Civ 3, Why aren't I winning?

[Paul in Qatar]

I have been spending much, much too much time with Civ 3 of late. My fingers hurt.

 

But I am getting better. I can get to cultural vicotry, but that is not good enough, I want to build tha spaceship.

 

I am playing at Regent level, I (now) turn off Cultural Victory. I play the Romans on a Huge Map, I allow only about four other Civs. I use the city governors to manage citizen's moods.

 

Take for example my most recent game. I am in 1982 and dominate the world. I have all the resources and most of the wonders. My reputation in good, and I guess once I get to the UN I will win a Diplomatic Victory.

 

But I am WAY behind the real world in technology. I am just completing flight now.

 

What the heck am I doig wrong?

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Paul in Saudi:

I have been spending much, much too much time with Civ 3 of late. My fingers hurt.

 

But I am getting better. I can get to cultural vicotry, but that is not good enough, I want to build tha spaceship.

 

I am playing at Regent level, I (now) turn off Cultural Victory. I play the Romans on a Huge Map, I allow only about four other Civs. I use the city governors to manage citizen's moods.

 

Take for example my most recent game. I am in 1982 and dominate the world. I have all the resources and most of the wonders. My reputation in good, and I guess once I get to the UN I will win a Diplomatic Victory.

 

But I am WAY behind the real world in technology. I am just completing flight now.

 

What the heck am I doig wrong?

 

Do you utilize maximum efficiency in agriculture so that you can specialize some of your population as scientists? Do you survey potential city sites to make sure you will have plentiful food supply? Also, do you emphatically plan your city placement so as to be able to irrigate them ASAP? If you have a city with a lot of excess food and population, yet very little production capacity due to lack of nearby minerals and mines, try switching some population over to scientists. Also, do you make your first four city improvements, temple, granary, library, and marketplace? Not necessarily in that order either, two most important things IMO is to build up city culture and settler units. Also, steer your research towards areas that discover new research buildings. That's all I can come up with without seeing a savegame.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Paul in Qatar]

I am playing on my Mac, so (I presume) I cannot send you a gamefile.

 

I also place my ciites near a resource (such as wheat or game. I make my build spearman, temple (I hope to have pyramids, so no granry), settler, library.

 

I suspect the city governor is not putting enough omph into science. I note I accrue huge sums of money. Neat but not a war-winner.

 

Any more thoughts?

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Paul in Saudi:

I am playing on my Mac, so (I presume) I cannot send you a gamefile.

 

I also place my ciites near a resource (such as wheat or game. I make my build spearman, temple (I hope to have pyramids, so no granry), settler, library.

 

I suspect the city governor is not putting enough omph into science. I note I accrue huge sums of money. Neat but not a war-winner.

 

Any more thoughts?

 

It sounds like you need to take a couple citizens off of food production and put them on science research. I would ignore the pyramid and concentrate on the lighthouse, being able to get to other continents when you have galleys is a huge bonus IMO and allows you to lock up most of the open territory and get exclusive early trade agreements at least 1000 years before anyone else can cross the blue water. Although I admit, having the hanging gardens are nice also, since it in effect saves you from assigning citizens to entertainment for a while so that you can concentrate on production and research. Even if you can't effectively use other continents (until you place the forbidden palace and/or rebuild your palace to reduce corruption) it denies it to your competitors, and possibly locks you into strategic materials and luxury goods which will keep your people happy also as well as allow you to basically hold competitors hostage to trade their tech, gold, and reciprical items for materials or luxuries at a highly favorable exchange rate. For instance, if you're the only one with coal or iron, you're making a lot of profit that isn't going into the production of competitors armies/expansion. Maximize competitor friction, minimize your own.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Brad Edmondson]

A buddy just gave me this game. How much time investment am I looking at to win a game? I don't have a lot of game time so I tend to avoid the crack-like games when I can

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Brad Edmondson:

A buddy just gave me this game.  How much time investment am I looking at to win a game?  I don't have a lot of game time so I tend to avoid the crack-like games when I can

 

Damn Brad, how do you stumble onto the time hogs? The game is good, and in my eyes, just a very updated version of the original civ with some rules tweaks, so I'mnot sure if it will be crack like for you. However, there isn't much of a chance of you playing a game to completion even on a smaller map without at least a 10 hour investment on average, mean deviation of about +/- 4 hours IMO depending on starting conditions and difficulty level.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Paul in Qatar]

OK, I am doing better.

 

The year, 1940, an unsettled Joe Stalin, head of the long-standing Russian Democracy looks out over his domain.

 

The ciites on the main continenet are all Hospitaled and the factories are coming along nicely. Hoover Dam will be online at the same time. The Germans are dead.

 

He lacks rubber but has all other resouces. He wonders, pensive, is rubber reason enough for a war?

 

He knows his culture rules. All top five cities are Russian. His proud, but miffed he turned off the cultural victory. Most desturbing of all is the little guy with the hammer who only awards him a couple of lights when he retires.

 

"Why, why, why" the dictator asks himself "Why doesn't my point total kick butt as well as my military and cultural accomlpishments would seem to indicate?"

 

"And why am I talking to myself?"

[Ssnake]

Once you have invented modern armor, bargain for rubber and build lots of armor. It's a really impressive unit when invading somewhere. Don't make the mistake of combining Armor and Mech Infantry in armies since it slows down the army to infantry speed - combined arms doesn't work in Civ3 as the expert might expect.

 

Once you have your force ready and the rubber deal expires, go for it.

[Paul in Qatar]

Well. I got the rubber, contributed by the Americans who also lost a couple of cities in the bro-ha-ha. Now I am building many many tanks and socking away tons of cash.

 

Still, despite it all, in 1990 I am still only Paul the Cruel. Why is that? I know I can be so much more than just cruel.

[Paul in Qatar]

The year is now 2014. I have half of the spaceship done. I still need synthetic fibers and the laser to finish. I wonder if there is enough time.

 

Sill this is my best game so far.

 

If I run out of time I will go back to a save and go for a military vicotry by blitzing the world with my (by then advanced) armor.

 

Still my score is quite low. I am only Paul the Terrible. I wonder why. I presume my city governors are keeping happiness too low.

[Brasidas]

Paul, import lots of luxury items, the more you have, the happier your people are. How many do you have anyway?

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Paul in Qatar]

The year is now 2041. I built the UN but tied for President of the World!

 

In any case, I all seven luxeries as well as a lot of strategic materials.

 

Let me brag....

 

2 Urainium

2 Aluminum

1 Rubber

4 oil

2 saltpeter

4 iron

5 horse

 

How the heck I could not control 2/3 of the surface is minor mystery. My intent is to play this out then go back to about 2000 and seek military victory. Any ideas on how to provoke a war?

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Paul in Saudi:

<snip>

 

.....Any ideas on how to provoke a war?

 

Break trade agreements, use spying, build some privateers and harass shipping, trade with a potential antagonist's rival powers, shift military forces to border cities and areas to ratchet up the tension, and use diplomacy to insult your target, it will instigate a war, might take about ten years, but it will work.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Andrew Jaremkow]

I have a question for the Civ3 experts:

 

I've been playing for a couple of months now, and all seems to be going well. In this particular game I sent the space-ship to Alpha Centauri in the early 1900s, and then I decided to play on just to see how things turned out. Anyway, after I'd discovered all the different technologies on the technology chart my scientists started researching something called "Future Technology 1". Unfortunately, when they completed it nothing happened. Now they're working on "Future Technology 2".

 

Is there any point in continuing to research these? Do they ever do anything?

[Ssnake]

Future Technologies add to the final score, but don't offer any value within the game itself (they don't enable new technologies/weapons/city improvements).

[Ssnake]

Paul, you do invest in city improvements and also in cultural achievements, right? That does contribute to the history rating. Do your scientists invent new technologies, or do you just steal them from your neighbors?

[Gabe]

My strategy for that game is to start with a mad scramble for new settlements. I expand as quickly as I can and make sure to link all my cities by road. The more people you have, the more money you have and the quicker research gets. Early expansion also means more opportunity to find scientific discoveries in barbarian settlements which save me a few research items.

 

The game usually run out of city names for me (start using "New" prefix) before I run into my first competitor. At which point I am way ahead and my competitors are in awe of my culture.

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Gabe:

My strategy for that game is to start with a mad scramble for new settlements. I expand as quickly as I can and make sure to link all my cities by road. The more people you have, the more money you have and the quicker research gets. Early expansion also means more opportunity to find scientific discoveries in barbarian settlements which save me a few research items.

 

The game usually run out of city names for me (start using "New" prefix) before I run into my first competitor. At which point I am way ahead and my competitors are in awe of my culture.

 

Isn't this the only way to play it though?

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas

[Ssnake]

Not necessarily. High settling speed does create a head start, a slower pace can however be compensated to a certain degree with good trade skills and the development of "key wonders". Or if the shape of the continents provides certain choke points where you manage to block the others.

 

A good road net always seems to be a valuable investment, though.

[Gabe]

It's really a quality versus quantity problem. What I mean is I place a premium on building settlers and workers over city improvements. I adjust the productivity of my cities to make as much food as possible so the population grows quickly, affording me a vast pool of workers and settlers.

 

When the population number becomes yellow, meaning growth as ceased, its time to thin out the population with more settlers and workers. It also make people happier that their city is not so crowed. I much rather do this than spend time building temples and colosseums.

 

I try to have roads already setup before settlers even get to a future site, or at least have workers waiting for them so that city get off to a fast start, and make me more settlers.

 

Sometime after 1,000AD I start focusing on quality.

[Ssnake]

Most wonders in fact require the excess productivity of big cities. There should at least be one or two cities that specialize on city improvements and, especially, wonders. Personally I prefer the "quality over quantity" path, but then you have to deal with settler invasions from other nations.

 

Again, as long as they don't start a war with me, I try the cultural assimilation. It probably is as costly to push all the cultural improvements as building armies - but it is so much more productive!

 

I must confess though that I tend to be behind in the technology race until the last decades of the 19th century, even if I pick a scientific nation to play. The perhaps biggest criticism of the game that I have is that the game mechanics all favor military aggression as the instrument of choice to win the game. Military leaders as the only means to rush a wonder emerge only if you let your troops fight often. This is an inherent bias favoring brute force over cultural, scientific, diplomatic, and/or economic strategies for global domination.

 

[Edited by Ssnake (28 May 2003).]

[Brasidas]

Originally posted by Ssnake:

Most wonders in fact require the excess productivity of big cities. There should at least be one or two cities that specialize on city improvements and, especially, wonders. Personally I prefer the "quality over quantity" path, but then you have to deal with settler invasions from other nations.

 

<snip>

 

I must confess though that I tend to be behind in the technology race until the last decades of the 19th century, even if I pick a scientific nation to play. The perhaps biggest criticism of the game that I have is that the game mechanics all favor military aggression as the instrument of choice to win the game. Military leaders as the only means to rush a wonder emerge only if you let your troops fight often. This is an inherent bias favoring brute force over cultural, scientific, diplomatic, and/or economic strategies for global domination.

 

Presently I am able to play the French and have imposed "Pax Franca" without a single shot being fired and am able to maintain a significant lead in technology and culture as well. I see that if I embark on a violent course of action, the whole world will follow me, and that can lead to unpredictable results. Therefore until the competing countries start making obvious alliances against me, it is wise to continue using my commercial clout and strategic materials as a hedge against such an anti-France alliance coalescing. Presently in the 1860s. It's not easy to do it peacefully (not one war so far) but it is interesting.

 

Regards,

 

Brasidas