Help With Spaceship Launch

[Rev. Crawford]

[NOTE: I had trouble in previous attempts to post this question - please excuse if it gets posted twice.]

I've been playing Civ3 for about a month on the lower difficulty levels. I have been able to win on "points," but not by the spaceship launch. I try to concentrate on commerce, set the science slider to 60%-70%, change excess population units to scientists, and buy technologies from other civs. Despite all of this, I'm barely able to get out of the Industrial era by 2050. This is frustrating as I cannot begin to build the spaceship or build any of the cool units available at higher tech levels. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Jack_www]

In the last game I won I was able to build the spaceship I think in the 1800's, can't remember the date I built it. One thing I do in all my games is sell techs to the computer players. This allows me to put the science up to 80% to 100% for most of the game. Usually I can get a tech a four turns and not need to put it up to 100%. My style of play is a builder, thus while I am expanding early on in the game, I take time to build a temple and latter library when I get the tech for it. Also when unversity come I build those right away too. Hope any of this helps you get that space ship before 2050.

[Bluefrog]

Expand.

I know, it's pretty elementary, but expanding is the top way to get a tech boost. The more tiles you have to work, the better. The higher your pop, the better...the citizens can work more tiles. And build roads -everywhere-! They provide commerce...later, more commerce with railroads. This commerce fuels scientific gain, so you can easily see how this could help your cause.

Second, I like to build every science imp in nearly every city. Sure, it might cause you to take a hit in your military growth, but it's worth it.

The tech-whore strategy is viable, but only to a point. The idea behind it is that you sell techs to other civs, thus allowing you to accumulate their wealth and dump your funds into science, all the while depriving them of scientific growth because you have their money. I've used it a couple of times, and you can get an astronomical gold advantage (which does kick ass when rush-building in democracy), but it's often more frustrating than it's worth. With the patch, the AI trades with itself in the middle of your turn, thus dulling the tech-whore dominance. Also, I've made very lucrative deals, where the AI civ gives me 150+ gold/turn for a tech, then declares war on me a couple of turns into the deal, so they basically get the tech for free. (Well...if you don't count revenge. I've a long memory in Civ, heh. A reckoning will always come, heh.

All in all, it boils down to one thing: commerce. Trade your spare luxuries for gold/turn. Trade a strat resource for a lump sum, thus giving the AI civ access to the resource for 20 turns, and that's it. Hardly enough time to do much of anything with it, and you get to line your coffers. Sell off captured workers! Hell, I should do that in my current game...I've got a TON of German slaves just sitting around...

[barefootbadass]

Also, the ai researches faster on higher difficulty levels, which speeds it up too. As far as getting all your money out of tech payments, throw in a luxury or something if they will pay more for it, or sell the luxury next turn when they have increased their gold rate. And make sure you at least have a respectable military.