one-shield city strat

[Caius]

Hi all,
I got Civ III a few weeks ago and have kept myself away from reading this site, in order to try to learn as much as I could by myself. However, I of course have some questions for the tried and true vets out there

What do you do with those one-shield, one-commerce cities on the fringes of your continent, or on other continents? Do you even bother settling out there, except to get resources? I even tried rush building courthouses, but without a whole lot of benefit.

Can late-game resources appear on improved land? Or within your boundaries? I haven't watched real closely, but once my civ encompassed my whole continent, I don't think any further resources appeared there.

Thanks for the help!
Caius

[barefootbadass]

After a while those one shield cities gain no benefit from a courthouse corruption-wise. I think they might be slightly less likely to revolt with a courthouse and/or police station, but culture is the main thing. I usually just rush buy a few cultural improvements and then put the city on wealth and change its citizen to a tax collector(unless I want it to grow to make workers or for pop rushing). These cities are good for several purposes, mainly seizing territory and potential resources as well as current resources and luxuries.

Conquering enemy cities should just be razed and replaced with a new settler unless they have a useful wonder or something. If you keep the enemy city, squash the resistance and get the population down to 1 ASAP, by starving them, building workers, and(in advance) bombarding. Then grow it rapidly to increase the proportion of your citizens and rush your culture like usual(especially important in an ai wonder city, the game remembers the level of culture the previous civ had and I believe that plays a role in defections).

Oh, resources are not affected by terrain alterations of any kind. Rubber will still appear where your jungles used to be if you chopped them all down, etc.

[Bluefrog]

Resource locations are determined during map creation. That said, city locations and cultural borders have no affect on late-game resources. I've had Horses, Iron, and Oil all pop up right on my city sites before.

On the last game I played (large, low land mass archipelago), I came across a tiny island far from my capital that was about five tiles of tundra, nothing more. I didn't settle there, and eventually Germany grabbed it up. When Oil finally came available, it was very scarce. Wouldn't you know, I didn't have any, but one did appear on the tundra island. So...it wouldn't always be a bad idea to gamble on city sites.

As to what to do with those border cities...depends on your resources and goals, I guess. If I'm up on gold, I'll rush libraries and temples to get the borders expanding. If it's on a military front, don't raze it...the use of roads/railroads is very nice.