Fyyr, felt bad about hijacking that other thread. Anyway, I found a Civ FAQ that might help you. There's also a VERY hand reference sheet (will, a few sheets) you might want to print.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3faq.shtml


OMG! Just found something I didn't know about

How do I use the production queue?

Shift-Click - Add to production queue.
Shift-Q - Save production queue as default.
Q - Load production queue with default.
Shift-Del - Removes all items from the queue.
Click-Del - Removes the item clicked.

Automation is very handy. It lets you concentrate more on keeping your ingrates....um...population happy and healthy.

For a long time I would manage my workers by hand. That made for long turns as I managed 30+ workers. I noticed they do on automatic pretty much what I did manually anyway. So I make a worker and press A. Occasionally I make a special team to create roads or mines or some special project I need.

Now, since you were such a bum and beat the Regent level, I will have to give it a try again.

Don't feel bad, Bap! I spent like the better part of 4 days working on it. :p I still would've lost but I won the space ship. I can't believe it.... I was building wonders like mad, had all the improvements like temples, libraries, anything that would give culture, and I was still behind on the culture stuff. Actually, the AI took the best of the culture wonders, and I took a techie research path so I could get to SS asap, maybe that's why.

BTW: I think the workers take their orders from the govenors. So if you set a city to produce food, the workers will irrigate rather than mine.

But, I think after reading the FAQ, the govenors might be a little buggy. Now that I think on it, that could be true. However, they're excellent for maintaining civil order and production orders, but their prioritizing of stuff might not be all that great.

Governors are something I cut the power from right off the bat. I don't let them build wonders or military units. I still manage all my cities through the use of the build queue.

They get back at me, however, by sneaking an explorer into the queue from time to time.

Ah! The way I handle that is to turn on the "Always ask for new production orders" option. And if you have PTW you can tell it to never build wonders and have control over what it'll try to build next. You open up the governor and press the tab for production, maybe that is there in regular Civ 3, but I didn't notice it before.

I think that copy/paste of the production queue might be really useful too. I can't wait to try it out. You can pile up the next 10 items to produce by holding down the shift-key and clicking on the item you want to add to the production queue.

BTW: Some of the things your advisors say to you, and the other Civ leaders, are hilarious! I was confronting the Aztecs with their incursion into my territory and he said: "We regret this incident. Or so I'm told. Frankly, I don't care." And then I noticed my advisor said, "Next to you, everyone else has the intellect of a carrot!". Talk about your toadying followers! And then the things they say when you Retire if you lose or win are funny. "Ok, now step over THIS line."

In civ 2 they used to be acted out and voiced. I miss having elvis as my cultural advisor sometimes.

I play with Conquests now. That incorporates play the world. I have turned off their ability to build wonders, but I leave off the "ask for new orders". The only time an explorer gets stuck in the queue is if some crucial resourse gets cut off when I'm building multiples of a certain unit type.

Like, I'm builing cavalry but my horse supply gets cut off. Then the governor has only one choice and that is to put explorers on the queue since I don't let him do anything else.

The reason I don't have it ask me each time is I like for it to continue to build the same unit it was building until I say to stop. It may indeed work that way if I have both "ask for new orders" and "build same unit" on at the same time.

I have noted certain civilizations have a personality. The Arabs can't be trusted in any game I play. They start out friendly but quickly get uppity. The Zulu are very aggressive and usually will turn on you but at least they never pretend to be your friend.

ontezuma just likes to skirmish all the time. Seems to start fights for no good reason except to have a fight.

As for funny things to say, I can only recall one incident. The chinese made a rediculous demand and I said no. He said, "Oh, didn't like that one, eh?".

Something I find odd is some civilizations you can wipe down to one city left in some tundra at the end of the world. You have 8 tanks and an full strength army (the kind you get from a great leader) standing outside the door. You tell them to surrender and they say they plan to fight till the end. Oh well.

Something I've recently learned is that many of the optional advancements I used to skip turn out to have hidden benefits that now make sense on why the AI persues them. The biggest one being economics. Basically, you just rake in extra money just for having done this research.

I looked at that faq, it is obviously not updated for Conquests. I would like to see the calculations on Flak as a defender in a metropolis. One flak gun was killing a horde of my tanks. I thought they were for air defense.

If a victorious unit fails to get promoted, it will always be promoted upon surviving any other battle in the same turn . This gives an obvious advantage to defenders as well as an incentive to use the same offensive units for additional battles whenever possible.

Now this bit of info brings to mind possibilities.

Try this, Bap: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3units_c3c.shtml

Wow.. didn't know razing a city lowers you in the eyes of other civs... guess that makes sense! Probably Europeans wouldn't like the US if we made Bagdad a big pile of rubble.

I havent' done it in this game, but in Alpha Centuari I was at war with one faction and hated them so bad I'd burn their cities every chance I got.

They'd call me up just to tell me I was scum.

*Edit:
Didn't know Crusaders could build forts.

This is too weird. All the latest games I start I have NO iron, NO gunpowder, and NO oil on any of my land.

Regeant is really stingy with resources. I played one game where the bloody Iroquois had 5 oil, I had none. :( So, uh, in the National Interest I had to uh, exterminate them because they're, uh, terrorists.

Actually, not really, they could beat me to a pate.

I have serious problems keeping up with the AI at regeant level. I'm trying various posted strategies of expanding and I just can't keep up!!! But man, I'm so happy I learned that copy-production queue command, makes things SO much easier.

I think even if I seriously lag on early expansion and resources it is still possible to get a space race win fairly easily. But it isn't very satisfying to be 6th place in points and win the space race. :(

Ok, I can tell I'm really into this now because I'm picking civilizations by their characteristics not by how cute the leader is....

Hey Bap, have you tried the "pop rush" under despotism? I kept reading "pop rush" didn't know what it meant. It means, using population to rush build things, i.e. you kill off your citizens. Life is cheap! It's kind of efficient if you have lots of food to build new citizens, but corruption or other things keep you short on shields.

I actually was keeping up and even surpassing the AI (barely) under Regeant for the first time by "pop rushing" my grainaries and then occassionally pop rushing my temples and other culture items. I had one city with 3 tiles that were on flood plain with wheat and they produced a TON of food. I think one citizen is 20 shields, and I was creating one every 2 turns or so.

You also have to time it right and that part is tricky to explain (and do). Here's a good article about the technique: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_despotrush.shtml

For the first time I found myself reluctant to switch to Republic after I got it.

I think what I might do is create myself a scenario where I just play the first couple thousand years and try to beat the AI point-wise. That'll help me nail down opening strategies.

I "get out the whip" when I need to build up a cities culture or defense because its on a border.

Still, every game for the last few weeks I've been missing key resources. At least the last one I held on to the end but lost running out of time.

I play the Ottomans because it fits my play style. Playing the civilization that fits your play style goes a long way to helping you.

I need to sit down and figure out what advantages each civilization characteristic gives you. One technique I found is using a ton of scouts or warriors to explore and get "goody-huts". It can really help advance your sciences early on.

I feel your pain about the missing resources, I swear the game stacks the deck against you!

BTW: Have you checked out the editor yet? I went in and looked at the rules... really interesting! I noticed there's some sort of turn penalty if you pop rush or draft citizens and I'm trying to figure out what exactly that means.

Also, I had the editor generate a map for me and it really only put the oil on tundra or desert (Alaska or the Middle East, I reckon).

The civilization traits are all in the rule book. Also, resource locations are described in the civilipedia.

This latest game started in a good locale, I was starting as normal then the Arabs declared war on me right off the bat. I didn't provoke them. They warrior rushed me at the beginning of the game. I feel like I've suddenly forgotten how to play I lose so badly now.

Regeant level makes me feel that way too. Yes, I should look at the manual! :)

Those damn Mongols keep extorting me for advances.

Bap, what earthly use it to plant forests? I read it doesn't help with pollution, you can't chop them down for the bonus a second time.... Well... I suppose the only thing might be to slow down troop movements for something. I dunno!

I never do it. I don't know.

Ok, found this thread about "You know you've been playing too much civilization when....". It's hilarious!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=33370

Forests are semi useful if you have a city with no hills around and lots of plains. Can plant a forest and a mine and get some shields goin in that city.

Ah, that's right, forests give you a shield.

Uh oh, found a place where you can get modded files. You can have Henry Kissinger or Yoda as an advisor. And check out the sexxay female leaders! http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=811356#post811356

You might also try Apolyton.net. (www.apolyton.net)

The danger is it covers more Civ-like games.

History will remember me as "Lincoln the Magnificient!"

Well I have been playing a bit of the game since we all started talking about it.

Some of the fundamental flaws, playkilling bad are(just the ones I have discovered so far):

1) When I upgrade my spear, to pike, to musketeer...the musketeer is weaker than the spear and pike guys. He is chomped by sword guys, that seems silly.

2) I have had resources dry up or run out(it said they ran out), when there was no abitity to make anything from the resource. Had a saltpeter resource on an island, under a colony. No saltpeter peices could be produced on the island, and no harbor. Salt peter ran out.

3) You have no control over which pieces defend. The game just picks 'whoever', and throws them at your attackers. When certain pieces are more effective or weaker against certain offensive types, that is a serious flaw. In virtually any serious strategy since chess, you the player have the option of who you want to defend with.

4) You really are only attacking one piece against one piece, unless you have an army. And having an army seems silly. It is very much like the board wargames in that respect.


ps, having scouts early in the game is a major, major attribute. They can find money and techs, long before those civs which do not get them can.

Are your musketeers fortified? I'm assuming you aren't attacking with them because they make crappy attackers. As the ages go by, the units become more and more specialized toward defense and attack until the modern age when the have insane values for each. Also, are the swordsmen special units like berserkers or the gaelic swordsmen? Special units are nasty.

Resources have been a pain in my butt lately. Haven't had them dry up too often but they are rare for me and plentiful for the computer even if I own an entire continent.

The game uses the best defender each attack. It decides from defense value and hit points remaining.

I like armies, they are rare though. An army can make a huge amount of difference.

Yeah, two things to think about with combat: The ADM and the status (conscript, regular, veteran, elite) of your unit. The ADM is Attack/Defense/Movement. You really don't want good defenders attacking good defenders. You want good attackers attacking.

I think the game will do combat such that your best defenders go against the AI's best attackers. Just make sure you have better defenders than the games attackers. When you highlight a piece, or go to build, it should show you the A/D/M value of that unit.

Another trick to learn is to move attackers and defenders together. Don't leave helpless attackers without troops to defend them.

Then the status of the piece, veteran, elite whatever, determines how many hits it can survive. Regular units are pretty weak, so you'll want to build units in cities with barracks where they'll come out as veterans.

It actually works pretty well the way the computer runs combat, once you figure out how it all works. However, even so, every now and then a guy carrying a medieval weapon, especially if he's a tough veteran or elite, will whomp someone with a gun. It's just luck! I think I've had tanks taken out by musketmen or worse...

I remember civilization 1 where my battleships (attack 18) would be defeated by militia (same as the warrior now). Not just once but regularly.