Distilled Civ3 Tips and Notes

[inca911]

Hiya! Inca911 is back (please hold your applause until the end, thank you very much) and I am now beginning the new Distilled Civ3 Tips and Notes thread. The purpose of this thread is to compile information that is important and little known regarding Civ3 from all across the site, especially information from Firaxis Gurus like Soren Johnson and Dan Magaha. Please avoid adding information that is only a guess or a question. I'd like this to become a one-stop shopping place for Civ3 Intel. Please do post any corrections to information that are posted in this compilation as accuracy and factuality are of utmost importance. I will continue to compile information from the various threads but if you find a particularly good bit of information, you can always email me at inca911@hotmail.com or if you *know* it is correct you can add it here!

1. Scientific Development Cap is 32 Turns
There is a scientific development cap of 32 turns for advances in Civ3. If you look in the Editor (Open Civ3Edit.exe and then under tools uncheck "Use Default Rules", then go to Rules: Edit: Civilization Advances), you can see how much an technological advance costs. For instance, if an advance like BrozeWorking costs 3, then it roughly requires that number *10 beakers to develop. However, there is a 32 turn cap on development so even if a development costs 100 beakers, you can still get it in 32 turns even if you commit only 1 beaker per turn! So watch your early scientific progress and make sure you are not overallocating your Science to a development that cannot be done earlier than 32 turns. I know this new fact has already helped me. There is a currently unknown adjustment to this number based on the total # of civs as well as how many of those civs you know to have the advance (perhaps the X and Y values found in the editor?), but this general guide is great. Now you better evaluate the goal of Monarchy:
Warrior Code costs 3 (remember this equals 30 beakers!)
Ceremonial Burial costs 2
Mysticism costs 4
Polytheism costs 12
Monarchy itself costs 24

So you can see that the headlong drive to Monarchy will seriously impede your progress in other areas with development costs of only 2 or 4. Only time will tell if that strategy is worthwhile. Certainly a compiled list of all the actual tech costs would be nice, but until I compile such a list (or someone else does it for me--wink, wink!), I'll evaluate the importance of techs based on the editor costs and hoard/trade them accordingly.... One outstanding question: If you commit 0 beakers, do you still get an advance in 32 turns?

2. Floodplains and Jungles cause Disease
Yes, it's in the manual. However, I'm not the only person who thought a floodplain with wheat was a good place to build a city. Oops! Only later did I realize the serious impact of disease on my population. So watch out for those floodplain tiles as you go about playing Civ3. You can't clean them up like you can a Jungle, but the risk of disease does go away when you have Sanitation. One outstanding question: Does disease only happen when you have a worker (or city site) on one of those tiles?

[inca911]

3. Forced Labor Under Despotism

There is a small, innocent looking button next to the production storage box that can be used to great advantage. It's the Rushbuy/Forced Labor button. For those of you who haven't clicked it yet, you'll likely want to give it a try! Under Despotism, which lasts a loooonnnng time, you cannot Rushbuy a unit/advance, but you can use Forced Labor to finish a job immediately! Forced labor coverts population into shields. Limited experience seems to indicate that foreign nationals are used up first (must prove this out), thereby theoretically eliminating a drag on your cities' stability while at the same time giving a huge production boost while simultaneously ridding the city of a discontented worker! A single captured worker (who is less productive anyway) can be converted into a vital Temple thereby expanding your borders, increasing your culture and giving more access to vital resources. Forced Labor is likely going to be a big ticket item under Despotism.

[CygnusZ]

Cost is only roughly *10. It is also dependent upon the # of civilization that have previously discovered the technology.

If you think about it, if Bronze Working really only 30 Beakers, then wouldn't producing 2 science/turn (easy to do even at the start) make it available in 15 turns?

[Lord Maxwell]

Happiness and difficulty:
Chieftain has four content citizens in every city with no improvements/garrisons.
Warlord has 3 content citizens.
Regent and Monarch have 2 content citizens.
Emperor and Deity have just the first citizen content.

World sizes:
Tiny 60x60
Small 80x80
Normal 100x100
Large 140x140
Huge 180x180

(I also think tech is 2.5 times as expensive on huge as on tiny.)

When hurrying production with forced labour a citizen is worth 20 shields. (And they remember it for 20 turns as well.)

[Madine]

Using forced labor tends to have lasting unhappiness effects.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

These strats come from about 5 games worth of playing in the Ancient Era. if you have any to add, please do so.

(1) It there is a resource nearby, found your city on it. You won't have to worry about another civ cutting off its access to your city.

(2) If you are expansionist, use scouts to go find other civs. When you find them, make peace and right of passage and alliance right away to prevent other civs from ganging up on you. Even weak civs should get your attention, because a stronger civ could influence them and the weak civ would give in and give them a right of passage to your civ.

(3) Expand as quickly as possible. Don't worry about culture at the very beginning since the AI won't either. None of your cities will be taken culturally, although if you capture some, they might revert back to their owners because your ratio of culture to theirs isn't big enough

(4) To keep the enemy troops from pillaging your roads during war time, you should keep a reserve of mounted troops to respond to any areas of threat. Also, a few swordsmen close to any of your colonies would be a good idea

(5) Learn to read the land. Since Civ3 's maps are more accuratly rendered climactically, most of the time when there is a chain of mountains, to the north of it will be deserts and plains. (this happens in real life because the rain clouds cannot cross the mountains, so all of the rain is dumped on the moutnains) Those deserts could be a good source of incense and other resources. If its close enough, you can build a few colonies there, but you should have fortresses and swordsmen nearby.

(6) Keep civs who have early UUs at bay using diplomacy. In the Ancient Era, UUS are a lot stronger proportioanly than later stage UUs. If the Persians are close to you, keep them happy.

(7) Get trade going early. What I noticed at first when I am weak, the other civs tend to shortchange you when it comes to diplomacy and trade. The AI looks at your army and your culture and responds according to that. Since at the beginning my army is usually average size, and my culture is almost zero, they don't regard you very highly. Since trade has to be renegociated every 20 turns, by the end of the Ancient Era (when I have between 10-12 cities) I get better deals because my army is stronger and my culture is usually among the top 3.

(8) Found your cities with 4-5 squares of each other. Since corruption is rampant at Regent, you should also get the Forbidden Palace. The more culture you have, the less corruption, so make sure during this whole period that your capital is churning out temples, marketplaces, courthouses etc to improve your civ total culture and reduce corruption.

(9) Stay in Despotism until you have corruption under control (i.e no Total Corruption) When that happens, then you can switch to Monarchy, which combats your corruption and waste.

(10) When researching techs, research the ones which you need most. Since I like Industrious/Expansionist civs (gives me a jump in diplomacy because of fast encounters with other civs and lets me build faster infrastructure), I start with Masonary. Then, I go for Ceremonial Burial, and then Bronze Working. I try to alternate from Military techs, to city techs, so I have a good balance.

Heres the tech tree of the ancient times

Well, I can't figure out how to do i.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

dp

[inca911]

Lord Maxwell: Thanks for the happiness breakpoints. Now we need to determine the breakpoints for number of cities and happiness of the populace!

Madine: Yes, you get some temporary unhappiness effects from forced labor, however ridding a newly captured city of an already unhappy foreign laborer and adding a valued improvement should easy counteract that unhappiness effect. I agree and we do need to quantify the unhappiness effect.

Lawrence of Arabia: I'd like to limit this thread to facts regarding the game and it's play characteristics. Although your tips might be beneficial in your specific game-play situation, they are not really the kind of information I am trying to collect. Thanks for the thoughts!

Regarding Culture:

Culture is perhaps one of the most interesting new features in Civ3. In another thread, Soren has provided a bit of insight into the culture formulae and he made some great comments that I'll paraphrase here.

Culture defection of a city is determined by evaluation of several factors:
1. Distance from the Civ's Capital
2. # of Combat Units in the City
3. Civil Disorder in the City (keep them happy if you don't want them to leave you!)
4. We Love the (Leader) Day
5. Cultural Ratio of the two Civilizations
6. Cultural Ratio *within the City!* (i.e. If while under your control the city has added cultural points that favors your civ. If most of the cultural achievements were under the enemy civ's rule, that works against you. Another reason to get Temples and the like up early!).

Lastly, although it has not yet been confirmed by a second source, it has been speculated that capturing an enemy capital resets the cultural ranking of that civilization. Very interesting and very powerful if true.

So, if you are at cultural war with a neighbor, all things being equal, it is best to capture cities that are farther away from the capital city (distance factor) and make sure they do not go into civil unrest. If experience shows that cultural reversion does occur, use of the WLT*D may keep you on stable footing and certainly avoiding civil unrest in the newly captured city is of utmost importance. If anyone witnesses the cultural reset upon capital capture, please post here. Culture is a powerful weapon and hopefully this brief tutorial will shed some light on this little-understood new feature of Civ3.

A Teaser Note Regarding Governments:

Although I don't yet have specific relationships, Soren mentioned that every civ has a most favorable government and a least favorable government. Obviously the traits of the civilization determine the governmental bias for that specific civ (perhaps the Industrious nature of the Chinese favors Communism?). More on that later as we figure it out.

[Nero Would]

The preferred and shunned governments for each civ are listed in the editor.
Here they are, along with the Ai's agressiveness level (on a scale of 1 to 5).

Civ       Favourite  Shunned    Agressiveness 

Rome      Republic   Communism      4     

Greece    Democracy  Despotism      3  

Germany   Republic   Communism      5  

China     Communism  Monarchy       2  

Japan     Monarchy   Republic       4  

India     Democracy  Despotism      1 

Aztecs    Monarchy   Democracy      4  

Iroquois  Communism  Monarchy       2   

Egypt     Monarchy   Republic       3	 

Babylon   Monarchy   Despotism      4	 

Russia    Communism  Democracy      4 

America   Democracy  Communism      3 

France    Republic   Monarchy       1	 

Persia    Monarchy   Democracy      4 

Zululand  Despotism  Democracy      5 

England   Democracy  Despotism      3	 

[Nero Would]

Dupe post - sorry.

[Travathian]

Ok, but what effect does preferred gov't have on human players? Does the AI prefer to use it for that civ? Does that civ prefer it, so when you're in negotiations with that civ and you're running their preferred gov't they are more favorable? (ie SMAC) Does a human player running the civs preferred gov't gain anything special?

[civmonger]

alright let me see if i can supply any wisdom here. Ive played 2 games although i quit the first game because i approached with a CTP2 mindset and it didnt go over well (water tiles arent as useful in Civ3 as in CTP2). My second game was a great success. Won by Space Race in 1966.

I was America played against the Germany, Aztecs, England, Russia, Rome, France (Joan of Arc is bald in modern times, surprised me and was kind of comical) and Iroquios. Rome and Germany were eliminated in Industrial Age. whats interesting is that all the remaining civs were in democracy even Russia by modern times.

I found I couldnt settle on mountain terrain.

I never lost a city to culture but did gain quite a few. As soon as I founded a city i built up its culture immediately. I discovered that apparently it helps with distance corruption. I had 5 cities on the other end of the world on a continent inhabited by the French and Russians whose culture outranked mine up until the end of the game so I had to rush every culture building and courthouse but i didnt lose a single one although one was choked to the terrain immedialtely surrounding it but built there for the incense haha!

I also discovered that if you est a city with only one tile seperating you and a rival u can take the tiles right next to their city but you must maintain a high culture or you could lose your tiles. This doesnt seem to be the case if there are 2 tiles seperating your cities, no matter how much your culture expands you wont take the tiles adjacent to their city and vice versa. This is good strategy for obtaining resources that arent in an adjacent tile to an enemy city provided you can get close enough to est a city and your city's influence can overtake the tile.

[inca911]

When you found a city on a forest or jungle square, that square is immediately cleared to grassland. This feature makes some less-than-desirable city sites actually viable and certainly you don't have to quest as long for a grassland square as a result!

[Special_K]

I can't seem to research any science advance in fewer than 4 turns no matter how high my science is. Can anyone else confirm this, or has anyone researced an advance in fewer than 4 turns?

[Vipsanius]

Originally posted by inca911
When you found a city on a forest or jungle square, that square is immediately cleared to grassland. This feature makes some less-than-desirable city sites actually viable and certainly you don't have to quest as long for a grassland square as a result!

Is this verified? When you clear a Forest square with a Worker, you get plains, not Grassland. If founding a city on a Forest square yields Grassland, then that's definitely worth noting.

Vipsanius

[Travathian]

You can rush build wonders, but with a catch. Start building an improvement. Disband units til it gets to two turns left, then switch to the Wonder. If it gets to one turn left you can switch to other units/improvements, but NOT wonders.

[David Weldon]

Yes, the terrain of your city is converted to a grassland-like state. I have built cities on hills, jungle, forest, grassland, and grassland with bonus production, and they all produce a city whose production is 2/1/1 (+1 if near a river). Note the loss of the bonus production in grassland! I have takend to building cities in the worst square I can near to good terrain. It gives you a lot of free terraforming.

Yes, there is a minimum of 4 turns for a tech advance, no matter how much overkill you use. I have found that because the multiples don't always work exactly, I can sometimes start at, say, 60% science to achieve 4 turns-to-advance and then after 2 or three of the turns I can drop it to 40% or 50% and still get the advance in a total of four turns. This has been very valuable in giving me an extra 50-100 gold at times.

Also:
The manual and civilopedia are flat out wrong about railroads. They state that RR add +50% to the production of a square. bzzzzzzzt. Try again.

In fact, RR add +1 to whatever improvement you have added to a square. RR through forest does nothing. RR through unimproved squares? Nothing. RR through something that has been irrigated = +1 food. RR through something that has been mined = +1 shield. Any bonus recources are meaningless. This can be used for added growth (if you want it by then), but the real result is that one should mine and not irrigate whenever possible so that the RR will add to production.

[Strollen]

Actually I am pretty sure that railroads do work as they say in the manual that add 50% to any improvement (fractions round up)

In most situations this means +1 shield to mined square or +1 food for an irrigated.

However in a situation like a wheatfield in a grassland.
A railroad in a mine wheatfield gives you 4 food +2 shields, but if you irrigated it you get 7 food and no shields. The same thing is true for a coal mine or iron mine you get 6 or 7 shields running a railroad through it.

[Vipsanius]

Originally posted by David Weldon
Yes, the terrain of your city is converted to a grassland-like state. I have built cities on hills, jungle, forest, grassland, and grassland with bonus production, and they all produce a city whose production is 2/1/1 (+1 if near a river). Note the loss of the bonus production in grassland! I have takend to building cities in the worst square I can near to good terrain. It gives you a lot of free terraforming.

Good info, thanks. Since this is so, why not build in a hill square every time--in order to get the defensive bonus along with the production?

[David Weldon]

Strollen:
The manual states that RR adds 50% to the _production_ (i.e. shields) of a square. It says nothing about increasing whatever improvements you added to a square. A minor point. The important thing is not what the manual did or didn't say, but what RR actually does.

In any case, how does 4 to 7 relate to 4+(1*1.5) even if you do round up? I tested a lot of different cases, but apparently not all cases, before deciding that the result is a flat +1. I'll do some more checking tonight I guess.

Vipsanius:
If you build on a hill, you lose the potential of mining that hill for a total 3 (or 4 with RR) production later on. Other than that, I generally do build on a hill if possible.

[Lord Maxwell]

Originally posted by Vipsanius


Is this verified? When you clear a Forest square with a Worker, you get plains, not Grassland. If founding a city on a Forest square yields Grassland, then that's definitely worth noting.

Vipsanius

Yeah, city location doesn't matter. Only special resources and river proximity changes the citys production/food/cash.

And you can get grassland when clearing forests as well, if you look closely at forests you see what kind of tile you will get. If the forest has yellow ground you get plains, if it has green ground you get grassland.

[DaveV]

Another note about building cities in poor terrain. In my latest game, I built a city atop a jungle/dyes square. It converted to grassland, but kept the dyes special (according to the manual, grass/dyes is an impossible combination). A pop-up congratulated me for connecting dyes to my roads and making my people happy.

[miloII]

Originally posted by inca911
Lord Maxwell: Thanks for the happiness breakpoints. Now we need to determine the breakpoints for number of cities and happiness of the populace!

Madine: Yes, you get some temporary unhappiness effects from forced labor, however ridding a newly captured city of an already unhappy foreign laborer and adding a valued improvement should easy counteract that unhappiness effect. I agree and we do need to quantify the unhappiness effect.

Lawrence of Arabia: I'd like to limit this thread to facts regarding the game and it's play characteristics. Although your tips might be beneficial in your specific game-play situation, they are not really the kind of information I am trying to collect. Thanks for the thoughts!

Regarding Culture:

Culture is perhaps one of the most interesting new features in Civ3. In another thread, Soren has provided a bit of insight into the culture formulae and he made some great comments that I'll paraphrase here.

Culture defection of a city is determined by evaluation of several factors:
1. Distance from the Civ's Capital
2. # of Combat Units in the City
3. Civil Disorder in the City (keep them happy if you don't want them to leave you!)
4. We Love the (Leader) Day
5. Cultural Ratio of the two Civilizations
6. Cultural Ratio *within the City!* (i.e. If while under your control the city has added cultural points that favors your civ. If most of the cultural achievements were under the enemy civ's rule, that works against you. Another reason to get Temples and the like up early!).

Lastly, although it has not yet been confirmed by a second source, it has been speculated that capturing an enemy capital resets the cultural ranking of that civilization. Very interesting and very powerful if true.

So, if you are at cultural war with a neighbor, all things being equal, it is best to capture cities that are farther away from the capital city (distance factor) and make sure they do not go into civil unrest. If experience shows that cultural reversion does occur, use of the WLT*D may keep you on stable footing and certainly avoiding civil unrest in the newly captured city is of utmost importance. If anyone witnesses the cultural reset upon capital capture, please post here. Culture is a powerful weapon and hopefully this brief tutorial will shed some light on this little-understood new feature of Civ3.

I have captured Capitol cities on several occasions while trying to win the game with culture. I noticed no cultural reset and on one occaion I lost the city to its original owner after 3-4 turns, when it was quite close to my Capitol and that civ only had three cities left.
No indication of Cultural reset there.....

A Teaser Note Regarding Governments:

Although I don't yet have specific relationships, Soren mentioned that every civ has a most favorable government and a least favorable government. Obviously the traits of the civilization determine the governmental bias for that specific civ (perhaps the Industrious nature of the Chinese favors Communism?). More on that later as we figure it out.

[1Razor]

Originally posted by David Weldon


In any case, how does 4 to 7 relate to 4+(1*1.5) even if you do round up? I tested a lot of different cases, but apparently not all cases, before deciding that the result is a flat +1. I'll do some more checking tonight I guess.

In this case I think the basic rules of math would apply, Multiply before Add

4*1.5(+1), which in this case = 7

[Special_K]

Originally posted by DaveV
Another note about building cities in poor terrain. In my latest game, I built a city atop a jungle/dyes square. It converted to grassland, but kept the dyes special (according to the manual, grass/dyes is an impossible combination). A pop-up congratulated me for connecting dyes to my roads and making my people happy.

You can also clear jungle squares w/ dye or other improvements into grassland and the improvement will stay.

Yes, there is a minimum of 4 turns for a tech advance, no matter how much overkill you use. I have found that because the multiples don't always work exactly, I can sometimes start at, say, 60% science to achieve 4 turns-to-advance and then after 2 or three of the turns I can drop it to 40% or 50% and still get the advance in a total of four turns. This has been very valuable in giving me an extra 50-100 gold at times.

I did some more testing on this last night. You can research an advance in 3 turns, it just takes a ton of science. I had an advance that at 50% took me 4 turns. I had to put my science rate at 100% to get it down to 3.

[David Weldon]

OK, time to stop the bleeding.

First (defending my own particular level of idiocy):
Strollen mentioned that RR add 50% to your improvement, not to the base tile, thus 4*1.5+1 is not a meaningful calculation.

This is a moot point, however, as I did some more testing and Strollen is apparently wrong. On wheat or cattle in grassland (both give 4 base food), I get 6 food with an irrigated, railroaded tile. Not 7. 6. It would seem that the difference between 1*1.5 rounded up and simply +1 is indistinguishable.

Also, on a coal mine with RR I get 5, not 6 (as he suggested). I didn't have access to a minable Iron, so I couldn't check it but I'm willing to wager on the result...

The important part of what I feel is incorrect in the manual is that RR can add to food, not just production (as it is documented).

My test game is under Republic with France on Regent in the industrial age. If someone else could actually verify their results, that would probably help. Perhaps the bonus increases with some additional tech advance?

[David Weldon]

Special_K:
I have tried that before, and was unable to get to 3 turns. What was the situation (level, tech, science at 50%, science at 100%)?

I have calculated the actual cost of advances as follows (tested on small and standard size worlds at regent and monarch):

Cost = tech# * World# / 5

The tech# and the world# can be found in the editor.

For standard size this means 24*tech# and for small it means 20*tech#.

It is routinely possible to trade for techs at a lower cost in gold than this #, but I have tested it extensively and this is almost always the amount of science needed to build a tech. I wonder if there is a possible strategy here where you simply produce gold and buy your techs on the cheap?

Anyway, I say almost because once I could get Mapmaking (tech#=12) quicker than I could get Literature(10). Mapmaking was acting like it's tech# was 9 for some reason, but I didn't change any of the editor settings, so there must be some modifications that I am unaware of. They probably relate to how many civs already have the tech or something like that...

[inca911]

Thanks again for the great contributions to this compilation of the work of many Civ3-ers! I'm sure I'm not the only one who has benefitted from all this new Civ3 information.

Resource Depletion:
Although some folks are fortunate enough not to even notice the phenomenon, resources in Civ3 can disappear from time to time due to depletion (likely just a random factor). If your only source of Iron suddenly vanishes, you will for sure be desperate to obtain a new source. So, just like most corporations, it is important to plan ahead and either obtain a second source (or second source trade partner) for strategic resources. On a slightly related note, changing the terrain of a resource square does not change the resource as it did in Civ2 via terraforming.

Terrain Improvement and RRs:
There seems to be general uncertainty in the forum regarding the effects of irrigation, mining and RRs on the various terrain types. Look on page 206 of the manual for the base terrain values and the improved values related to roads, irrigation and mining. It's all right there! For RR, I have yet to personally prove the shield and food output increases for RR (I have heard that the manual is not accurate in stating that both shield and food output in increased, but don't know if it is true) so if someone with that experience could please post the improvement for RRs on the different terrain types (or just a formula), that'd be a help. Thanks!

Using a Leader to Rush Build a Wonder:
Move the leader to the city that you are using to build the Wonder. Then activate the leader and there is a Hurry Production button in the production orders menu at the bottom of the page.
EDIT: Thanks, Special_K, for the Leader rush-build instructions! I just used Kubla Khan to rush-build the Forbidden Palace in Delhi (The Indians are gone and now we'll see how productive we can make those now-Chinese cities)!

[regoarrarr]

I've also gotten techs as 3/turn. The game is on Warlord as the Greeks. I was following my money-making strategy that I outlined in another thread. Basically trading each tech as i get it to every power for an insane amount of gold / turn, and then setting 100% science.

I'm still in the middle of the game, and as my cities get bigger I hold out hope to get it down to 2 turns / tech.

[Special_K]

Originally posted by inca911
Using a Leader to Rush Build a Wonder:
There is not clear documentation on how to do this process in the manual (not that I found), so I'll add that process here when I get time.

Rush Building with a leader: Take the leader to the city you want to rush build in. On the main map screen (not the city screen) have the leader as the selected unit. One of the unit options at the bottom of the screen is to rush build a wonder, the other is to build an army.