Winning Early: What do YOU do?

[Arrian]

In my first really successful PTW game (Monarch, standard settings across the board, Celts), I took over my continent (conquering Russia, Germany and England). Meanwhile, the other continent was slugging it out too: Babylon vs. Zulu, Babylon vs. Persia, Persia vs. Zulu... the Zulu generated FOUR GLs during that mess, which makes me wonder what the hell they did with them, because I used my 4 to secure world domination. The Babs and Persians got 1 or 2 each as well. Only isolated China managed not to fight anyone until I invaded them.

-Arrian

[ducki]

Mostly a bump for a great thread - not much of this is "dated" by PTW, most of it is still good strategy, definitely worth reading all of it, for those new to Civ3, anyway.


Winning early: What do I do?
Read threads here. Best advantage you can get, and it's free.

Another thing to do early - make more workers than you think you need, especially as a non-Industrious civ - jeeze those guys are slooooooooooooow.

[Big Fish]

Originally posted by Arrian
You're on to something there, jshelr. In my recent Ottoman game (the one I posted in the "A Strategic Choice" thread on the strategy forum), I was on a large continent with 6 other civs, and there was an awful lot of warfare.

The Arabs attacked me (2 reg warriors)
I attacked the Aztecs, knocking them to 1 city with archers.
The Arabs & Romans got into a war, don't remember who started it.
The Arabs got the Aztecs to ally vs. Rome.
The Aztecs fought France, getting the Arabs to ally.
I attacked Rome.
I attacked France.
The Arabs attacked me again.
I attacked Egypt

That's as of 900AD.

-Arrian

Sounds like WW1

[Tiberius]

The AI is definately better in PtW, it is a much harder challenge now. I had to go back from Monarch to Regent for a few games to get used with the new AI behaviour.

In my current game I started on a medium island with the romans being my neighbors. I managed to destroy them but lost the Great Lighthouse and was stuck on the island for a very long time, with only 6 or 7 cities. When I finally was able to travel, I managed to destroy the chinese, who were also isolated on a medium island. However the other civs who were on a great landmass flourished in the meantime, and by the time I conquered a few Zulu small island cities, the Persians have destroyed the Arabs, the Ottomans, the Babs and the Zulu! Now they are huge and are ahead of me in science with 7 or 8 techs!

So to keep this post on topic: don't stay isolated! Staying alone on that island (against my will) I won independence (the Persians tried to invade me with the help of the GL, without any success; I sunk all their invading ships) but I eventually lost the game!

[realpolitic]

Prepare for your first war early - Regular archers are OK, unless you're a militaristic civ. Vel is right abouut having 5 to start but an average early city should be conquered losing less than 3


look at this comparison

settler - 30 sheilds no pop gain
3 archers or 2 swordsmen 60 shields pop gian its worth the extra 30.

[bobbo008]

I change a few things in the editor if I play on a big map. For example, units move 5 spaces on roads per turn and settlers/workers have can move two spaces instead of one. Occasionally I'll make everyone expansionist.

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by sboog
Please clarify when to mine, when to irrigate, when to road. Am utterly confused.

sboog

Here's an article you may want to read if you really want to learn about tile values/worker assignments in the early game: (I'll warn you, that it is awfully in-depth)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...threadid=31014

My opinions:

While you are in despotism you want to irrigate plains and mine grassland. Because of the tile penalty of despot, irrigating grassland is useless, and if you are mining plains you are slowing down your growth because the tile isn't producing at least 2 food.

Bonus resources confuses the situation. You should usually irrigate bonus resources. In despotism/settler production, FOOD is more important than shields in most cases. You need to look at how much excess food you are producing. You need 20 food to grow if your city doesn't have a granary (10 with a granary). Any excess food produced will NOT carry over when you gain a population point.

With no bonus resources (producing +2 food), the fastest you can build settlers on average is 1 every 20 turns (10 turns with a granary) because that is how long it takes a city to gain the 2 population points you will lose from building the settler. Before your city reaches size 7+, the best situation is to be producing +5 extra food, because you will grow every 4 turns (2 turns with a granary), thus building settlers on average every 8 turns (4 turns with a granary). Producing +6 food will still take you 4 turns to grow (and still 2 turns with a granary), so that won't help you at all. If you are surrounded with lots of bonus resources/floodplains (high food, but low on shields), then you may need to mine some of the bonus resources. If you are so lucky that you get 3 cattle on grassland in your city, then mine all 3, because that will still give you the ideal +5 food when working all 3 tiles. Irrigating multiple bonus resources may allow you to work some forests or hills and still get you at the ideal +5 food, it all depends on the terrain.

Building granaries extremely early in the game depends on terrain and map size. If you're only going to have room for 4-5 cities, or playing a tiny/small map then it's probably better to build your settlers before the granary. On larger maps (especially pangea maps) or maps with few opponents, building the granary before your first settler, or right after your first settler would be better in many cases.

I always irrigate or mine before roading a tile. If you're industrious and mine before roading, you'll get 2 extra shields. If you road first, you'll get 3 more gold. Shields/food is more important to me than gold. If you are trying to beat the AI in techs extremely early in the game, then it would probably be better to road first. Later on in the game, when you don't have workers desperately trying to keep up with the improvements to keep pace with your city growth and you start moving workers in stacks, then road first.

[BigDork]

Hi all. Thanks for all the great info. I just got the game and PtW for X-mas and have been basically been playing non-stop. I only played Civ II a couple times so I'm coming into this game pretty new to the whole Civ experience. I played a couple on the easiest setting and now and up to the next level. In my first game I'm kinda holding my own. I'm ranked about third. I have high culture but am behind in tech and military power. My nations size is I think 5th out of 8. I expanded some but ran out of room between the Carth's and the water. It wasn't the best starting spot but I don't believe in starting over, I'd rather face the challenges or starting wherever.

One thing I'm really wondering is what is the best way to aproach the different play styles. I guess I'm more of a builder than anything. I usually go for a cultural or diplomatic victory. I've tried to be a warmonger but usually am not as successful as I'd like to be. Do any of you pro's have any suggestions? How can I be a successful warmonger? How can I be the best darn builder I can be? Thanks

BigDork

[BigDork]

Actually I just thought of something else I don't recall seeing in this thread, which techs should you go for and in what order? I know wheel, bronze working and iron working are way up there but, what else are important? What can be overlooked? Any advice is appreciated.

BigDork

[Theseus]

Pretty broad questions, BigD.

What civs have you tried thus far? I'd suggest Egypt as a good starter. Also, if you wanna be a builder, try the Babs. For warmonger, China or Japan.

Early tech research order is tough without the context of a given game. In general, I'd say there are 3 'preferred' tracks:

1) Military
2) Literature (for the GLib)
3) Governmental (for either Monarchy or Republic, but usually Monarchy)

[Bamspeedy]

If you want to be a builder, you will place your cities in more of an OCP (optimal city placement) style. This style is where you try to have little or no overlapping of tiles. With this style, you will have many tiles that are unused until you get to hospitals, but when you do get hospitals these cities will grow to their maximum potential. And you'll have fewer cities, so corruption won't be so bad for cities farther away.

Warmonger (early conquest), go with ICS (infinite city sprawl), or some form of it. ICS doesn't care about overlapping of tiles. ICS allows about 10-12 tiles/city, and an extreme ICS allows about 5-6 tiles/city. Build cities 2-3 tiles apart. Forget infrastructure except for maybe barracks. You'll have many more cities which will give you so much more free unit support. Most (if not all) tiles will be used much earlier in the game. ICS is used mainly for massproducing cheap units to upgrade (warriors-swordsmen or chariots/horsemen to knights). Corruption will be worse for cities further away, but ICS cities aren't expected to produce many shields individually anyways because they are just producing cheap units,workers, and settlers. The small cities won't need cathedrals, aqueducts, etc. But if you do put a temple in each of those cities, you'll have lots of culture. Every city, no matter how corrupt it is will give you at least 1 gold, which will pay for the temple or barracks. Getting just 1 more luxury will add so many more happy faces because of all the cities you have. Using ICS on a huge map I can get over 100 cities before 10 A.D. and conquer the world with knights. With no libraries I can learn modern age techs in 4 turns (on a huge map), just from all the specialists from 511 cities.

Other warmongering tips-Make sure you have a nice large stack before declaring war. A large enough stack to take a few cities in the first few turns of war. After you capture a couple cities so quickly, they will beg for peace. Strike the AI while it is still in it's expansion phase (producing settlers). Often times their borders cities will be very lightly defended and will be easy to take. Deity and sometimes emperor may require you to wait awhile before striking because you need time to overcome all the free military units they start out with. Strike the AI while it is busy building a wonder. Give masonry to your neighbor so that he builds the pyramids, then capture it (make him build the wonders for you). Industrial age warfare-USE ARTILLERY.

But I think most people use a blend of OCP and ICS, where each city uses about 15 tiles. This way most tiles are used before hospitals, but the cities still have some room to grow after hospitals. But regardless, exactly how you place your cities should be more defined by terrain, resources, rivers, strategic locations (choke points), etc.

[BigDork]

What civs have you tried thus far? I'd suggest Egypt as a good starter. Also, if you wanna be a builder, try the Babs. For warmonger, China or Japan.

Okay, well here's what's happening in my current game. I'm playing as the Greeks on a large, continent, everything else is default. Difficulty is warlord. My expansion was blocked early buy the Carths. They were to the north and there was water everywhere else. I grabbed all the land I could but it wasn't a lot. My culture is 2nd highest in the world behind the Celts. The Celts are currently the strongest nation in the world. A huge military and more land than anyone else. Me on the otherhand have a pretty small military and am 5th out of 8 in land size. Well, I'm getting sick of just about every country demanding money, maps, and just about everything else from me. The Carths are really starting to piss me off and I wanna bloody their nose a little. That is where I run into my problems. I'm just not very good at the military aspect. What is the best strategy when attacking. Should I get a RoP first and to hell with my reputation? I've tried to get allies but no one will help me out. How do I get allies? What is a good size military to take to war? And one thing I really am wondering, is it better to raze a city and build your own or capture and deal with the resistance/bad placement/possible culture flip back? Thanks all

BigDork

[ducki]

BigDork -
Without seeing the game, I'm just guessing here...
Horsemen/Swords - 12 + 6 is probably what I'd start with, and switch every available other town to producing more Horsemen and keep them that way until the end of the war, throwing in a Spearman once in a while.

Knights/Pikes - As many Knights as you can possibly gather, 12-15 is a good start, 20-30 would be even better. Pikes as needed to take over Garrison duty from the formerly wounded Knights that got left behind to quell resistors.

Both of these numbers are for a "hurting" war - not sufficient to fully destroy a Medium-sized Carthage due to their UU.

I always have wounded, so I prefer to capture towns and garrison them with my wounded while the rest of the force moves on. As long as you are not a cultural zero, it should be ok most of the time

[Thoth]

BigDork: The AI will not sign a military alliance with you unless you are already at war with someone. Once your military build up is complete and you are thumping on the Celts you should be able to sign up an ally or two.

The demands for tribute will continue so long as you have a weak military. As you build up your forces these demands will likely stop.


**somewhat unreleated point**

Earlier in this thread it was claimed that you should always mine first, then road. There is an important exception to this if you are playing Industrious: The very first tile that you improve (assuming that it is grassland, and you are producing a warrior) should be roaded first and then mined. The mine will not be complete in time to speed up your first warrior, but if you road first the mine will be complete in time to speed your second warrior. A gain of three gold/beakers isn't much in 1800 AD, but in 4000 BC it can make a sizeable difference in the number of turns for your first tech. (I normally research one of the cheapies at 100% tech)

[Bamspeedy]

Thoth-Yes you are correct. But like all tips/strategies there are exceptions to the rules. Even your tip is wrong in some cases.
If you move the settler 1 tile before founding the city (which I often do, to either get to the coast, onto a river, or to move off of a bonus grassland) then you will speed up production of your first warrior if you are industrious (if your worker starts on the mine the same turn the capital was built). Just make sure your citizen is working the tile that is going to be improved so you get the benefit of the mine the same turn it was built. And if you are unfortunate enough to start with no shield tiles (cattle, bonus grassland) right away where it will take 10 turns to build the warrior then you will produce it faster by mining first.

[Demosthenes1234]

Originally posted by DeepO
Be careful though, as soon as the AI gets ships it will start circumventing the chokepoints, so you still have to hurry to build there. But it will give you some more time...In the same spirit: try to settle coastal areas first, as it will prevent the AI to land settler teams on your side of the continent.

In addition, if the ai still manages to settle a city in between your coastal cities (like in that one square which isn't under your coastal influence. IF you don't want to attack them as they are like a kickass powerful neighbour then your best bet is to either link up with city and get some trade routes going. OR if you just DON'T want them there(which is me as I always love having a continent to myself) then build additional cities in that area, boost up all the surrounding cities culture, build wonders, improvements etc and wait until the enemy cities people revolt as they 'yearn to be with you'.

[BigDork]

I used culture to flip a city in my current game. There was a city belonging to the Carths on my border that had saltpeter next to it. Well I was in no position to go to war against the Carths for this one city. I do however, have high culture. So I plopped down a city. Rush built temple, cathedral, library, university and waited a little while. Poof...Now I have saltpeter. And what did I learn from all this? I need a bigger military

[yammos]

hrm i just tried to delete this and it didnt allow me to. Evryone just disregard this.

[WaR_AnGeL]

These r sum great strageties... I'll most definatly be using them in my next game... Good stuff

[Theseus]

You are welcome.

They probably need some updating and cleaning up... 3-tile spacing as the easiest / most effective city spacing methodology, for instance.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Theseus
You are welcome.

They probably need some updating and cleaning up... 3-tile spacing as the easiest / most effective city spacing methodology, for instance.

hi ,


, yes and now , depends under the circumstances , ......

have a nice day

[Panag]

hi ,

a friendly bump

have a great day

[TomVeil]

Add me to the list of people delighted with this thread. I'm a pretty experienced player, but I always had trouble on Monarch. Just by fixing all the bad habits that I'd developed in the early game, I was able to amass an insurmountable lead in my current Monarch game by 800BC.

[MysteryMan]

1) Ctrl+Shift+Q. This will save you MUCH frustration. Sometimes you start in the Gobi Desert. Given the fact that a full game of Civ III can take all day to play, do yourself a favor and get a start that interests you. This is NOT cheating, it is wasting your time more wisely.

2)Choose your civ wisely! Before you start the game, think not of whether you will win (hey, you read my post didn't you, you're golden!) but instead think of HOW you will win. If you want to be the Dark Lord, Chinese are the best bet (IMHO) followed closely by the Japanese. If you want to spread peace and prosperity, I would recommend the Babylonians as you can still win that often-crucial early-game war with the Bowman Rush (you will get an early GA, deal with it). If you're not sure, the Egyptians are a good bet as they have the versatility to do most anything.

3)Play with a bit of personality. This can be of help in winning, but mainly it just makes it more interesting. Click on the text below the picture of the civ leader when you are choosing your civ. You can change your name, your civ name, your title, the whole nine yards.

4)ONLY ONE WARNING. Doesn't matter how nice you want to be. If someone pisses you off twice, you may as well accept that they will keep doing it, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU KICK THEM AROUND.

5)KNOW YOUR ENEMY! If you have 2 neighbors in 3000BC, and one of them is the Indians, and the other is the Germans, wipe out those Germans ASAP. You can destroy the Indians almost anytime (I bet the real Ghandi got to run away a lot) but once those warmongering Germans get Panzers they can put a WORLD of hurt on you.

6)In times of war, prepare for peace. In times of peace, prepare for war. Always remember that the ultimate object of war is peace.

7)Exception to #6 - if you are playing as the Dark Lord, then read the above as following:
In times of war, prepare for more war. In times of peace, prepare for war. Always remember that the ultimate object of war is more war.

...and I'm spent.

[Lunacy]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia


In fact, this IS EXACTLY HOW THE ROMAN FORMATIONS WERE BUILt! They had the most inexperienced units attack first, then the second rows were more experienced units. The elites only had to fight when the battle was going badly.

It's funny but it does make sense if you think about what warfare was like until the modern age. Prior to the use of heavy machinery like tanks men used to simply rush one another weilding bladed weapons or shooting guns. Surviving probably depended as much on luck as skill so why waste your better warriors/soldiers on those initial onslaughts. Strategically it made sense to have your masses take out as many of them as possible while hopefully at least wounding the most skilled and then your better warriors could handle those if need be.

Also - we need to keep in mind that an elite warrior in CIV is one who has already been tested in battle so in a real-world scenario this would translate into a warrior who's been part of those mass initial clashes in various battles and survived so Brutus would not have spent his whole life laying back, relaxing and just killing those infirmed

Lunacy

[Odin]

I am a civ Veteran, mostly from Vel, Aeson, Theseus, and co.

Here are some of my tips:

1. Distroy of weaken an agressive civ early on, especially Persia, Immortals are always a mojor pain in the ass. One of my favorite tricks is to kill thier first worker, that REALLY slows them down if you kill the unit early enough. If you have a very nearby civ, rush them to make room for your expansion.

2. Befriend peaceful civs like France or Greece, they make good trading partners. Remember what a neighbor starts out with on the techs, so you can trade for thier techs instead of researching it yourself.

3. The Pyramids and Great Library are extremely important. At higher levels they are a nessecity.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Odin
I am a civ Veteran, mostly from Vel, Aeson, Theseus, and co.

Here are some of my tips:

1. Distroy of weaken an agressive civ early on, especially Persia, Immortals are always a mojor pain in the ass. One of my favorite tricks is to kill thier first worker, that REALLY slows them down if you kill the unit early enough. If you have a very nearby civ, rush them to make room for your expansion.

2. Befriend peaceful civs like France or Greece, they make good trading partners. Remember what a neighbor starts out with on the techs, so you can trade for thier techs instead of researching it yourself.

3. The Pyramids and Great Library are extremely important. At higher levels they are a nessecity.

hi ,

trade techs , no way , just renogiate peace and get the tech they have for free , ........ it does not work allways with the ottomans , ......

have a nice day

[The Mad Monk]

Winning Early: What do YOU do?

I don't.

[forest]

3. The Pyramids and Great Library are extremely important. At higher levels they are a nessecity.

I have to disagree about the Great Library. I have heard it called the "loser's wonder", because it doesn't get you techs until two other civs get them, which is too late to be of outstanding value. I find that aggressively trading techs can keep me in the same position, without having to spend all those shields on the great library.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by panag


hi ,

trade techs , no way , just renogiate peace and get the tech they have for free , ........ it does not work allways with the ottomans , ......

have a nice day

You must make sure that you are militarily stronger than the target civ for this to work.


Side note re: Great Library. Has anyone gifted the city with the GL away just before Education and then conquer the city back after education. Supposedly I read at CFC that you can benefit from the GL a second time all the way to the beginning of the industrial age!