Help my civ

[johncmcleod]

I'm new to Civilization 3, and I'm playing my first game. I am the Zulu. I made mistakes early on that I didn't know would cost me anything. The major one was land. I built one city, and a little while later I built another. I had a fair size island to myself, but I didn't take advantage of it. Then the French came. The had filled up their island, and started settling on mine. Soon, they had put cities on all the land on the island. I had no room. Soon I came in contact with all of the other civilization. They were a little bit ahead of me. I did my best to make an alliance with the Persians, my 2nd favorite civ. Xerxes didn't care to be my friend much though. The difficulty setting is on Chieftain, but I still started having civil unrest. The only way I could calm everyone down was by increasing entertainment funding. But by doing that I had no choice but to decrease science funding. It wasn't long before other civs sped away with technology. One thing I did was sell my other city for a bunch of money and technologies. I built another city, but it defected. Right now it's 1997 and I'm fairly close to the industrial age (don't laugh), but every other civ is pretty close to the modern age. I am building one city and trading it and a ton of money for another city, but when I try it, Joan of Arc says she can't do it for reasons of state. I try offering her a lump sum of 730 gold for that city (it has a population of 6), but for some reason she won't accept. I have no resources, so mula is all I can trade. I plan on selling one city I'm building for everything I can get, and then selling all my teasury (710 gold) and everything I got from the previous city trade for that one city. But Joan of Arc has been very annoying and won't accpet any trades. I asked her what she wanted from me for the city I want, and she said it wasn't for sale. Even if I still get the city, I fear my civ will be crushed soon. I don't want to start over, so could someone give me some advice? I'd appreciate it.
John

[MrWhereItsAt]

Well, I can't really help you out here, but I can say what has worked for me in the past and the impressions I get from other posters at this site...

Not building tons of cities and filling up as much land as possible is a MAJOR mistake. The other Civs do this, and if you leave the slightest little bit of land out, they will find it and settle it - and telling them to get off your land doesn't help. Resources especially are critical and it is iportant to have cities in good land as well as including deserts and hills/mountains, 'cos this is where most iron, coal, oil, aluminium and saltpeter come from, the most important of resources. This is why many here seem to advocate an early war or two to enable them to dominate the continent they start on - this works by attacking the enemy Civ when it has low culture, so any captured cities don't defect back.

You will also find (if you look at your histograph) that early in the game, if you are building up some of your cities, your culture will be overwhelmingly the best in the world. But by about 1000AD, the AIs will begin catching up, and you are in a race from there. They seem to spend this early part of the game building new cities, and don't improve them 'till much later. You would be wise to do some of the same.

The AI is also very cagey in negotiations - if you are stronger than them they are likely to accept more easily than if you wer the same strength or weaker. But if you are too strong everyone will resent you to a degree and they will drive hard bargains. Sometimes if you offer something and their response is not as much as you wanted, you can add a little bit to their side and they will accept. The AI seems to want resources (especially Iron) over everything else and will buy huge amounts for them. Thus it makes it even more important to secure multiples of the same resources early on.

That's (believe it or not) just a quick outline. YOu should really go to the strategy section, where questions like this are answered by ppl with really ingenious solutions.

I especially recommend any threads with Velociryx in them - he is probably the MVP of the whole site, and his strategies are simply outstanding in their effectiveness and creativity!

[Yolky]

My $.002(Canadian) is too play till the end and use it as a learnimng experiance just like I did.

The only advice I can say is make Knights about 4 to 6 and go to war and take out the Cites that you need to.



Davor

[Dobian02]

I just finished my first game on Warlord. I played on a standard map as the Americans and finished fourth out of eight civs (damn that average score - I was really the third best civ at the end, and only slightly behind number two!). This game rates you too much on how much territory you have, and not enough on how good your civ actually is, IMHO. The Aztecs - who had twice my territoy, declared war on me, and I kicked the crap out of them and took one of their cities. They can talk all they want about culture in this game, but make no mistake - it's still about conquest. I out-cultured everyone except the Indians, and only assimilated two cities in the entire game. I had the Persians in my game, too. They're totally aggressive. Don't expect to make friends at all with Xerxes - he' like Sister Miriam in AC. Just remember when you play again to expand-expand-expand in the early game. My mistake was I didn't have a research strategy in my first game, and wasted time researching things I could have skipped. Now I know what to do, so watch out in game 2!