Dude thank you, I used to play this game when I was way too young to even understand it therefore leaving it on my shelf for over a decade. Just re-installed it and watched your tutorials and I am having so much fun with this game! Seriously, you are awesome. Keep on doing what you do. Take care!
Hey, I really didn't intend for this video to be this long, but I also didn't want to split it into parts. I will add timestamps with links to different topics so that it's easier to navigate. 0:15 Chopping Forests 3:28 Capture units/workers 4:30 Armies and Great Leaders 7:26 Culture Flips 10:27 Anarchy 14:22 Wartime and Golden Ages 21:16 Resources and Map Generation. 27:48 Game Rules And Difficulty Levels 31:29 Goodie Huts and Popping Settlers 36:04 Corruption 41:00 Combat and Promotions 42:38 Does the AI Cheat? 45:50 How is the interturn structured? 53:07 The City Center Tile 59:30 Wonders 1:08:02 Misc (Boats, espionage, stealth bombing) 1:12:30 Overflow/Micro 1:14:28 Hurry Production 1:18:44 More about culture 1:21:26 More about resources 1:23:36 Diplomacy 1:27:28 Barbarians
I have my first Civ 3 game save that has been going on for weeks. I don't seem to be making the right moves, so, keep reloading older saves and go back and watch your older videos. I do have couple of thousand hours of Civilization Revolution experience on Xbox 360 but Civ 3 seems to progress differently.
@@sora14077 Hey Matti. I have one email in my inbox from someone with the last name Abdoly, who's first name starts with K. About a game as Japan. Is that you? I responded to that email but maybe it didn't go through. I can copy and paste the response if you didn't get it for whatever reason.
@@sora14077 Oh, you actually signed the email with "Matti", it's definitely you. Here was my response. Thanks for including all 5 saves! I can do a more detailed breakdown. Starting with 1550 BC. Judging by the replay, it looks like your opening build was some warriors, 2 settlers, and then a granary in your capital. That's a great opening, you claim a lot of land quickly. You used your warriors to gain contact with most (but not all) the civs on the map, which is important for tech trading. Kyoto is planted in a great spot. Judging by the replay, you moved your first settler one tile to get it there, I assume to ensure that Kyoto is coastal. Good idea. The downside here is that your next two cities are in bad spots. Both are surrounded by hills/mountains/plains. They don't have any 2 food tiles, so they can't grow to size 3. This means that they can't build settlers. You built a granary in Osaka, which isn't very useful. Granaries only have an effect when your city grows in population, and Osaka cannot grow past size 2 anytime soon. Edo is in the forest. It only has 1 two food tile (the deer on forest). This means it can grow to size 3, but will do so slowly. But then you chopped the forest, which increases it's available food, speeding up its growth :) The top priority when choosing your first few city spots is food. More food = more settlers = bigger empire. I've attached a picture with recommended city spots. These are fairly close together, but they all have at least 2 tiles that give 2 food (grassland mostly), without needing to irrigate or cut forests. It seems after grabbing a few cities and securing iron, you went for an attack on Russia. That was a fast transition. Within 36 turns you built about 20 offensive units. Good job! You properly committed to the attack, which is why it was successful. Don't build wealth this is early in the game. Osaka and Satsuma should be building military units, since they have barracks, and can't grow to a big enough size to build settlers. There's still land left to claim, there's no excuse for building wealth. Don't build wealth until at least all the city spots are taken, and you have all the workers you need. If your city is getting unhappy, build a settler to reduce it in size. Or use the luxury slider, or build a warrior for military police. This is a problem in Kyoto too. Kyoto's building a wonder. It should be using all available resources. Instead, at 10AD, you have 2 tax collectors. Assign those citizens to work tiles so you can finish the colossus faster. If you're still unhappy, use the happiness slider. Or bring that spearman from Osaka to Kyoto to provide military police. Osaka will never be unhappy since it can't grow. Oh, that's also why it doesn't need a temple, you can sell the temple in Osaka. You switched into monarchy. Good. You're doing great in tech. You have some small unit support issues, plant more cities to solve that. You also only have 4 workers (+ slave workers) for a huge empire, you should build more workers. So you put yourself in a bit of an awkward spot by the 170 AD save. You stopped building military units, so you're not really ready to attack anyone else. But you also mostly stopped building settlers. So you didn't claim all the new land you opened up. You took some cities from Russia, but they aren't contiguous, since the other enemy AIs claimed all the other available land. It seems you realized this, since I see 2 settlers in the 170 AD save. So generally, you're doing well, outpacing the AI. You had kind of bad land to begin with. Build more settlers, take up the remaining city spots. There's a good spot south of Tokyo within range of the whale, and 2 spots east of Kagoshima. Finish expanding, then I'd recommend taking out the Indians. Also, chain irrigation southeast from Satsuma to Nara, Kagoshima, and Osaka. That way those cities can finally grow. Oh, and build more workers :).
Nice set of tips -definitely a few new ones for me. One I didn't see is that if you screw up, and multiple cities go into civil disorder for whatever reason (eg loss of a luxury over the end turn), you can avoid all disorders after the first event / built item. Enter the first city when the notification pops up, then use arrow keys to cycle through all your other cities and adjust specialists before the rest trigger.
Wifey and I have been playing a Civ3 scenario (game comes with an editor) on hot seat mode for like two decades. I have modified the units to where there is much more in the way of tactics: everything moves at least one faster (except heavy stuff like cannon, but it shoots farther), there is much more bombardment available as an option, and new units like the "spy-bomber" give us humans a big advantage over the AI. The spy-bomber is the former explorer changed by the editor to be a cheap, fast, invisible unit that drives the AI crazy because it isn't "smart" enough to post old units on important sites to keep the weak spy-bombers from pillaging.
I've been playing this game for "YEARS" now but kind of knowledge you gave is extraordinary. You truly are Einstein of Civ 3. Great! Job. Love from Pakistan.
So by the grace of our overlord Suede I am authorized to correct him a touch. That the Forbidden Palace actually does reduce corruption in surrounding cities. Because when you have a FP distance corruption is calculated using whichever distance is smaller, the one to the FP or your original palace. So smart placement of your FP can almost double your productive lands, more detail bellow. So as said in the video there are two kinds of corruption, the distance corruption is most obvious and you see it pretty much as soon as you plant your second city and then more so when you plant the one even further. The further away it is the worse it gets, simple. The FP allows for a second focal point to your empire but it doesn't help against the other kind of corruption except in a general flat reduction of all corruption. The other kind, rank corruption is a bit more tricky but by and large it works the same way, the further a city is from the capital the more it has. With the exception that with rank corruption there is a tipping point after which, well it doesn't quite get exponential but it gets bad quick. That is why Suede was mistaken, he would put his FP in a very distant city, the FP would make that city non-corrupt but for the cities around it reduced distance corruption didn't matter since rank corruption was already catastrophic, you could not even notice or barely so. But unless someone asks that's about enough of theory, what you guys want to know is how to tell corruption to fuck itself and have mad gains. And luckily that's what I am here to say. You may not like it but ideal shape of your country is elliptical, with the twin palaces acting as the foci (centers) of that ellipse. How big you should make that ellipse you ask? Well it depends on your government, map size and difficulty so it is different in each case. BUT a good rule of thumb is that your palace should be in the center of a circle where the edges of the circle are marked by cities that are about 50% corrupt AFTER Courthouse (you may need to move your capital to a more optimal position, indeed usually you will but a military great leader can rush a palace and this is a smart thing to do anyway). This is your core territory, the Forbidden Palace will allow you to make another. The way you do it is simple, look for nearby land to conquer, it should be about the same size as your current core and ideally bordering you. Then you repeat the process there, see how many cities/tiles it is from your palace to the 50% corrupt cities then find a city in your intended target that is double that distance from your current capital. This will be the future site of the FP and the second focus of your empire. Well almost, at this scale rank corruption is not yet crushing but it is noticeable so don't go quite so far but maybe 20% closer to the original palace. To give an example since I usually play huge maps the distance from my capital to the border is five cities. Not five closest cities but five cities in a line and I plant so the big fat crosses don't touch so that is about 25 tiles. The FP then should be 50 tiles away from my current capital, but given rank corruption you should make it closer to 40. The end result if you follow my advice will be that elliptical shape and some very productive yet large lands. Once you are at this stage I think nothing short of a Sid difficulty civilization of normal size can keep up (and even big enemy civs are not as efficiently set up as you so even big rivals beware). If you are lucky you can get all this land from one big, conveniently positioned rival. More likely you will need to partially conquer another one or two to get all your potentially productive lands. Word of warning though, be careful about getting new cities after you set your empire up this way. Precisely make sure that any cities you conquer or plant are further away from your capital than the cities in your 2nd core. If they are not chances are this new city will be shitty due to distance corruption but its existence will make every single city in your 2nd core worse because of rank corruption. So only take extremely important cities that fit this criteria, like ones with luxury resources. Or even better just take cities that are far, far away and don't interfere with your 2nd core at all. Final tips for those who are dedicated enough to get this far. Be mindful of your desired final government. If you measure out your optimal country size while in Despotism you will be sad to realize the optimal size is much larger in Monarchy/Feudalism, and even larger still in Republic or Fascism and greatest in Democracy. Each of those has less corruption than the last and so the biggest optimal empire core is different for each. And if you are aiming for Communism FP considerations are less important since that govt. has almost a totally different approach to corruption. It still matters even if your endpoint is communism but in that case the two cores will be only a transitionary phase so feel free to treat my rules more as guidelines if commie is the goal. So in short plan out your future empire with governments in mind. Another important thing of note, and fun, is that distance corruption is absolute so your cities should always be in a circular pattern around the palaces, this is obvious and what makes the elliptical shape in the end. However rank corruption is not absolute it is relative. This means there is a fun loophole to corruption here. You could in theory conquer your continent and if it is not too big rule that with your original palace. Then go literally around the world, perhaps hunting for lux resources you lack, and conquer a similar amount of land there. If you build a FP in the center of that distant land you will have perfectly usable cities! So the core and the 2nd core don't need to border each other if you don't want them to. But more realistically it is the smart thing to do, it is easier to conquer (and then defend) nearby lands, the risk of ruining things by taking cities that would increase rank corruption is lessened and so on. But still I bet you never thought you could have a fully functional colony on the other side of the world. Now have fun min-maxing and owning those cheating AI bastards everyone ;)
Wow - 2 minutes in and I already learned stuff I hadn't known about in 15 years of playing. I'm not a competitive player by any means, so there's much I never bothered to learn, but these tips are gold. Great video, thanks a lot!
Dude!! Thanks a lot for this video, this is a very dear game to me and your level of commitment to it is inspiring! Just to mention, about point 16. In one of my games i was conquering a lower civ but with very high amount of population. So for example, when conquered it messaged "there are 11 resistance in the city" so what happens is that you have to "force loved you" which is hard in republic, and none problematic in Democracy, but if the influence around it still of the nationality for a lot, they can flip 2 ~ 3 turns.
I just found your channel yesterday and I am glad to know that we have quality civ3 content in this age. Instant sub!!! Also, did you try the rise and rule mod, I've been playing it since last week and I think it is an enourmous enhancement to the base game.
I'm not much of a fan of the "everything and the kitchen sink" type mods like RARR, Double Your Pleasure, etc. Generally I feel the base game lasts long enough and is epic enough in scope as is. When I download mods I look for small maps with a lot of replayability :)
I experienced the culture flip unit culling yesterday for the first time. I always knew the couple units I kept on a city died in a flip, but thought I'd be able to hold the city for a bit longer than a turn or two. just about the turn after I took a city, it flipped, and I hadn't moved like 30 units off the city from the last turn rip that battle
2 other examples of turb order are pollution and enemy movement. Pollution ticks before food and shields are applied. Also an enemy movement can knock you off a tile before it ticks. When you might have expected that third pop for your setler, or the 10th shield for the 1 turn warrior, you can be interrupted.
36:51 My understanding is that cities will use the forbidden palace city for calculating distance corruption if it is closer than the capital city, but rank corruption still calculates based off the capital. Calculated corruption can go way over 100% before it is capped, so that is probably why you don't see a change. It's effect would probably be most noticeable if you had cities with fairly low rank but high distance, maybe you started on a small island without too many cities and your next cities are on a continent halfway across the map, or something similar.
Precisely, yeah. Sorry if I explained it wrong here, it's an old video. You can see my England demigod game where I do exactly what you mentioned here, and I build my FP somewhere very far and it works well. ruclips.net/video/Mh0I1HNYbt4/видео.html
Been getting back into CivIII recently, and a huge reason for it is because of your videos (countless hours into the TETurkhan mod)! Thanks so much for the great content. Question, how do you toggle the view of "terrain only"? I'm sure it's basic but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere.
Thank you to @Ryaken and @Where Is Krell? for pointing out that you can have multiple scientific leaders at once! This was an error in my video. So hold on to them for as long as you want! Additionally: empire size as it relates to anarchy length is based on OCN. If you have a hyper large empire, you can actually get a +3 modified, in some cases leading to a 9 turn anarchy!
@@jerrygar7 There's an old article by SirPleb on Civfanatics called "Creating and Using Leaders". In it, Pfeffersack mentions a rumor that Scientific Leaders (SGLs) prevent the creation of Military Leaders (MGLs). Alexman comments next that if you have any leader of any type, you cannot get an MGL, and claims to have tested it. Those comments might predate the final version of the Conquests expansion, but even if so, I doubt that they ever changed/fixes it so that MGLs could get made if you have another leader available.
Yes, you absolutely can! I once spawned 2 in one turn, hitting Philosophy-Literature as Scandinavia (not even scientific civ, btw). Such small things are memorable and make you return to this awesome game again and again.
It is quite picky, but in the turn order, we can add that Income/science is compute before the food and shield. It is most useful when you finish a tech. You get science and income, then the tech finsh and you are asked what next. You can go to the Science/Happiness sliders and to your cities. As the income and science is already compute for the turn, you can put the hapiness slider to max and have a free WLTKD over the empire. The turn before you can put all the citizen as scientists and put them back to work after the research is done, but the shield are not counted yet, so they do both. It is a lot of micromanagements, but it can cut 1-2 turns of research.
Thanks a great deal for making such a long video, right on the money my freind just gave me a copy of the game so thanks for the headstart. Really glad to know the mechanics tips, I came from civ 5 and so 3 is a little....foreign so far, but good fun. Appreciate your dedication to civtopia pal 👍
What are your thoughts on: 1. Playing with scientific leaders (i never have the option on) 2. Is it cheating to rig the civs (e.g. pangea 60% water as an expansionist civ with no other civs expansionist) 3. should planting on bonus food give the city centre food? Things learned: - Spiral to forest chopping - pretty much everything to do with war time - wonder golden ages - didnt know unique units were kept until a golden age - 3billion - 5billion hill stuff - roads reducing corruption - didnt know forbidden palace did nothing regionally, just thought it was very little - you can open top five cities/demographics in game? - unit promotion probability - knew the ai could see the map but not the resources - did not know the plus 1 shield for size 7 cities - everything espionage - Like to think i was knowledgable to begin with but guess i was a little off
1) Playing with them off makes the traits imbalanced, so I keep them on. 2) Nothing is "cheating", there's just different levels of challenge. But I'd recommend playing a variety of map settings and with a variety of civs. 3) Gameplay-wise? Maybe. It would be a quality of life change, it would make good city placement easier. But I think it would make it too easy to have a powerhouse size one city. In terms of realism? Makes sense as is I think. That's what happened to Toronto in Canada. We settled in that area because it had the best farmland, but now it's all paved over with urban sprawl. So we don't get the bonus food :) 4)you can open top five cities/demographics in game? Yeah it's F11 or something like that. One of the F keys.
Thanks, Suede. I'm glad the English teaching is going well. It's not always an esy gig. I've heard you say something like "mealy troops." What are they? And from context, R and G (or RNG) seems to be the luck of combat results. What is the exact meaning of that?
RNG is random number generator. It refers to luck in video games. Sometimes when talking about multiplayer games, I say "melee troops". Units with one one movements point, who must be controlled very differently from mounted (fast moving troops)
So, tip 101 basically means that on high level difficulty in the early game when you want a spot for the city where barbarian units are, but don't have strong enough army to reliably beat them, you can just lure them away with one unit.
Like you said, there is actually a marginal reduction of corruption to near cities of the forbidden palace. It's only noticeable on a large or huge map, and only is effective to cities within about a 10 block radius.
Are you sure? Someone else claimed it acted as a second palace for the purposes of distance corruption calculations. Which is irrelevant if you have a ton of rank corruption, but relevant if you do looser city placement, or are spread across islands/continents.
@@suedeciviii7142 yeah, im not as experienced on lower maps, i mainly do huge or large on regent and monarch. But yes, it does lower it a bit. I'm usually republic, but jave waited until democracy to do it, and it had a noticeable effect.
What difficulty do you play on? If you just want to win I'd recommend my "mistakes new players make" series. The tips here are only really necessary on high difficulty levels.
You mentioned about how a single unit can't produce 2 great leaders. There was a game I had where after I upgraded my knight to a cavalry he eventually went on to get a new great leader, though I suppose that doesn't entirely count as the same unit. Also on the topic of cities flipping, I have a personal grievance that I wanted to vent. Artillery doesn't count towards the occupied military count because I had a city with 36 artillery in it depose.
IIRC someone disagreed with this point. I haven't seen evidence but take that as you will. It's very possible for city with 36 units to flip. A single unit reduces the flip chance by like, 0.15% or something like that is some cases.
@@suedeciviii7142 That's pretty disappointing that the flip chances are so unaffected by military presence. Also I had an interesting thing just happen in my game. I think I might have found another way to bait the enemy into declaring war but it may need further testing. Basically I had a privateer stationed in an unguarded city and then the Koreans came and bombarded it but if I loaded back and put a soldier in there the enemy didn't attack.
You can ROP attack as many times as you want as long as they are the ones declaring war. Demand techs until they hate you, then fail a spy mission, that should do the trick :)
Thanks for the video, Suede! It could have saved me days of reading forums on game mechanics years ago when I was more interested in Civ3 than I'm now. It's a great idea to put them all in one place. I'm sure, you have already mentioned all of them in your long game videos but not everybody is able to watch them full length. So, sorry if I missed it somewhere, but I have a question related to the "interturn". For example, I have a city that grows in 1 turn and builds a temple in 1 turn. The new citizen is gonna be unhappy which should put the city into disorder. So after the turn ends will the disorder start immediately or the temple will be completed making the new citizen content?
Thanks! So it actually doesn't matter if you build a temple or not. A new citizen will never cause your city to disorder, whether they are unhappy or not. Disorder is calculated by "Did unhappy citizens outnumber happy citizens when you ended your turn?", not whether that's true when the turn starts. As for construction, interestingly, disorder will prevent shields from being added to the box. But it doesn't actually stop construction. If the box is full for whatever reason at start of turn, construction will complete, even if you're in disorder (or even anarchy!) So if you rush production on a temple, causing unhappy citizens to outnumber happy citizens 4 to 3, and then end turn, the city will disorder but production will still complete. If you then zoom in on the city, the citizen ratio will be 3 to 3, so the problem has been fixed by the temple, but the disorder still occured. This kind of proves what I said above: disorder is calculated at end of turn, not at start of turn.
one thing that is still frustrating is the fact that one turn you will have even tech with the ai but a few turns later they ll will have 4+ more techs than you out of no where even if you are bigger and have 70 or even 80 percent research
It's because they're trading amongst themselves. Also depending on the difficulty, the AI might be out-teching you because they're playing republic and you're playing monarchy/despotism.
Odd question but I'm trying to convince my friends to start playing civ 3 over civ 5 - is there any way you could do like a transition video highlighting major differences for people trying to pick the game up after what civ 5/6 has introduced?
I've been planning a "first time playing civ 3" video for a while. But that's a good idea too. Like, "Why you should play Civ 3 if you're a fan of later civ games".
Yup! Collosus is exp, sea, and com. England, Portugal, and the Hittites all get Golden Ages from it. Egypt gets a golden age from the Pyramids, China, from the great wall, etc.
@@suedeciviii7142 Is that for Vanilla and Conquests both? Thought in C3C you needed one Wonder for each trait, and had to build at least one yourself, not just capture them.
1:05:50 Almost! You couldn't know but it's Besançon, so the "c" sounds like a "ss" :-) EDIT: (I wrote "ss" to not be confused with "s" which sometimes sounds like "z" both in French and English :-) )
What's your take on accelerated production? How does it change how the game is played? Is it better to play with it on or off, or is it more about trade-offs? Also, a "X-number of Civ III Keyboard Shortcuts" would be much appreciated. ;P
It imbalances the game. The biggest annoyance for me is it doesn't change minimum or maximum tech time. So despite teching twice as fast, you still can't get a tech faster then every 4 turns, making it very difficult to get a tech lead on medium or high difficulties. Worker speed is unchanged, despite most other things being changed. You can imagine why this is absolutely insane. I guess you can build twice as many workers? But the opportunity cost of building workers is also doubled.
Oh, if I'm not mistaken the game still has the same number of turns too! It's ridiculous. If you want a faster game, just play a tiny map or an 80% water map. We do use accel prod for multiplayer though. Micromanagement of shields and food is a lot more important with accel prod.
@@suedeciviii7142 Ah I thought so. I just played a a game with it off on Regent and the flow of the game felt so much better and I was actually able to expand much faster than I've ever been able to. Thanks for the reply!
@@suedeciviii7142 I used to like snoopy terrain, together with some irrigation and custom mines, but tbh, for some reason now I would like something more cleaner, guess Ill go back to the stock graphics. Thanks a lot 🙂
No, you can def get multiple scientific great leaders. The most I've had at once is 4. Do you know what the percent chance is of spawning a scientific leader when you get a tech first?
Its possible to get more than one scientific leader at the same time. I had a game with 7 leaders. I had 4 of them sitting in cities didn't want to trigger a golden age.
18:45 On that same note (and perhaps you'll mention it later) - don't switch governments during a GA, unless maybe you're a religious civ under despotism. Anarchy wastes precious bonus shield/commerce turns! If you accidentally trigger a GA during despotism and aren't religious it might just be better to eat the despotism penalty than to switch.
@@suedeciviii7142 Glad you do hahaha, I was honestly afraid my comment spam would make you Annoyed or even Furious! More seriously though, I hope you don't mind the engagement, your channel is pretty much the best outlet for Civ3 stuff!
@@cheaterman49 Yeah absolutely! If you want to get my live reaction to questions, you can stop by my livestreams, Sundays at noon EST here on RUclips :)
Usually by testing myself. Some of it is from Civfanatics threads, but I usually didn't take a single user's word for it. Only stuff confirmed by a couple people. If I wasn't 99% sure of something in this video, I prefaced it with "if I'm not mistaken" or something like that.
It depends on if you need gold or techs. Often I set it to 0% to save gold, so I can upgrade military units and kill people. Especially if I have another way of getting techs (tech brokering, buying techs, great library, espionage, or in peace deals).
Suede CivIII Cool. Thank you. Do you know if having multiples of flak cannons positioned in one city will increase the percentage of intercepting a stealth bomber that is bombing it?
Tried that gpt deal and it didn't work the way I figured. Seems there's more to it than turning your slider(s) to zero, making the deal then putting your sliders back where you want them. When I tried it there was a humonguous deficit no matter where the slider was. Don't you have to make other deals with other AIs to pull this off? Thanks.
Ah I think I've seen that before. I can't remember exactly what causes it, but had you ruined your trade reputation that game by breaking any 20 turn commitments (including peace treaties and military alliances)?
@@suedeciviii7142 Trade no but peace treaties yes. My understanding was that peace treaties are treated separately from trade deals. Anyway no biggie. There's an old thread which may refer to this; some players have conflicted consciences about it: forums.civfanatics.com/threads/explotive-gpt-trade-with-ai.253550/
I know it's technically one of the allowed pronunciations of granary, but coming from the midwest we always say ɡrān(ə)rē with a long A like "grain" and not ɡran(ə)rē like "granny". Sorry, just bothered me around the number 10th time of the 102 times you said it.
Lol it's like when he says barrackses, I try to laugh and think of Smeagle saying it but goddamn it is in every video. Whatever, I've learned so much and Suede is the biggest Civ3 boss alive, still love the videos!
Bravo! Now that I've seen the whole video got a few more questions and observations. Please indulge me: In your examples of culture flipping those Cities are on another Civ's border. I've had conquered cities away from alien culture pressure flip anyway. They were near other conquered cities from the same Civ which didn't flip. Is there any rule concerning this? Thanks. 35:45--Expansionist Civs can pop Cities from Goody Huts? Never experienced it, only Settlers. Didn't even know it was possible. 1:1:16--Oh so NOW I get the double-rush trick. Neat! But I'd still rather wait 'til next turn ('cept when building stuff in newly founded cities after trans-oceanic amphibious invasions). Tip 99--Ah, so the AI doesn't consider that breaking the trade deal? A fantastic exploit (cheat?) but if experts do it why not me :-)? Tip 101--This makes avoiding Barbs way too easy, no? Just don't put units NW or SE of 'em. Presume this doesn't work for Workers or Settlers.
There's a complicated formula that determines a city's chance of flipping each turn. According to the formula for culture flipping, the odds of flipping are 0% if there's both no foreign citizen and foreign tile in the BFC. Sometimes you can get foreign citizens in weird ways, like joining workers to a city, or building a settler in a captured city. Flipping is just a percent chance. Sometimes the least likely city to flip will be the one that flips, and the others don't. For popping cities, it says something like "an advanced village has joined our nation" or something like that. There are a lot of things I'd call cheats but prompting the AI to declare war when I'm paying them isn't one of them. If they didn't like it they shouldn't have declared war :p It does work for workers/settlers, as long as they aren't one move away. If it would take the barbarian 2+ turns to get to where the undefended worker/settler is, they won't go after the settler (unless it's NW/SE)
@@suedeciviii7142 Thanks for your etailed replies. Would you believe in my last 2 games I've popped 3 villages and 1 Settler with Scouts? Never happened before, although the first game I blew by refusing Bismarck's demand; the second is still in progress.
can u help me out im in a right pickle singleplayer im the chinese french, japanese and portugese r ded lol germany and aztecs at war carthage and germany in modern era america got 1 city but not at war and still alive? year is 1804 im doing fine for gold just got refining i have no oil and im already exporting my extra rubber thx
@@suedeciviii7142 That gave me an idea. After some experimenting, I can say that it is related to the attack value. Fighters have one, bombers don't. This also extends to stealth fighters and bombers, despite both functionally being bombers and the stealth fighters never being able to use their offensive power. Likewise, Artillery does not benefit from mobilisation, just like workers or settlers.
Democracy is a government tech so it's also highly valued. Depending on how many AI civs have each tech, I could see that making sense. Also on lower difficulties the AI tends to give better trades, idk what you're playing on.
Love this channel. Recently downloaded Civ3 since i wanted to play Civ but everything after 4 seems weird. Civ4 was alright but Civ3 was one of my favorite games when i was a kid but I hadn't played since like 2005. And back then I didn't really know any of the mechanics and only played in chieftain. I remember going a difficulty higher and always failing. This time i learned the mechanics of the game and used the help of your videos and I won a 64 hour long game on Regent (large map, max AI count, conquest win only). Looking forward to higher difficulties now. This game is so addicting I actually have to force myself to stop playing.
Your story is basically the same as mine! I’m now to the point where I can win pretty much every time on regent and win maybe 50/50 on monarch. I used to play this game on chieftain when I was younger and I had pretty much no idea what I was doing. Suede is awesome and he totally changed how I view this game.
Thanks for posting these. It brings me back to the old school days where there werent swamps, and no multi-player. My brother and I would play together, giving over the first setler, and acting like we were different players.
You can have a unit spawn more than 1 leader IF you upgrade it. Say, if an elite warrior spawns a leader, becomes a swordsman and then wins a battle as an elite it can spawn another leader (assuming one can spawn at all). It works once for every upgrade, probably because as far as the game is concerned it's a different unit. But as it keeps its given name, I consider it one and the same. Beyond that, great video. Specially the part about the forbidden palace.
@@suedeciviii7142 I can confirm this as well, but IIRC it is important NOT to change the unit's name when it prompts you to after winning MGL because that will prevent the future upgraded versions from popping new MGLs. Also I'd put up a pin with the revised Forbidden Palace understanding I showed you because the way you explained it in this vid is quite detrimental since a well placed FP can create a second core for your empire (if not commie, in that case you can build it pretty much anywhere). If people followed your advice here they would put it down in any random quality town that is terribly corrupt, probably with too much rank corruption around to notice the distance corruption reduction it gives.
@@nekotamo5154 As for corruption, my explanation in this video was wrong (since in some cases, distance corruption is an important factor) but I stand by the general advice. That generally, it's best to prioritize putting the FP in a high corruption, good land city. If you have a comment that explains the interaction between distance corruption and rank corruption, I can pin that though.
Are there any exploits that still work against the AI or did they all get patched out? I know there used to be a bug where you could demand 123456789 GPT from an AI and they would accept
Sometimes the science advisor pops up and says i learned a new tech from the other civs without me doing any sort of trading. I dont get how that happens
I wouldn't call it an exploit. It's staple play in multiplayer, and in the single player Hall Of Fame they have a list of legal/illegal tactics. It's not listed on either list (unlike some other things on this list like chain boating), which suggests it's uncontroversial.
#61... I haven't been playing for very long, so I'm on chieftain level. The AI may know where strategic resources are going to show up, but they certainly don't _behave_ like they know. I've noticed how AI players will build roads right past a resource which is currently visible. One had gems right outside of its city border and didn't build a road to it for centuries, even after the influence border expanded to include it. And I've never seen them planting a city in a weird, remote place because a resource is next to it. Also, I have never seen an AI build a colony. But they will put a fortress on a resource... and leave it unmanned! Maybe their "inside knowledge" of resource locations becomes more evident in higher levels.
Occasionally they do, but they're just shit and don't no what to do with the info. But I have seen AI plant random cities that turn out to have oil. And no, they don't play better on higher difficulties.
6:51 Oh I can answer that for you! I didn't consume any military GL during my last playthrough, only scientific (useless otherwise as you pointed in the previous tip), and I never got more military GLs but I did get more scientific ones (3 in total, 2 remaining by end of game)! So there you go. :-)
I can confirm this, you can get as many Scientific Leaders as your luck allows while having one or more, but Military ones can only spawn if you don't have one already
Dude thank you, I used to play this game when I was way too young to even understand it therefore leaving it on my shelf for over a decade. Just re-installed it and watched your tutorials and I am having so much fun with this game! Seriously, you are awesome. Keep on doing what you do. Take care!
Sending in 1,000 spearmen to attack a city on a hill with walls and wonder why they all die lol
@@thepotato405 LMAO 🤣
Haha I learnt this game on my own, just kept playing...But sure a complex one..have one of the best memories with this game..
Hey, I really didn't intend for this video to be this long, but I also didn't want to split it into parts. I will add timestamps with links to different topics so that it's easier to navigate.
0:15 Chopping Forests
3:28 Capture units/workers
4:30 Armies and Great Leaders
7:26 Culture Flips
10:27 Anarchy
14:22 Wartime and Golden Ages
21:16 Resources and Map Generation.
27:48 Game Rules And Difficulty Levels
31:29 Goodie Huts and Popping Settlers
36:04 Corruption
41:00 Combat and Promotions
42:38 Does the AI Cheat?
45:50 How is the interturn structured?
53:07 The City Center Tile
59:30 Wonders
1:08:02 Misc (Boats, espionage, stealth bombing)
1:12:30 Overflow/Micro
1:14:28 Hurry Production
1:18:44 More about culture
1:21:26 More about resources
1:23:36 Diplomacy
1:27:28 Barbarians
I have my first Civ 3 game save that has been going on for weeks. I don't seem to be making the right moves, so, keep reloading older saves and go back and watch your older videos. I do have couple of thousand hours of Civilization Revolution experience on Xbox 360 but Civ 3 seems to progress differently.
@@pathukavalar If you're getting stuck, feel free to email your save files to suedeciviii@gmail.com and I'd be happy to identify problems.
Hey Suede I sent you an email with my Civ 3 Saves but you didn't respond
@@sora14077 Hey Matti. I have one email in my inbox from someone with the last name Abdoly, who's first name starts with K. About a game as Japan. Is that you?
I responded to that email but maybe it didn't go through. I can copy and paste the response if you didn't get it for whatever reason.
@@sora14077 Oh, you actually signed the email with "Matti", it's definitely you. Here was my response.
Thanks for including all 5 saves! I can do a more detailed breakdown.
Starting with 1550 BC. Judging by the replay, it looks like your opening build was some warriors, 2 settlers, and then a granary in your capital. That's a great opening, you claim a lot of land quickly. You used your warriors to gain contact with most (but not all) the civs on the map, which is important for tech trading. Kyoto is planted in a great spot. Judging by the replay, you moved your first settler one tile to get it there, I assume to ensure that Kyoto is coastal. Good idea.
The downside here is that your next two cities are in bad spots. Both are surrounded by hills/mountains/plains. They don't have any 2 food tiles, so they can't grow to size 3. This means that they can't build settlers. You built a granary in Osaka, which isn't very useful. Granaries only have an effect when your city grows in population, and Osaka cannot grow past size 2 anytime soon. Edo is in the forest. It only has 1 two food tile (the deer on forest). This means it can grow to size 3, but will do so slowly. But then you chopped the forest, which increases it's available food, speeding up its growth :)
The top priority when choosing your first few city spots is food. More food = more settlers = bigger empire.
I've attached a picture with recommended city spots. These are fairly close together, but they all have at least 2 tiles that give 2 food (grassland mostly), without needing to irrigate or cut forests.
It seems after grabbing a few cities and securing iron, you went for an attack on Russia. That was a fast transition. Within 36 turns you built about 20 offensive units. Good job! You properly committed to the attack, which is why it was successful.
Don't build wealth this is early in the game. Osaka and Satsuma should be building military units, since they have barracks, and can't grow to a big enough size to build settlers. There's still land left to claim, there's no excuse for building wealth. Don't build wealth until at least all the city spots are taken, and you have all the workers you need.
If your city is getting unhappy, build a settler to reduce it in size. Or use the luxury slider, or build a warrior for military police. This is a problem in Kyoto too. Kyoto's building a wonder. It should be using all available resources. Instead, at 10AD, you have 2 tax collectors. Assign those citizens to work tiles so you can finish the colossus faster. If you're still unhappy, use the happiness slider. Or bring that spearman from Osaka to Kyoto to provide military police. Osaka will never be unhappy since it can't grow. Oh, that's also why it doesn't need a temple, you can sell the temple in Osaka.
You switched into monarchy. Good. You're doing great in tech. You have some small unit support issues, plant more cities to solve that. You also only have 4 workers (+ slave workers) for a huge empire, you should build more workers.
So you put yourself in a bit of an awkward spot by the 170 AD save. You stopped building military units, so you're not really ready to attack anyone else. But you also mostly stopped building settlers. So you didn't claim all the new land you opened up. You took some cities from Russia, but they aren't contiguous, since the other enemy AIs claimed all the other available land. It seems you realized this, since I see 2 settlers in the 170 AD save.
So generally, you're doing well, outpacing the AI. You had kind of bad land to begin with. Build more settlers, take up the remaining city spots. There's a good spot south of Tokyo within range of the whale, and 2 spots east of Kagoshima. Finish expanding, then I'd recommend taking out the Indians. Also, chain irrigation southeast from Satsuma to Nara, Kagoshima, and Osaka. That way those cities can finally grow. Oh, and build more workers :).
Nice set of tips -definitely a few new ones for me. One I didn't see is that if you screw up, and multiple cities go into civil disorder for whatever reason (eg loss of a luxury over the end turn), you can avoid all disorders after the first event / built item. Enter the first city when the notification pops up, then use arrow keys to cycle through all your other cities and adjust specialists before the rest trigger.
Wifey and I have been playing a Civ3 scenario (game comes with an editor) on hot seat mode for like two decades. I have modified the units to where there is much more in the way of tactics: everything moves at least one faster (except heavy stuff like cannon, but it shoots farther), there is much more bombardment available as an option, and new units like the "spy-bomber" give us humans a big advantage over the AI.
The spy-bomber is the former explorer changed by the editor to be a cheap, fast, invisible unit that drives the AI crazy because it isn't "smart" enough to post old units on important sites to keep the weak spy-bombers from pillaging.
sounds like a fun way to do a co-op vs the AI in always war
I never knew you could relocate citizens to different tiles. So much is being unlocked
What?!
I've been playing this game for "YEARS" now but kind of knowledge you gave is extraordinary. You truly are Einstein of Civ 3. Great! Job. Love from Pakistan.
So by the grace of our overlord Suede I am authorized to correct him a touch. That the Forbidden Palace actually does reduce corruption in surrounding cities. Because when you have a FP distance corruption is calculated using whichever distance is smaller, the one to the FP or your original palace. So smart placement of your FP can almost double your productive lands, more detail bellow.
So as said in the video there are two kinds of corruption, the distance corruption is most obvious and you see it pretty much as soon as you plant your second city and then more so when you plant the one even further. The further away it is the worse it gets, simple. The FP allows for a second focal point to your empire but it doesn't help against the other kind of corruption except in a general flat reduction of all corruption. The other kind, rank corruption is a bit more tricky but by and large it works the same way, the further a city is from the capital the more it has. With the exception that with rank corruption there is a tipping point after which, well it doesn't quite get exponential but it gets bad quick. That is why Suede was mistaken, he would put his FP in a very distant city, the FP would make that city non-corrupt but for the cities around it reduced distance corruption didn't matter since rank corruption was already catastrophic, you could not even notice or barely so.
But unless someone asks that's about enough of theory, what you guys want to know is how to tell corruption to fuck itself and have mad gains. And luckily that's what I am here to say.
You may not like it but ideal shape of your country is elliptical, with the twin palaces acting as the foci (centers) of that ellipse. How big you should make that ellipse you ask? Well it depends on your government, map size and difficulty so it is different in each case. BUT a good rule of thumb is that your palace should be in the center of a circle where the edges of the circle are marked by cities that are about 50% corrupt AFTER Courthouse (you may need to move your capital to a more optimal position, indeed usually you will but a military great leader can rush a palace and this is a smart thing to do anyway). This is your core territory, the Forbidden Palace will allow you to make another.
The way you do it is simple, look for nearby land to conquer, it should be about the same size as your current core and ideally bordering you. Then you repeat the process there, see how many cities/tiles it is from your palace to the 50% corrupt cities then find a city in your intended target that is double that distance from your current capital. This will be the future site of the FP and the second focus of your empire. Well almost, at this scale rank corruption is not yet crushing but it is noticeable so don't go quite so far but maybe 20% closer to the original palace.
To give an example since I usually play huge maps the distance from my capital to the border is five cities. Not five closest cities but five cities in a line and I plant so the big fat crosses don't touch so that is about 25 tiles. The FP then should be 50 tiles away from my current capital, but given rank corruption you should make it closer to 40. The end result if you follow my advice will be that elliptical shape and some very productive yet large lands. Once you are at this stage I think nothing short of a Sid difficulty civilization of normal size can keep up (and even big enemy civs are not as efficiently set up as you so even big rivals beware). If you are lucky you can get all this land from one big, conveniently positioned rival. More likely you will need to partially conquer another one or two to get all your potentially productive lands.
Word of warning though, be careful about getting new cities after you set your empire up this way. Precisely make sure that any cities you conquer or plant are further away from your capital than the cities in your 2nd core. If they are not chances are this new city will be shitty due to distance corruption but its existence will make every single city in your 2nd core worse because of rank corruption. So only take extremely important cities that fit this criteria, like ones with luxury resources. Or even better just take cities that are far, far away and don't interfere with your 2nd core at all.
Final tips for those who are dedicated enough to get this far. Be mindful of your desired final government. If you measure out your optimal country size while in Despotism you will be sad to realize the optimal size is much larger in Monarchy/Feudalism, and even larger still in Republic or Fascism and greatest in Democracy. Each of those has less corruption than the last and so the biggest optimal empire core is different for each. And if you are aiming for Communism FP considerations are less important since that govt. has almost a totally different approach to corruption. It still matters even if your endpoint is communism but in that case the two cores will be only a transitionary phase so feel free to treat my rules more as guidelines if commie is the goal. So in short plan out your future empire with governments in mind.
Another important thing of note, and fun, is that distance corruption is absolute so your cities should always be in a circular pattern around the palaces, this is obvious and what makes the elliptical shape in the end. However rank corruption is not absolute it is relative. This means there is a fun loophole to corruption here. You could in theory conquer your continent and if it is not too big rule that with your original palace. Then go literally around the world, perhaps hunting for lux resources you lack, and conquer a similar amount of land there. If you build a FP in the center of that distant land you will have perfectly usable cities! So the core and the 2nd core don't need to border each other if you don't want them to. But more realistically it is the smart thing to do, it is easier to conquer (and then defend) nearby lands, the risk of ruining things by taking cities that would increase rank corruption is lessened and so on. But still I bet you never thought you could have a fully functional colony on the other side of the world.
Now have fun min-maxing and owning those cheating AI bastards everyone ;)
Your videos are the reason i migrate from civ 4 to 3. Great work Man, you explain yourself in a clear and polish way!
Wow - 2 minutes in and I already learned stuff I hadn't known about in 15 years of playing. I'm not a competitive player by any means, so there's much I never bothered to learn, but these tips are gold. Great video, thanks a lot!
Great vid! Amazing lifespan on this game... 20+ years later, there are still players. Amazing.
I rewatch this every 3 months and learn something new lol
This should be part of the official handbook... Great video.
Right of the bat, you killed my ego. Here I thought I was clever chopping forests to hurry my wonder production, and had no idea it was in vain, lol.
This is awesome, thanks for all the work.
Gah my army of lumberjack workers - planting trees to chop them down a few turns later - all for nothing!
Cheers for doing this. Have a good one!
29:40 lmao after all these years I finally found out why I was always getting these guys in my games
Dude!! Thanks a lot for this video, this is a very dear game to me and your level of commitment to it is inspiring! Just to mention, about point 16. In one of my games i was conquering a lower civ but with very high amount of population. So for example, when conquered it messaged "there are 11 resistance in the city" so what happens is that you have to "force loved you" which is hard in republic, and none problematic in Democracy, but if the influence around it still of the nationality for a lot, they can flip 2 ~ 3 turns.
I just found your channel yesterday and I am glad to know that we have quality civ3 content in this age. Instant sub!!!
Also, did you try the rise and rule mod, I've been playing it since last week and I think it is an enourmous enhancement to the base game.
I'm not much of a fan of the "everything and the kitchen sink" type mods like RARR, Double Your Pleasure, etc. Generally I feel the base game lasts long enough and is epic enough in scope as is. When I download mods I look for small maps with a lot of replayability :)
@@suedeciviii7142 I agree its slow but I am quite enjoying it. Loe your content though, got so many good tips that I started using,
I experienced the culture flip unit culling yesterday for the first time. I always knew the couple units I kept on a city died in a flip, but thought I'd be able to hold the city for a bit longer than a turn or two. just about the turn after I took a city, it flipped, and I hadn't moved like 30 units off the city from the last turn
rip that battle
Love the vid Suede. This game was a big part of my childhood. Video suggestion for you tho…ranking all civ3 tracks. This game is filled with BANGERS 🔥
Great idea but I don't want to do it without posting the music, and i'd be scared to get a copyright strike
2 other examples of turb order are pollution and enemy movement. Pollution ticks before food and shields are applied. Also an enemy movement can knock you off a tile before it ticks. When you might have expected that third pop for your setler, or the 10th shield for the 1 turn warrior, you can be interrupted.
At the rate I've been watching your videos, I'll have the same amount of time on that as I do Civ3.
At the rate I've been putting them out lately you might!
36:51 My understanding is that cities will use the forbidden palace city for calculating distance corruption if it is closer than the capital city, but rank corruption still calculates based off the capital. Calculated corruption can go way over 100% before it is capped, so that is probably why you don't see a change. It's effect would probably be most noticeable if you had cities with fairly low rank but high distance, maybe you started on a small island without too many cities and your next cities are on a continent halfway across the map, or something similar.
Precisely, yeah. Sorry if I explained it wrong here, it's an old video. You can see my England demigod game where I do exactly what you mentioned here, and I build my FP somewhere very far and it works well.
ruclips.net/video/Mh0I1HNYbt4/видео.html
Been getting back into CivIII recently, and a huge reason for it is because of your videos (countless hours into the TETurkhan mod)! Thanks so much for the great content. Question, how do you toggle the view of "terrain only"? I'm sure it's basic but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere.
ctrl-shift-m
Thank you to @Ryaken and @Where Is Krell? for pointing out that you can have multiple scientific leaders at once! This was an error in my video. So hold on to them for as long as you want!
Additionally: empire size as it relates to anarchy length is based on OCN. If you have a hyper large empire, you can actually get a +3 modified, in some cases leading to a 9 turn anarchy!
My question is can you pop a military leader if you are holding onto a scientific leader for later use?
@@jerrygar7 Yeah as far as I know.
@@jerrygar7 There's an old article by SirPleb on Civfanatics called "Creating and Using Leaders". In it, Pfeffersack mentions a rumor that Scientific Leaders (SGLs) prevent the creation of Military Leaders (MGLs). Alexman comments next that if you have any leader of any type, you cannot get an MGL, and claims to have tested it. Those comments might predate the final version of the Conquests expansion, but even if so, I doubt that they ever changed/fixes it so that MGLs could get made if you have another leader available.
Yes, you absolutely can! I once spawned 2 in one turn, hitting Philosophy-Literature as Scandinavia (not even scientific civ, btw). Such small things are memorable and make you return to this awesome game again and again.
You're an angel
Thanks for helping me beat my childhood's nemesis!
It is quite picky, but in the turn order, we can add that Income/science is compute before the food and shield. It is most useful when you finish a tech. You get science and income, then the tech finsh and you are asked what next. You can go to the Science/Happiness sliders and to your cities. As the income and science is already compute for the turn, you can put the hapiness slider to max and have a free WLTKD over the empire. The turn before you can put all the citizen as scientists and put them back to work after the research is done, but the shield are not counted yet, so they do both. It is a lot of micromanagements, but it can cut 1-2 turns of research.
Yup, good point. I generally follow the HOF rules when I play though, so no city screen hacking.
I love the name "Big fat cross" for THAT shape XD
Thanks a great deal for making such a long video, right on the money my freind just gave me a copy of the game so thanks for the headstart. Really glad to know the mechanics tips, I came from civ 5 and so 3 is a little....foreign so far, but good fun. Appreciate your dedication to civtopia pal 👍
And the AI will accidentally declare war on you if you have an invisible unit in their way, such as a submarine.
You just answered like 30 questions iv had for 20 years
mtv.mtvnimages.com/uri/mgid:file:http:shared:mtv.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/rihanna-winking-new-1437074506.gif?quality=.8&height=228&width=302
Excellent video.
Let me share a shortcut I've just discovered by accident: CTRL+SHIFT+N = Clean Map Preferences
What are your thoughts on: 1. Playing with scientific leaders (i never have the option on) 2. Is it cheating to rig the civs (e.g. pangea 60% water as an expansionist civ with no other civs expansionist) 3. should planting on bonus food give the city centre food?
Things learned: - Spiral to forest chopping - pretty much everything to do with war time - wonder golden ages - didnt know unique units were kept until a golden age - 3billion - 5billion hill stuff - roads reducing corruption - didnt know forbidden palace did nothing regionally, just thought it was very little - you can open top five cities/demographics in game? - unit promotion probability - knew the ai could see the map but not the resources - did not know the plus 1 shield for size 7 cities - everything espionage -
Like to think i was knowledgable to begin with but guess i was a little off
1) Playing with them off makes the traits imbalanced, so I keep them on.
2) Nothing is "cheating", there's just different levels of challenge. But I'd recommend playing a variety of map settings and with a variety of civs.
3) Gameplay-wise? Maybe. It would be a quality of life change, it would make good city placement easier. But I think it would make it too easy to have a powerhouse size one city.
In terms of realism? Makes sense as is I think. That's what happened to Toronto in Canada. We settled in that area because it had the best farmland, but now it's all paved over with urban sprawl. So we don't get the bonus food :)
4)you can open top five cities/demographics in game?
Yeah it's F11 or something like that. One of the F keys.
26:20 LOL I like your short version xD
Thanks, Suede. I'm glad the English teaching is going well. It's not always an esy gig. I've heard you say something like "mealy troops." What are they? And from context, R and G (or RNG) seems to be the luck of combat results. What is the exact meaning of that?
RNG is random number generator. It refers to luck in video games.
Sometimes when talking about multiplayer games, I say "melee troops". Units with one one movements point, who must be controlled very differently from mounted (fast moving troops)
Thank you man, amazing contribution!
So, tip 101 basically means that on high level difficulty in the early game when you want a spot for the city where barbarian units are, but don't have strong enough army to reliably beat them, you can just lure them away with one unit.
Yup!
Like you said, there is actually a marginal reduction of corruption to near cities of the forbidden palace. It's only noticeable on a large or huge map, and only is effective to cities within about a 10 block radius.
Are you sure? Someone else claimed it acted as a second palace for the purposes of distance corruption calculations. Which is irrelevant if you have a ton of rank corruption, but relevant if you do looser city placement, or are spread across islands/continents.
@@suedeciviii7142 yeah, im not as experienced on lower maps, i mainly do huge or large on regent and monarch. But yes, it does lower it a bit. I'm usually republic, but jave waited until democracy to do it, and it had a noticeable effect.
I like the map you are using.
I've been playing this casually since it came out. Decided it might be time to actually win
What difficulty do you play on? If you just want to win I'd recommend my "mistakes new players make" series. The tips here are only really necessary on high difficulty levels.
@@suedeciviii7142 I'll check it out, thanks
They need to make this into a movie. It's the next Endgame
You mentioned about how a single unit can't produce 2 great leaders. There was a game I had where after I upgraded my knight to a cavalry he eventually went on to get a new great leader, though I suppose that doesn't entirely count as the same unit.
Also on the topic of cities flipping, I have a personal grievance that I wanted to vent. Artillery doesn't count towards the occupied military count because I had a city with 36 artillery in it depose.
IIRC someone disagreed with this point. I haven't seen evidence but take that as you will.
It's very possible for city with 36 units to flip. A single unit reduces the flip chance by like, 0.15% or something like that is some cases.
@@suedeciviii7142 That's pretty disappointing that the flip chances are so unaffected by military presence.
Also I had an interesting thing just happen in my game. I think I might have found another way to bait the enemy into declaring war but it may need further testing. Basically I had a privateer stationed in an unguarded city and then the Koreans came and bombarded it but if I loaded back and put a soldier in there the enemy didn't attack.
@@danielsime911 Was that a declaration of war when they bombarded the privateer?
@@suedeciviii7142 yeah, that was when they declared war.
So I have learned that you can flat our Right of Passage attack twice in a game, if the previous civ didn't know the new one.
You can ROP attack as many times as you want as long as they are the ones declaring war. Demand techs until they hate you, then fail a spy mission, that should do the trick :)
Thanks for the video, Suede! It could have saved me days of reading forums on game mechanics years ago when I was more interested in Civ3 than I'm now. It's a great idea to put them all in one place. I'm sure, you have already mentioned all of them in your long game videos but not everybody is able to watch them full length.
So, sorry if I missed it somewhere, but I have a question related to the "interturn". For example, I have a city that grows in 1 turn and builds a temple in 1 turn. The new citizen is gonna be unhappy which should put the city into disorder. So after the turn ends will the disorder start immediately or the temple will be completed making the new citizen content?
Thanks! So it actually doesn't matter if you build a temple or not. A new citizen will never cause your city to disorder, whether they are unhappy or not. Disorder is calculated by "Did unhappy citizens outnumber happy citizens when you ended your turn?", not whether that's true when the turn starts.
As for construction, interestingly, disorder will prevent shields from being added to the box. But it doesn't actually stop construction. If the box is full for whatever reason at start of turn, construction will complete, even if you're in disorder (or even anarchy!)
So if you rush production on a temple, causing unhappy citizens to outnumber happy citizens 4 to 3, and then end turn, the city will disorder but production will still complete. If you then zoom in on the city, the citizen ratio will be 3 to 3, so the problem has been fixed by the temple, but the disorder still occured.
This kind of proves what I said above: disorder is calculated at end of turn, not at start of turn.
@@suedeciviii7142 Thanks for your answer! Even deeper than I expected
for boat hoping. I think the boat that moved to that space most recently is on top. Aside from that it is very random.
Thanks
The lack of overflow is such a deterrent. (1:13:31)
"
Good tips. Just wondering if you have any tips on increasing the chances of AI fighting another AI in a game?
Well in the settings you can turn up AI aggression when setting up the game. Also use military alliances.
one thing that is still frustrating is the fact that one turn you will have even tech with the ai but a few turns later they ll will have 4+ more techs than you out of no where even if you are bigger and have 70 or even 80 percent research
It's because they're trading amongst themselves. Also depending on the difficulty, the AI might be out-teching you because they're playing republic and you're playing monarchy/despotism.
Nice job bud. Thanks.
Would love to see this for Civilization 4 too.
17:39 What button are you pressing to remove the artificial improvements and view the landscape without any improvements?
ctrl shift m
Odd question but I'm trying to convince my friends to start playing civ 3 over civ 5 - is there any way you could do like a transition video highlighting major differences for people trying to pick the game up after what civ 5/6 has introduced?
I've been planning a "first time playing civ 3" video for a while. But that's a good idea too. Like, "Why you should play Civ 3 if you're a fan of later civ games".
One downside of eliminating the possibility of the AI extorting a resource, in my experience, is that instead it simply demands a city
The AI cannot demand cities.
@@suedeciviii7142 So it was all just a dream
Outstanding TY.
About point 29 at around 19:20, do civs with expansionist and seafaring traits get ga from only the colossus or do you still need another building?
Yup! Collosus is exp, sea, and com. England, Portugal, and the Hittites all get Golden Ages from it.
Egypt gets a golden age from the Pyramids, China, from the great wall, etc.
@@suedeciviii7142 Aah thanks for the reply, and usefull tips in this video so also thanks for that :)
@@suedeciviii7142 Is that for Vanilla and Conquests both? Thought in C3C you needed one Wonder for each trait, and had to build at least one yourself, not just capture them.
@@jonshive5482 Yes, in conquests you can get a golden age from one wonder, as long as it has both your needed traits.
Capturing doesn't work.
1:05:50 Almost! You couldn't know but it's Besançon, so the "c" sounds like a "ss" :-)
EDIT: (I wrote "ss" to not be confused with "s" which sometimes sounds like "z" both in French and English :-) )
I'm surprised how many I knew, but weighed against how many there are it doesn't seem like it.
What's your take on accelerated production? How does it change how the game is played? Is it better to play with it on or off, or is it more about trade-offs? Also, a "X-number of Civ III Keyboard Shortcuts" would be much appreciated. ;P
It imbalances the game. The biggest annoyance for me is it doesn't change minimum or maximum tech time. So despite teching twice as fast, you still can't get a tech faster then every 4 turns, making it very difficult to get a tech lead on medium or high difficulties.
Worker speed is unchanged, despite most other things being changed. You can imagine why this is absolutely insane. I guess you can build twice as many workers? But the opportunity cost of building workers is also doubled.
Oh, if I'm not mistaken the game still has the same number of turns too! It's ridiculous. If you want a faster game, just play a tiny map or an 80% water map.
We do use accel prod for multiplayer though. Micromanagement of shields and food is a lot more important with accel prod.
@@suedeciviii7142 Ah I thought so. I just played a a game with it off on Regent and the flow of the game felt so much better and I was actually able to expand much faster than I've ever been able to.
Thanks for the reply!
@@radioren1221 If you really prefer it there are some changes you could make in the editor to make it more balanced.
@@suedeciviii7142 I'm okay, I haven't noticed it taking too much longer with it off, and I actually prefer the longer experience.
How do you know all this stuff? Were you a game developer for civ lol?
Your graphics look so clean. Im using snoopys terrain, but I was wondering What graphic mods are you using?
None. Just the popheads citizen mod and the grid for the minimap.
@@suedeciviii7142 I used to like snoopy terrain, together with some irrigation and custom mines, but tbh, for some reason now I would like something more cleaner, guess Ill go back to the stock graphics. Thanks a lot 🙂
You can have two military great leaders at the same time. My record is 3.
No, you can def get multiple scientific great leaders. The most I've had at once is 4. Do you know what the percent chance is of spawning a scientific leader when you get a tech first?
Yes, see the pinned comment. 2.5%, 5% if you're sci.
Its possible to get more than one scientific leader at the same time. I had a game with 7 leaders. I had 4 of them sitting in cities didn't want to trigger a golden age.
Yeah, I clarified this in a comment. I'll pin the comment.
18:45 On that same note (and perhaps you'll mention it later) - don't switch governments during a GA, unless maybe you're a religious civ under despotism. Anarchy wastes precious bonus shield/commerce turns! If you accidentally trigger a GA during despotism and aren't religious it might just be better to eat the despotism penalty than to switch.
Can I just say I love when someone binge watches my channel and replies to a bunch of stuff from my old videos that I've forgot about :)
@@suedeciviii7142 Glad you do hahaha, I was honestly afraid my comment spam would make you Annoyed or even Furious! More seriously though, I hope you don't mind the engagement, your channel is pretty much the best outlet for Civ3 stuff!
@@cheaterman49 Yeah absolutely! If you want to get my live reaction to questions, you can stop by my livestreams, Sundays at noon EST here on RUclips :)
@@suedeciviii7142 Sounds like a plan :-) have a very happy NYE in the meantime haha!
can you recommend some must have mods for civ3? singleplayer! Thanks
Amazing!
Such a good video good content man 😊😊
How did you get some of this info
Usually by testing myself. Some of it is from Civfanatics threads, but I usually didn't take a single user's word for it. Only stuff confirmed by a couple people.
If I wasn't 99% sure of something in this video, I prefaced it with "if I'm not mistaken" or something like that.
No tip about science? or you have it in another video? I noticed you have the slider on 0%, why and when should you do it?:)
It depends on if you need gold or techs. Often I set it to 0% to save gold, so I can upgrade military units and kill people. Especially if I have another way of getting techs (tech brokering, buying techs, great library, espionage, or in peace deals).
Your going to make me get this game again xD
$5 on steam. Goes as low as $1.25 during sales :)
Suede CivIII
Cool. Thank you. Do you know if having multiples of flak cannons positioned in one city will increase the percentage of intercepting a stealth bomber that is bombing it?
@@LCInfantry Yes it works. I think the cap is 4-5 flaks. There was a thread on cfc on the subject
Suede CivIII
Thanks, I’ll look into that.
Tried that gpt deal and it didn't work the way I figured. Seems there's more to it than turning your slider(s) to zero, making the deal then putting your sliders back where you want them. When I tried it there was a humonguous deficit no matter where the slider was. Don't you have to make other deals with other AIs to pull this off? Thanks.
Ah I think I've seen that before. I can't remember exactly what causes it, but had you ruined your trade reputation that game by breaking any 20 turn commitments (including peace treaties and military alliances)?
@@suedeciviii7142 Trade no but peace treaties yes. My understanding was that peace treaties are treated separately from trade deals. Anyway no biggie. There's an old thread which may refer to this; some players have conflicted consciences about it:
forums.civfanatics.com/threads/explotive-gpt-trade-with-ai.253550/
Not even playing Civ 3 - but i have to watch any well produced video about old games. Pls help xD
"well produced"
Excellent video but just a pronunciation tip, the capital of Korea is pronounced SOLE not SEE-OLE. LOL
So I definitely didnt need to pay 4000 gold for that ICBM 😞
I know it's technically one of the allowed pronunciations of granary, but coming from the midwest we always say ɡrān(ə)rē with a long A like "grain" and not ɡran(ə)rē like "granny". Sorry, just bothered me around the number 10th time of the 102 times you said it.
Lol it's like when he says barrackses, I try to laugh and think of Smeagle saying it but goddamn it is in every video. Whatever, I've learned so much and Suede is the biggest Civ3 boss alive, still love the videos!
Bravo! Now that I've seen the whole video got a few more questions and observations. Please indulge me:
In your examples of culture flipping those Cities are on another Civ's border. I've had conquered cities away from alien culture pressure flip anyway. They were near other conquered cities from the same Civ which didn't flip. Is there any rule concerning this? Thanks.
35:45--Expansionist Civs can pop Cities from Goody Huts? Never experienced it, only Settlers. Didn't even know it was possible.
1:1:16--Oh so NOW I get the double-rush trick. Neat! But I'd still rather wait 'til next turn ('cept when building stuff in newly founded cities after trans-oceanic amphibious invasions).
Tip 99--Ah, so the AI doesn't consider that breaking the trade deal? A fantastic exploit (cheat?) but if experts do it why not me :-)?
Tip 101--This makes avoiding Barbs way too easy, no? Just don't put units NW or SE of 'em. Presume this doesn't work for Workers or Settlers.
There's a complicated formula that determines a city's chance of flipping each turn. According to the formula for culture flipping, the odds of flipping are 0% if there's both no foreign citizen and foreign tile in the BFC. Sometimes you can get foreign citizens in weird ways, like joining workers to a city, or building a settler in a captured city.
Flipping is just a percent chance. Sometimes the least likely city to flip will be the one that flips, and the others don't.
For popping cities, it says something like "an advanced village has joined our nation" or something like that.
There are a lot of things I'd call cheats but prompting the AI to declare war when I'm paying them isn't one of them. If they didn't like it they shouldn't have declared war :p
It does work for workers/settlers, as long as they aren't one move away. If it would take the barbarian 2+ turns to get to where the undefended worker/settler is, they won't go after the settler (unless it's NW/SE)
@@suedeciviii7142 Thanks for your etailed replies. Would you believe in my last 2 games I've popped 3 villages and 1 Settler with Scouts? Never happened before, although the first game I blew by refusing Bismarck's demand; the second is still in progress.
what am I supposed to do when I start the game I don't understand
This video talks about that
ruclips.net/video/Ntkw5otU8C4/видео.html
11:15
What on earth is that capital? Can you even naturally spawn on a 1 tile island like that?
No it was a weird challenge I did.
The game can spawn you on 4-5 tile islands though.
@@suedeciviii7142 Ohhh, okay, thanks!
4-5 land tiles for a cap is still revolting to me tho
What's the best government?
republic
@@suedeciviii7142 reallllly? Dam. Ok thanks
@@MarloMitchell Decisively too. Communism is also pretty good and nothing else is remotely close.
Are you using a graphics mod?
No, other than the citizen moods mod.
i had two sci great leaders at once
10:54 anarchy will last between 4-**8** turns
can u help me out
im in a right pickle
singleplayer
im the chinese
french, japanese and portugese r ded lol
germany and aztecs at war
carthage and germany in modern era
america got 1 city but not at war and still alive?
year is 1804
im doing fine for gold
just got refining
i have no oil and im already exporting my extra rubber
thx
Send the save to suedeciviii@gmail.com
@@suedeciviii7142 how do i do that ;-)
@@suedeciviii7142 and by the way i am awwwwwwwful at this game
Very strange that bombers don't benefit from mobilisation.
The weird thing is the stealth fighters do, even though stealth fighters cannot intercept.
@@suedeciviii7142 That gave me an idea. After some experimenting, I can say that it is related to the attack value. Fighters have one, bombers don't. This also extends to stealth fighters and bombers, despite both functionally being bombers and the stealth fighters never being able to use their offensive power. Likewise, Artillery does not benefit from mobilisation, just like workers or settlers.
1:25:00 Idk man, i just traded Democracy for Nationalism with USA, no gold attached
Democracy is a government tech so it's also highly valued. Depending on how many AI civs have each tech, I could see that making sense.
Also on lower difficulties the AI tends to give better trades, idk what you're playing on.
@@suedeciviii7142 difficulty 3/8 i think. (Bloody aztecs man, they spawn every time near me and do a zerg rush)
That Finally Ready for Regent (no roads) game is one of the, if not the, ugliest thing I've ever seen.
good tips, but so long! lmao
Yeah I only intended this to be like 25 minutes or something but as soon as I started writing tips, I couldn't stop.
Do you have a document that is like this and all your tutorials localized in one place? Maybe a pastebin link?
Love this channel. Recently downloaded Civ3 since i wanted to play Civ but everything after 4 seems weird. Civ4 was alright but Civ3 was one of my favorite games when i was a kid but I hadn't played since like 2005. And back then I didn't really know any of the mechanics and only played in chieftain. I remember going a difficulty higher and always failing. This time i learned the mechanics of the game and used the help of your videos and I won a 64 hour long game on Regent (large map, max AI count, conquest win only). Looking forward to higher difficulties now. This game is so addicting I actually have to force myself to stop playing.
Your story is basically the same as mine! I’m now to the point where I can win pretty much every time on regent and win maybe 50/50 on monarch. I used to play this game on chieftain when I was younger and I had pretty much no idea what I was doing. Suede is awesome and he totally changed how I view this game.
Thanks for posting these. It brings me back to the old school days where there werent swamps, and no multi-player. My brother and I would play together, giving over the first setler, and acting like we were different players.
No swamps sounds like heaven
You can have a unit spawn more than 1 leader IF you upgrade it. Say, if an elite warrior spawns a leader, becomes a swordsman and then wins a battle as an elite it can spawn another leader (assuming one can spawn at all). It works once for every upgrade, probably because as far as the game is concerned it's a different unit. But as it keeps its given name, I consider it one and the same.
Beyond that, great video. Specially the part about the forbidden palace.
Interesting!
@@suedeciviii7142 I can confirm this as well, but IIRC it is important NOT to change the unit's name when it prompts you to after winning MGL because that will prevent the future upgraded versions from popping new MGLs.
Also I'd put up a pin with the revised Forbidden Palace understanding I showed you because the way you explained it in this vid is quite detrimental since a well placed FP can create a second core for your empire (if not commie, in that case you can build it pretty much anywhere). If people followed your advice here they would put it down in any random quality town that is terribly corrupt, probably with too much rank corruption around to notice the distance corruption reduction it gives.
@@nekotamo5154 That's wild if true about MGLs hahah
@@nekotamo5154 As for corruption, my explanation in this video was wrong (since in some cases, distance corruption is an important factor) but I stand by the general advice. That generally, it's best to prioritize putting the FP in a high corruption, good land city. If you have a comment that explains the interaction between distance corruption and rank corruption, I can pin that though.
@@suedeciviii7142 alright sure I'll put it together right now
Thx for the video. 🙂
Are there any exploits that still work against the AI or did they all get patched out? I know there used to be a bug where you could demand 123456789 GPT from an AI and they would accept
Yes oh my god there are so many. My Sid Gandhi series is based around one
Sometimes the science advisor pops up and says i learned a new tech from the other civs without me doing any sort of trading. I dont get how that happens
You have the great library, that's why
Or you made contact with friendly barbarians
im here because i just rage quit civ 3 again!!!! I HATE CIV 3!!!!! AND I ALWAYS GO BACK!!!!! BUT I F****** HATE IT!!!!!!
1:21:26 - isn't this an exploit?
I wouldn't call it an exploit. It's staple play in multiplayer, and in the single player Hall Of Fame they have a list of legal/illegal tactics. It's not listed on either list (unlike some other things on this list like chain boating), which suggests it's uncontroversial.
#61... I haven't been playing for very long, so I'm on chieftain level. The AI may know where strategic resources are going to show up, but they certainly don't _behave_ like they know. I've noticed how AI players will build roads right past a resource which is currently visible. One had gems right outside of its city border and didn't build a road to it for centuries, even after the influence border expanded to include it. And I've never seen them planting a city in a weird, remote place because a resource is next to it.
Also, I have never seen an AI build a colony. But they will put a fortress on a resource... and leave it unmanned!
Maybe their "inside knowledge" of resource locations becomes more evident in higher levels.
Occasionally they do, but they're just shit and don't no what to do with the info. But I have seen AI plant random cities that turn out to have oil.
And no, they don't play better on higher difficulties.
I played a game where I recieved three scientific leaders eventhough I hadnt already used the first and second one.
6:51 Oh I can answer that for you! I didn't consume any military GL during my last playthrough, only scientific (useless otherwise as you pointed in the previous tip), and I never got more military GLs but I did get more scientific ones (3 in total, 2 remaining by end of game)! So there you go. :-)
I can confirm this, you can get as many Scientific Leaders as your luck allows while having one or more, but Military ones can only spawn if you don't have one already