First Contact.

[Spearthrower]

Hello everyone!

First up let me say Hi! I finally found a forum for Civ3 so I decided to not lurk and just come straight in and post

I got the game a few days ago and except for a few bugs it's a damn good game. Now bear in mind that I've never played previous Civ's before (well maybe civ 1 once but all I remember is sending wagons around) here is my problem!

I've only played on Chieftain mode for obvious reasons... the 1st game I played I didnt even realise you could go into the cities heheh....... anyway, I've played about 10 games now and while I haven't actually lost yet, all I seem capable of is winning by default. The game ends and I have the highest score. I've tried and tried to win by various methods..... like cultural, military but just cant seem to get anywhere.... I take it that its just because Im crap at the game heheh.... but it's driving me nuts not being able to win.

Can someone post me a brief guide on how to get a specific win... say for example "militaristic", maybe suggest a civ, a build guideline, a "how to" section.... nothing too taxing for you (or me) but just something to help me get my 1st proper victory.

Thanks in advance and sorry if there's been a string of posts like this before.... as I said, I haven't lurked here at all

Spearthrower

[eMarkM]

Well, you should do a little reading of the forum. I don't want to reiterate all of great strategy info that's here. Here's my fav:

Vel's Strategy Thread - The Early Game
Vel's Strategy Thread - Part 2

There's an overwhelming amount of info in just these threads, much of it quite advanced. These, IMHO, are the best strategy threads around. There are others. Most of the best ones have been indexed on the Apolyton Strategy Home Page. Check them out.

e

[Spearthrower]

eMarkM
Thanks for the reply..... I was actually just reading those. To tell you the truth they're a little bit over my head at the moment.... you got to remember I've NEVER played before and a combination of jargon and intricasies makes it almost another language to me
Someone spoon-feed me some information and I will shut up, go play and come back and tell you all how good I am heheh.

If not then maybe someone can answer me these questions:

Why when I played Romans and built a lot of legionarries did a single spearman manage to take down my entire army? Is this normal? I had about 7 or 8 attacking each city - whats the point of them? Yet somehow when Rome is attacking me they suddenly become an excellent attack unit! I worked out to use archers to attack early cities, but even then I seem to lose more than is acceptable but in reverse the enemy doesnt have those problems.

Why did my culture victory not work? I am currently playing Babylonians - I have disgusting amounts of culture, built all the wonders, my border cities are all fully built yet somehow I havent managed to convince the Romans or Egyptians towns to turncoat to me. I know they can do it automatically but is there any specific skill or manual thing I can do to encourage it? I tried inciting propaganda and spent 4k for no results?? It all seems a bit pear-shaped to me!

[Arrian]

On cultural defection - there is a chance a city will defect each turn, based upon a number of factors:

Your total culture vs. theirs
Your nearby culture vs. theirs (bordering cities)
Proximity to Capitol (yours vs. theirs)
Unhappiness (civil disorder increases defection possibility)
Military units in the city (this is less important, but does play a role, apparently).

I've had great success with cultural defection, but there is an element of random chance involved. I've often gotten cities that I didn't expect to get, while the city I was hoping would defect hangs around for 1000s of yrs.

Regarding legions. First off, I don't think the Romans have very good civ atttributes (commercial/militaristic, right?), and the legionary just isn't that great. 3 attack, 3 defense, 1 move. It's a balanced unit, which makes it fairly versatile, but an attack or defense of 3 just ain't that much. Spearmen defend at 2, but with fortification bonuses (foritied, in a city, if the city has walls, etc.), it's a match for a legionary. Try out the Persians. The Immortal (4/2/1) is nasty, and does very bad things to spearmen.

If you are attacking cities, I would strongly suggest bringing along some mobile units (horsemen/knights/cavalry/tanks, whatever you have at the time), as they can soften up the defenders, but DO NOT DIE if they lose. They fight until they get down to 1 hit point, and run away. Hit with the horsies, mop up with the grunts. Also, bombard units can be pretty effective at softening defenses (not to mention breaking important things), particularly once you get to canons and artillery. Keep your troops in a stack with some good defenders (spearmen, pikemen, whatever you have then).

As for more general stuff... go with the representative governments (republic/democracy), try to grab the happiness and science wonders (Sistine Chapel/Bach/Copernicus/Newton). Keep reading the forums, keep civin', and you will figure it out... but I WARN YOU - this line of games (CIV/CIV II/Alpha Centauri) is the most addictive thing out there, short of crack. The game is complex, so playing it and figuring it all out takes serious time.

-Arrian

[Spearthrower]

Arrian

Cheers for the reply

"I've often gotten cities that I didn't expect to get, while the city I was hoping would defect hangs around for 1000s of yrs. "

Hmmm - this seems to be the case for ALL the cities round me.

"Regarding legions. First off, I don't think the Romans have very good civ atttributes (commercial/militaristic, right?), and the legionary just isn't that great."

I guess you must be right... but what a shame, there I was pumping out Legions by the horde only to find out that they were cack! I thought they would make an excellent Ancient attacker..... well I suppose its not meant to be realistic anyway

The ideas on attacking are a great help, I'll try those out next game... I really want to do a military victory but I was thinking that a Monarchy is probably best for military games... am I wrong? I've been using Democracy for cultural and not fighting.... can you get away with full-scale war in representative governments?

"The game is complex, so playing it and figuring it all out takes serious time."

I noticed the complexity already heheh - the figuring out is coming.... slowly.

[Arrian]

You can, in fact, fight a major war under democracy, given the proper conditions. First off, if you're playing on the lower difficulty levels, unhappiness isn't a major concern. However, if you intend to take over the world while allowing your people to vote, here are the keys:

Sistine Chapel - doubles the effect of your cathedrals (which should be build in every city)

Bach - makes 2 unhappy people content in each city.

Universal Sufferage - reduces war weariness (comes later)

Poice Stations - ditto Univ. Suff., but you have to build them everywhere... I would suggest doing this in large cities only.

Luxuries. There are 8 luxury resources in the game. The more you have, the happier your people are. You get 1 happy citizen in each city (that is connected via road) for each of the first 3 or 4 luxury resources you have access to (I'd have to look at a game to be sure). The next several luxuries will make 2 people happy per resource, and so on (7th and 8th make 4 happy each, I think). Thus, gaining access to luxuries is HUGE. If you're going to fight, go for these as much as anything else. Denying them to the AI will make his people unhappy, and yours happy. Note that if you have access to 5 dyes, it's the same as having 1 in terms of happiness, only you can trade dyes to 4 other civs.

Luxury spending - there is a slider bar under the F1 advisor screen that allows you to allocate some of your budget toward luxury spending. This can help if the war drags on really long.

Finally, democracies make lots of money. This means you can support lots of units. Build up a LARGE army. When you hit, hit with overwhelming force. Use combined arms (footsoldiers/mobile units/bombard units/air and naval power) and achieve your objectives as quickly as possible. Then make peace for a while, reload, and hit again.

Hope this stuff helps you out.

-Arrian

[MarshalN]

On victory conditions:

Cultural -- 20000 culture in one city, or 100000 in your total civ culture, and you win

Militaristic -- Conquer/kill everyone in sight. Basically, you own all the cities, you win.

Diplomatic -- everyone (AI and you) take a vote in the UN. If the vote results is that people love you, you win.

Space -- your spaceship gets to its destination before theirs. Remember, it's NOT the launch date but the arrival date that counts.

[Arrian]

Victory conditions

One addition to the cultural victory condition is that, in order to win by having the 100,000 total culture points, you also must be double your nearest competition.

Conquest - yeah, kill all opponents.

UN - Beware the UN! You can easily lose this vote (though if you work at it, you can muster the votes) and *bang* game over.

There is also a "domination" victory, which is similar to conquest. If you control 2/3 of the world map within your cultural borders, you win.

The spaceship victory occurs at launch. Basically, you complete the last ss part, and you have no option but to launch. You then get a neat movie and you win.

-Arrian

[henry296]

Originally posted by MarshalN
On victory conditions:

.

Space -- your spaceship gets to its destination before theirs. Remember, it's NOT the launch date but the arrival date that counts.

In Civ3, as soon as the ship is launched, you win. This is a change from Civ2 where they're could be a race to AC.

Todd

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by MarshalN
Space -- your spaceship gets to its destination before theirs. Remember, it's NOT the launch date but the arrival date that counts.

No, it's the launch date that counts in Civ3. Since everyone's spaceships are the same now, all that matters is who launches first. Thus, the game ends as soon as you launch the spaceship.

[MarshalN]

Ooops, sorry. Since I never turn on the space victory condition (I hate space victory for no apparent reason) I never found out

Sorry for that, shouldn't talk when you're not 100% sure hehehe

[GreekyGoodness]

Originally posted by Arrian

Luxuries. There are 8 luxury resources in the game. The more you have, the happier your people are. You get 1 happy citizen in each city (that is connected via road) for each of the first 3 or 4 luxury resources you have access to (I'd have to look at a game to be sure). The next several luxuries will make 2 people happy per resource, and so on (7th and 8th make 4 happy each, I think). Thus, gaining access to luxuries is HUGE. If you're going to fight, go for these as much as anything else. Denying them to the AI will make his people unhappy, and yours happy. Note that if you have access to 5 dyes, it's the same as having 1 in terms of happiness, only you can trade dyes to 4 other civs.

-Arrian

Just to clarify the luxuries and number of happy faces, you only get the bonus happy faces for additional luxuries over 3 if you have a marketplace in your city. Otherwise, all luxuries up to 8 only give you one extra happy face.

Greeky

[Harm]

To expound on the Marketplace:

1st & 2nd Resource: 1 Happy Person each
3rd & 4th: 2
5rd & 6th: 3
7th & 8th: 4

Having all 8 luxuries and a marketplace = 20 Happy people.

Easy way to help wage extensive wars as a Democracy.

Be prepared to pay out dearly for those last few luxuries as the computer will know you need them.