How much real choice is there in playing Civ3 ?

[The Andy-Man]

exactly, and with stupid war wariness, AI dow's or a DoW tp get a leader are impossible.

i always play a religeous civ for evetually i end up in war, and have to change govt. alot of trouble without relgeous, so i wuld be stuck with monarchy the WHOLE game.

[Zouave]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
exactly, and with stupid war wariness, AI dow's or a DoW tp get a leader are impossible.

i always play a religeous civ for evetually i end up in war, and have to change govt. alot of trouble without relgeous, so i wuld be stuck with monarchy the WHOLE game.

I usually use republic. Once a war starts, you have 20+ turns to fight before war weariness kicks in. That is plenty of time to get a leader and/or capture a couple cities.

[volcanohead]

Religious trait is extremely powerful. Losing all those turns to anarchy is just too expensive.

It's unfortunate that when adopting a purely peaceful approach (well, attempting to anyway) Democracy isn't a more viable alternative for you Zoave. Fast, overwhelming wars, combined with religious trait to swiftly move in and out of democracy are extremely powerful tools, significantly more effective than culture or diplomacy IMHO.

V

[Zouave]

Unfortunately, civs using democracy and communism sometimes seem to declare war on me just to cause war weariness. I hate them for, but they are usually on the other side of the world, so I cannot force them into a peace treaty. I just have to wait it out. Democracies are likely to collapse in this situation. Plus, the extra benefits of a democracy over republic are nominal. If you have enough workers, you do not need the production bonus, and if your empire is well planned and managed, the little bit of extra corruption will not be noticed. I have never had the AI subvert any of my cites through espionage, so this is not important. I'll stick with republic. It has worked so far.



The only religious civ I play is the Japanese, and I do agree it is very powerful. I do not play the Japanes unless I feel like kicking ass, so I almost never use them in this strategy.

[volcanohead]

It is frustrating that a peaceful approach is not rewarded more. I agree that the benefits of democracy over republic are much less than rebublic and the other government types, but I find it annoying that the game is structured in such a way that the government which gives the greatest benefit is difficult to maintain when adopting the peaceful strategy.

There are so many ways in which a peaceful strategy could be made to be more of an option. For instance, a pacifist democracy government, which has greater benefits than normal democracy but which throws you into anarchy for some horribly long period if you so much as step foot in another civ's territory, and thereafter can never be invoked again so as to avoid manipulation by the war mongerers.

[The Andy-Man]

i always use egypt, for religeous and industrial is a very powerful combo indeed.

[volcanohead]

Egypt is good, but when you think you're going to war Japan is extremely effective. The samurai UU is powerful, and was made more so in patch 1.17 which allowed it to be upgraded to Cavalry.

Culture is another area which could be developed to promote viable alternatives to war. Korn has described some very reasonable suggestions in this link.

[Skanky Burns]

I played my first game post-patch as the Romans with the intent of seeing the changes to the combat system. I expanded rapidly on my tiny world map, built many warriors, then legions, and finally discovered that there was no-one else on my continent.

After I discovered the other civs, I found that all three shared a continent smaller than my one. I found my tech rate to exceed theirs, and ended up never having a battle with any other civs units.

[Jac de Molay]

With Strategic Resources at stake, I've found it's almost impossible to play defensively.

[Salvor]

I think that volcanohead raises some good points, but his definition of "defensive game" is much more restrictive than mine.

I find it much more difficult to employ a defensive strategy in Civ3 than it was in Civ2 and its spinoffs. But it's not impossible. But to say that you can NEVER raze or capture an enemy city is rather extreme. I don't generally raze enemies, but I'm inevitably in a war at one point or another, and do capture enemy cities by means other than cultural flips (i.e. by conquest). I still consider several of my strategies "defensive" even with these occasional skirmishes, especially if I'm not the one declaring war on anybody.

I never go for diplomatic victories simply because I think it leaves too much to chance. You can never be sure how other civs will vote, and it doesn't seem to matter as much how well or poorly you've played the game up to that point. I usually leave the option turned on, then make every effort to build the UN myself and never hold elections, thus denying any other civ from denying me victory through such a "cheesy" (IMHO) method.

I agree that Civ3 does seem to frown on defensive strategies, probably because they went a bit overboard in trying to prevent ICS. But that's the way the game was designed, so when I decide to try a defensive strategy, I know it's a bigger challenge, and get more satisfaction when I win. Certainly a lot more satisfaction than I would get from whining about it.

[Selkirk]

Originally posted by DetroitDave
With Strategic Resources at stake, I've found it's almost impossible to play defensively.

I played a one city game on Monarch (pre 1.17f) where I had no resources at all in my territory. By the end of the game I had a constant supply of every resource and every luxury via trade. I did not declare war at all and no one attacked me. I won with a cultural victory.

I do find cultural and diplomatic victories unsatisfying, though. At least with space and conquest there is an exciting build up to the point of the win (or loss). Culture wins are way too abrupt. Its like getting cold water dumped on your head with no warning.

The culture and diplomatic victories need a movie or some sort of unique ceremony at the end to make you feel good about your choice of victories. Firaxis was a little stingy with the victory movies.

[Worthingtons]

I was very close to a defensive peaceful victory. I got a nice starting posistion on a game once, and being expansionist I had good fortune in 2 ways

1. got a LOT of tech from huts
2. Sourced out my nearest neighbour quickily.

The 2nd point enabled me to expand very quickily in thier direction and I found I had a decent Civilisation with no need to wage war. I appeased the neighbours, build a decent DEFENSE and was looking good for a peaceful victory.

Unfortunatly power went to my head, and i was too tempted to take the Americans luxuries which were close to my borders. attacked without a decent attack force, underestimated the AI massively, Game over

[Pius Popprasch]

When playing India I played pacifictic and got eliminated by the Aztecs 1530AD. Other countries didn't want to trade with me. My cities were pretty cultural but my overall culture was low because I had fewer cities. On Emperor level I never had a cultural flip to my side. Once there was an underdevelopped tundra city right next to my capital. My capital was a cultural marvel but the worthless tundra city never joined my empire.

[notyoueither]

I could win no matter what, if only they'd give me a banana.

Bananas uber alas, or something like that.

Salve

[kailhun]

Played for a long time on the current game without having to resort to war. But that was mostly because of a somewhat unique situation. The Romans were north of me. The Chinese and Japanese south of me. I was a solid band of purple between them. The Japanese/Chinese were at war with the Romans. I let the Romans through, but not the Chinese/Japanese. This kept three AI-civs busy.
After a while I became too weak (didn't emphasize my military as much as the C/J coalition) and war was declared upon my person.
C and J wiped out after a couple of wars. Then my allies, my friends, the ones I had protected (the Romans) declared war on me! I was shocked. I was horrified. I was victorious.
I'd say war is inevitable. If not for growth or resources, then because the AI will turn on you sooner or later. You can't please them all the time and at some point some little thing will piss them off and ... WAR!

Robert