Distilled Civ3 Tips and Notes

[Travathian]

You can rush build wonders, but with a catch. Start building an improvement. Disband units til it gets to two turns left, then switch to the Wonder. If it gets to one turn left you can switch to other units/improvements, but NOT wonders.

[David Weldon]

Yes, the terrain of your city is converted to a grassland-like state. I have built cities on hills, jungle, forest, grassland, and grassland with bonus production, and they all produce a city whose production is 2/1/1 (+1 if near a river). Note the loss of the bonus production in grassland! I have takend to building cities in the worst square I can near to good terrain. It gives you a lot of free terraforming.

Yes, there is a minimum of 4 turns for a tech advance, no matter how much overkill you use. I have found that because the multiples don't always work exactly, I can sometimes start at, say, 60% science to achieve 4 turns-to-advance and then after 2 or three of the turns I can drop it to 40% or 50% and still get the advance in a total of four turns. This has been very valuable in giving me an extra 50-100 gold at times.

Also:
The manual and civilopedia are flat out wrong about railroads. They state that RR add +50% to the production of a square. bzzzzzzzt. Try again.

In fact, RR add +1 to whatever improvement you have added to a square. RR through forest does nothing. RR through unimproved squares? Nothing. RR through something that has been irrigated = +1 food. RR through something that has been mined = +1 shield. Any bonus recources are meaningless. This can be used for added growth (if you want it by then), but the real result is that one should mine and not irrigate whenever possible so that the RR will add to production.

[Strollen]

Actually I am pretty sure that railroads do work as they say in the manual that add 50% to any improvement (fractions round up)

In most situations this means +1 shield to mined square or +1 food for an irrigated.

However in a situation like a wheatfield in a grassland.
A railroad in a mine wheatfield gives you 4 food +2 shields, but if you irrigated it you get 7 food and no shields. The same thing is true for a coal mine or iron mine you get 6 or 7 shields running a railroad through it.

[Vipsanius]

Originally posted by David Weldon
Yes, the terrain of your city is converted to a grassland-like state. I have built cities on hills, jungle, forest, grassland, and grassland with bonus production, and they all produce a city whose production is 2/1/1 (+1 if near a river). Note the loss of the bonus production in grassland! I have takend to building cities in the worst square I can near to good terrain. It gives you a lot of free terraforming.

Good info, thanks. Since this is so, why not build in a hill square every time--in order to get the defensive bonus along with the production?

[David Weldon]

Strollen:
The manual states that RR adds 50% to the _production_ (i.e. shields) of a square. It says nothing about increasing whatever improvements you added to a square. A minor point. The important thing is not what the manual did or didn't say, but what RR actually does.

In any case, how does 4 to 7 relate to 4+(1*1.5) even if you do round up? I tested a lot of different cases, but apparently not all cases, before deciding that the result is a flat +1. I'll do some more checking tonight I guess.

Vipsanius:
If you build on a hill, you lose the potential of mining that hill for a total 3 (or 4 with RR) production later on. Other than that, I generally do build on a hill if possible.

[Lord Maxwell]

Re: Re: Founding Cities on Forest, Jungle

Originally posted by Vipsanius


Is this verified? When you clear a Forest square with a Worker, you get plains, not Grassland. If founding a city on a Forest square yields Grassland, then that's definitely worth noting.

Vipsanius

Yeah, city location doesn't matter. Only special resources and river proximity changes the citys production/food/cash.

And you can get grassland when clearing forests as well, if you look closely at forests you see what kind of tile you will get. If the forest has yellow ground you get plains, if it has green ground you get grassland.

[DaveV]

Another note about building cities in poor terrain. In my latest game, I built a city atop a jungle/dyes square. It converted to grassland, but kept the dyes special (according to the manual, grass/dyes is an impossible combination). A pop-up congratulated me for connecting dyes to my roads and making my people happy.

[miloII]

Re: Regarding Culture

Originally posted by inca911
Lord Maxwell: Thanks for the happiness breakpoints. Now we need to determine the breakpoints for number of cities and happiness of the populace!

Madine: Yes, you get some temporary unhappiness effects from forced labor, however ridding a newly captured city of an already unhappy foreign laborer and adding a valued improvement should easy counteract that unhappiness effect. I agree and we do need to quantify the unhappiness effect.

Lawrence of Arabia: I'd like to limit this thread to facts regarding the game and it's play characteristics. Although your tips might be beneficial in your specific game-play situation, they are not really the kind of information I am trying to collect. Thanks for the thoughts!

Regarding Culture:

Culture is perhaps one of the most interesting new features in Civ3. In another thread, Soren has provided a bit of insight into the culture formulae and he made some great comments that I'll paraphrase here.

Culture defection of a city is determined by evaluation of several factors:
1. Distance from the Civ's Capital
2. # of Combat Units in the City
3. Civil Disorder in the City (keep them happy if you don't want them to leave you!)
4. We Love the (Leader) Day
5. Cultural Ratio of the two Civilizations
6. Cultural Ratio *within the City!* (i.e. If while under your control the city has added cultural points that favors your civ. If most of the cultural achievements were under the enemy civ's rule, that works against you. Another reason to get Temples and the like up early!).

Lastly, although it has not yet been confirmed by a second source, it has been speculated that capturing an enemy capital resets the cultural ranking of that civilization. Very interesting and very powerful if true.

So, if you are at cultural war with a neighbor, all things being equal, it is best to capture cities that are farther away from the capital city (distance factor) and make sure they do not go into civil unrest. If experience shows that cultural reversion does occur, use of the WLT*D may keep you on stable footing and certainly avoiding civil unrest in the newly captured city is of utmost importance. If anyone witnesses the cultural reset upon capital capture, please post here. Culture is a powerful weapon and hopefully this brief tutorial will shed some light on this little-understood new feature of Civ3.

I have captured Capitol cities on several occasions while trying to win the game with culture. I noticed no cultural reset and on one occaion I lost the city to its original owner after 3-4 turns, when it was quite close to my Capitol and that civ only had three cities left.
No indication of Cultural reset there.....

A Teaser Note Regarding Governments:

Although I don't yet have specific relationships, Soren mentioned that every civ has a most favorable government and a least favorable government. Obviously the traits of the civilization determine the governmental bias for that specific civ (perhaps the Industrious nature of the Chinese favors Communism?). More on that later as we figure it out.

[1Razor]

Originally posted by David Weldon


In any case, how does 4 to 7 relate to 4+(1*1.5) even if you do round up? I tested a lot of different cases, but apparently not all cases, before deciding that the result is a flat +1. I'll do some more checking tonight I guess.

In this case I think the basic rules of math would apply, Multiply before Add

4*1.5(+1), which in this case = 7

[Special_K]

Originally posted by DaveV
Another note about building cities in poor terrain. In my latest game, I built a city atop a jungle/dyes square. It converted to grassland, but kept the dyes special (according to the manual, grass/dyes is an impossible combination). A pop-up congratulated me for connecting dyes to my roads and making my people happy.

You can also clear jungle squares w/ dye or other improvements into grassland and the improvement will stay.

Yes, there is a minimum of 4 turns for a tech advance, no matter how much overkill you use. I have found that because the multiples don't always work exactly, I can sometimes start at, say, 60% science to achieve 4 turns-to-advance and then after 2 or three of the turns I can drop it to 40% or 50% and still get the advance in a total of four turns. This has been very valuable in giving me an extra 50-100 gold at times.

I did some more testing on this last night. You can research an advance in 3 turns, it just takes a ton of science. I had an advance that at 50% took me 4 turns. I had to put my science rate at 100% to get it down to 3.

[David Weldon]

OK, time to stop the bleeding.

First (defending my own particular level of idiocy):
Strollen mentioned that RR add 50% to your improvement, not to the base tile, thus 4*1.5+1 is not a meaningful calculation.

This is a moot point, however, as I did some more testing and Strollen is apparently wrong. On wheat or cattle in grassland (both give 4 base food), I get 6 food with an irrigated, railroaded tile. Not 7. 6. It would seem that the difference between 1*1.5 rounded up and simply +1 is indistinguishable.

Also, on a coal mine with RR I get 5, not 6 (as he suggested). I didn't have access to a minable Iron, so I couldn't check it but I'm willing to wager on the result...

The important part of what I feel is incorrect in the manual is that RR can add to food, not just production (as it is documented).

My test game is under Republic with France on Regent in the industrial age. If someone else could actually verify their results, that would probably help. Perhaps the bonus increases with some additional tech advance?

[David Weldon]

Special_K:
I have tried that before, and was unable to get to 3 turns. What was the situation (level, tech, science at 50%, science at 100%)?

I have calculated the actual cost of advances as follows (tested on small and standard size worlds at regent and monarch):

Cost = tech# * World# / 5

The tech# and the world# can be found in the editor.

For standard size this means 24*tech# and for small it means 20*tech#.

It is routinely possible to trade for techs at a lower cost in gold than this #, but I have tested it extensively and this is almost always the amount of science needed to build a tech. I wonder if there is a possible strategy here where you simply produce gold and buy your techs on the cheap?

Anyway, I say almost because once I could get Mapmaking (tech#=12) quicker than I could get Literature(10). Mapmaking was acting like it's tech# was 9 for some reason, but I didn't change any of the editor settings, so there must be some modifications that I am unaware of. They probably relate to how many civs already have the tech or something like that...

[inca911]

Resource Depletion, Terrain Improvement, RRs, more

Thanks again for the great contributions to this compilation of the work of many Civ3-ers! I'm sure I'm not the only one who has benefitted from all this new Civ3 information.

Resource Depletion:
Although some folks are fortunate enough not to even notice the phenomenon, resources in Civ3 can disappear from time to time due to depletion (likely just a random factor). If your only source of Iron suddenly vanishes, you will for sure be desperate to obtain a new source. So, just like most corporations, it is important to plan ahead and either obtain a second source (or second source trade partner) for strategic resources. On a slightly related note, changing the terrain of a resource square does not change the resource as it did in Civ2 via terraforming.

Terrain Improvement and RRs:
There seems to be general uncertainty in the forum regarding the effects of irrigation, mining and RRs on the various terrain types. Look on page 206 of the manual for the base terrain values and the improved values related to roads, irrigation and mining. It's all right there! For RR, I have yet to personally prove the shield and food output increases for RR (I have heard that the manual is not accurate in stating that both shield and food output in increased, but don't know if it is true) so if someone with that experience could please post the improvement for RRs on the different terrain types (or just a formula), that'd be a help. Thanks!

Using a Leader to Rush Build a Wonder:
Move the leader to the city that you are using to build the Wonder. Then activate the leader and there is a Hurry Production button in the production orders menu at the bottom of the page.
EDIT: Thanks, Special_K, for the Leader rush-build instructions! I just used Kubla Khan to rush-build the Forbidden Palace in Delhi (The Indians are gone and now we'll see how productive we can make those now-Chinese cities)!

[regoarrarr]

I've also gotten techs as 3/turn. The game is on Warlord as the Greeks. I was following my money-making strategy that I outlined in another thread. Basically trading each tech as i get it to every power for an insane amount of gold / turn, and then setting 100% science.

I'm still in the middle of the game, and as my cities get bigger I hold out hope to get it down to 2 turns / tech.

[Special_K]

Re: Resource Depletion, Terrain Improvement, RRs, more

Originally posted by inca911
Using a Leader to Rush Build a Wonder:
There is not clear documentation on how to do this process in the manual (not that I found), so I'll add that process here when I get time.

Rush Building with a leader: Take the leader to the city you want to rush build in. On the main map screen (not the city screen) have the leader as the selected unit. One of the unit options at the bottom of the screen is to rush build a wonder, the other is to build an army.