Civ 3

[dr_manhattan]

Hi there

got hold of Civilization 3 the other day but i'm finding it kinda tough...any general advice you guys could give me? (about Civ 3 i mean, not life in general)

[rjpageuk]

Spend your first 1000 years making as many cities as you can, by the time you have stopped doing this the borders for each civ should be settled.

You then need to concentrate on either:

a) building up your infrastructure to try for a non militaristic victory

or

b) build up your army and take out as many people as possible.

[dr_manhattan]

cheers i'll try that.....how many cities am i looking at building roughly?

[rjpageuk]

It all depends on the map size.

The beginning of the game is always the "expansion" phase. You want to make sure you have at least one military unit in each of your cities, especially the outside ones, but the best thing to do is try to get a granary in a city which goes up in population very quick so you can constantly churn out settlers.

You will know when you need to stop since you will have come up against the coast/other civs borders.

It is very important to capture all the land you can early on, because you will find if you dont, you can quickly be dwarfed by the other civs.

To take the infrastructure route I spoke about before (rather than the miliary one), once you have founded your borders and have stopped making cities, you should turn your attention to workers to improve your land and also switching governments.

I fuond almost without exception you were best off with tax set to 100% and no luxury or science under a despotism.

Then you need to buy techs from the other civs once they have gone down in price (which will occur when 2 or more civs know the same tech).

Then once you have founded your borders, stated to improve yourself and have some science improving facilites, and changed government to preferably monarchy (which I find preferable to republic) and then democracy you can switch to making your own advances. Then with your huge set of developed cities, with a democracy you can quickly catch up and overtake the other civs.

If you are a real newbie at the game you should start on the easiest setting, although then you will advance scientifially very slowly since other civs are slower at advancing than you.

Once you know what you are doing you should play on regent, because then it is a level playing field - i.e there are no bonusses for either the comp or you. What I have said above applies best for this difficulty.

Apologies for the long post, I forgot what a great game civ was!

I am sure there is a great FAQ for it over at gamefaqs!

[dr_manhattan]

cheers chief i'll give this a go soon :-)