Civ3: Who's resolve is first to falter?

[Alexander's Horse]

Hmmm, weakening, maybe I should buy this game - AI good at war - I'd like to see that

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by War4ever
This was at deity level..... seems i still need to master emperor a bit more

You're bragging again, my friend.

[Bird]

Horse: "good" is a relative term, but the ai is definitely better at war than before. One of the things that helps the ai, I think, is the elimination of ZOC's. The ai in my game has avoided traps to get to where it wants to get.

[Alexander's Horse]

I didn't buy it first off but maybe now I will have to - just to keep up with the master class

[deity]

Just bought it!

Installing it right now....

[Alexander's Horse]

Damn - now I'll have to buy it

My son Hydey already has it. I told Mrs Horse I'd pick up the kids and she could do the shopping but I just told her I'd meet her at the mall

[War4ever]

Originally posted by Steve Clark


You're bragging again, my friend.

Steve i must admit i was way over my head in that game....hell i am having trouble on Emperor

do you guyz raze cities early? i find myself keeping every city i conquer.... sometimes this comes back to haunt me....

Damm egyptians and their war chariots

[Ming]

One thing that makes the AI smarter at war is that they now "select" what they are going to attack. In Civ II, if an AI unit was next to a city... it attacked the city, not any other of your units it touched. In the field, they tend to ignore fights it can't win easily, and instead, attacks what it should be able to beat.

Yeah, it still attacks when it doesn't have a good chance, but it is far smarter at war than the AI in Civ II. And Bird is right also... the lack of ZOC's allows them more flexibility, and does limit your ability to box them in.

[Xin Yu]

Played a couple of hours tonight. Two interesting findings.

First, I was researching writing but traded with an AI for it. I was hoping it would reduce my turns for literature, but it didn't. However the tech queue did work -- I set the 'big picture' of writing-literature and after writing is obtained it asked me whether I wanted literature. If I did not set it up that way the computer would have randomly selected a tech for me to research.

Second, I could buy workers from AIs for 30 golds each. The workers appeared in my capital after the trade. However the option disappeared after I obtained 2 workers from Germany. Looks like only workers inside capital city could be traded. If you contact with an AI early you can use this method to boost your economy while delay the AI -- whenever the AI pop up a worker from its capital you buy it. It's free of support.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
If I did not set it up that way the computer would have randomly selected a tech for me to research.

I thought the same... but Rah figured out that you can change the science you are working on by just going to your science advisor screen. You can change at any time, but you lose all the progress... it doesn't transfer. So if the computer picks randomly for you, you just change it... nothing lost.

[Carolus Rex]

This game sounds great! Two more weeks, two more weeks...

BTW, when Civ 2 came out Fundamentalism was too powerful IIRC, so they downgraded the science rate even further. Fixing the corruption levels (if they indeed are unbalancing), and the other things Rah mentioned, in a patch, should be a walk in the park!

Carolus

[Smash]

There is a bit of a hole in the government scene for conquering.Only Monarchy is available for longterm warfare types.The representative governments can be used but war weariness is a pain.Communism is a long ways down the tech tree and there is no SoL or similiar.
You need to celebrate a monarchy and hope you won't have to go for other landmasses for awhile.

[Bird]

Speaking of war, I really got caught with my pants down in my game. I was doing well, probably second behind the red civ, which had a huge landmass all to itself. I had been peaceful and mostly cooperative with the other civs the whole game, including the Aztecs. The Aztecs had betrayed the Germans earlier in the game, so they weren't entirely trustworthy, but we had trade agreements and right of passage agreements. Once the trade agreement expired, they launched a sneak attack, taking 4 large cities on the same turn, razing each one. This came at a stage in the game where most of my cities were either improved to the max or getting there quickly. It hurts to watch size 17 cities razed. It really does.

Lesson learned, though.

[War4ever]

Bird i like the fact that the ai razes cities.......although the realism of losing four such cities might be in question, at least this ai throughs obstacles for us to hop through......

i am going to have to check out this science switch...its been just killing my research to have the "game" pick my research for me after a trade .....

one thing i have noticed..... is that i don't seem to get sciences from captured cities.....and i know i am not always in the tech lead every game

[Steve Clark]

Are you sure about the science switch losing the progress? I vaguely recall switching several times without losing anything. For example, all of the techs in the same "class" (like the first column) starts out at 32 but if you got one down to 17, they are all at 17 now thus, you can switch up to the last turn without penalty. I think.