Civ3 is hard!

[Mike_W]

I consider myself an experienced player since I have played Civ-like games for over 10 years now. I was pretty good at Civ 2 (I couldn't win at deity but I held my own at emperor), but Civ 3 is so much different!

I started two games at Monarch and got nowhere basically. I was behind in tech, culture, territory, etc. I downgraded to Regent and thought that I would kill. But, surprise, I'm barely keeping up. The AI just keeps expanding like crazy! Before (Civ 2) I would create around 15 good cities and stop there and develop. The other civs would have more cities but they're all small under-developed villages so I still had the advantage. But now whatever I do I'm not able to distance myself from the others. Mind you I'm looking at the Score and Power graphs for reference and I listen to what my science advisor has to say. It seems like the strat in Civ3 is never stop expanding!

Maybe there's something I'm not doing right (obviously...). I know that my tech choices were not necessarily optimal. I missed some important wonders (the Great Library) at the beginning. I'm doing better now though (The Sistine Chapel and JS Bach's Cathedral are mine). I still have a good shot at victory. I just switched to Democracy so things should pick up. I'm thinking of delcaring war on two neighbouring civs to take some of their puny cities that cut my territory in two. I hope my people are not going to be too mad about that.

Anyway, any thoughts are welcome.

[D4everman]

Accept the word of one who knows....

Do not start a war as a democracy. Democracies cannot maintain a long war, war weariness will cause rampant civil disorder after a few turns. You can't stop it either unless you end the war. Its even more intense if YOU start the conflict.

The other problem is that if your enemy won't "talk" to you so you can hammer out a peace you're stuck. The disorder will continue and your citizens will start destroying improvements. The french effectively brought my mighty empire to its knees in that way in one game. (it was unfair though because I didn't start the war.)

Do this....change to communism or monarchy then attack. I haven't tried that, but its the only way you're gonna wage a war of conquest.

[Osprey]

Mike,
Use the 'ARSE' Strategy and select the Chieftan difficulty. I was getting beat on the Chieftan level at first but after a few tries it started to become too easy (and it has a whole lot to do with what kind of hand you're dealt) so I bumped the difficulty level up 2 notches. I had such a hard time with that I employed the ARSE strategy and kicked the difficulty level down one notch. Now I'm playing on Warlord and I'm barely holding my own. Every nation around me is at war with me and wants my cities as a peace deal. I'm not giving up any cities so I'll slug it out with them until they either want peace at a reasonable deal or I get another case of the ARSE!

The Osprey

[Khannalxytys]

Well... i believe this feel .. is due to the fact that u are looking at the score.. since the score is based on Territory covered... cultural value (which obviously is higher with more cities.. ok .. they are all underdeveloped but they exist.. and with their capital and major cities. being as great as yours.. in culture.. the others make the difference.. )number of happy people(corruption doesnt affect happyness..) and some other things... its clear that small empires would never ever win by score or culture.. (that's why it took me SO long to convert an enemy iroquois city right near my capital) .. they had tons of cities.. thus they were dismissive of my cultural achievments.. and despite the fact that the city was near my 3.5k city worh of culture... the fact that their overall culture is higher then mine .. counts for the abosrption ..


so .. the down point of having as many cities.. is the fact that there is corruption.. and its a real problem .. the more cities u have .. the higher corruption u have... horribly damaging commerce.. and production... thus they are going to be always underdeveloped .. and influencing the other cities of your empires... for number of cities also counts as a variable of corruption.. thus.. they will be flooded with corruption and u will beat them at production and income.. althoiugh their number of cities producing culture each round.. (a temple after lots of rounds makes a hell of a culture) and the territory covered.. makes them better at score.. although that doesn't mean that overall .. they are better then your tiny not corrupted empire.. ( I personally think corruption .. and waste.. should be included in the score calculation .. )

[uXs567]

I don't think war as a democracy is _that_ hard... I had several and didn't have a lot of problems. One of them I started myself, cuz the english were starting to bother me with all their running around on my land, and the other was started by the russians because they kept catching my spies.
Besides some cities getting out of "we love the king"-day, nothing out of the ordinary happened. This was on chieftain tho, dunno if that has anything to do with it. Oh and practically all my cities had buttloads of improvements, including police stations and stuff.

uXs

[Fredric Drum]

It also depends on the resources available to you. If you have loads of silk, ivory, spices etc, you'll keep your citizens fairly happy. And either way you can let your governor manage citizen moods.. If you conduct a war as democracy, you'll need all happy improvements plus lots of entertainers.. so your cities will become very inefficient, but you'll get by somehow. Inefficient cities is of course not desirable if you're after a well-oiled war machinery, you'll need more turns to build your tanks.

If you're a religious (I think) nation, you can switch governments withouth anarchy in between, so if war breaks out, or you start a war, you simply switch to communism and you're ready to rumble.

Also, have you noticed how enemy naval vessels (and bombers) always want to destroy your infrastructure?? The AI sure knows how to annoy you... I've even lost a war largely due to this. They managed to cut me off from my resources!!

Fred

[Skanky Burns]

I won a conquest victory purely in Democracy. (once i got the advance, that is). I had temples, coloseums and cathedrals in all cities, and access to luxuries. Even when at war with one or two other civs, i traded with the third for more luxuries (was on tiny map). This kept the people from being unhappy, and allowed me to war effectively.

Also, i didnt just keep attacking until i finished them off. I just took cities to get some resources, their capital to prevent the cities i took from revolting, and then asked for peace. Later on, they decided to try and recover from the set-back by declaring war on me again. They were practically inviting me to invade!!
The trick is to keep the wars short, and keep the luxuries flowing.

I was lucky in that game, as i had access to quite a few luxuries in my territory. It was funny to be trading luxuries with an enemy (part of the deal for peace), and then they declare war. Suddenly, ALL their cities are rioting!! Makes things easier.

[Zardose]

Targeting infostructure..

Yea...I noticed that, French Ironclads kept running by my cities destroying roads, mines, ect.. and China sent a lone ground troop over, he spent decades just pilaging and screwing up my workers handiwork...pissed me off!

But, Later I was at war with the Babalonians. I had them down to 1 city, on a small island. I wasted many knights on that last city,sending 4-5 at a time until, I remembered what France and China had done to me. So I tried it on old Hammerabi, worked like a charm. With all the mines gone They had nothing to maintain a proper defensive force, I walked right in and made myself at home.

I hate it when you learn something from an AI

Zar...

[KLIN-TONN]

bombardment...

...in this game kicks ass. I played a fantastically fun game (which I lost) where I sent eight bombers on two carriers and five or six battleships to support two armies and about twelve other troops in an attack on the American mainland. I used the bombers and battleships exclusively to destroy infrastructure so that they couldn't reinforce their big cities, which I then burned to the ground.

However, I was a democracy in that game, and eventually my people effectively brought an end to my war machine. Then, with the remaining Civs in the world against me, I eventually built the UN and called for a vote just to give myself a merciful death. Incidentally, I think if you can afford to raise the luxury level in the domestic advisor screen significantly during war time, litte disruption will be felt - even in a democracy. You just have to have smaller goals, I think, and more exacting, precise plans.

The UN is an easy way to win. In the third game I played to completion, in Regent (or Monarch - whichever is the third level) I kept to myself the whole time, built the UN, lost the vote by two, reloaded the autosave, gave all my money and technology to the civs that voted against me, and won. Cheap but effective, as they say.

[Mike_W]

hmmm...I'm not sure if I should start this war under democracy now. This advantage that the religious civs have is pretty powerful and convenient. Switching to communism for say 10 turns of war then coming back to democracy is very cool. It took my empire 7 turns of anarchy to go from republic to democracy. Several of my cities were starving and lost 3-4 pop. Very damaging. I'm not about to do it again unless I have a good reason.
However I'm sure that if you crank the luxuries to say 40% you could manage a war under democracy. Unfortunately in my case I have only one luxury resource to keep my people happy. It's pretty bad. And I cover a pretty big territory. Thankfully I have iron and horses but only once. Nothing to trade. I'm number one in culture though which is kinda cool.
I think that I'm going to try a mini war under democracy. My objective is only a handful of small barely defended, but very annoying, cities. Shouldn't take more than a few turns. The only problem is that I hope the other civ will talk to me for peace after those few turns.