Civ3: Who's resolve is first to falter?

[Ming]

NP rah... I sent my picks in for this week before I left town.
Not knowing how good the "connection" would be from Dad's, I figured I shouldn't take any chances.

Go Bears!

[War4ever]

ah the rivers must be the case and i must have missed a barracks or two in my empire.... thanks guyz

Nationalism makes the diplomatic side of the game that much more intense....

i like the diplomacy but find the ai weak unless they truly have the upper hand and then they are pretty much too agressive...its hard to find the happy medium.

[Bird]

I've started 4 games now on monarchy level and gotten killed in all four. The first game was actually my best. I have been unable to keep the ai from declaring war. No matter how much I appease them, one of them eventually attacks and often it's followed by an alliance against me. When I've taken the offensive, elite archers start losing.

I have been playing in a style that tries to spread the cities out so that city radii don't overlap, but that makes defending difficult against the onslaught of ai units, since zoc doesn't apply. The ai is relentless in destroying my improvements, particularly to critical resources. You cannot settle cities while at war unless you send out 3 or 4 good units with the settler, b/c the ai makes a beeline for that city. I'm beginning to think the only way to start is to be extremely aggressive at the outset and wipe out your neighbors, but in the game I tried that, my elite units mysteriously started losing as I tried to take out the last two iroquois cities, and then they allied with the egyptians, and that was that. Still have never gotten a great leader.

One thing I've learned, though, is the importance of trading techs to all civs when you trade to any civ. If you're gonna trade it away, trade it to each of them b/c the others will if you don't.

The wonder building is incredibly frustrating. I was one turn from pyramids, and had oracle, colossus and lighthouse available as alternative wonders. The ai built all 4 wonders on the turn before me. I got a very expensive granary. I quit that game then out of sheer annoyance, so maybe I've played 4 1/2 games.

I'm not sure yet whether I like this game.

[Steve Clark]

Bird, remember when we all used to laugh about the stupid AI at deity in Civ2? Certainly times have changed.

[War4ever]

Bird its my belief that you must get your a$$ kicked a few times before the machine goes......

"ok if we don't let him win a game he just won't play with me anymore!"

seriously though..... i have just finished a game as the Persians and much to my delight it was a slugfest.

i made the mistake of attacking my neighbors the axtecs... whom had a MP pact with the french and the babylonians and the zulus...

so i allied with the germans and the iroquos.... but i got these agreements because i had traded maps so often, given free tech, and eventualy had free passage and mutual protection....

IMO you need to establish a trust with the ai civs to get these.... and i would think that the above go along way towards that.


In the end of world war one (1590ad) i had erradicated the aztecs thereby almost doubling my land..... while using the germans and the iroquios as a buffer.

Wars in this nature are easier to survive....i too used suffer from the ai gangbang

i started the whole thing by building an obsolete immortal UU....who walked up to the border and picked off a jaguar warrior which then put me into a golden age and my cashflow went from 350gc to 550gc per turn....... during my golden age i managed some elites who in turn brought me two leaders...whom rushed wonders although i did miss theory of evolution....

i did neglect my navy and suffered losses at sea but the land campaign was nice though costly..... but not as costly as it was for all my enemies

only problem now is that i am still Democratic and even with universal sufferage i have huge war weariness and i can't get the other sides to agree to a peace treaty

a quick question for anyone.... i know you can only have one small wonder active at any time... and i know you still keep the culture from the ones which are no longer functioning , but is there anyway to go back to one of the ones i built earlier or can you only use the one you have most currently built

Oh yeah....and bird...... i know that feeling of being screwed to four wonders in a row...... it happened to me this game..i still can't ever build the sistenn chapel..

As for leaders..... all my armies are weak unless with modern units.... even then its better to use them on wonders....

attacking from your city on to units in your land is safer that being in the open especially if you watch his stack to know when to leave one left.... and with railroad you can effectively move troops around to cover your flanks....

riflemen era with infantry are great for attacking mounted riders......i won so many battles this way and their defence is even better....

Question for debate...... is it better to upgrade (without leos) and lose a status....nothing like reg going to conscript on the upgrade or is it better to just build the units and disband your weaker ones?

ok no more

[Smash]

upgrades maintain their status.Vet,elite....Leo's just makes it 50% cheaper.

I just had an aircraft carrier sunk by a galley and a modern armor defeated by a pikeman.Uh oh.......can you say civ1?

[Xin Yu]

Best starting point in deity

On river
A lot of shield grass or specials such as wheat along the river.
A luxury special inside region of the capital.
Two civs on two sides of your civ, not too far but not too close as well, so you'll not be pinned by barbs from 3-4 barb villages, and can get contact with two civs and others via them.
The other two sides will be close to but not immediately next to the coast so that you can put down 3-4 cities there in later stages.
commercial and expansionest (English). So you get some techs and units from huts, and be able to build the GL.
Even so, you can only keep up with the AIs before GL expires.

[Alexander's Horse]

Well while you guys are jumping in, I'm still dawdling along in my first game at Chieftain. Its 1920 now and after one big war in the Middle Ages it looks like another is starting. Everyone is ganging up on the Babs, including me. Cultural domination seems to work a lot better than warfare for expansion but if you go to war, scorched earth seems to be the go, raze their cities and send the slaves back to the motherland to work. At this low level its hard to get the AI to declare war on you and the civs have a long memory if you start a war or break a treaty. That can make it very hard to trade for essential resources.

[Nap Bonaparte]

War4.....as far as deciding whether to upgrade or disband units, it all comes down to individual preference. I generally run out of cash on my major offensives from rush building temples and cathedrals to prevent captured cities from rebelling back to enemy control. So when that happens I will disband my non-elite obsolete units in captured enemy cites to reduce the cost of rush building temples. For example, I am currently disbanding my cannons and riflemen while my homeland cities are cranking out vet artillery and infantry. What works really well is conscripting infantry for 1 pop point and then disbanding them for 22 shields.

In my current game as the French on Monarch level, I captured the Egytptian capitol of Thebes twice and both times it rebelled back even with a rush built temple. The third time I captured it I immediately sued for peace and then rush built a temple and cathedral on consecutive turns by disbanding units. So far I have held on to it for 5 turns. I will post here if I lose it to rebellion again.

When I lose a city to rebellion, it seems to have a regular enemy unit as garrison when I retake it no matter what I leave as a garrison when it rebels(usually vet). For example, if I leave a vet infantry as a garrison and the city rebels it has a regular rifleman in it when I retake it. Anyone else have any experiences with this???

[War4ever]

Nappy... i have experienced the revolt back with only one garrison troops which falls easily to my forces yet again.

i thought i read somewhere that you lost one degree of experience on upgrades.....ala civ2 but i could be mistaken

you don't need to be the tech leader via GL to rape the ai for techs...... it helps but once it expires your in the same predicament.... i found it quite easy to maintain good relations with everyone by paying a large sum to the civ with the tech and then selling it to everyone else for half the costx5 or 6...which makes for a steady profit

Is it just me or do wars tend to pop up during the ages as large crusades to rid the world of someone.......even when your not the one on the rampage and if your the one being picked on then your in trouble unless you have friends......

[Alexander's Horse]

I find the workers tiresome. They should have given options to be cruel to them. A few executions would have been fun.

[War4ever]

LOL @AH.... i too find the workers annoying ...what would have been better is for them to include an automate that works properly....as it is now they run around fixing one tile and then ripping it up to put irrrigation on it....or giving you the opportunity to prioritize minning, irrigation or roads/rail..... this way groups could work together to finish the job

and they don't prioritize well..... i like the public works idea of CTP better to be honest

building on hills is key for defense and it doesn't hurt the growth any......

does the coastal fortress not work the way its supposed to? damm bab navy was pounding me until i got a makeshift fleet of dingys out to arrest them for dumping hazardous goods.....

Go greenpeace

[Alexander's Horse]

I found if you raze cities and enslave the inhabitants you soon end up with lots and lots of workers and soon every tile is improved in your homeland cities. I'm not sure if improving tiles outside the city radius does anything, seems not unless you can build a colony, but I did experiment a bit with that i.e. like more direct road routes. You can use roads to block tresspassers though if its within your cultural border - though not all!

One thing I noticed is the ai mines every grassland square it can't irrigate so I've started doing that. But in the end I just have teams of workers (3 or 4) planting forests, harvesting them and then planting them again, say one square per city. Its tedious but the cash adds up. Sometimes special resources have popped up on those tiles but I don't know if that's just a concidence.

Oh yeah! You also need to guard workers from barbs!

If anyone has better ideas I'd like to hear them.

Also I noticed on the population roster of captured cities you end you end up with a mixed population of your own citizens and those of the subjugated nation. Maybe over time the chances of defection decrease as your own population increases? (provided you build the happy improvements) I haven't got my head around the "resistor" concept yet either.

[rah]

When I capture cities, I starve down the population, rush a temple and when the city is down to one or two pop, my workers come in and join the city. I keep my citizens at 50% or more, and have yet to lose a city to defection. I'll also sometimes use workers from one civ to help raise the pop in other ex-civs cities.

Being religious, after you finish a major offensive, sometimes you can drop into desp for a turn and reduce the bad pop into a couple of quick rush buys then switch back.

I'm having my best luck with the (militeristic, religious) civs. Cheap happy improvements, lots of combat upgrades and more leaders than from any other characteristics. I used to like industrious for the improved workers, but that only helps you real early because as most of you have found out, most of your workers are in the chain gang. My workers are feeding pop points to conquered cities.

RAH

[ColdWizard]

don't know if its been mentioned yet, but razing cities to get workers can be powerful under communism. rushing under communism costs population and where better to get that pop than by using the remnants of your crushed enemies.

i won my game on chieftain, cultural victory in 1970.