The CIV3 FAQ: COMMON QUESTIONS/COMPLAINTS/ARGUMENTS and their ANSWERS - Page 9

Kloreep · May 17, 2004, 01:10

You need a connection between your capitol and the capitol of the civ you want a trade route with. This can be done with any combination of roads, harbors, and airports.

If there is any road connection between two cities, including through other cities, they are trade connected; so all you'll need to connect yourself to a civ whose capitol is also on the same continent is roads.

A harbor can connect with any other harbor over any water tiles you have the ability to cross - coast from the beginning of the game, sea with Astronomy, and Ocean with either Navigation or Magnetism. Note that harbors can be blockaded from accessing another harbor if units of a civ you are at war with block all possible paths to the other harbor. However, as the ocean is quite wide and vast, pretty much the only way for a civ to blockade a harbor of yours is to have units on the coast tiles adjacent to your city.

An airport can connect with any other airport on the map.

Again, any combination can be used to reach the other civ's capitol. You could have your capitol connected by road to a city with a harbor, with that city's harbor connecting with the harbor in another of your cities on another island that has an airport, and with that city's airport connecting with one of the other civ's cities that has an airport, and with that city connecting with that civ's capitol. Harbors and later Airports are generally in enough abundance that you don't need as long and complicated a chain as that, but it would work.

playshogi · May 31, 2004, 13:58

Will you be able to do gpt deals in the future if you buy a tech from an AI for gpt and that AI is eliminated by another AI before you finish paying?

Napalm Eddie · August 9, 2004, 00:08

Ok, I downloaded a scenario from this site. I want to play it. How do I do that? Civ 2 had a load scenario option, does Civ 3?

Rommel2D · August 9, 2004, 00:28

In Conquests V1.22, the option says "Civ-Content" on the main menu. Not sure if that's what it was called in the earlier versions, but it was there...

BruceTheStupid · August 31, 2004, 06:12

Duplicate post

BruceTheStupid · August 31, 2004, 06:21

I've been a die hard Civver for toooo many years, and have begun playing CIVIII again after a considerable lapse of time, because originally I was quite disillusioned with the game experience. However, I've come back to it and am getting rather engrossed (divorce number 2 on the way?

) although I'm still relatively green as regards the nuances. I've picked up numerous tips from the forums, but I have 3 queries about Culture/"culture-flipping", that I can't seem to find answers to (I have the original game, patch 1.29f);

Q1: If one factor in culture flipping is how many of the AI city's possible 21 "production" squares are within your cultural borders, does this mean that if this number is zero, the percentage chance of flipping is always 0% regardless of how much cultural superiority you have over the other Civ?

Q2: What happens when your city's cultural influence reaches the point where your borders would normally expand, but the border is already butting up against the border of another Civ? If your culture is superior to that of the other Civ, does their cultural border get pushed back? If so, this would seem to increase the odds of a culture flip, but I've never seen borders being pushed back, so I'm not sure this happens (in the real world, I would have thought this would be an appropriate effect).

Q3: Could someone explain when/if/under what conditions a captured Great Wonder begins to produce culture for your Civ, or does it never give you any additional culture points? I have just captured 2 cities with GW's and neither appear to be getting any culture points from them (There was an earlier post on this but I'm afraid I didn't understand the answer)

.

Napalm Eddie · August 31, 2004, 09:37

Yeah, I took a bit to warm to Civ 3 as well. Civ 2 was just so well made, I didn't want to change. But I did and I'm glad now. As for your questions, here's my best answers:

Q1: A city could be completely isolated from another civ and it could switch. I'm experianceing that in my current game. Very annoying. I don't know why some cities will switch even when they don't share a border. My solution to the problem: smash the "cultured" civ.

Q2: Your civ's borders can push another civ's back. As far as I know your culture has to be greater than theirs for such a thing to happen. It is possible!!!

Q3: Don't know about this one. It may never or it may just take many turns. I would assume they would produce culture when most of the people in the city are of your civ and not the enemies.

Hope that helps

BruceTheStupid · August 31, 2004, 12:16

I could understand isolated cities flipping if they had been captured previously and still had foreign citizens in them (I've had this happen), or if the other civ had planted spies and you experienced a flip because of propaganda (you'd have to go back to a pre-flip saved game and try exposing a spy to see if they had one in that city). However, if you definitely had isolated cities flip on you with no pressing borders, no overlapped city squares, no foreign citizens and no spies undertaking propaganda, I'd be interested to get confirmation on that.

Alternatively, post me a saved game from a couple of turns prior to when the flip happened, and I can have a look myself........

Solomwi · August 31, 2004, 12:52

1. A city has to have either foreign citizens or tiles under foreign control to flip. So, if the AI city has none of your citizens and no radius tiles in your borders, yes, no matter how superior your culture is, the chance of it flipping is zero.

2. The first priority is distance from the city, or "ring". If the contested square is in your second ring (outer ring of city radius), and the AI's first ring (next to the city), the AI city gets it, regardless of culture. If the tile is in both your second rings, or both your first rings, the city with the higher culture gets it. If the culture is equal, the older city gets it. So yes, your expansion can push AI borders back, but not to the point that you claim a tile that is closer to their city than yours and within their unimpeded cultural radius, by which I mean what their radius would be with no other cities around.

3. Captured GW's never give culture to a civ that didn't build them.

BruceTheStupid · August 31, 2004, 13:45

Excellent, Solomwi, thanks - from your certainty, I guess you have played the game more than Napalm Eddie and I.

One point of clarification though, you said that if the AI city has none of my citizens and no radius tiles in my borders, the chance of a flip is zero. What if I have one but not the other - do I still have a chance if I've got no citizens in their city, but radius overlap, or vice-versa?

Solomwi · August 31, 2004, 13:49

I've played once or twice.

All it takes is one or the other, foreign citizens or foreign tiles, not both. I wish I had the link handy, but either here or at CFC, there's a very handy flip calculator, which will give you the percentage chance of a particular city flipping in 1, 10 or 100 turns.

DrSpike · August 31, 2004, 14:17

To provide an example the chance of flipping in a city equidistant from both capitals with 3 squares under your control when you have twice as much culture and the city is insufficiently garrisoned and there is no riot/wltkd is 0.3% per turn.

Simple.

BruceTheStupid · August 31, 2004, 19:17

Quote:

Originally posted by Solomwi
either here or at CFC, there's a very handy flip calculator.....

For others, I don't think this is what Solomwi was referring to exactly, but it's useful for those with an inclination for complex algebra:-
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3faq.shtml#culture
(scroll to near the bottom of the page and look under the "Culture and related questions" heading, and "What is culture flipping (CF)?" question).

This equation purportedly came from Sorenson who wrote this section of the game code, and confirms basically what Solomwi was saying, in that you must have either foreigners in the city, or city radius tiles within your culture border (or both), otherwise your chance of flipping another city is always zero.

Napalm Eddie · August 31, 2004, 20:13

I bet my cities had a spy in them. Never experianced the AI using them at all. I've just got done playing through all the Conquests so this is my first full game in a long time.

Solomwi · August 31, 2004, 22:47

Bruce, that's not a bad primer on it, and I'd recommend everybody get familiar with, if not the actual formula, the variables and how they affect the formula result. This is the calculator thread I was speaking of.

Eddie, more likely they had foreign citizens in them than a spy.

Balazs · December 13, 2004, 13:17

Hi!

I have quite an interesting (or rather disturbing) problem:

I played a lot with C3C about a half year ago and it runned all OK. Then I returned playing Civ2, and now my Conquest didn't run! (I guess not because of civ2).
The autorun starts, the Atari intro runs, than instead of the menu there's a black screen. I think the program itself is running, I can hear the music and I can quit with 'ESC'. Reinstall doesn't help...

Has anybody had the same problem? Or rather the solution?

BruceTheStupid · December 13, 2004, 20:13

I have a similar problem with Civ2, where the windows load (I can see the window frame) but the rest of the screen is blank - the copyright CD check seems to freeze. I found that by mouse clicking on the blank screen it took me to the opening menus. My theory was that the CD is beginning to wear out (

gee, I don't know why, I've only played the game one or two thousand times!). I also had the same problem with another game, and the same solution works for it too.

Balazs · December 14, 2004, 13:18

You mean you downloaded it, or copy the original cd? Or buy it again...?

BruceTheStupid · December 15, 2004, 06:49

No, using the same game CD. My problem was just that the screen froze as the program checked for the presence of the CD. I had the pukka copyright CD in the drive, and clicking on the blank screen seemed to force the copyright check to complete (don't know why, and cared even less!)

Balazs · December 17, 2004, 10:19

Oh, I've misunderstood it

So you say with just one click it should run? Well, actually I tried it (I pushed every damned button, but no use...).

Anyway I'll try it again as soon as I get home.

(sorry for asking everything twice, it's because of my quite poor english

)

holy · December 18, 2004, 21:45

This may not be what was in view for this forum, but here goes:

The CivPedia clearly says that the Spaceship is built entirely in orbit, and then is launched from orbit. BUT, in the climactic moment of the game, in the premier movie segment, the completed Spaceship is shown launching from the surface!

No, I don't have an answer for this.

DrSpike · December 19, 2004, 06:42

The Civilopaedia says lots of things.

holy · December 20, 2004, 18:43

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike
The Civilopaedia says lots of things.

Yes, like it says that the F-15 (Air Force, land-based, years of service approx. mid-70's to present) was a replacement for the F-14 (Navy, carrier-based, years of service approx. mid-70's to present). I'm sure with minimal effort anyone with a little knowledge of history, the military, or any other subject could find dozens of examples. But I thought the spaceship thing was particularly interesting since it's such an important idea in the Civ world.

BruceTheStupid · December 21, 2004, 03:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Balazs
(.............it's because of my quite poor english

)

So, slang English words like "pukka" would not have helped in my last explanation (actually "pukka" is a Hindu word for "good", and the slang meaning is probably closer to "the real thing"). Sorry..............

Balazs · December 21, 2004, 07:50

Never mind, I like learning new words

Rommel2D · March 11, 2005, 17:18

Can we clarify the use of the word 'mod'?

I'd assumed this is short for modification. In order to distninguish between a single editor change and an entire .biq file, I've used 'mod' to refer to a single change, and 'scenario' to refer to a collection of them in a biq file.

But it seem most people refer to biq files as 'm(M)ods' and I often have to reread the context in such conversations to figure out what they mean. Is there another use I'm not aware of? The AU refers to their biq file as a mod, so it seems the academic community sees this differently...

Toby Rowe · February 8, 2006, 23:14

Or if playing an old game, when the intro begins press escape, takes you straight to the start screen and avoids any video problems in the section studio's waste most of their money.

A good game speaks for itsself and needs no intro.

Ideally, press for all games to be printed in vinyl, tape or on floppy, you only need hiccup for a CD to stop working- pah!

Toby :-) !

vmxa1 · February 8, 2006, 23:37

Vinyl? What device other than a turntable plays that? Anyway tape and floppies are far more likely to fail than a CD. I would not trust a floppy at all.

DrSpike · February 9, 2006, 04:01

Yeah, I don't know how we ever used them. Whenever I am forced to now I seem to have problems.

ginseng332 · April 25, 2006, 16:42

Civ3 vanilla newbie here.

I have read this entire thread and haven't seen anything related to my questions.

I have been playing with only my civ of choice, no opponents, to learn the game. I can't seem to get a victory; it seems the only way I can win is by building the SS. However, I can't ever get it to launch by pressing the LAUNCH button on the SS screen. Is it because in some cases I build the last component after 2050? Also, I think I recall something in this thread about needing Future Tech 8 to win the space race?

Any other ways to win while playing by one's self? It's pretty obvious to me that I can't win a culture race if I don't have anyone else to race against...

Sorry if this isn't posted in the right place.

Gracias!

-Gin

(Edit: I realized while starting another game last night that it may be due to the game thinking it's already over. When I move the initial settler and worker around once or twice, a pop-up displayys that tells me the game is over and gives me the option of quitting or 'playing 'couple more turns'.)