Chieftain level AI

[Renfield]

Hi all! I wanted to ask why at Chieftain level the other civilizations seem to be always one step ahead when it came to discoveries and such.

I would start my game by pumping out settlers and nabbing what would be the choice terrains for resources, gold and iron and the like.

But no matter how well I managed my cities, I could never get one up on the others to launch a devestating blow with advanced weapons. Even those I wittled down to a couple of cities whose improvements I kept destroying to make their troops unsupportable managed to come around with the latest tank or foot soldier.

What am I missing here


Cheers

[vmxa1]

It could be two things that come to mind. The first is you should be trading and have contact with all civs. This will help you with research and later take money away from thier research.

Second is to get techs that they don't have so you can trde for their and cash.

You should be able to get by without either, once you get the hang of making your empire better than theirs.

Be sure to improve worked tiles and road them. Use rivers to increase commerce and allow you to grow without aqueducts.

Look for food heavy cities to specialize in settler pumps and troops pumps. This frees up other cities to build structures.
The troops pump or pumps will crank out workers from time to time to keep them at a reasonable size.

Post a save so we can see what you are up to.

[Cerbykins]

The quirk of chieftain in Civ 3 is that the AI has the same 'intelligence' (broad definition ) BUT what it can do from level to level changes. The BIG advantage you have on chieftain level is actually how fast it grows and builds - it takes twice as long as your cities do. Yet, it seems commerce isn't affected so they can research as fast as normal (I'm sure I'll be corrected there )
The good news for you is, as the game goes on, the chieftain AI players tend to slip back, because their cities don't have the infrastructure to get the big techs later on

As for whacking them with an advanced unit...dream on I'm afraid
Back when I was new at Civ 3, I expected to invade europe with a couple of cavs. I figure you're about as cheesed with your troops now as I were with mine, then

What you CAN do to kill, is pack 'stacks' of troops together, and smack cities THAT way. Pack no fewer than 3-5 units, and add in a healthy surplus over the amount of enemy you expect to face in any one place. (so if you expect a garrison of about 5 units - take, say...10 )
You never know when those wretched tanks will fail to some spearmen...and you dont want your hard smacking work undone by running out of troops after a bad run.
Last but not least, if you're gonna kill someone, bring an ally or two. If you don't, your opponent will - and then you might have to stay in a fight longer than you want to :P

[MrWhereItsAt]

Renfield, one of the best ways to pull ahead of the AI is with clever tech trading. If you notice several civs you can trade techs with have a few techs you want, research the one NONE of them has. Then you may be able to trade your ONE tech to each of them for a tech each (sometimes more). Thus your one tech's worth of research will give you several times the payoff. This is a good way to pull yourself up from behind, and there were always techs you could research first, such as Printing Press. This has been changed a little in C3C, but you can still use this sort of tactic to pull yourself to tech parity.

BUT, this can still be useful if you are at the same level as the AI. You can concentrate on the techs you want, and then trade in the same way with the AI to get the techs they get that you miss out. If you research 2 techs none of them have and at the same time each of 3 civs researchs a tech you don't, you can trade one tech to get all three of theirs, and still be one tech ahead.

Otherwise there are many things you can do throughout the game to push your techs ahead - there are wonders such as the Great Library that let you keep up whilst forging ahead on one path and the Theory of Evolution that gives you two free techs (!).

[Theseus]

Post a save.

[Alex]

Read some threads in the Strategy forum. There are a few of them designed to help newbies.

[Nor Me]

Re: Chieftain level AI

Originally posted by Renfield
I would start my game by pumping out settlers and nabbing what would be the choice terrains for resources, gold and iron and the like.

On of the mistakes that newer players seem to make is not putting their first few cities close enough to the capital. You probably want the first 3 or 4 new cities within 3 or 4 tiles almost whatever the terrain.

Without a save or screenshots, we can't tell what's wrong.

Not building enough workers or trading with the AI enough also seem to be common.

[Bamspeedy]

Another common mistake by new players is not building enough workers. Check your cities. If you have several citizens working on tiles that are unimproved (especially unroaded), then build more workers.

I've seen many games where new players had only 2 workers for their 10+ cities. You should have a minimum of 1 worker/city, 1.5 if non-industrious. More is ideal, but you have to be careful that you aren't draining yourself too much by building workers instead of settlers. Workers DO help with your initial expansion, but very early in the game there is a delicate balance between having too many workers and not having enough.

[okblacke]

I just finished a Chieftan game I started to experiment with worker management and governors and the like. (One nice thing being it takes less time to play on the lower difficulties.)

I've traditionally always used what around here they call "Optimal City Placement" (OCP). That's where your cities don't overlap work areas and each can reach its full potential. When erring, I would err on the side of more space rather than less, figuring bigger cities would be better.

This turned out to be an archipelago map, so this approach wasn't even possible.

The more common philosophy here is that you don't waste any valuable square and with OCP you're wasting something like half the squares for most of the game. If you make sure your cities have 12 productive squares, you won't even notice the cramping till practically the endgame.

I can't quite bring myself to "Intercontinental Sprawl" (ICS) but I did tweak my philosophy the other way, by erring on the side of less space between cities rather than more. A big part of my island was tundra and narrow islets, so I made sure that all the good bonuses were used.

I also spread to a few nearby islands, though somewhat limitedly--I tend to forget to settle after a while.

In the first half of the ancient age, I sent out a Curragh to discover as many of the other Civs as a I could and traded to parity. From then on out, they never had a chance. They never got another tech before me, I built all the wonders in my capitol except Great Library (which I didn't think of starting until Education, by which point I wasn't allowed to) and Manhattan Project (no uranium).

I haven't played Chieftain in ages, and I had actually thought to start this on Warlord, but even when I did play Chieftain, I've never beat the computer this badly. By my cultural victory in 1967 as I was researching the last few modern researchers, the other civs were all in the the mid-Middle Ages.

Two big factors:

1. Hanging out here and reading the messages on terrain improvements and city placement.

2. The AI can't handle archipelago. Even by the end of the game not all the AIs had met. And only the Aztecs and the English were sending out galleys.

This was also kind of interesting because it was an entirely peaceful game. (I think that happens only on Chieftain.) Not only did no other civ attack me, no other civ attacked ANYONE. Very odd. We were all good buddies by the end of the game, with ROPs and not a few MPPs.

In fact, just for giggles, I gave all the other civs all the techs and disbanded all my military. The AI never attacked.

Anyway, the key thing is to read, read, read and observe, observe, observe. I used to sweat the AI having a tech lead over me (at Regent) in the Ancient game, but it's so easy to trade it out with just one or two contacts, get it from huts if you're expansionist, get it from the Great Library if you need to, or just build up your infrastructure well enough so that you're out-producing the AI and can take advantage of the techs already being discovered, that I really don't sweat it. (I sweat the AI having the ability to create lots of knights before I can make pikeman or lots of Cavalry before I can create riflemen, though.)

[ok]

[Renfield]

Hey its been a while since Ive logged in here. Its been many months since my cry for help but I didnt want to be rude and forget to thank you all for your kind and informative input regarding my question. It has helped me hone my strategy in many ways.
Thank You Again One and All

[vmxa1]

That is good, glad it worked out.

[Cerbykins]

*laughs hysterically*
You do realise, I just this moment made a post saying Chieftain is too hard on the first-timers...
(could only be me, really... )

Anyway - glad to be of whatever service

[Dis]

I think my first civ3 game was chieftan level. I wanted to test the waters.

I didn't dominate as I thought I would, but I did win.

Although back then I didn't know all the tech trading strategies (and cheese tactics) that I do now. I won by creating a large empire with good commerce that could research fast.

It was my second game at warlord level that I got smashed. I played as rome, and I had no hope. I let the ai get a larger military than me and then they ganged up on me and gang raped me

military numbers are important in this game. If the ai percieves you are weak they will attack. when you are in the diplomacy screen you will see things like our military is weak compared to theirs. Or our military is strong compare to theirs, or average. When your military is weak compared to the ai you will see them become much more demanding and aggressive. This is a sign you need to build up your military.

Support costs for this can be a problem. Building more cities is the best way to alleviate this. Goverment settings can also alleviate this (different govs allow for different amount of unit support). Building too many cities will create more corruption, but imho unless you are on tiny maps, you need at least 10 cities. Build them, or take them by force. close to 20 cities will ensure you have a dominate empire- at least on the lower levels.

[Cerbykins]

I did notice that, but to be honest these days I'm too busy planning my neighbour's downfall instead, and all too often they declare war just in time to find me massing on their border