Just Can't Get The Tech Edge Back

[duxup]

When Civ 3 was released I played a great deal of it. About a year ago I took a hiatus from Civ 3 and have recently returned. To my surprise I’ve found, I suck now .

Specifically I keep falling behind when it comes to technology. Even in the first age I’ll find that I just can’t keep up. Usually when I’m somewhere around half way though the first age I’ll receive notices that one or two of the AI are working on wonders well into an age ahead of me.

The only solution I can think of is to rush my way to the Great Library, but that aside I just can’t keep up in technology it seems, and the Great Library won’t last me forever. My attempts to trade for tech in various ways have not been enough to keep my Civ from falling way behind.

Any help is greatly appreciated.


Misc Details:

I play at Regent difficulty.

I play single player only so the AI is the only one cheating (just kidding).

I tend to play on Huge Maps with lots of civs, and large land area, so there’s lots of AI interaction with me and one another.

My civilization usually is one of the larger in land area, city numbers, and military so size doesn’t seem to be a problem.

I usually hang out as a Despot until I discover Communism. Could this be a problem?

I’m running the 1.27f patch.

I'm playing PTW. (forgot to add that at first)

[vmxa1]

It is usually advisable to get out of despotism as soon as you can.
Communism is very late in the game and you are basically hobbling yourself.

You don't say if this is PTW or not. If you were playing on an older patch and jumped to 1.29 or PTW it changed many things. One change was to make the AI do a bit better at working tiles. Not great, but better.

So if you are playing a civ that is not religous, I would suggest you research to republic and switch to it. If you are religous, you can go for Monarchy and later do republic.

BTW I would never suggest going to communism, except in an extreme case. One of the things players like to do to the AI is keep it in war until it jumps to communism or despotism. That is because they know it will hurt its production.

If you are doing a fair job of rexing and tile improvement, you should be fine with just a government change (in a timely fashion).

At regent, you should be able to get ahead and stay ahead in tech and have no use for the GL, except to get the culture and prevent the AI from having it.

Also be sure to make contact with all the civs as quick as you can and to trade often.

[duxup]

Thanks vmxa1 I'll keep those things in mind.

I am playing with PTW. (I just added that).

It's a pretty maddening problem since In the past I was able to stay ahead of the comp easily and now i'm behind an awful lot

[vmxa1]

Yes the 1.14 and 1.2x patches to PTW made the game a bit harder. You could tighten up ciy placement to CxxC and makle los of workers to improve tiles and be just fine.
If you still are struggling post a save and you will get lots of people to toss in some strategies.

[WackenOpenAir]

i play deity only, but i hope this kind of goes for all levels:

trading techs is the way to keep up, you cant research everything yourself, you must trade. check your foreign screen often to see if you can trade something. (as long as you have anything to offer, check it every turn to see if you can get something, when you don't have anything to offer, check it as soon as you have something to offer)

in ancient era is wher you tech slowest compared to the AI.
after that, you can keep up with them

in ancient era, the tech tree is much more horizontal than in other era's. the ancient tree is has only chains of 4 techs max. (meanign you have 4 techs you need to get in order to get the last one)

if you fall behind in techs, you generally cant trade your techs anymore either, meaning you will never catch up. you just will be behind a lot more very soon.

if you fall behind and cannot trade anymore, you will need to catch up quickly, you can do this by destroying some cities and get techs in peace negotiations. the more of the opponents cities you capture / destroy, the more he will pay for peace.

you cannot get techs in this proces that you do not have acces to. in ancient era, you generally have acces to many techs because of the horizontal structure of the tree. later on, you only have acces to few techs, and thus can get fewer techs in peace negotiations.

in ancient era, it works good to have war and peace negotiations as your primary tech source. (make sure you have writing before talking about peace, so you have acces to many techs. research polytheism yourself, the AI most likely doesnt go for it, so you can trade with it)
later on you will need to do some teching yourself as well, make sure you have some science when you are in medival age.
Now tech vertically, choose one path, and don't research anything else. this way you have the best chance of getting a tech first. when you have a tech first, you can trade it with every other civ and get many of their techs in return.

[Solomwi]

Trading gets less important as the difficulty level drops, and I think starts being important really at Regent. Of course, I guess it's important at any level at which you find yourself falling behind in the tech race. There are also some good threads on which techs the AI generally doesn't research (Polytheism is a biggie, IIRC). It's good to go after one of these, then trade it to the AI that's been researching everything else. You can usually get easily more than one in return if you shop it around instead of just trading it once.

Also remember in trading that the AI values highly (obscenely high most of the time) any tech it is the sole owner of (meaning one single AI nation). If I have two Scientific neighbors, and other game circumstances permit, I'll sometimes gift the second one into the next age. Either they'll get the same free tech the other did, meaning it suddenly gets cheaper to buy, or they'll get a different one, and usually the two will trade those ASAP, meaning both get cheaper to buy.

[Agathon]

Trading and thieving techs is the usual solution. Attacking a smaller neighbour who has traded for the techs you don't have helps. For some reason the AI trades techs to all the other AI civs most of the time.

[latka]

While trying to increase your learning, you need to keep in mind that you need to slow down the other civilizations learning.

I do this by pilliging alot during war. One does not have to take cities all of the time during war. After all, you have to deal with making conqued people content as well as get the culture up to prevent city flipping.

On top of pilliging, I bombard the heck out of cites and their surrounding squares, just to destroy improvements and decrease the population. You can do alot of damage if you drop a city of size 18 to size 6 and destroy a bank and a factory.

The opponents loss of income does two things for you. Not only does their learning drop in respect to the loss of resources, it also drops because more resources have to be put towards support the military that they built. After all, why bang your head against a well fortified city, losing units that you will need to replace.

[thazer]

Latka you're a genious thanks for sharing your strategy!

[star mouse]

What I do to preserve tech lead (Regent)

I can get a good tech lead at some point in the game, but generally there's times I am behind, especially early. Being behind is normal, but you can eventaully catch up and get in front in the tech race.

Strategies to catch up:
* Buying techs is a lot cheaper than researching them. If I'm behind I crank science all the way down to 0% or 10%, build up a lot of gold, and buy techs. I can buy a tech every few turns this way. This works especially well in Republic or Democracy when you're at peace.

* Trade often. Look for deals where you can get tech for tech, tech for gold, tech for resources and tech for combos.

* Place a road in all worked tiles to increase trade. People often overlook this!

Strategies to get ahead:
* The AI will research techs at the same level in the tech tree. If you drill into the tech tree (such as going for Military Tradition as soon as you enter the Middle Ages), you will eventually have techs that no-one else has. You can get exorbitant deals for these.

* Get the Great Library wonder at whatever cost. Beeline for Literacy right from the start. Start saving shields for the Great Library (prebuilding) by starting a different wonder or a Palace in a good city. Switch to the Great Library when you get Literacy. If you get the Great Library, make contact with as many people as possible, because the more AI Civs you know, the more techs you can get from the Great Library. The Great Library works on contacted civs, not total civs.

* Also get Theory of Evolution by the same means. By the time Theory of Evolution is available, you should have a tech lead or be within 2 techs of it. If you have a tech lead, Theory of Evolution can help you increase and preserve it. If you are within 2 techs of it, choose techs that will net you a tech lead - choose techs the AI won't be researching.

* You can tighten your grip on the tech lead by trading your unique techs to the AI player with the best tech at exorbitant rates. What you are trying to do is get 150-200 gold per turn from an AI player for a tech. If you do this, you really slow down their ability to acquire techs. You might be able to do this swindle 2 or even 3 times. Keep trading the tech around until you cannot get gold per turn for it. You want to sell high, and then devalue the tech so the AI cannot recoup their losses. Once you can do this a couple of times to the strongest AI players, you will be able to get and maintain a large tech lead because you cripple their ability to research. You can crank your science up to 100%, and watch the techs roll in. Just make sure you also have a strong army and good relations with these AI's, because AI's will often declare war on you just to get rid of this crippling burden.

[latka]

I am honored by your complement thazer, thank you.

Here is one more piece to go along with my strategy. Explorers are cheap and can move through enemy territory and terrain quickly. They can also pillage.

Build a bunch of these and position them on your opponent’s boarders. When you declare war, rush them into their territory and destroy their terrain improvements.

Don't worry about the AI taking your units. The AI will suffer the greatest loss from the pillaging. Here is the best part. The AI does not use explorers for pillaging. They are worthless units to them. Perhaps they will disband them in a city, but who cares. There production cost is so low; the AI won’t get many shields for them.

The AI may even attack them with units that will not have any movement points left after the attack. This is great, because you may be able to take those units with your fast moving units, depending on the location. If they don’t take the units, you get a second round of pillaging, great.

I like this, because I can use my small cities to produce these while my large cites produce the real units, which cost a lot.