My first experience with monarch

[Metaliturtle]

That's more or less how most games are though, The main bonus it has is that you are limited in production levels by the AI, basically, The AI is at 100% production on Regent, so are you, Regent is the level where you are basically competing against the AI only, no advantages either way. If you get easier, your production is like 120% of what the AI is, easier than that it's around 140% get harder and you are 80% and 60%. There's also the matter of happiness, in Chieftain, unhindered, the 6th citizen is unhappy, Warlord, 5th, all the way to on diety it's the 2nd citizen in a city. This is the other major computer advantage, because where you're getting unhappiness on your third citizen, they've got production still, albeit as soon as they reach 4 they get unhappiness.

To even the score I'd suggest Egypt, or the Industrious Science nation, but Egypt would be easier. This way your workers will be at the same as most of the other civs units.

As far as extra computer units go, I've found it usually to be either a warrior or spearman, but that's about it. It still saves them 20 turns of production though, so in that respect it may be unfair, but if you get 2nd and 3rd cities built quickly, you should alleviate that problem.

[King of Rasslin]

The early units are used to fight barbarians and scout. They are more powerful than you think.

[johncmcleod]

I feel your pain Rasslin-it is really stupid. All games are like that though, and I've gotten used to it. I just hope that in civ4 there will be a difference between all of the AIs. I hate it so much. And if you think it's bad in civ3, it's worse if you play sports games. It's like that in every one. On higher difficulty levels, instead of the computer using better strategies, they just have better players. Like in World Cup 2002, on professionsal and world class difficulty levels your fast forwards get outrun by defenders. And even worse, the computer might cheat. Not to get off the subject but for example in wc98 my brother was playing on a really high difficulty level. The comp goalie made an impossible looking. My bro looked at the replay frame by frame and at one frame the goalie jumped halfway across the goal. In one frame! Anyway, I suggest just playing on regent and go to the Apolyton U thread on the strategy forum. Sorry for being off topic.

Oh forgot to add. I have seen save game editors where you can edit unit placement, city productions, what imrpovements they have, the end date, and your tech advances but is there one where you can edit the treasury, political agreements, and whether there is peace or war between civs? Because if there is, you could make the comps fight each other. I wouldn't think of that as cheating, cause the AI cheats too, even more. I'd think of it as balancing the game.

Another thing you can do w/the save game editor is start the game out on chieftain for like the first couple turns, then edit the difficulty level. That way they might not start out w the free units. The save game editor where you can do that is from the Civ3 Multi Tool

[King of Rasslin]

As long as people want better graphics then we will see great graphics. And we certainly won't see good AI because people want graphics and don't care how dumb the computer is.

When you really think about it, even a crude graphic game like Chess still doesn't have a perfect AI. If Chess can't have perfect AI, there is no way Civ 3 can. Playing on regent and limiting yourself (no upgrades, no autosave, etc) might be a good idea. And thanks for the warning about those soccer games, sports games are notorious for being that way.