Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Two

[Velociryx]

Since our first thread was getting a bit full, I figured it was time to start a new one, and carry over some of the more enduring points from the first thread for our continued discussion. Distilled notes below:

The Factions – A closer analysis (Part One)

Before we can begin picking apart the factions (and that’s in the works as I type this….it’s just that the article wound up taking far longer to type than I had originally anticipated, and I wanted to get something out today), it would be insightful to take a close look at one of the key aspects that define Civs. Their tendencies, and the advantages of those tendencies. With that in mind, here’s a quick survey of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tendencies that define Civs:

Expansionist:
Starting Tech = Pottery (Granary)
Free Scout at game Start (2 Move/ 0 Attack Exploration Unit)
Goody Huts = More good stuff & no barbarians; can easily dominate the diplomatic scene via controlling early contacts

The usefulness of this trait is directly tied to world size and the amount of water you have selected for your planet. Small worlds, or worlds without much land will GREATLY disadvantage this trait’s strongest points. Conversely, the larger the planet/more land to be had, the stronger this trait becomes.

Keep in mind too, that this is an almost entirely early game trait. It’s only useful as long as there are huts to be “popped,” and land to be explored. After that, it becomes largely useless (save for the fact that you start with the tech for granaries, which essentially allows you to double your growth rates in cities, thus expand even faster!). The lesson here: Expansionist Civs live and die by their early game! A strong opener will set you up for an even stronger mid-game. Falter once during the Ancient era though, and you’ll spend the bulk of your time playing catch-up.

Militaristic:
Starting Tech = Warrior Code
Military units gain morale faster, higher chance of generating a leader, barracks are half price.

A good trait, but not a great one. Even with a militaristic civ, it’s frustratingly hard to generate leaders, and with even moderately active barbarians milling about, most civs will not have any great difficulty in training elite warriors of various stripes, thus limiting the impact of two of the strongest selling points of this trait.

Armies too, are a good bit weaker than they should be, further limiting the power of the Militaristic trait.

Still, it does have its advantages. Long-term, you WILL gain more Great Leaders than your non-militaristic rivals, which is essentially a free pass at wonder-building (and don’t bother to build a small wonder with a GL….save them for major wonder-building to steal a juicy wonder out from under a Civ that has been hard at work on it for half a century or more!). And Armies, while not the powerhouses we initially envisioned them to be, are still useful in certain situations, and the creation of your first army (actually, the army’s first victory) leads to minor wonders that cannot be created otherwise.

To a lesser degree than Expansionist Civs, Militarism’s usefulness is tied to world size in reverse. Cheaper barracks means faster barracks, and on Tiny maps, the several turns faster barracks construction can make or break your game. As world size increases, and with it, the distances between Civs, this ability begins to diminish in impact, though not nearly to the extent that Expansionistic Civs suffer under tiny maps.

In all, the Militaristic trait is a collection of decent abilities, none of which truly stand out, but when combined, make a sturdy-enough Civ Trait.

Commercial:
Starting Tech: Alphabet
Less Corruption in cities
1 Extra Gold in each 7+ City

A powerful trait by any definition, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, with Corruption such a killer to city productivity, ANY means of combating it is a good thing, and Civs with this trait come with a built-in advantage. Thus, you can expect to see Commercial Civs with larger, more productive empires on the whole. Larger Empires = More production centers. More production centers = more territory controlled, more access to resources, and more places that units can be built in a reasonable amount of time.

As you might expect then, the Commercial trait doesn’t really come into its own until the mid-game.

After all, when you’ve only got two or three cities, and they’re all pretty close together, corruption isn’t an issue at all! But, as your Empire matures and grows….as you expand and begin to flex your muscles a bit, you’ll find this trait moves from “helpful,” to “invaluable” in its overall value.

As an added benefit, the Commercial Civ starts with a VERY attractive tech, along the path toward Republic and the Great Library!! This fact simply cannot be overstated, and is hugely important in planning your Civ’s future!

Scientific:
Starting Tech: Bronze Working
Free Tech advance as you enter each new age, lab-enhancing infrastructure is half price.

By itself, the free tech is a NICE boon for this ability to have, but when added to the fact that everything that enhances your science (libraries, universities, research centers, etc) is half price for you, and you’ve got yourself an EXTREMELY attractive Civ trait! (mostly because there are actually quite a number of science-enhancing facilities!).

No matter how you look at it, “Scientific” is a tough act to follow, but they have yet one more ability that the casual player may not have thought of, and it relates to their starting tech.

No…the ability to build Spearmen from the get-go isn’t it! LOL…true, that’s a nice boon, but even MORE important is the fact that the Scientific Civs are exactly one tech out from Iron Working.

He who discovers where the iron deposits are first can play a resource denial type of game with regards to city placement and find himself in an absolutely unbeatable ancient-era position very quickly! (How hard do you suppose it would be to defeat your opponent KNOWING that you had a monopoly on your continent’s iron supply, or at the very least knowing that your opponent had no iron at all for the foreseeable future?).

The proximity to Iron Working is what makes the Scientific trait a true gem….the free tech and cheaper facilities are just a wonderful bonus!

Industrious:
Starting Tech: Masonry
Double-speed Workers
Extra production shields in large cities (1 in ea. 7+ City)

The production bonus is minor, and though it’s impact will be felt for the better part of the game, it is not this trait’s strongest selling point by any means.

First and foremost is the double-speed worker ability. This simply cannot be overstated! And the first time you have to clear out jungle tiles, you’ll be eternally grateful for your industrious workers! In the early game, those workers can really be a godsend, allowing for lighting quick road construction to speed your settlers on their way, and bulking up your shield counts at selected towns faster than you’d ever have believed possible! Worker speed alone would be reason enough to favor this Civ trait, but that’s not all you get!

Have a look at your starting tech, and the GREAT early game wonder that comes with it! (and with rapid expansion, your Civ can be working on this project well before the others even THINK about starting it!) No matter how you look at it, Industrious is
one of the strongest traits in the game!

*Note that the double speed worker effect also applies to captured workers....think about the implications of that for a moment....

Religious:
Starting Tech: Ceremonial Burial
Happiness-producing builds are half price, anarchy only lasts one turn.

This trait is all about control of your citizens. You get a LOT of city improvements for half off, and they ALL help keep the masses content. When you want to switch from one form of government to another, forget decades of turmoil. One measly turn, and you’re back in charge and churning along like nobody’s business.

Considering that most Civ’s will make 3-4 government switches during the course of a game, and that a city totally shuts down when unhappy citizens riot, and the advantages of this trait become clear.

It’s all about turn advantage here. Your cities will be among the happiest in the world, and switching government types is a piece of cake, enabling you to take advantage of mid-game political situations, declare war (switching to communism and using population to rush….well, anything you want), then switching back when your objectives have been reached, and reaping the benefits of instant Democracy!

And, considering how many happiness-enhancing buildings there are, you can all but guarantee that you’ll be one of the leading contenders in the Culture war!

Your starting tech is on a direct path to Monarchy, which is good….the more government types you have to choose from when you go to make a switch, the better for you, and playing to your natural strength in starting tech, you’re fairly well-suited to go ahead and beeline for Monarchy in any case.

The next installment of this piece will take a look at the various factions in the game, in terms of their Civ-Traits and Special Units, and offer up specific in-game strats for getting the most out of each.

Early Game Expansion – Keeping Pace with the AI
The AI expands brutally and relentlessly (REX-style, per Lawrence of Arabia!). If you don’t, you’ll find yourself rapidly falling behind in every meaningful category. To that end, the human player must become the T-REX of the REXers, meeting that fast expansion point for point, racing to choke points with settlers or warriors to limit the AI’s opportunities and stake out a largish tract of land for yourself.

And, as recently pointed out elsewhere on this thread, do not simply limit yourself to traditional “good city spots!” Late game resources can be found in rugged hills, jungles, and deserts, so if you want your fair share of late game resources, don’t be at all shy about founding cities in what would be almost universally regarded as lousy terrain. Consider them long-term investments.

So….if you’re looking to establish yourself as an Empire, how best to go about it? Obviously, founding cities in food rich tiles MUST be given top priority in the very early game (to fuel your further expansion into those “long-term investment” cites.

What follows then, are the current “best practices” to get yourself up and running in record time:

The Needs of the Empire
If you’re going to build an Empire, then you have to have at least the basics of a plan in order to proceed. What is it you want to accomplish? Survival, obviously, but then what? Are you going to play the conqueror’s game early? If so, then thinking in terms of where you want a barracks (troop training center) will be of relatively high importance to you. Got your eye on an Ancient-Era Wonder or two? Then you’d better start thinking now about where to found a city that can be set aside to begin work on it, and the sooner the better!

So….let us start by making a list of things your Empire will need to get in order to start really flourishing.

1) Settler Farms: You need two high food production cities if you want to keep pace with the AI’s expansion, and these should be founded with all speed, before anything else is given consideration. These are, after all, the cities that will drive the expansion of the rest of your Empire.

2) Worker Farm: In the early game, you can get by with just one of these….should also have good food production, but with a granary installed, pretty much any city can do this effectively. This city’s overriding goal is to crank out a minimum of one worker per city (more if you can afford it, by all means!), and start mapping out extensive road networks, irrigating tiles that will net you a Despotism food bonus for doing so, building mines and so on. This is absolutely essential to your long-term growth, and should probably be the third city on your list. Very high priority here!

3) Barracks/Wonder City: If you have the conqueror’s eye, then once you get four cities established, you’ll probably find yourself with sufficient mass to begin churning out troops everywhere and simply rush your nearest opponent, but if you’re looking at a more Hybrid stance, then one ancient era barracks town is probably sufficient. Such a town need not have stellar food production, but should get a granary in case pop-rushing troops becomes necessary, and the town should have access to numerous hill/mountain tiles for good early game shield production. In the case of a city you have earmarked for production of an Ancient Wonder, keep the granary and skip the barracks. In both cases, the city in question should get a temple, both for culture and population control, and if time permits, each city should produce a worker of its own, to be specifically assigned to improve terrain around that city. Garrisons are optional for the Wonder City, as they can, no doubt, be provided by some other town nearby, and of course, if the town in question is a troop center, then the garrison will be arriving shortly.

4) Luxury item(s)/Ancient Era Strategic Resources: Once you get the basics up and running, it’s time to start thinking about your mid-range future, and in the ancient era, that means Iron and Horses. Savvy trading and attention to the appropriate areas of the tech tree (The Wheel/Iron Working) will reveal the location of these ancient era resources to you, and these should get your immediate attention! The same goes for luxury items….any that are close by (especially if there’s a “patch” of 3+ tiles!) should be raced for! Not only are the luxuries themselves tradable to other Civs later in the game, but the individual tiles net you extra coins when worked, making them excellent indeed!

5) Long-term investments: See that patch of desert over yonder you’ve been sending settlers across to get to juicy city sites? Or that wide swath of hill country to the north? The jungle along your southern border? Once you get yourself established as outlined above, now it’s time to start thinking in terms of long-term investments. Cities founded in any of the places mentioned above won’t grow much during the early game. They won’t be paragons of productivity by any stretch of the imagination, but….they WILL increase your chances of securing those rare and valuable mid and late game strategic resources, and for that reason alone, they’re worth founding.

Pulling Double Duty
Of course, it goes without saying that if one of your early settler farms/worker farms/wonder-building towns also happens to be sitting astride luxuries or strategic resources, then so much the better for you! Anytime it is possible to do so, found your cities so that they can achieve multiple goals and serve multiple purposes for you! Doing so will bring a kind of efficiency to your Empire that you’ll be hard pressed to top.

Run your expansion along those lines, and on Monarch-level difficulty and below, you’ll find yourself keeping pace with the AI, if not surpassing him.

OoO

Resource Depletion and 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….

OoO

Blc’s Scouting Notes
During the early exploration stage of the game, stay on the mountains and hills with warriors (if you're not playing expansionist).

This makes your initial search for resources and huts much more efficent. I usually will try to send one warrior on every mountain I see, then send one after him in order to pick up the goodies.

OoO

GaH’s Worker Notes – Use ‘em in gangs!
i want to talk about workers. i think it's a better idea to have them move in stacks and do one improvement at a time. for example, 2 workers building together a mine and then a road will complete both tasks at the same time as one building building a mine while another is building a road. however in the first case you will be able to use the mine a couple of turns earlier than in the later case. that can make a noticable difference in a really tight situation. i go the same way when clearing jungles or forest, cause then you can see your work actually having an effect much sooner!

OoO

Vulture Culture
(Being a good Despot)
The basic premise here is that under Despotism, sacrificing one or more population points in order to strategically speed build critical early game infrastructure can put you light years ahead of the pack, either in terms of culture (hence the name), or in terms of building a massive early game army via the Despotic Whip. In either case, if your opponents are using the strategy and you are not, you will fall hopelessly behind. It’s one of those things that’s simply too powerful to ignore.

Specifically, each point of population can be sacrificed for 20 shields of production (40, the first time you do it), so bear that in mind when you decide what to rush and when. Also, keep in mind your civ’s native strengths when pop-rushing (the Babylonians, for example, have a HUGE advantage in this regard, being able to rush in most all cultural-enhancing stuff for half the normal price). In other words, in the early Middle Ages (if you are still expanding and have not yet dropped out of Despotism), it may be wiser to rush a Cathedral first—more expensive, but you get 40 shields for the first pop-sacrifice-- at a newly founded city, and then follow that up with a rush of a Library and Temple). In any case, no matter how you go about it, the fact is, it’s a powerful tool to put in your “Empire-Growing-Toolkit!”

OoO

The Culture Bomb/Palace Bouncing
Related to the above, if you’re looking to wage a “Cultural War” on a neighboring Civ, then the faster you can get your culture enhancing goodies installed in border towns, the better for you. With that in mind, when you target one or more towns you’d like to absorb, you NEED to immediately start thinking in terms of rushing in as many cultural improvements to towns that surround it, and you need to do it as quickly as possible. If possible (and especially if there are a number of rival Civ towns nearby, all fairly distant from that Civ’s capitol), begin thinking in terms of re-locating your capitol closer to the border, even if only for the short term. Proximity to the capitol is a big factor in deciding if/when a city joins the fold, and the loss you may take in higher corruption rates in your empire while the capitol is “out of position” are well worth it if it enables you to scarf up half a dozen rival cities without hurting your reputation or firing a shot. What’s more, if your culture is significantly higher than your neighbor’s, you can always re-locate the capitol once the cities are yours, and they’ll stay in your fold.

To speed this process, another thing that has been found to be helpful is to have any excess workers (or settlers produced from nearby towns) join the cities you’ve established along the borders. It seems that size matters after all….

Cultural Kudzu
The concept of the “Culture Bomb” applied Civ-Wide, causing the steady, outward crawl of your borders, and, if your capitol in anywhere in the vicinity, causing rival civ cities to simply melt into yours when borders begin to touch.

[Velociryx]

blc’s Culture Capture – A different twist!
I started my last game with my capital directly on the tip of a north/south penisula. The next civ was aproximately 20-25 squares directly north. My idea is to build 3-4 cities 12-15 squares north of my present position. Leaving a lot of room for the AI to come in and backfill. Push the culture on 3 of the cities and move my palace to the 4th most centrally located city.

My reasoning behind this is that the culture effects of the capital drop off with distance. If the AI has 2 or 3 cities with my capital between them and his, I should manage a cultural takeover of the cities. I need to move my Palace anyway and this might give me some free cities.

I would like to try to keep my Forbidden Palace in reserve if I find an unsettled island. Then I use lumberjacking and build a viable colony.
OoO

Combating Corruption
Despite the numerous complaints about how debilitating corruption is, there are a number of things you can do about it, such as….

1) Under Despotism, sacrifice your population to further your own glory. Doesn’t matter how bad the corruption is, you get the same benefit, production-wise.

2) Assign a worker or two to each town you’re looking to hurry production in and chop down trees. When you get the tech for it, replant and repeat. Ten shields a pop. Not terribly efficient, but if you need something built fast out on the fringes, it’s better than one shield a turn.

3) The old standby….cash. Use #2 above till you get a good start on whatever you’re building, and rush it with coin for the rest.

4) Troop shuffle. Build troops in towns with good production, shuffle them to the fringe and disband. Won’t help you with wonders, but….

Minimizing Corruption
Capitol/Forbidden Palace placement on a standard sized map:

Under the following grid layout, you'll find your empire to be VERY productive!!!

Key:
F = Forbidden Palace
P = Palace
_ = Nothing (space marker)
0 = City

0____0____0____0____0
0____0____0____0____0
0____F____0____P____0
0____0____0____0____0
0____0____0____0____0

OoO


Building Wonders
Long before the wonder you want becomes available, select a town and have it start building a Palace. Good thing here is that multiple towns can be “building the palace” at the same time, so you can set aside a few towns for this if you wanna.

Then, when you get the tech that has the wonder you’re looking to build, make the switch with no loss, and you’re well on your way! Note here, that this means your capitol is probably not the city you’ll be building the bulk of your wonders at, which is why I build my barracks there….while the cities all around the capitol are building and pre-building wonders, the capitol can churn out troops when it’s not building infrastructure, lending a bit of synergy to the growing empire.

Most of the Wonders are of only marginal value (though there ARE exceptions!), but build all you can anyway if you’re going for a cultural win. They all generate a bit of culture, and if you have them and the AI doesn’t, you’ll only further your culture lead.

OoO

Early game tech advances
Tech sucks in the early game….but there are a number of things you can do to improve your lot in life, and some of them are:

1) Explore like crazy!!! Not only do you stand a better chance of popping a goody hut and getting tech, but you’ll also be more likely to meet other civs and trade with them. If you get it in trade (or free), you don’t have to research it, thus, circumventing the problem entirely. And while we’re talking about trading tech with other civs, milk them for everything you can! Make as many separate transactions as possible if you have lots of information of value to them. Do they want tech? Make a trade! Maps? Another trade! Communication with other civs? Another trade still! Of course, when they have information YOU want, try to get as many goodies in a single deal as you can…. The thing is….they’re GOING to find out about the other civs anyway….you may as well make them pay you to do it! (note! If you’re planning on an ancient era-war, shoot for monarchy, otherwise, skip it, trade for those techs later, and go straight for Republic…again, depends on your game style).

2) Get the HELL away from Despotism! Monarchy isn’t much better from a research standpoint, but it IS better….make the switch (just milk Despotism for all its worth while you’re under it)!

3) Build roads! LOTS of roads! Why? Yeah, it looks tacky, but hey….roads = money and money can be used for research….but be smart about it…..after you’ve got a basic road network connecting all your towns and their special resources, haul a bunch of workers back toward the capitol and start road building there, where corruption is not an issue, and slowly work your way out. And while you’re at it, spike those mineral counts!

4) Build the Great Library!

Aeson’s Note on Workers in Capitols
Anytime an AI Civ has a worker in their capitol city you can trade for them. It also works the other way around, as you can give any worker in your capitol to the AI Civ of your choice. I think trading units would be a great addition to the game, but currently it only works with workers that I've noticed.

Bblue’s Strategy Notebook!
1) Early Tech Research

Although nothing is absolute but given a normal/good starting location, the first techs I reserch are the Wheel and Bronze/Iron working. Reasoning that these reveal the location of the Horse and Iron strategic resourses, this in turn allows me to concentrate my direction of empire expansion. This seems to be most useful when there are multiple directions of expansion and/or when you need one of these reasources from your civs UU (ie. Persians/Iroquis ... Indians; feathers, not dots) Just don't want to be left out in the cold without my ancient era UU.

2) Culture Warfare

Having a more peaceful/hybrid style of by I've found I can make tremedous gains (sometimes up to 3/4 of an Ai civ) with nothing more then cultural expansion. Key to this is the civ specific trait of Religious. This trait has quickly proven itself the most useful for my playstyle. Only fleeting glimpses of anarchy and cheap Temples/Cathedrals is a tremendous advantage. Unlike one of the more recent posts where they consider letting the AI civs backfill gaps in thier Civ then aquiring them through culture, my stadagy is more of an ever-marching wall of cultural assmilation.
I'll position city locations on my frontier as close as possible to neighboring civs cities (2 spaces if possible/ but a minimum of 3). Then rush build cheap temples, libraries, and later cathedrals.

Assuming you've managed to get an overall cultural advantage, which you should with cheap temples, my borders experience a steady, though not lightning fast expansion, doing nothing more then building things in cities that I'm going to build anyway.
Some more sutle points to this that I have found effective, is if an opponents city is 'culturaly pressured' from multiple cities, they defect faster, so I consentrate rush building around the oppisition's cities that form recesses into my borders. With the relegious trait, it is extremely nice the drop back to despotism for a turn or 2 so you can rush build with population instead of shields. Palace/Forgotten city placement also plays a important role, I tend to build my FP fairly early in the game and typicaly not a great distance from my Palace, this allows 2 things; fairly fast production of the FC, since corruption is not totally crippling near the Palace and that when I do move my Palace my older more developed cities don't take a huge courption hit. Palace moving is also somewhat key to this stradagy.. once the FP is in place move the Palace as near the advancing cultural front as feasable, thus keeping your new cities out of nightmare couruption and putting additional pressure on oppisition cities.

3) A Possible Use for Priveteers?

Stumbled across this in my last/current game and came in rather handy, granted this situation isn't that common, but this could be a handy tool in the CIV3 toolbox. One of my continential neighbors, the Aztecs, who I have/had a good relationship with and had no intention of fighting a long drawn out war with had only one supply of Saltpeter. with no saltpeter on the open market for trade this was thier only source. The deposit was on an island with one city and thier only navy was galleys. Thier city didn't have a harbor yet so it wasn't getting to thier mainland, so I had my spy...umm I mean 'tourist' visit the city and saw thay were building a harbor, I quickly built 4 Priveteers and proceeded to embark on a PEACETIME blockade of thier harbor for 30 turns or so (before a french armada of Galleons from half a world away sailed by and sunk them) this was 30 free turns for me to build up a gunpowdered military and... well... take care of the situation before it became a fair fight. Combine this with the 'cheat/bug' where you can stack other ships (ie. battleships) with the priveteer where the game allows units to attack the Priveteer's square, lets the battleship defend and no peace treadies are broken, and this becomes a viable stratagy even in late game. (although exploiting this 'bug' is up to the individual, personally I don't feel it was the way the game was intendend and will not use it unless I see the AI use it (not likely).)

OoO

[Velociryx]

DeafHawk’s Triple-Ring Plan
Build cities like this: Exactly 5 spaces away W, N, E, S. 4 spaces away, NW, NE, SW, SE. only like a ring of cities around my capital. It is similar to city placement grid plan with palace and FP described earlier in this thread that showed cities placed abstractly as squares of cities around your capital and FP. But in my opinion, better to think in a circle, rings not squares of cities. I had workers building roads running from capital to the first ring city sites built as soon as possible before the settlers are built, with two horsemen units stationed in capital for easy rapid deployment to protect settlers or workers as necessary defense agaomst pesky barbarians (or a hostile civ for that matter) call it my rapid response defense team. Then after first ring is built, I proceed to build a second ring around the first ring about 4 spaces away, if possible. 3 spaces if i have to if the other civs are too close. In no time I had 18 cities fairly close to my captial, not too bad but I did not get my second ring fully completed. The other civs grabbed seven sities I wanted to build cities as part of the second ring there oh well, nothing that a little military solution can take care later. I think I could be much better.

I need to work on my REX strategies and work around having no luxury. There was absolutely no luxuries or iron to have in the whole midwest! Only horses to be had. About having no luxury I did not realize how that really got to hurt on reagant level. If you use the whip to force build ganaries it is not possible without temples to have past size two without having third citizen become entertainer and you still will have to use two garrisons to keep size two cities full productive. You would have to build temple and two garrisons to have size three cities full productive.

The citizens have a long memory! I used the whip and because of that, I had to build second garrison and a temple beside a ganary and I believe this slowed me down. Maybe it was just better not to use the whip and so I do not have to build second garrison and temple and I can have size three cities churn out the settlers fast enough for the land grab race for my second ring area. I did have the cattles and wheats and rivers to irrigate, plenty of them indeed, to help me. Another thing I think I should have was to build less workers as I am playing an industrious civ and my workers build more roads faster hence needing less workers at start.

But anyways this brings me to think of a planning theory I will call the deafhawk triple-ring plan to propose as an aid to visualize what you want to do with city placements and whether you should trouble to keep your conquests or just raze or sell them.

This is an optimizing plan to use prime circle of land ( area size depending on factors determining extent of corruption) near your capital best you can to place the most possible potiental productive cities in that area and a long-term defense plan. This is only good I guess for larger maps if you are lucky enough to start in a central location in a huge landmass with no other civilizations too close by and if land area is relatively flat ( not too many mountains) you can have unbelievable a lot of productive cities ( read: cities that actually produce some commerce and shields as opposed to fully corrupted cities) than you would ever think is possible with just the palace and not the FP built yet if you expand aggressive like I did, hopefully with help of luxuries! You can squeeze 8 cities or more five squares or less from your capital in a ring around it and having roads connecting capitial to ring cities so you can station your horsemen in capital for rapid response defense. These will be your good productive cities. They will be churning those needed workers, military units, and settlers for the second ring of cities. You use those productive cities to build the second ring, 3 or 4 or 5 squares if you can get, just grab those area 10 to 12 squares from your capital and make sure you use close to every square 10-12 squares from your capital. Those second ring cities would not be much good as producting cities as due to corruption problems. But they are potiental good or decent producers later on when you tackle the corruption problem .

For this purpose of this rant I am using this term to refer in relation to corruption, the ablity to produce without waste commerce and shields, and not general infrastructure) You can have like 24 cities nearly optimal spaced relatively close to your capital, 8 cities in the first ring plus capital already good producers and about 15 cites potiental decent producers (potiental to be realized later). And while you are racing to settle the first ring then the second ring area, you should be researching straight as possible to code of laws for courthouses and then on to republic. By this I mean when you get them road connected to your capital, courthouses in them and you switch to republic, presto, you have 15 extra good or decent productive cities. And WLKD helps too. 25 ( or more depends how you space them?) productive cities to churn all those military units eh?

This is the general REX plan and the point you step out of the land grab is when you get the second ring of cities built. At this point you should be preparing for the republic switch, that means building courthouses, temples, and ganaries and getting your cities big as possible as republic works best when the cities are big. Use the whip liberally and switch only after you got those improvements in place and after that, wait until cities grow back to decent sizes if they are not already. Your workers should be emphasizing on irrigating any squares that get you more than two food and building those roads then mines lastly. Under depotism your food growth is the real producer not shields if you use the whip effectively and that is especially true for the second ring cities with their corruption problems.

After you are done with all that, switch to republic and presto! you have nice 25 productive cities, not very bad thing to have in civ 3! Oh, , in any time during the expansion phase or preparation phase you have to wage war ( pray a short war and you survive!) and you conquest some cities or you culturally assimalite cities. Do keep the cities in the second ring only if they are good placed to use effectively the second ring area squares ( like 8-12 squares from capital) Remember in this plan you would want to space to squeeze most potiental productive cities possible in that area (but not squeeze too much of course). If they do not, raze or starve and build a new city instead. If the acquired cities are in the third ring (liek more than 12 but not much as more than 16 from capital) you keep. Why? they probably will be worthless ever as productive cities unless you build the FP near them and I do not recommend that. Yes, but you keep them as "buffer" cities.

You do not build any improvements except for barracks and walls and just set those cities on wealth and forget about them and do not bother to improve the land excpet for military roads. The third ring cities are to be your fodder cities, merely cities with walls and barracks and some place to station your armies. In other words, a ring of defense, your frontline defense. Remember the plan assumes a huge landmass whereas you are in the middle and surrounded by potiental hostile civs, meaning no chokepoints to block out civs, and making defense much harder if you get ganged on. So you need kind of a early warning system. The cities are better than a lot of fortesses and your troops are more concrenated and more effective and if you get nationalism you can take advantage of the third-ring population for draft and not have to resort to draft from your productive cities. IF you ever get your third ring cities up and you are attacked and you lose, no biggie. No major blows. you fall back to your real cites and counterattack later. That is for the third ring cities. Any cities you acquire that are not of the triple rings area you just sell or raze unless of course they are close to resources you need.

Of course, this is all abstract, and have yet to be implemented in real practice, and only in certain maps and situtations. But modifications and variations can be derived from the general idea. This plan is based on assumption on standard maps ignoring FP for now, you have a limited range from your capital where cities within the range can decently produce (whatever in your judgement) in republic with courthouses and that cities beyond this range will not be any good use as producers. I do not have an idea how far this range extends yet. Maybe someone would figure that out. And this range creates a limited circle area of land that you should focus on how to better use this area for your city placements and get them set up quickly. And that in peaceful or relatively peaceful race of empire-building, the civ that focus only on and finds the best use possible for that limited area and set up their potiental producers soon as possible not just their actual producers and try to realize the potiental as quickly as possible will be way ahead of the others that do not.

OoO


Battle Strategies
Stiel’s Capitol Isolation Theory

-Determine where rival capitol is (found embassy & RoP agreement)
-Look to see if you can reach it with units in one turn
-Make plenty of units to attack the capital

When you have an army of sufficient size,
- Attack all roads that are directly connected to the capitol!

Why?
1. The rival civ won’t acquire strategic resources (cannot build modern units any more)
2. The rival civ won’t acquire luxury resources (which will cause civil disorder in whole civ)

But keep in mind that you do not want to actually TAKE the capitol! Doing so will simply cause them to relocate it and will have the effect of enabling them to once again build modern units.

If there is a HARBOR in the city destroy it!
If there is a AIRPORT in the city destroy it!

OoO

gnomos’ Worker Worm
I've been having a blast with the french on chief level with a huge map, in early industrial ages.

The cavalry unit roxors, especially when backed up with about 20 workers (you need to be able to build railroads too).

The 3 movement on cavalry is key, you need to be able to rush through the culture zone and be able to attack in the same turn. You blitz a city, and capture any nearby workers. Raze the city if you don't have enough troops to properly garison it to quell resistors. Then quickly build a rail line through your newly conquered territory, right up to the far side (captured workers help add to your labor force). You leave behind a trail of workers on each tile. Then you motor the next wave of cavalry down the rail line, charge the next city, and conquer it. Once you punch through the defensive perimeter, the going gets really easy. The occasional amphibious landing can help crack any older cities with larger culture radiuses. Generally, you need about 4-5 cavalry for each city you want to conquer, the enemy civs need their own road network because your workers have 1 movement, and you need enough workers to lay track (french workers make great rail builders). If you do this right, you can take 15+ cities in one turn, leaving behind a "worm" of workers on your new rail line. After your cavalry have attacked, they often still have movement points left; when you've exhausted all your units you can then slide them along your new railrod to garrison the cities you have captured and decided to keep.
OoO


Brother Kinjy’s Civ-Paralyzation Plan
If you find yourself positioned such that there is a narrows between you and a rival civ, you can easily thwart the AI's expansion, on all but Diety levels.

1) Build up a fair number of military units near the narrows.

2) Let the rival civ establish a city at or near the narrows.

3) Rush in and capture the city.

4) Raze the city to the ground.

5) Pull back your units.

6) Wait a short while, usually less than 10 turns and watch the rival civ establish another city at the same spot.

7) Repeat steps 3 through 6.

For some reason, the AI will invariably attempt to keep settling the same spot, to detriment of their expansion elsewhere.
OoO

[Velociryx]

Vel’s RoP Blitz
This will wreck your reputation with all other civs in the game, so think carefully before committing to it….you’ll be regarded as a total bastard and global pariah, but….sometimes you just gotta….you know?

1) Contact said Civ and trade luxury items and cash for a Right of Passage agreement, giving you access to his roads/rails (already have your army en route by the way...and preferably just off the coast!)

2) Land your troops and use his own rail system to position your forces exactly where you want them.

3) When you're ready, launch the attack! With enough force, you can take the Civ out in a single turn, or at least grab all his key cities and cut the roads and rails to them to prevent a swift counterstrike.
OoO

Notes from Gatamelata’s War Journal
I have some experiences to share in response to some of the
comments I've read here. Some background: I've been playing
the huge earth map that shipped with the game on Regent with
16 civs. I played one with 8 civs, but the rush of dealing
with 16 potential opponents - I haven't found anything yet
that beats it.


Making War:

I haven't thought of warfare in terms of ancient vs. modern. Mostly
I see warfare as an opportunity that may arise. Depending on the
flow of the game, who I've talked to, whether contact has been
made between the New and Old Worlds, etc, there are usually periods
in my games where many of my cities have all of the possible
improvements. During those times, I prepare for war by pumping
out a nice balance of defensive and offensive/support units.
Once I have a surplus of units, I take stock: are there any
inviting targets nearby? Are there any luxuries outside my borders
that I don't yet have, and that I can reasonably expect to hold
once I've taken them? Or wonders? Or chokepoints? Especially
chokepoints, since it is so much easier in this game than in
SMAC to manipulate the flow of the game by brokering between AI
civs.

If there are such valuables to be had, then I try to take a page
from the computer AI's book: the sudden, surgical strike. Drago
Sinio was exactly right on this point - you almost always, no
matter your government, want to avoid a protracted war. Know
your objectives, know your capabilities and limitations, and know
when you're beaten! Finally, take stock of the enemy and try to
get a good idea of what it will take to make him want peace, and
factor that into your objectives. Assemble a sufficient (overwhelming, if possible)
force just inside your borders nearest to your objective, then
strike without warning. Once your objectives have been taken,
offer peace, fortify, consolidate, and connect it via road to
your empire. You may have to offer gifts in order to secure
peace, but hopefully not - you should have hit the AI hard
enough that he doesn't want to fight you again.

It is very important to have an exit strategy when you plan a
war. If you just attack, take a small chunk of his empire and
sit on it, then he will strike back hard and where you least
expect it. Trust me, the AI won't waste troops on futile
counter-attacks. Once I had Joan on the ropes (4 cities left in
the Modern Era) and she was still sending units into my interior through our
neighbors to disrupt my infrastructure. If this kind of surgical
strike is executed well, it can be over in one turn, which leaves
no opportunity for counter-attack.

Any of this can happen in any of the eras, in my experience. It's
been very likely to
happen in the Ancient era, when expansion is on the brain and
one can reasonably expect to be able to take up to 5 cities from
an enemy civ. I've also seen this kind of opportunity come up
in late Medieval/early Industrial eras. I find that quite a few
mid-game conflicts are fought with knights, cavalry, pikemen
and musketeers. During the modern age, I am usually kept hopping
upgrading my obsolete units, filling out my towns with all of the
by now rapidly-appearing city improvements, and cleaning up
whatever wonders I can grab.

OoO

Resource denial:

Heh, this was an area the AI excelled at. When the Zulus conned
the Persians into attacking me, the first thing Persia did was
sever my mesopotamian incense-gathering cities from the rest of
my empire, throwing many of my cities into unrest. It works well
the other way around, too. If you can deny an enemy essential
luxuries, it can be more crippling than denying strategic
resources. I was able to precede my aforementioned attack on
France by severing her wine and incense supplies - that threw
most of her empire into disorder. Joan eventually regained control
of her cities, but at what cost? Either she burned quite a bit
of cash generating the requisite improvements, or she made some
specialists. Either way, her productive capacity was significantly
reduced, and she never recovered. While she struggled to contain
rebellion, I swept into her heartland and smashed her standing
army. Since she was unable to field troops, and since her
outlying cities took advantage of the unrest to defect to my
side, there was little she could do to prevent France's demotion
to the level of a third-rate power. This is the power of Civ3's resource system - it is now
possible to attack all of the cities in an entire empire at once in a way that I
haven't seen since the days of Civ2 and later-version Civ, where
taking an enemy's capital could split his empire.

OoO
Inca’s Battle Notebook
On Armies:

It is extremely important to remember that the principle of Combined Arms must be applied to Armies just as it is to other units. To achieve their true potential, Armies must be supported minimally by Bombardment units and must not be used without those critical defense-crushing members when sacking a city. An Army is not intended to achieve victory if improperly used! An Army is simply a very high-powered attacking unit and if you recklessly throw it against a fortified position, it will break apart. Additionally, as the paramount high-power attacking unit in the games, Armies have best served me in ripping a pathway into the heart of an enemy so that my other supporting units can rush in and secure resources, destroy infrastructure, raze cities, etc. It is very satisfying to fire the fields of my enemy and destroy 1000s of years of their development in a matter of a few turns.

On Combat Concepts:

I have seen many complaints about stone age warriors defeating mounted Knights. If people did not use the labels of Archer/Tank/Cavalry to personify/describe the units and instead viewed them in the cold mathematical world of probability and statistics as 1.2.1 or 4.3.3 units, then combat would be viewed in a much more pleasing and rational manner. The act of rendering Civ3 combat into the picture of a stone age warrior with a spear facing a mounted charge of armored Knight gives a much different expected outcome than the math indicates. Combat = Math = Probability. People win the lottery all the time and statistically this is no different than some of the less-probable outcomes that arise from Civ3 combat. Think like the combat engine if you want to keep some sanity.

All Wars Must Have Objectives:

Remember that all wars have finite objectives and one must plan accordingly for the successful and unsuccessful conclusion of wars. Securing resources, denial of resources (my personal favorite), Wonder acquisition, genocide (aka no more cultural defections!). All these must be clearly defined to avoid an over-extension of your capabilities. Waging war for no good reason only leads to your civ being behind in tech/wealth/culture. Many posts that I have seen throughout the forum cite specific targets and objectives and I hope that the better combat style of the AI results in better player strategy for wars.

On Pillaging:

If you have little likelihood of keeping a town, and a successful siege is equally unobtainable, do not forget the power of pillaging! There is no real reason to attempt to capture a fortified, walled city in the hills when you can pillage its mines, destroy its roads, cut off its access to vital resources and luxuries and move on to a more obtainable objective (or just more pillaging!). Crippling the production capabilities of a town is often better than needlessly expending valuable units attempting to capture it. The AI no longer wars against solidly fortified and garrisoned targets and one should follow their lead in this matter. Imagine if they did this more actively to you! It takes many, many years even after the war officially ended before you would be back at pre-war production levels. That in itself should be a good indication that a war who's sole purpose is to destroy unprotected infrastructure can cripple the long-term productivity and advancement of a once powerful civ. Even better, you can accomplish this with more obsolete units and you never have to engage the enemy on it's terms. If they wish to stop the firing of their fields, they must move to engage you!

OoO

[Velociryx]

Romantic vs. Scientific Gamers – Brushing against the edges of Metagame in Civ3

Okay, since I've been reading a lot of the threads over in the general section, it's got me thinking about something.

In the broadest sense of the word, you can break gamers down into two camps. You've got your scientific gamers and your romantic gamers.

Scientific gamers are all about the numbers. They want to know what the specific attack and defense numbers are and WHY. They want to change them if they don't suit (see the NUMEROUS threads in the general section re: combat). These guys are all about realism. Unfortunately, they'll probably find Civ3 not much to their liking. The reason for that is that Civ is not a wargame in the classic sense (certainly not in the sense of Panzer Blitz or Wester Theater). The kinds of detail in combat they're looking for are staples of the wargame genre, but have NEVER been implemented with great success in 4x games.

Why?

Mostly, because 4x games MUST, by their definition abstract combat in order to devote time to what the game is really about....that is, growing an empire!

Romantic gamers exist at the other end of the spectrum....they're the ones who see past the abstracted combat at what's going on behind the scenes. They're the ones who recognize that it's not "really" a spearman that just beat that tank, but an "ill-equipped partisan rebel" who somehow....somehow carried the day.

History is full of wildly romantic tales like that, and they tend to be our favorite stories.

From Thermopalye to the Russian withdrawl of Afghanistan, it sticks in our minds BIG TIME when the underdog pulls one out on the big dog.

And, IMO, since the game we're now playing represents the whole sweep of history, it's important that the combat system leave room for events like this.

Frustrating as it is when it happens to me, that's what history is all about....

OoO
Essay on Local Geography as it affects your game
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.
OoO

Combined Arms Essay
Okay….there have been a TON of threads about how twisted, bent, and broken the current Civ3 combat system is. There have even been some well-presented arguments about how and why to change it.

I’ll not be discussing any of that in my post today for two reasons. First, because that particular horse has been thoroughly beaten TO DEATH in the Civ3 General section and I’d rather not rehash it here, and second, because it doesn’t matter in terms of the game we’re playing AT THIS MOMENT. Like it or not, the combat system in Civ3 right now is…well…the combat system in Civ3, and if we’re going to talk strategy, then we need to talk about it in terms of what IS, rather than what should be in one group or another’s opinion.

So….yes. There have been reliable reports of skewed combat results. I’ve seen a scant handful of them myself, and if you’re looking for ways to minimize, or even eliminate those skewed results from your game, then keep reading.

There are those who argue that late game units are not powerful enough in relation to their ancient era counterparts, and in fact, Soren Johnson, one of the programmers on staff at the company (and the one who brought you that truly WICKED AI!) said as much in a recent chat. Design decision, pure and simple.

So yes…in terms of raw firepower, modern units are not overwhelmingly powerful vs. their older counterparts, but I contend that raw firepower only tells part of the story, and to that end, let’s take a look at one oft-cited example of combat to find out more about that.

Da Big Matchup
Cavalry vs. Longbowman

Stats (and I’m at work, so if this isn’t exact, someone lemme know and I’ll correct it)
6-3-3 vs. 4-1-1

Results:
Cavalry attacks Longbowman – Regardless of the terrain, it is almost inconceivable that the Cavalry unit will lose. You MIGHT see a loss if the Longbow unit was fortified in a town on a hill (are those bonuses cumulative?), behind a Wall, and if the Longbowman was Elite and the Cavalry a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, but even then, my money would be on the Cavalry. The fact is, the Longbowman is pretty much toasted.

Longbowman attacks Cavalry – On open terrain, the Longbowman will, more often than not, DRIVE THE CAV UNIT OFF. Note that the Longbowman will not kill the Cavalry unit, and this is the telling point. The best that the more primitive unit can hope to do is to simply weaken the Cavalry unit and drive him away. Unless the field commander OF the Cavalry unit chooses to fortify, the Cavalry unit CANNOT LOSE this fight, even if on the receiving end of this attack! Of course, in hilly/mountainous terrain, a fortified cavalry may be able to fend off the assault, but even still…why run the risk of hunkering down when one of the main strengths of a Cav. Unit is its mobility?

I submit to you a few points for consideration regarding the match-up mentioned above:

1) Under the current combat system, technological advances do not bring overwhelming firepower to the more advanced society, but they DO provide combat advantages that are less obvious to the eye, including an ever-widening array of specialized units.

2) Proper use of these units and their abilities will result in outdated armies not being able to significantly harm your forces, while simply moving your units “in the general direction of” your opponent in the same fashion as Civ2 AI will result (predictably!) in the case of a Longbowman killing a defending Cavalry. The point is that a good general will never allow the Cavalry into that position to begin with.

3) The biggest, most telling advantage that modern armies have over their older counterparts is two-fold. First, mobility. A modern army can hit harder AND pull back from an older army. Thus, the out-dated army finds itself continually “just out of reach” and unable to effectively counterattack. Second, combined arms, and by this I mean, bombardment from land, sea, AND air, fast (3 move) units, capable of slipping in and taking out the enemy stack’s best defender and then retreating back to a point of cover and safety (and without the enemy stack’s best defender, how likely is it that they’ll continue to advance??? And if they do, are there any doubts as to what the outcome will be?), and stout short range attackers to grapple with units as they close, while the mobile units guard the flanks and hit targets of opportunity.

The above three points can be applied to ANY BATTLE IN THE GAME, and doing so will result in your almost never having “silly” combat results. True, planes can’t sink ships in this game, but they CAN reduce them to a single HP. And doing so WILL make your naval battles easier, no?

Likewise, bombing the $hit out of a size 14 city (metropolis defense bonus) to reduce it to size 6 before the attack and weaken the defenders inside will make it easier on your attacking forces….probably easy enough that you’ll not take any losses.

Of course there are times when you hit the wrong button or when situations demand that you use a unit for something other than its intended purpose (Cavalry being the only defenders in a hotly contested city). But again, if you’re a good commander, you’ll have already made plans to relieve and reinforce the unit(s) in question, and they won’t spend too long in the hotseat.

On the other hand, if you have NOT made any contingencies….well….how good a commander are you? At that point, I would submit that it’s not the combat system that’s broken at all….

Anyway, all that to say that combined arms are amazingly powerful things, and available in limited form as far back as the ancient era (Catapult, Horsemen, Swordsmen). USE THEM unless you just like losing lots of men in battle!

Just like in SMAC, yes, you can construct a linear attack force (all swordsmen, for example), and you WILL win lots of battles, but….the first time your swordsmen get picked to death by a zillion Iroquois Mounted Warriors, backed up by strategically placed catapults guarded by fortified spearmen, and never even get to attack will be the LAST time you design such a one-dimensional attack force!

Tech advances DO bring combat benefits into the game. Not the “run over all opposition” type that many seem to be looking for, but the advantages ARE, in fact, there. All that remains is to….well….use them.

EmarkM’s response to the essay
No combined arms strategy is complete without thinking of how you'll take out enemy resources. Here's a late game example. Once tanks come on line your un-updatable cavalry becomes outmoded, but you often have a ton of them left around. It's pure folly throwing them against fortified infantry behind a city wall--that's what tanks are for. But, I've been using them as pillaging units and they're fantastic.

Pillaging was something I almost never did in Civ2, since you could use enemy roads. Why take them out when you can take them over? Pillaging takes a whole new meaning in Civ3 when you can't use their roads and roads must connect resources. While your combined arms of tanks, artillery and navy are pounding their city, send the masses of now "useless" cavalry to pillage their roads and improvements. Especially access to resources. Their 3 movement is perfect for this sort of behind the lines action. Use transports to get them deep in enemy territory for guerilla activity.

Sure, bombers can accomplish the same thing, but you often have a lot more cavalry sitting around garrisoned doing nothing than you have bombers online. Since cavalry is rather expendable at this point anyway, it's worth it if a bunch get killed if you can take out access to their rubber to prevent infantry, oil to prevent tanks, or luxuries to cause unrest. If you can, take out all roads surrounding their capital and they're really screwed. I found the enemy concentrating so much on defending their cities that I was able to destroy whole swaths of improvements almost completely unmolested using cavalry deep behind enemy lines.

It's all part of a real PLAN you must make to win, as opposed to just cranking out the Civ2 Howitzers endlessly and just mowing down the opposition. You have to actually sit there for a few minutes at the start of your turn and plan where to cut their roads, how to get your units there, etc. Something you rarely did in the mindless tank/howitzer rushes of civ2.

Comrade Tribune’s Response
I have noticed at least two strange things:

1) Industrial Era Longbowmen

You can stack Longbows with Rifles, and use the Longbows for attack. Why? Because Longbows are much cheaper, and have the same AV. So Musketmen become obsolete long before those timeless Longbows. Why did no one tell that to Napoleon and General Grant?

The problem is that Muskets and Rifles are very expensive, and for their price they should both have a slightly higher AV.

2) FLASH

(Forced Labour Rush): Under Despotism, you can mass-produce Horsemen (or, even worse, Mounted Warriors) with Forced Labour, and rush everybody else for a short, pointless game with the highest possible score.

What´s broken here? I think it´s not the Horsies. It´s a) Forced Labour, and b) Walls.

a) Forced Labour should cause Unhappiness. But, afaIk, there is, unlike in CivII, no 'Ultra-Unhappiness'. You should have, say, 4 unhappy people, but if, after Forced Labour, only one guy is left in your town, only one will be unhappy. One soldier is enough to keep him in line. I believe they didn´t intend that, it´s a bug, plain and simple.

b) Walls/Cities give now only +50% DV. That´s not enough. That´s the second reason why FLASH works. Walls should stop Horsies. In real life, they stopped nearly everything. Or Hannibal would have conquered Rome.

[Velociryx]

Army Notes
Armies. Most people don’t care for them, but I think we’ve been looking at it in the wrong way/not thinking about exactly what they CAN accomplish. I’ve been experimenting with that, and I’ve gained a whole new respect for armies.

First, consider that each unit fights till it gets till its last HP, and then withdraws and a fresh unit comes up. Thus, an early game army consisting of Swordsmen has the MAJOR benefit of cavalry (ie – retreats when badly injured, increasing survivability), and has three times more HP than anything it’s going to normally come up against.

Which means….

Armies can’t blitz, so don’t bother putting blitz-troops IN an army. They’re more useful to you separate!

Armies shine the brightest when composed of grunts. Infantry. Ground pounders.

An army consisting of three different units MAY be useful in a specialized situation or two, but my experimentation has revealed that a homogenous army does better than a mixed, and you’re gonna LOVE what an army of Longbowmen can do during a Middle Age assault on a town, or an army of Mechanized Infantry can do for you defensively in the modern era.

It’s a given that in every battle, the computer presents his best defender, so present your best attacker! Let your army lead the charge against those city walls and see if the sturdy spearman can chew through 15 points worth of pissed off swordsman….

Defensively, there’s no unit that the computer can bring to bear on you that’ll top a full-strength army, so if you’ve just taken a city and want to use it as a forward base. Plop an army in it and laugh as he tries to take it.

Hell, plop two down, either in the city or in mountain forts approaching it, and just let him come (and by the way, tell him to bring friends….LOTS of friends…he’ll need them!).

So…all that to say that I have changed my mind about Armies. No, they’re not going to ever replace the standard battle group….too tough to get, and maybe that’s for the best, because my experimentation with them has revealed them to be a lot more useful than I first gave them credit for.
OoO
More Observations From Gatamelata’s Notebooks
AI Behavior:

I have to add my voice to the chorus of praise for the AI. At first I was puzzled by some people who claim that the AI is impossibly aggressive, and others who said that it is completely docile. What's more, I've noticed both behaviors in my games. I studied the phenomenon some, and this is what I came up with.

It seems that the AI is strongly influenced by its early experiences. In games where I refused to share world maps, refused to trade technology, and was otherwise completely polite and well-behaved, the AI typically turned into a group of raging tyrants. On the other hand, when I traded frequently and yet was opportunistic and occasionally aggressive, these were the games where I could see 5700 years of peace. At this point it seems that if the player becomes the bad apple in the early trading barrel, to use a clumsy metaphor, it'll spoil the whole bunch relatively quickly.

The AI seems to place a large stake in willingness to trade. You might notice that sometimes a refusal to trade will even change a rival's attitude an entire step downward; say, from Polite to Cautious. So here are a few tips on forestalling AI aggression via trading:

1) If the AI wants to trade, do it! This doesn't mean you should accept those ridiculous late-game requests for mutual protection, right of passage, and 108 gold per turn. But trade something. My usual placation is just a token trade, such as territory maps, or even just a small gift of gold. Making such little gestures seems to keep the AI thinking of you as a friendly and viable trading partner.

2) If you see the AI getting ready for one of its ambush extortion gigs, where it builds up a huge military, requests a lopsided trade, then either goes to war when you refuse or sneak-attacks you the next turn, then you can still avoid the attack. When you see the piles of infantry gather just outside your border, and Alexander rings to ask for Sanitation, Flight and Radio in exchange for his World Map, offer a counter-proposal. Then do everything you can to arrange an alternate deal that involves per-turn payment. This seems to have two effects: first, the AI still regards you as a good trading partner, and second, the AI seems less likely to attack somebody who still owes them a balance of gold, or who is providing them with crucial spices.

3) Mutual protection pacts are a good way to keep a potential aggressor away. Find the biggest bully, and sign one with him. That way he's less inclined to attack you, and when war does break out, chances are you're on the winning side.

Finally, when your carefully-balanced millennia-long peace finally breaks down, there are a few things you can do. First, try to stay out of it if you can. Everybody else at war means that you've got a bunch of turns of production that they don't, and it means you're gaining ground in the Big Race. Unfortunately there is often a tangled web of mutual protection pacts in these games, and by the time somebody decides to be the turd in the punch bowl (so to speak) and plunge the world into global war, you may well be involved in one of these pacts. If so, then take any extra turns between the outbreak of hostilities and your own involuntary involvement to fortify your borders. Chances are you'll be fighting off two to seven civilizations, depending on world size and how the pacts shake out. Be prepared to lose some ground and keep your eyes on the long term goal - survival. You may even be lucky enough to be in a position that lets you do some serious land-grabbing right now. But be careful, and be ready to set aside some of your new cities as appeasement. Finally, keep in mind that it's usually pretty easy to sign a peace treaty during these conflicts. Not even the AI wants to fight several people at a time. If the pact that got you into the mess in the first place has expired, you can usually extricate yourself, and it pays to do this. I have found that the last couple of civs still engaged in the global war tend to stay in it much longer, for a couple of probable reasons: first, they've usually either gained or lost something significant, and they want to capitalize on the gains or recoup their losses. Then again, I may be anthropomorphizing, here - those are the reasons I'd stay in ;-) But this trend indicates that you should get your land-grabbing done quickly. By this time you have probably already got a manageable empire anyway, and there are only a couple of cities you should grab anyway: critical chokepoints, resources or luxuries, or perhaps a wonder.


Treaty manipulation:

Okay, so while we're on the subject of global war and far-reaching mutual protection entanglements, what if you're the fly in the world peace ointment? In a recent game I played the Romans, and the Greeks and the Russians each had a presence on my part of the continent that was too much to bear: each empire was right next to my capital, which made mine long and thin, and which made their cities potentially excellent ones if they belonged to me, for corruption would be minimal. Furthermore, the Greeks sat on vast oil reserves and the Russians had furs. Mutual protection pacts abounded, so I did some study and this is what I came up with:

When I just rode in and attacked the Greeks, I found myself at war with five other civs. The Greeks called in the Russians, who called in the Iroquois and the French (ironically enough), who negotiated with the Egyptians to put me down. Okay, not unexpected given all the pacts. But then I tried again, with a twist: I negotiated mutual protection with France before attacking Greece. Greece called in Russia. Now France is not involved, but they're sworn to protect both Russia and Rome. So who do they attack?

It turns out that they fall on the side of the defender, which was me. My forces were committed in Greece, so when Russia crossed the borders and attacked one of my cities, France declared war... and then got the Egyptians in on the deal, too. I couldn't stand to see the Americans idle, so I negotiated them into the mix, as well. But the point is that you can get past the tangled web of pacts if you're careful and clever.


Nationalism: a powerful tool

In another game I found myself using tanks to attack an England armed with Riflemen and cannon. It was here that I learned a painful lesson: conscription and mobilization are extremely effective defensive tools, and the AI is not at all shy about using them. The AI will ruthlessly rush-build, conscript, and mobilize in order to ensure its own survival. How do I know? Well, aside from the abundance of conscript-level riflemen that I killed, whenever I took a city it was ridden with unhappiness. When I checked to see why, aside from the predictable "Stop the aggression against our mother country!" business, there were also three other categories: "We can't forget the oppression you have bore down upon us" [sic] (rush building), "All we are saying is give peace a chance" (war weariness), and "Hell no, we won't go!" (conscription). Now, I hadn't been conscripting or rush building, so it seems that I inherited some discontent from the unlucky English.

Because this was such an effective tool for the AI, and because I am such a blatant rip-off artist when I see good tactics for the first time, I heartily recommend this. I have yet to fight much of a defensive war after the discovery of Nationalism, but I'm eager to be in the position so I can test the effectiveness of these tools. Now, to be sure, nobody wants to be in this position, but I enjoy playing a losing game to the bitter end as much as I enjoy playing a winning game to completion, so I would like to try. Perhaps when I start playing on Monarch or Emperor, I'll have a chance? ;-) Currently my T-REX (heh, cute name, Vel) style of expansion means that if I can forestall any serious AI aggression past the middle ages, I won't be seriously threatened militarily. Which, of course, explains why I have committed so much research into pacifying the AI.

OoO

Specific Building Notes - Factories
I don’t know if this is at all the norm, but here’s how I approach it….and let me start by saying that every city I’ve got gets a factory! True, pollution can be a problem, but with a team of 4-6 workers on permanent pollution patrol (ctrl-P, if memory serves??), you’re all set! And, read on for some ideas on how to get your pollution patrollers for free, too! (no upkeep).

I regard industrialization as a pivot-point in the game. Corruption or no, the addition of factories to even horribly corrupt cities can do nice things to your overall productivity, and to that end, the MOMENT I get the tech for it, nearly city I’ve got changes its production from whatever it’s working on to a factory.

There are exceptions, of course. Cities currently working on Wonders keep working on them, unless they’ve just started, in which case I’ll still switch, then rush the factory and finish the Wonder even more quickly!

Cities who are at or near growth limits and building an aqueduct/hospital get to finish those builds before starting their factory (yep….I generally beeline for Sanitation before factories….this is because even without granaries, my cities spend tooooo much time stuck at size twelve if I do it the other way…), and cities that have recently been culturally absorbed/militarily captured and don’t have “the basics” in place yet (cheapies that I can rush easily, up to and including: Temple, Library, and Cathedral (esp. if I have the Chapel Wonder).

Of course, factories are honkin’ expensive builds, especially on the fringes, where you have scant shields to work with to begin with, BUT…there are some things you can do about that.

First…consider the early game. Your worker-priorities look something like this: Road-build to new city sites, road-build to connect critical and luxury resources, make mines to boost mineral counts in cities you want to build early Wonders, and irrigate the occasional food tile, but only those that will see some benefit to it under despotism.

Note then, that clearing forests was not on the hot list for your busy workers, and when you start mass-producing factories, now would be an excellent time to start doing so a vengeance, generating LOTS of those “10 shields to…” messages to speed your factories to completion. Also, now would also be a good time to gather up all of those out-dated warriors and swordsmen, ship them to some fringe town and have them line up to offer to melt their armor and weapons down for the cause. It’s only a few shields, but hey…every little bit helps, and those guys have no doubt paid for themselves many times over by now anyway.

Doing both of the things mentioned above, and mixing in liberal amounts of cash will see you speeding selected factories in strategically important cities to completion relatively quickly, and if you’re really in a pinch for money, once your first few new factories come online, having them build a few artillery units (or something) and transporting via rail for disbanding at fringe cities should see all your factories coming on-line in good time. (you’ve got the “built up” production from the stuff they were working on before the tech, you’ve got an army of workers milling around anyway, who instantly begin descending on every patch of forest anywhere close to cities now working on factories, and you’ve no doubt got a number of obsolete units milling around).

Also….in terms of raw production, there’s seldom any contest at all between a factory and a courthouse, so if you find yourself having to choose between one or the other, always do the factory first and use the productivity gains to speed in a courthouse. Post-patch (depending on how they “deal with” corruption, this may change, but for the moment, nine times in ten (or more), the factory is the way to go in that comparison.

So….factories as soon as they become available. You’ll be glad you did!

With coal plants though….I never do. Hoover Dam comes right on it’s heels (or at least that’s what it feels like in terms of getting tech), and I’ve found that by focusing on running my fledgling rail network through mined tiles (everything eventually, of course, but starting with the mines!) where I want to build HD, I can spike my mineral counts obscenely high anyway (without a coal plant), and generally get it built in something like 20 turns (and by this point, I’m running about 4 techs ahead of the next nearest competition, which means that even if he destroys his economy in the name of science, the turn he gets the tech, I’m finishing the project.

Factories with Hydro plants everywhere…build a courthouse for the 25% reduction in corruption, and suddenly those formerly “1-shield” towns are actually….well, okay, not GREAT, but better….viable….
OoO

Arrian’s Different Take
I industrialize ASAP. I usually bypass Sanitation and go straight for the factories. Why? Because in my experience, it seems that population causes much more pollution than production. Hence, the factories provide much more "bang for my buck." I actually tend to keep most of my cities at size 12 until I have mass transit. With factories, these cities produce plenty, but pollute only a reasonable amount. Once I have mass transit, it's hospital time. I've decided, due to the fact that "specialist" citizens provide only minor benifits (1 gold/research per taxman/entertainer), that the optimal city size is at or around 20. Thus, much of my grassland remains mined, not irrigated. I usually sell ecology and recycling to the AI for tons of cash, as they pollute like crazy and don't seem to emphasize those techs.
OoO

Brother Kinjy’s take on speed-building Factories
I have been playing around with this idea for a bit and thought I might as well share it with everyone.

When you get to the industrial (and modern) age, everything costs so dang much, shield-wise. Granted, by running democracy and setting your science slider to 10% you can generate a lot of cash to rush-buy stuff, but still, I long for the pop-rush.

So, why not do a pop-rush?

Get all your cities to a point where they are ready for say, a factory. Start building factories and get them maybe 20% complete.

Then call for a revolution and switch back to despotism. Execute a pop-rush in all your cities, then switch back to democracy.

Now, this strategy is a real winner if you are a religous civ and you only lose two total turns to anarchy, but it can be viable with any civ. The key is making sure you can handle the impact of the anarchic period (have a good army ready in case some other civ gets uppity, have reserve cash on hand, etc).
OoO
Granaries
On the topic of build orders:
I find that for cities with bonus food tiles, they generally grow faster than I “need” them to, or can easily control anyway, so the only place I build granaries in the early game are those cities with what I’d call only “average” food production, and for them, it’s a good investment.

Even when pop-rushing though, if you’ve got a city near a flood plain with a bonus wheat tile, and you’ve got it, and one other floodplain tile irrigated (which does net you one extra food under despotism), the city’s going to grow like a freakin’ weed anyway….and your fledgling economy will be hard pressed to support granaries everywhere in any case (especially if you’re already bulking up on temples and libraries for culture), so the places with astronomical food production….I’m inclined to let them run without one. Keep in mind that in the early game, you really only need pop points for three things:

1) Rush-building facilities or units

2) Making workers

3) Making more settlers

To that end, any city that grows over size three in the early game is growing too fast, IMO! (The exception would be a city that you have earmarked for Wonder-Building, and in this case, a granary is a must-have, along with a temple!) So….for a city that I KNOW will be making a Wonder for me, when the city gets founded, it gets: Temple, Worker (who is devoted exclusively to that town to bulk up mineral counts), Granary, Wonder (the town’s garrison is provided by some neighboring town doing the Warrior/Settler/Warrior/Settler routine). Again, I don’t know how typical that approach is, but it’s the one that made the most intuitive sense to me as I began exploring the game.
OoO

[DaveV]

Vel - thanks for sharing your insights. It's interesting to see the SMAC, Civ, and CTP crowds all gather together and exchange ideas.

I don't mean to sound petty here, but your persistent use of SMAC terminology (factions, minerals, labs, etc.) is a little disorienting. I've dabbled a little in SMAC and can decode the references, but it could confuse the uninitiated. I realize you've spent years playing and writing about SMAC, but this is a new game with new names.

Just a suggestion for the sake of readability...

[Velociryx]

LOL...you know....I hadn't even thought about it. I guess it's the case that I've been using those terms for so long that I don't even catch myself doing it....I will though, go back through here and see where I've done it and try to make the changes, but if a few of them escape me, just point 'em out....how's that?

-=Vel=-

[eMarkM]

Wow. I printed out your first six posts. It comes to 32 pages! A lot to assimilate.



e

[drenasu]

I've seen many people complain about captured cities reverting to enemy control via culture. I've been playing on mainly diety level lately, and what works for me is to ensure that there are no unhappy people in the city, even if you have more happy people to balance it out. I just set more people to entertainers so that everyone in the city is either a happy person or an entertainer. I usually don't even let someone remain just content. Of course, I build temples, cathedrals, etc. as fast as I can as well to stave off the city reverting. I may have been just lucky, but this has worked pretty well for me so far. I just won a tiny map, panagea, diety level game last night via space race in 1600 AD, but if I had wanted to, I could have finished off the game via dominination if I just took a couple more cities (which would have been effortless). This was without any cultural reversion during the whole game and I probably took something like 15 - 20 cities during the course of the game. Anyway, hope that helps some people.

[Arrian]

I knew there was a lot of solid stuff in the first thread, but you've compiled a veritable tome. Well done, as the other thread was indeed getting huge. This condences things nicely.

Going back to my earlier comments about early expansion and my suspicion that I was over-emphasizing lux. resources to the point of lunacy... I was right. I started a new game last night (the Babs again... I just can't help it) and concentrated more on getting 4 core cities up and running. I ended up (at the end of the land-grab phase) with only 2 lux resources - albeit a bunch of each. On that particular map, a pell-mell charge for more would have been counterproductive and probably would have failed anyway. I ended up securing 3 more through wars - both of which were fights the AI picked - "You have chosen...poorly." In addition, due to the solid core empire buildup, the true strength of the Babylonians, the overwhelming culture creep, kicked in and I received all sorts of defections. So, to summarize a long post about a relatively simple point, grab lux. resources early on, as they never run out or become obselete, but do not do so at the expense of putting down a solid base of 3-4 cities which can pump out settlers, workers, units or wonders as needed. You can cripple yourself without realizing it.

-Arrian

[adaMada]

. Keep up the good work, vel!

Question that I was wondering if anyone has a strategy for: What's the best time to make an army, assuming you can only get one? Calvery? Tanks? Panzers, that being the reason you play as germans? How about after you consider the issue of non-upgradability? Does that change things (I'd think it'd mean you'd go for a later-game unit)?

Just wondering if anyone had some tips to share on this...

-- adaMada

[Velociryx]

Hey man, and thanks! I saw a few requests regarding making a more compacted version of our discussions thus far, and in truth, it was time for it....the 250 post limit is actually a near-perfect benchmark....at that point, it was getting tough to remember exactly on what page a certain point was, so I re-read the entire thread today and started working some serious copy/paste magic, compiling lists of things topically, wherever possible. I'm not 100% happy with the end result, and there's still some minor bits of editing that needs doing, but on balance, we've got an awful lot of good information crammed into those posts. I tried to cull out game descriptions (including my own!)and side discussions and focus in on just the nuts and bolts strategies, and discussion topics (like the stuff about factories and people's approaches to building them) that would foster additional discussions and prompt additional strats on the subject.

What we have so far is stunning to me! I mean, we're essentially still learning the game, and already there are some pretty solid, advanced ideas being fronted from a variety of folks! That's awesome, and since there's every indication that it'll continue, as this iteration of the thread unfolds, I think we'll start seeing more and more dazzling gems of strategy...odd things that have been tried and that met with smashing success....good stuff like that!

Regarding your latest game experience, I find myself agreeing on both major counts. One, the Babylonians ROCK(!), and two, getting a solid core established before sending settlers far afield to gain luxury items galore is essential.

Hypothetical example:
You start in an awesome growth site for your capitol....near a river, one cow, one stalk of wheat...already you're rolling, but.....

If you send your very first settler to the heart of the jungle in order to get an early lock on those five tiles of silks, you are guaranteed to get them, true....at the expense of halving the rate of your next round's expansion, and potentially, the round after that (second settler will probably still be en route to the city site, and in any case, being in the middle of a jungle, will not be able to grow sufficiently to participate in the land grab).

This is not to say that STRONG consideration should not be given to that site! By all means! And, it's all the more incentive to hurry up and get your "core four" founded!

-=Vel=-

[Capt Dizle]

I need some clarification about this business of isolating a capital to cut off strategic resources.

If I have a city isolated that has horses for example, I can build horsemen in that city. It doesn't have to be connected to the capital.

Now, if I connect that city to another, but both are unconnected to the capital do I get horses in the strategic resource box for both?

I have noted that if I have a unconnected city with a resource I can build an airport there and get full use of the resource. Even without an airport anywhere else. I find this strange.

Does the forbidden palace act as a capital for the purpose of resource distribution?

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by adaMada
What's the best time to make an army, assuming you can only get one

I generally make an army with my very first Great Leader, with whatever 2 MP units i have lying around (or since im invariably in a war, 3 units just finished their training). The sole reason for this is to allow me to build the Heroic Epic, and increase the chance i get more leaders so i can rush me some wonders. The army doenst come in too handily.

However, since my last game i have been thinking about armies and their uses. Vel is right, blitz units are a waste of army space, as they lose their blitz abilities in an army anyway. Although most people think of armies as a powerful offensive unit, if you have pikemen or above, a purely defensive army would be excellent. This could be used to hold a heavily contested city that the AI desperately wants (a city that has the only iron and horses, for example).

Even better would be to use a defensive army on the offensive. Simply pick the city you want to capture, even if its deep in the enemy territory, like their wonder-filled capital, mega production center. Then gather your offensive units and the defensive army together. Move through the enemy territory as the AI bounces their units off your defensive army. Eventually you will arrive at your target city. Assault as per normal, and once captured, move all your units into the city. As they heal, rush build some defenders. If your losses were not too heavy, now pick a new target. Otherwise sue for peace.

[gnomos]

My first take on pollution is that a factory automatically adds 2 pollution. Each pop above 12 adds 1. I refuse to build coal plants, so I don't know what their effect is, ie, do they add pollution themselves or do they make the factory create more pollution?

I can't find ANYTHING in the manual about global warming. Does it only occur when you have too many polluted squares? Can you hold it off indefinitely by keeping all the GG (glowing goo) cleaned up? So far I've only had one map square go from grasslands to plains, luckily it wasn't even in any of my city radiuses, seems to me it happened on a turn where there was a lot of pollution on the ground.

Oh, I'm still playing my first game, chieftain level, been working on it for about 4 days now, I'm up to 1752, half way through industrial tree, I left the comp civs way behind in science, and I'm in the process of conquering the map. I've eliminated 3 civs, I own about 40% of a huge map with 60% water, I have about 120-150 cities now, and about 400 units. I'm working my way through the years to learn the ropes before I move to a more difficult level, and I'm setting a scoring benchmark against which I can measure future games. I like the new averaged score method, civ2 was kinda silly, you built a huge pop then on the last turn you made everyone happy for a maximized score. In civ3 if you want a good score you have to keep everyone happy every turn, because each turn's score is averaged.

[padillah]

This worked like a champ for me in my last game but you've got to have the money for it. (maybe as much as 2000 gold )

If you get a city from a battle the first thing you do is rush buy (or whatever rush you want to use) a settler. If you do this for several turns you will use up the people in the city until there is only one left (havn't figured out how to get rid of that last one yet). Then wait a turn and add them back to your city.

What I did was to "trade" settlers from a nearby city of mine but I think it should work just by waiting a turn or even joining the city right back.

The new settlers deplete the city by two (but they are resistors anyway) but it is comprized of your citizens so when you add it back you get two of YOUR citizens in the city.

Let me know how this works.
Hank P.

[madmario]

If you are on a large or huge map fighting an extensive and consuming war of domination (and would actually like to keep control of, say, Babylon) consider shifting to comunism (if not already there) and culling some conscripts. Conscripts suck in combat, to be sure, but the work fine for maintaining control. Communism is really needed for big wars of domination, and it allows two conscripts/turn (who can also be used for domestic happiness, though they do cost some cash).

This is especially in the industrial age after medicine, when you may have really big cities thta wonst miss a few citizens playing cards in babylon. You can get really large amounts of garrison units this way for basically their upkeep cost.

-mad mario

[Thoth]

A couple of corrections/additions

Militaristic:
Starting Tech = Warrior Code
Military units gain morale faster, higher chance of generating a leader, barracks are half price.

Coastal Fortresses, Walls and SAM batteries are also half price.

(side note about Coastal Fortresses)

These don't work quite as advertised, they don't take shots at passing enemy ships. They do, however provide significant defence against sea bombardment. The radius of effect seems to be the city plus a one square radius. I made these observations while conducting extensive bombardments against AI infrastructure. It was these campaigns that sold me on Coastal Fortresses. My Frigates did an excellent job of destoying improvements and bombarded many a road until the AI started building CFs. There was a noticable drop in bombardment effectiveness both against cities and against surrounding terrain improvements. Frigates are useless against a city with a CF, ironclads nearly so, destroyers are marginal and even battleships have a much lower incidence of successful bombardments against CF protected cities.

(end side note)

Vulture Culture
(Being a good Despot)

....

In other words, in the early Middle Ages (if you are still expanding and have not yet dropped out of Despotism), it may be wiser to rush a Cathedral first—more expensive, but you get 40 shields for the first pop-sacrifice-- at a newly founded city, and then follow that up with a rush of a Library and Temple).

This is a nice idea, but I've never been able to put an advanced improvement in the queue before the basic improvement of that type is in place. (ie temple must come before Cathedral, Library before University)


This is a great thread Vel, thanks for taking the time to put it together. My games have gotten a lot sharper as a result of reading the posts here and in the previous incarnation of this thread.

[Hastus]

Tip on rush reducing resistors in captured city by padillah

In the games I play I am not able to rush anything if the city still got resisters in it.

[Aeson]

This is a table I put together on another thread.

4000BC - 2750BC 25 turns, 50 years each
2710BC - 1750BC 25 turns, 40 years each
1725BC - 750BC 40 turns, 25 years each
730BC - 250AD 50 turns, 20 years each
260BC - 1250AD 100 turns, 10 years each
1255AD - 1750AD 100 turns, 5 years each
1752AD - 1950AD 100 turns, 2 years each
1951AD - 2050AD 100 turns, 1 year each

540 turns overall, 10BC being the 126th.

Conquest scoring bonus = (2050 - Date) * Difficulty (approximation)

BC dates are considered negative

Difficulty:
1 Cheiftain
2 Warlord
3 Regent
4 Monarch
5 Emporer
6 Deity

This formula has been tested on Regent and Diety levels, the other diffuculty levels are complete guesses

Maximum Score
3950BC conquest victory on Diety 36060
(pop of 1, area was 150 IIRC)

[Jumping Choya]

Well, I'll try not to emberass myself here by saying something stupid on this fine thread.

What exactly does the AI take into consideration when declaring war on you? Is it an apparant opportunity, technological/numerical superiority, or sheer boredom?

I've played a number of games now, and of all the times an enemy AI declared war on me, they sent in a half-witted invasion force that either got marginal success or was swatted down like a silly fly. And every time after that there was hell to pay for them, believe me.

My first example - opportunity. The AI (Iroquois) noticed once that I was in anarchy. In my current game, I had all my forces at the opposite end of my empire preparing for an invasion of China - and along come the Japanese, all the way across the land, with a horseman who slays my lonely spearman and razes the city. Both of these attacks were initially frightening - "Damnit, under attack!" - but I found as I began to strike back that they did not follow up their initial attacks, and did not have very good defenses.

Fortunately, I've never found myself in a war against a technologically superior foe, and because of my tech advantage I've been able to overcome numbers.

And then the third, which can be credited to randomness, insanity, or boredom. In a game I played, I had battled the Germans early on after encircling all of their settlements with my own - hey, why leave a hole in your empire? So I battled them down and let them keep one last city, as later in the game I hoped to relocate the Germans to some other place and do some nation-building. One day, I notice that Bismarck deploys a few swordsmen into my rifleman and cavalry defended territory. I dozens of cities, he had one, and for every obsolete unit he had, I had...at least dozens of superior units. I give Bismarck a ring and say, "Hey, what're these guys doing? Sight seeing?" to which he declares war. Bismarck sealed a very quick deathnote with that.

Another time, the Aztecs - good trading friends, we had about the same status- landed a swordsman on my shores and declared war. I never ended up succesfully invading their continent - they had big numbers and good units. It baffles me as to why the sent an obsolete unit to me, and never bothered to invade me again during the rest of the war.

All of these times, the AI relied on the sneak attack - they gave no prior displays of angst towards me or my people.

I should point out, though, I've been playing only on Warlord (hey, I'm a newbie, bear with me... )

Another thing that has baffled me is the signing of the Mutual Protection Pacts. Like others have said, stay out of them - they're the causes of many world wars (in fact, the only cause it seems...I've never seen the world descend into warfare prior to MPPs). If you go to the foreign relations screen and click to display MPPs, you'll see this spaghetti-string tangle of lines, and the truth of the matter is that you don't know who your allies will be if you have multiple alliances. Sometimes the AI makes alliances with the mortal enemy of another civ they have an alliance with. So basically, when it comes to war you could find that you have to betray several of your friends in order to fight for two or three other dumb countries. And forget any ideas of building a coalition that'll last for centuries, fighting all evil - in my experience, the other civs sign around too much and eventually they're forced to declare war within your little coalition.

This slightly relates to the above, but have any of you noticed that the AI is very forgiving to eachother? The last game I played, I was dragged into war with the Aztecs again because the Brits went to war with them (but I didn't really commit any forces to it). After a while I noticed a message that they had signed a Peace Treaty with the Aztecs. A while later, while mucking around in the foreign advisor screen, I found that the British and the Aztecs had signed a mutual protection pact! Madness!

Also, I've noticed that the AI has some uncanny exploration abilities. This game, the Germans just edged me out for the Great Lighthouse. Later in the game I trade for his World Map, and I see something a little surprising. Germany had sent out a ship in a straight line that lead directly to a small island in the middle of the ocean upon which they founded to cities. No variation in course or signs of searching around whatsoever.

Anyway, I hope I'm not coming off too negative here - I dearly love this game and it's been the joyful cause of many hours of lost sleep recently. I'm merely curious about what makes the AI tick, as I'm sure most of us are. Knowing thy enemy is the best way to thwart thy enemy, right?

BTW, Vel, how has your 16 civ game been going? Last check, it seemed like the world was on the verge of some interesting developments.

[Xin Yu]

Persian Immortal (4/2/1) has the highest attacking factor in ancient era; only cost 30 shields each, suitable for rushing (1 worker for 1 immortal); a win triggers the Golden Age for a better war time economy.

Playing Persian you should think about a war in ancient era, to make the most of its special trait. Research iron working, and build a city on top of iron then link the city to your other cities via road. You are industrious so it will be fast. Then build barracks and start building immortals. After 5 immortals, go inside a civ's territory and it will ask you to leave. Declare war at this time, and occupy a big city. Raze it and send the workers back for rushing more immortals. Reduce the civ to half of its original size then accept peace, of course the civ will give you all its tech if you ask. Set science high may give you 4 turn per tech since you have more cities and also in Golden Age.

[karlmarx9001]

'Also, I've noticed that the AI has some uncanny exploration abilities. This game, the Germans just edged me out for the Great Lighthouse. Later in the game I trade for his World Map, and I see something a little surprising. Germany had sent out a ship in a straight line that lead directly to a small island in the middle of the ocean upon which they founded to cities. No variation in course or signs of searching around whatsoever.'

This isn't cheating, amazingly enough. If you look around the map, you'll notice that most landmasses are separated by, at most, a square or two of sea. You can normally see across it if you go to the pre-Great Lighthouse edge. So, the AI builds the lighthouse to get across the short sea gap and then follows along the string of shallow water, resulting in a map that looks like some serious shenanigans have occured. ;0

[Nero Would]

Militaristic civs get either Warrior Code or The Wheel as their starting tech. Japan gets The Wheel, the rest get Warror Code. The Wheel is quite handy as a starting tech because it reveals horses which is useful for planning your very early expansion.

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I need some clarification about this business of isolating a capital to cut off strategic resources.

If I have a city isolated that has horses for example, I can build horsemen in that city. It doesn't have to be connected to the capital.

Now, if I connect that city to another, but both are unconnected to the capital do I get horses in the strategic resource box for both?

I have noted that if I have a unconnected city with a resource I can build an airport there and get full use of the resource. Even without an airport anywhere else. I find this strange.

Does the forbidden palace act as a capital for the purpose of resource distribution?

Blocking the capital does not prevent distribution of local resources throughout the empire. If a city is connected to horses (or iron, or a luxury...) it can use it. However, it does prevent distribution of traded resources, and it prevents the civ from trading resources to another civ.

Airports and harbors can extend your road network, if they are connected to another airport or harbor. For harbors, your tech level determines the depth of the sea/ocean through which trade routes can pass.

The Forbidden Palace has no effect.

edit: note also that capitals are often the hubs of road networks, thus blocking them will often have the effect of cutting the local road network in half.

[gnomos]

Is the conquest bonus awarded in whatever year you gain victory? Does the bonus vary depending on map size? I'm wondering how to achieve the greatest score.

[eMarkM]

I wanted to bring up on this thread the subject of vassals which I touched upon in the last thread. This is the strategy elaborated in detail on the "3 step to Deity" thread. In that thread this is combined with your standard "build nothing but warriors" rush strategy. I know this kind of mindless pumping out of military in the early game is frowned upon by many--a rebuttal being eloquently stated in the last thread by Vel. I also find the idea rather unpalatable myself as I, too, want to build an empire, not just rack up points in a rush frenzy.

However, don't let the rushing aspect of "3 steps" detract from the brilliance in the idea of creating vassal states. I don't think this has been explored here sufficiently. It's certainly not just a mindless exercise in rushing. I've been playing Monarch games now where you're very often behind in tech to everyone early in the game and quickly fall out of the "tech trading loop". You're in trouble when this happens because you'll be dead last in tech and have nothing to offer in trades. Putting science up to 100% sometimes isn't enough. Buying tech is fine, but only goes so far. At some point you have to give up exorbitant amounts to buy it from the leaders. Amounts you often don't have or are unwilling to part with.

Sometimes, you just have to go out and take it from them with force.

If you outclass a neighbor militarily, say, because they don't have iron and can't match your swordsmen or UU, but they are beating you in the tech race because of their AI bonuses, you're missing out on an effective way of catching up in the tech race if you don't make them a "vassal". As randomturn states in his thread, you use the AIs strengths, judo like, against them.

This is compelling game play, not just mindless warmongering. The trick is to take their cities to the point they cry uncle and come to the bargaining table. If they're strong enough at first--which they usually are--it will take more than a couple of conquered cities to accomplish this as they initially will refuse your envoy. But when they finally do, you can get at least one, maybe all of their tech, from them.

In the "3 step" thread they recommend backstabbing on the peace treaty almost immediately to get back to extracting tech. The rushers don't care about rep as they never cease in their conquest. I don't recommend this as an empire builder. In order to maintain your rep, you can't violate the 20 turn peace once negotiated. And this is where a lot of subtlety can come in. If they're still relatively strong, you can provoke them into breaking the 20 turn peace. This is a delicate situation since if you really break their backs and dominate them militarily, they'll never declare war no matter how much you provoke. You actually would prefer they remain semi-strong to get back to war sooner and so they are still out producing you in tech. Often they are strong enough to counter attack by then, so again, there's a lot to consider when doing this. You want to have them JUST under your control enough to get the maximum out of this, but it's a fine line to walk.

If you do it right, you can really play a civ like a fiddle. Declare war, take cities, make peace, get tech, provoke them to start war, take cities, make peace, get tech, etc. You can milk it for quite awhile doing this and get right back in the thick of things if you're trailing. At some point, they'll be so weakened by your onslaughts that they can't be provoked to initiate hostilities no matter how much tribute you demand. Then you just have to wait out the 20 turns. This is fine since by that time they'll research a tech or two so you can knock them back down again and get those advances. Once the 20 turns are up, you renegotiate peace. If they don't give up tech tribute, you can go to war with them and it won't damage your rep. Conquer cities, sue for peace, get tech, rinse, repeat. This can go on a over an Age.

Now at some later point you'll weaken them sufficiently that they can no longer produce tech for you and are reduced to a very minor power. At that point, depending on your preferences, you can take them out entirely to expand your empire, leave them alone to rot in obscurity, or continue with the vassalization and just get gold from them.

In my games my strategy was to always mark at least one civ for death and just mow them down to get their territory. At lower levels, you can just brute force w/o milking for tribute since you're often ahead in tech and tech tribute is meaningless. But at higher levels, even if you've marked the civ for genocide, it behooves you to squeeze them for all their worth in tech and gold before the final annihilation. To do so requires some forethought and planning, not just mindless unit rushing.

e

[Arrian]

Vel - The early land grab is so crucial to the rest of the game that I find myself pondering the best strategy often (also b/c it's probably the most exciting, nerve-racking, and frustrating part of the game - and I've been playing Regent. I'm sure it's a lot harder to compete w/the AI in expansion on Monarch and up).

Food, due to the value of despotic forced labor, is the most important thing early on. I would go so far as to say that if you do not start next to a river (no need for aqueduct for 6+ size) with some decent food-producing squares (at the very least grassland - and, in that case, you better have some other benifit, like hills w/gold or something), you should probably restart - unless you find the game too easy and want that type of disadvantage to overcome.

As with all things in this game, a good portion of your strategy must be developed based upon 1) who you are, 2) where you are (local geographical situation) and 3) who is near you. To follow up on my present game example:

My recent decision to concentrate my core cities up first rather than shoot straight for lux. sites in bad terrain was made easier by several factors. First, I was the Babs, and their crazy culture virtually guaranteed that my empire would gain border cities due to defections - thus expanding outward to cut off the other civs and backfilling later was not as important. Second, I had the benifit/curse of a LARGE jungle that started near (just to the sw of) Babylon and ran east to the sea, with a large desert above it (starting n of Babylon). To the north of the desert were the Japanese... this created a bit of a buffer. The Zulu were just south of the eastern part of the jungle, with an inland sea due west, Persia to the south and the sea to the east... they were screwed. Once I saw this, I knew I had a little bit more time to put down my outlying cities. After all, those cities you build to grab a luxury early on are often useless for anything else for 1000s of years (not to say the luxury isn't worth it, but...). Third, I had two lux. resources very close to my capitol - and a lot of them (5 or 6 spice/2 dye)... which meant that later on I could trade them all over the place.

Now, if I had not been playing the Babs, would I have been as comfortable with not aggressively cutting off the AI? Given the exact geography of this particular game... probably, but maybe not. The culture creep of the Babs is extremely comforting (I see the AI build a city in the general vicinity of one of mine and I think "thanks, guys, that will be mine soon enough" and I'm often right). Say I was playing as the Chinese (all other things being equal). I probably would have felt more vunerable, as their culture takes much longer to ramp up. I probably would have fought an ancient war.

In short, aggressive expansion to hamper the AI is less important for civs which have early culture bonuses (basically: religious, as scientific's culture power shows up w/libraries, which require literature, which takes a little while to get to). The quick expansion of your borders to influence 2 hampers the AI, in that there is that much less available terrain for their settlers. If the AI builds a city on a site that you really wanted, fine, make sure that your cities closest to that one build temples, libraries, cathedrals, and universities as soon as they are available. If the city isn't too close to their capitol, you should get it (particularly if it's a zulu city or some other civ with terrible culture early on).

A note on capitol isolation during a war: if you are fighting a limited war (your goal is to take a couple of cities and then go for peace), this is particularly valuable. Cutting the roads to the enemy's cap. will prevent them from importing resources (whether luxury or strategic) from other civs. Also, many times it will be easy to cut off the cities between his cap. and you, thus throwing them into disorder. Capitol isolation will not cut off all cities from all resources, as any city that is connected to a resource by road can use it. Still, it will hurt the AI badly.

A note on armies: Their value lies in the combined hit points of the units you put in the army. You don't gain attack or defense power, just the ability to keep at it longer. I recently built an army of knights. After usuing it twice on the attack (killing defending pikemen but going down to 1hp both times), I stopped that, and used it as a defender for my offensive units and bombard units. Just imagine the defensive potential of an army of mech inf. You could send that, along with with a bunch of artillery, deep into enemy territory and bombard the hell out of anything you want, wreaking general havoc and mayhem on your enemy. On the attack? Just mass your offensive units... no need for an army.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

You will be assimilated….
(or, The Borg come to Civ3)

So you thought corruption killed ICS?

Nahhh….the Beast lives on, as I found out last night, playing with extreme styles.

Last night, my focus was on Despotism, and I began with a simple premise.

In Despotism, corruption doesn’t matter, because your people are your production. Kill ‘em off by the thousands to further the glory of your Empire.

By extension then, Food = Shields.

By further extension then, Granaries = Factories (same essential benefit, but you get them a LOT sooner, and on the cheap!)

So that got me thinking…..What If….

1) You founded as many cities as you possibly could (ICS Style), without regards to corruption, spacing, or any of the “usual” means and measures.

2) Your ONLY consideration for your initial city placement was the presence of a bonus food tile (game, cow, wheat)

3) You build cities with the notion that each gets access to ONE AND ONLY ONE of these tiles (meaning that if there are several bonus food tiles clustered together, you simply found several cities very close together there).

4) Every city gets a granary. EVERY city. This is akin to “powering up” after all. You’re not building granaries, you’re building factories.

5) Once all the food rich city sites have been taken, start expanding like a cancer. Again, corruption doesn’t matter, just grab as much land as you can, expanding relentlessly.

6) Research Iron Working and The Wheel to get a bead on those resources…founding cities to take them into your fold.

7) When you run into another civ’s borders, all stop to take stock of your game.

If you’ve done this, you’ll probably have something close to thirty cities (I was playing on a standard map, Monarch level, 8 Civs, Babylon). Some of those cities were all of two tiles apart. Almost all were growing like weeds.

At this point, I knew I could have simply finished the job and ‘Borged my way to dominance. After all, had I put my mind to it, I could have almost instantly had 60+ swordsmen and simply swarmed my English neighbors. No defense against that….not even the “standard” rush described elsewhere in this forum could work against the Borg strat, cos I’ve got so many cities, I can simply out-produce a standard rusher and sweep him off the map, returning the favor if needs be with about ten times the troops. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, you know? (especially not after ranting AGAINST that kind of beatdown game a couple days ago!)

So, being Babylon (Velocirabi), I decided to go the cultural route, and began mass-sacrificing population to rush in Libraries and Temples.

For a long time, I was running HUGE deficits as my crap cities weren’t generating nearly the coin needed to pay for all the cultural generating buildings I was rushing (and for the most part, those cities STAYED at size one).

Six English cities defected in the face of my HUGE culture.

Three French cities did the same.

And a Zulu town for good measure.

I never built the Forbidden Palace. Never moved my Palace.

Didn’t matter.

Corruption didn’t matter.

Wound up NOT winning by culture after all, but built the Space Ship in 1782.

A word of warning for you peaceful Builders tho….in MP (when there is MP), expect to see ICS alive and well, and it’ll eat you for breakfast unless you do it too.

The best defense against ICS is ICS, as SMAC demonstrated.

::shivers::

That was a scary game….

-=Vel=-

PS: Well said eMarkM….and it’s interesting to note that ICS-ing in the early game can put you in a position to do the very type of “fiddle playin’” you mentioned in your post. My hope when I wrote my little rant about “pushing scads of units across the screen” was that I would not come off sounding like I was against warfare altogether in Civ….hardly! It’s got its place, and as you describe, it can be a vital part of diplomacy (Gunboat diplomacy perhaps, but diplomacy nonetheless!). Integral part of the game tho! What’s chilling to me about ICS in Civ3 is how uncannily powerful it really is tho….almost makes me uncomfortable USING it…..
-V.