get richer, they get poorer.
-Check trade possibilities every turn. You never know when they've researched a new tech (or traded for one from another AI you couldn't get it from yet) or if they have a Worker in their capital to buy.

Combat
-Have clear goals when you start a war and make sure the forces you are devoting are suitable for it. If you do better than expected, feel free to take it further or contract your plans if you hit a stumbling block.
-Mobile armies tend to be easier use - make use of their extra speed to keep them alive
-If a mobile force isn't an option, consider creating a SOD (Stack of Death) with strong foot soldiers backed by strong defenders and Catapult-type unit. Bombarding will help you minimize your losses for a more efficient offensive.
-"Pruning" the AI by taking a few cities and maybe a resource or two from them early on in the game can make them a much easier target later on. Pruning all your neighbors a bit in the ancient age sets you up to be dominant in the Middle Ages.

Happiness
-In the early game the luxury slider can be very efficient when losing even a single laborer hurts.
-Don't always create entertainers, sometimes you can get away with making a Tax Collector or Scientist instead.

Corruption
-Having your cities placed more closely together mitigates corruption.

Goody Huts
-A Goody Hut can only give you a Settler if you have none currently on the map or in production. If you are Expansionist and are popping a goody hut, switch your cities off of settler production first. Just don't forget to switch them back!

Traits
-Expansionist
---Scouts can pop goody huts with no fear of spawning barbarians, this can lead to a significant early tech lead.
---The trait's advantages peter out quickly so maximise them early on.
-Seafaring
--Helps grab the early tech lead
--Build your first curragh very early!
--AI does not understand this trait


Basic rules of thumb for worker management:
Mine all grasslands in despotism, unless they have a bonus food tile.
Sugar is the only bonus food tile not worth irrigating.
Plains should generally be irrigated, but there are exceptions (such as a city blessed with Flood Plains as well)
Stacking workers can be efficient, but have Workers make roads individually. One full turn is wasted per unit moving into the non-roaded tile. This waste adds up.
Forests are just as good as mountains until you're out of Despotism.
Chopping forests early can significantly speed up production of early improvements.

[QuestGAV]

Initial City Placement

There are a few important things to note when placing cities. Perhaps most important is that a city square produces 2 food, 1 shield, and 1 commerce per turn regardless of the tile underneath. So, placing a city on a shielded grassland or most other bonus tiles is a waste of the resource as you'll still get 2/1/1 from the city square. The exception to this rule is commerce bonus tiles, as you still get the bonus. You can take advantage of this by placing a city on a hill with gold as you'll get the commerce bonus and the defensive bonus of being on a hill.

Our starting position here seems pretty sweet, so I'll found the city. Note that this city actually produces 3/1/4 since we're agricultural, commercial, seafaring, and on a river.

[QuestGAV]

Here's the 4000 BC game file.

[QuestGAV]

The Expansionist trait can be dominant in the early going. Your free Scout can pop goody huts with no chance of barbarians. Here our scout gets us Pottery, so we can switch to a Granary early on and get that economy pumping! The tech lead created by Expansionist can peter out quickly, so be sure to get in touch with the other civs early on and start trading to maximise your advantage.

[QuestGAV]

Deciding what to research early can be tough. Because you start with a few of the basic techs and so do each of the AI civs, it can be smart to skip researching the first row of techs and head directly into the second row. Writing is a common choice here as it leads to Philosophy and the free extra tech it awards you. Making a beeline for Philosophy and using the free tech to bring you closer to The Republic (and out of Despotism) can get you a very strong advantage early in the game.

At higher difficulty levels, it can be advantageous to set your research level down to 10%. The 2nd level techs will almost always start off at 50 turns regardless of whether your research is set at 10% or 100%. So, build your treasury and you'll have something to offer the AIs for the first tier techs that they'll be researching early on.

[QuestGAV]

Hmm, we have a slight problem here. Our food production is so high that we grew before our Warrior was done. Not a huge problem on earlier levels, but at Emperor the second citizen in any city is unhappy. There are a few ways to deal with this. One would have been to work a Plains square instead of the Wheat Grasslands square a few turns beforehand, then the city would grow and produce a warrior in 3650. Or, you could grow here and turn the citizen into an Entertainer. That makes the other citizen happy, but with such a small city that doesn't help a whole lot. With only one city, the luxury slider is reasonably efficient too - keeping our +5 surplus and on track for growth to 3 in 7 turns and completing the Warrior in two.

Finally, the second citizen in the city can be changed into a tax collector. This works because all specialists count as content citizens. We don't get the happy citizen, but we do get an extra 2 gold for smart micromanaging.

The luxury slider is probably the best option here, but be careful with it. As your empire grows larger you may have better luck by creating specialists in the cities that need happiness control rather than taking a bite out of your economy across the board.

[QuestGAV]

3750 BC game file.

[QuestGAV]

City Placement, Part Deux

Expansionist pays off again as a Settler pops out of the goody hut like a stripper in a birthday cake. Note that you can only get a Settler out of a goody hut if you are not creating one already and do not have one in the field. So if you are an Expansionist, switch all of your cities off of Settler production before popping goody huts!

The question here is where should my second city go? Civ3's corruption model strongly rewards players for placing their cities close together. As your empire grows, it will be much more productive if the cities are spaced tightly and you will make more efficient use of your land. It may seem better to place your cities loosely to maximise their growth, but many of those tiles won't be used until Hospitals are available later in the game. Creating more (but smaller) cities allows you to maximize your territory and grow more quickly.

Generally, as you go up in levels it becomes more important to place your cities closer together such as CxxC, where the Cs are city squares and the x's signify the tiles between them. This is known as ICS as you expand outwardly in what is known as Infinite City Syndrome. The AI, and some players, prefer CxxxC or CxxxxC spacing, known as OCS for Optimal City Spacing.

I'll send this Settler over to the Flood Plains tile just northwest of the Sugar bonus resource and only two tiles away from Delhi. I'll lose the extra food from that Flood Plains tile, but I'm Agricultural so the possibility of eventually mining all those mountains and hills along with solid food production from the other nearby Flood Plains is making me drool. This placement is certainly debatable and I'd love to hear other opinions.

[QuestGAV]

Our Warrior finishes and next in the queue should be a second Worker. Not building enough Workers may be the single most common impediment to succeeding in Civ3. I still have trouble building enough to keep up with the growth of my cities. Any time a city is working an unimproved tile you're playing at a subpar level. So start pumping out your workers early and keep them coming. Seriously, this can't be stressed enough. With a non-Industrious Civ you want to reach and maintain a ratio of about 2 workers per city as soon as possible, and any time your cities start working tiles that aren't improved then you may need to up that ratio further.

This worker will also finish at the time Delhi is ready to grow to 3, which means it will stay at size 2 and out of disorder. Building workers and settlers is another way of handling disorder.

Since our Warrior is done, we can fortify him in Delhi and drop our luxury rate back to 0% to pick up the extra 2 gpt.

[QuestGAV]

Worker Management

Along with building more workers, it's hugely important to manage your workers well. Setting them to auto simply doesn't cut it. And sometimes, you have to go against your instincts.

For example, it's tempting to me to irrigate every plain. However, the plain this worker is on needs to be mined, at least while we're still in Despotism. The sugar resource gives the plain one extra food. Irrigating this plain would put it at 3 food (which would of course get knocked down to 2 with the Despotism penalty).

Basic rules of thumb for worker management:
Mine all grasslands in despotism, unless they have a bonus food tile.
Sugar is the only bonus food tile not worth irrigating.
Plains should generally be irrigated, but there are exceptions (such as a city blessed with Flood Plains as well)
Stacking workers can be efficient, but have Workers make roads individually. One full turn is wasted per unit moving into the non-roaded tile. This waste adds up.
Forests are just as good as mountains until you're out of Despotism.
Chopping forests early can significantly speed up production of early improvements.

I'm sure there are dozens more of these that people can come up with.

[QuestGAV]

And so it begins...

Becoming the global tech broker is the key to winning the tech race, at least at higher levels. You can't go it alone and hope to outresearch the rest of the globe. Be proactive about trading and take whatever you can, because if they don't get the tech from you they'll get it from someone else. You might as well get paid for it. Making money off every other Civ's research efforts will eventually let your economy outstrip your opponents.

Early on expect mostly tech for tech trades. As the game goes on and the AI economies go, make gold per turn (GPT) trades to suck the life out of said AI economies. If they don't have cash and you do, they're in a world of trouble.

Once you've made contact with other Civs, it's important to check the trade screen with each of them every turn. Especially if you have a decent amount of cash on hand, you can buy workers from them. Not only do you now have maintenance free workers that you didn't have to pay shields or population for, you are hurting their economy by hampering their ability to grow.

[QuestGAV]

Seafaring

Our Scout already worked some magic for us in the form of an extra tech, a Settler, and contact with the Carthaginians. It's time to put the Seafaring trait to use.

I'll admit that Seafaring is something I've never tried before, but it seems to be a heavy favorite among the most experienced Civ3 players. It's main use is similar to Expansionist as it lets you get a Curragh out early in order to meet Civs on other land masses. The AI does not understand the value of early sea exploration, so getting yourself out there early with a Curragh lets you become an intercontinental tech broker and the AI just can't hang with that. If you don't find land immediately off your own coast, it's worth sending curraghs to their death in the hope of finding those other Civs. Being the tech leader is certainly important enough to sacrifice a 15 shield unit a few times, don't you think?

The other possibility here with the 2nd Worker completed is to build a Granary. With Seafaring on our side and a Settler already headed for a solid second city site the Curragh seems to be the better bet.

[cumi]

My tipps for the early game...

Hi,

these are my tipps:

1. Build a granary and make a settler-fabric from your capital, to get use of the wheat SW from the city.
2. I would place my next city 8-8 or 8-8-9 from your capital.
3. A good idea would be also to place a city 4-4 from your capital, but then the city would not get the benefit from a fish (2-2), so place the city 4-4-2.
4. Also a good opportunity, to place a city 6-6 from your capital. You can also make a settler-fabric there.
5. Should have build the city (with a "bonus" settler) immediatly NW from the place you got it, so you are exreamly near to a second luxury...

BTW, what level you play and witch Version on Civ3?

[QuestGAV]

It's C3C 1.22 @ Emperor level, though the level is a bit deceiving given that I gave myself all of the Civ traits so it should play significantly easier than your average Emp game.

Your placement advice for that settler there turned out to be pretty good... I waited a bit longer to move out towards those Wines and the Chinese grabbed them. I'll post some of the other screenshots that I nabbed last night when I get home from work. I definitely had an eye towards making Delhi a Settler Pump from the beginning, you'll see that in the next set.

[Jon Shafer]

I would have irrigated the wheat and flood plains before building roads like that. The key is getting cities up to 5 food per turn as fast as possible in order to allow them to churn out Workers and Settlers. As cumi also said, I would build a Granary before any Workers/Settlers and certainly not before my city was size 4+.