Strategy Notes From Vel - The Early Game....

[Steve Clark]

Would that be the famous Entertainer's number cruncher Nero Would?

All I can say, Vel, is to keep up the great work. I have gotten quite a few folks from other forums coming here and reading your strategies and analyses.

[adaMada]

Vel and everyone else on this thread:

-- adaMada

[vmxa1]

I have to say the IND is very good trait. I like Relgion and Commercial next. Having said that I have done my best game so far with Persia and they use none of those? Immortals can handle anyone in the early part of the game and with the Science boost you are soon out in front with tech and can sell/trade or barter. I am starting to reconsider the value of switching governments. If you have a civ that likes Monarchy, they tend to dislike either Dem or Rep. In that case you do not need to swith but one time and that can be very late in the game.

[Nero Would]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Would that be the famous Entertainer's number cruncher Nero Would?

Guilty as charged M'lord I'm a novice at Civ games, so I'm only crunching small numbers at the moment. I like to understand the rules of the game before I try to beat it. Fortunately for me, I enjoy puzzling out what the developers didn't put in the manual, so I should have lots of fun with Civ III.

[vmxa1]

While you are looking into the numbers, check into how they determine the resource useage. I had 3 uranium deposits and nothing using them as far as I know. No nukes/nuclear sub, did not even have the wonder. No trade for it, and yet it a matter of weeks two were exhausted? It seems that resources are depleated regardless of use?

[pchang]

That is correct. As long as the resource is connected to your road network, there is a % chance that it depletes each turn. It is in one of the text files (i.e you can change it). Note that the depletion % for horses is 0.

[ChrisShaffer]

Religious civs can use the whip to build a temple starting with only one shield. That's one population point turned into 29 shields. Very nice for expanding borders from the get-go.

[vmxa1]

I understand, I can change some things, but I would like to stay standard, so when I take a long break and come back (months), I won't have to remember what I did and why. I would prefer they added a tweak that does not change the chance of depletion, but does skip any chance if you have not even used the resource. That just seems sensible. By the way I think Rubber does not deplete either.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by Nero Would


Guilty as charged M'lord I'm a novice at Civ games, so I'm only crunching small numbers at the moment. I like to understand the rules of the game before I try to beat it. Fortunately for me, I enjoy puzzling out what the developers didn't put in the manual, so I should have lots of fun with Civ III.

Just don't be counting the steps each of the Civ3 units make, it's not worth it, my friend.

Stefen, from over there.

[Hastus]

Starting Build Order.

I start by building a worker in my first town then a warrior then a settler. I do this in all my new towns,I sometimes skip the warrior but I always build a worker first. The reason I do this is beacuse I think that first worker will pay itself many times over. Since under despotism irrigating dosent do much good you are able to pump up mines all over early and snatching does early wonders with a killer production. However I do play industrious civilizations most of the time and I am not sure how effective this would be without that trait. Anyone got thoughts on this strategy?

[Velociryx]

More on Starting Position and Strategic Reserves.....

Hey guys, and g’morning! And thank you Steve, for rounding people up and bringing them here! Judging by page views alone, I’d say we’ve got a pretty good thing going!

Went back and added the missing information on Commercial Civs after reading the comments here, and will prolly go back later and rework religious based on other comments, so please, keep ‘em coming! The articles and essays here will serve as the genesis for the eventual strat guide, after they’ve been hammered into finer form via our discussions!

I’m inching closer to finishing my detailed article on the various Civs (doing a compare & contrast, as well as writing up a couple different strategies and styles for each), and in the meantime, I figured I’d ramble on about a few other topics that have been on my mind regarding the game.

To that end, I’d like to talk more about a subject that I touched on a few days ago….starting position.

Prevailing local geography can really cinch the game for you, or hinder you in unbelievable ways, especially given the effects of corruption. The starting spot of your first city can and will quite literally define the character of your early game.

Two examples, at opposite ends of the spectrum:

First, let us suppose that you start land-locked, on a medium sized or larger continent. Your capitol (by default, your first city) will be centrally located to the rest of your empire, no matter how you choose to expand. Quite likely, your expansion will be in all directions initially (a city founded along each of the main compass points), with resources determining the exact city placement.

Thus, as you expand, cities that are “additional layers” away from your capitol begin to feel the burden of increased corruption, making the eventual addition of the FP a necessity. Note though, that in this case (a centralized starting point), relocating your Palace is NOT required, as you can simply control the direction of your expansion.

At the other extreme, would be a start that places your capitol at the tip of a peninsula, or adjacent to a wide swath of desert you have to “jump over” in order to start founding good cities.

In this case, your early game is going to be MUCH different from the initial start described, because the majority of your cities will face corruption due to distance from the capitol.

In game terms, this means that while you may grow and expand as quickly as the AI is, your cities will not be nearly as productive, forcing you to seek out more high-food producing centers than you’d otherwise need to, in order to speed build based on population sacrifice (a thing which most people will be doing in the early game anyway, but which you will be REQUIRED to do in order to remain competitive, in the absence of decent production from cities very far from your capitol). Of course, the ultimate solution to this problem is that once your Empire reaches critical mass is to relocate your Palace AND toss up an FP, but, unlike the first case mentioned, you face a steep challenge (having to do both). There ARE, however, some things you can do to help your position.

First, you’ve GOT to be aggressive if you start with your capitol in a poor position (read: NOT centralized to your natural expansion). By aggressive, of course I mean expansion-wise, as odds are good that your capitol will serve as one of your “settler farms” for much of the early game. A poor opening position will mean that each settler has to travel further to found a new city, making a good road network (one that does NOT cris-cross over rivers, for example) even more important, because you’ll need every bit of speed you can muster to keep pace!

As to the rest, there are a great many different possibilities….a great many TYPES of aggression you can use as tools to further your position, and I’ll cover some of them below to get your mind turning on the subject: (keep in mind of course that anybody, with any sort of start can make effective use of the following….it’s just that if you DO start with your capitol in an isolated position, the items below become less of a luxury and more of a “must-do.”

1) Military Aggression: This has numerous advantages in that it frees you up from having to worry about going for Early game wonders. Let somebody else get them, and while they’re building the wonders, you’re building an army to relieve them OF their wonders. You’ll NEED to start thinking in terms of founding a base near forests (preferably with a game tile in the radius) to be used as your troop training center. The reason for this is that if you start with a poor geographic position, you NEED to get a Great Leader sooner, rather than later, in order to speed-build your Palace where you want it. In the early game, with so many of your cities producing next to no minerals (mostly lost, due to corruption via distance), you’ll find yourself hobbled if you don’t make relocating the capitol happen in relatively short order. A Great Leader can do that for you, in addition to netting you a handful of nice cities (keep them if they fall in a nice position relative to your soon-to-be-moved Palace, burn them down if no).
2) Palace Bounce: This is especially useful if you find yourself on a peninsula and hemmed in by numerous rival civs. Odds are good that they’ve intentionally settled the headlands of the peninsula in order to stifle your growth, and if so, then rushing in cultural improvements and then relocating your Palace in their face will almost assuredly cause rival city defections, enabling you to “bounce” your Palace again, this time closer to where you want it (and probably cause a few new defections, prying deeper into the Empire(s) of your rivals.
3) Map-Making: Especially vital if you find yourself alone on a smallish continent, or hemmed in by a rival with a bigger and better culture than you that’s preventing defection. In this case, you NEED to build a galley and get the heck out of there! Find a new place to settle, and do it quickly….remembering that the AI is expanding like a mad rabbit on Viagra…if you don’t find a place to build a few new cities, there soon won’t be anyplace left!

Final thoughts re: Implications of starting position:
A centralized start….even a centralized start devoid of any sort of bonus resource (food or luxury) is generally superior to a more isolated start (at the tip of a peninsula, for example) for a number of reasons: First, it limits the natural size of your empire and increases empire-wide corruption effects in your game. Second, in order to maintain long-term competitiveness, it all but requires re-location of your palace AND the building of your FP, where a player starting with a centralized location will probably be able to leave his palace where it is, and simply build the FP. This of course, implies that you’ll be hard-pressed to net any of the ancient-era wonders, and if you do, it will be a much more difficult proposition than if you’d had a more centralized start.

It (isolated start) also may require a much more militarily aggressive stance from you and/or make the technology “Map Making” much more important to your game than it might otherwise have been. Regardless of the specifics of how you choose to deal with it though, the fact is, an isolated/peninsular start for your civ will VERY MUCH determine the flavor and character of your early game, and can have implications that will carry through well into the mid-game.

-=Vel=-

PS:
The concept of resource depletion brings up an interesting point. Strategic Reserves.

If it indeed proves to be the case that a resource with a road running through it has a % chance of running out, then, if you find yourself with more than one source of a given resource, it would behoove you to NOT road that tile until and unless your initial source ran out….thus, prolonging your total supply of that resource….strategic reserves….

[rugbyprop3]

Good Points..

In playing the game I dont know if you have mentioned or made clear the fact that 99.95% of the time you want to build your first city in the location that is given to you.

I don't know what the computer uses for its initial builds, but figure that on average after starting your first city on turn 1, you should have your first settler in approx. 20 turns. So if extra time is taken finding that perfect spot you can put yourself in hole that is hard to recover from. 20 turns figures in at least 1 warrior and potentially 1 worker depending on how good start warrior.

Use the warrior that you build along with your worker to scout ahead for all future cities, your 2-3-4 cities are ussually my production powerhouses. Typically for every city after your 1st you are able to scout good locations for their placement.

Also after you get 3-4 good cities established, that is when I ussually go and try to build some space to back fill into.

Using this strategy ussually works well for me.

[SerapisIV]

Hey tight head, who do you play for? I played hooker for Illinois for 4 years and now play off and on with Michigan. Lake Front 7s is a kick ass tourney. Nothing like playing next to random concerts in the background

[albiedamned]

This is a great thread. I know everyone says it, but it bears repeating.

Vel, I was a devoted reader of your SMAC strategy guide, so I look forward to your continued strategy postings on Civ3. I wanted to mention a strategy that I've employed in my past two games. The first game was with the Romans on Monarch, and the second game was the tournament game (Babylonians, Regent).

In both games, I did not engage in a single battle the entire game with the exception of attacking a few barbarians at the very beginning. In my Roman game, I did not plan to play this way (they're militaristic after all!), it just happened. In my Babylonian game I definitely planned it. I won the Roman game by spaceship in 1810, and the Babylonian game by spaceship in 1760. In both games, I switched to Republic as quickly as possible and then to Democracy as quickly as possible, and never made any other government changes.

The obvious advantage to this approach is that you can spend all your time and resources building your empire. I never had a lot of cities (about 10 in each game), but each of my cities had all possible infrastructure and 20-35 pop size by the end of the game. From the early Industrial Era on, I was able to maintain 4 turns per advance and still have plenty of surplus gold, largely due to trade arrangements (income from other civs). On a few occassions when my treasury did drop, I would just sell one of the less important techs to all the civs on the same turn for cash.

Several times in the ancient and middle ages I was threatened by the AI, and each time I gave in to the demand rather than start a war. As much as it hurts my pride to give in to demands, it was worth it in the long run. The World Map or gold that you give them is not worth the time and effort you will have to invest in a war.

There are two major disadvantages of this approach, both of which I was able to overcome. One is that since you don't fight, you can only trigger a Golden Age via building wonders. And the other disadvantage, which is very related to the first, is that without any Great Leaders it is difficult to build the early wonders. In both games I was able to trigger my Golden Age, but not until the late middle or early industrial era (Universal Suffrage triggered it in my Roman game, and Newton's in my Babylonian game). Once I got the GA, it was lights out for the rest of the world. But had I been beaten to those wonders and not gotten the GA, I might have been in trouble.

There is a third disadvantage to this approach: boredom. While not a tactical disadvantage, it certainly has to be considered. Having not gone to war for 2 games in a row, by the end of the 2nd game I was rather bored and itching for a fight! So I feel sorry for my opponents in my next game, because I guarantee I won't be so nice this time!

I think it would be difficult for anyone to achieve a quicker space race victory than I have without using this no-war strategy. Comments?

[rugbyprop3]

Originally posted by SerapisIV
Hey tight head, who do you play for? I played hooker for Illinois for 4 years and now play off and on with Michigan. Lake Front 7s is a kick ass tourney. Nothing like playing next to random concerts in the background

Right now I am playing for Milwaukee Rugby Football Club. During sevens season especially Lakefront Sevens, as a sevens scrub I have played for Curious George.