101 Tips And Tricks For Civ 3

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!

Very strange that bombers don't benefit from mobilisation.

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

My personal cheat vs AI:
Buy a tech from one civ and resell it to every other civ you know.
Works best if there are a lot of AIs.

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?

Excellent video.
Let me share a shortcut I've just discovered by accident: CTRL+SHIFT+N = Clean Map Preferences

How do you know all this stuff? Were you a game developer for civ lol?

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.

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.

I've been playing this casually since it came out. Decided it might be time to actually win

for boat hoping. I think the boat that moved to that space most recently is on top. Aside from that it is very random.

That Finally Ready for Regent (no roads) game is one of the, if not the, ugliest thing I've ever seen.

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 like the map you are using.

One downside of eliminating the possibility of the AI extorting a resource, in my experience, is that instead it simply demands a city

Thank you man, amazing contribution!

They need to make this into a movie. It's the next Endgame

LOVE the Civ 3 content. Keep it up. Are you using any mods?

A trick to exceed the army count per continent is to load armies on transports and float them off the coast.

been playing since around 08 back when i was a kid. i was lucky to get a copy in my first language so at least i knew more or less whats going on. havent really stopped playing since. now i play in english but despite the years i sunk into this games i still can barely beat the game at second to easiest mode. only recently i started understanding the "zoom to city" tab in its fullest yet i find myself unable to carefully plan out my EVERY move EVERY turn with EVERY unit especially in a huge empire. the endless expansion race and wars just take too much of a toll on my emotions and i get carried away. nice vid i learned a lot, cant wait to apply the tips

I have played Civ iii on and off for 15 years and only ever played on chieftain. The one I tried to go up to Warlord, I struggled mightily. I have watched this video and now I’m already winning Regent.

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!

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.

I never knew you could relocate citizens to different tiles. So much is being unlocked

So I definitely didnt need to pay 4000 gold for that ICBM 😞

This business of offering an extravagant amount of GPT by turning your sliders off still has me flummoxed. OK, so the AI makes the deal, but don't you still have to pay them the gold? Or do you expect to recoup that by getting other AIs to give you EVEN MORE GPT for some valuable tech? It doesn't seem to have been clarified in the example. And if you're just going to get much less gold up front than you're giving the AI per turn as in the example what's the point? Thanks.

Great vid! Amazing lifespan on this game... 20+ years later, there are still players. Amazing.

#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.

I rewatch this every 3 months and learn something new lol

100one hundred percent sure: the presence of scientific leaders does not allow new leaders to emerge.

Hoover Dam isn't wrong. You still need facotry for regular water plant.

I love the name "Big fat cross" for THAT shape XD

Would love to see this for Civilization 4 too.

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.

Excellent video but just a pronunciation tip, the capital of Korea is pronounced SOLE not SEE-OLE. LOL

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 ;)

Thanks for helping me beat my childhood's nemesis!

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 🔥

What a great video. The number 101 did confuse me I thought it maybe for complete beginers, like in univesity you have xxx101 etc. Almost did not watch because of that ! But thank you, very clear explanations and obviously massive effort and preparation. It's a shame if this was made 20 years ago it would have 1 million views probably. Civfanatics, what a fancinating place for civ and off topic discussions 20 years ago, that place also got diluted with time.

Thx for the video. 🙂

I played a game where I recieved three scientific leaders eventhough I hadnt already used the first and second one.

Do you have a document that is like this and all your tutorials localized in one place? Maybe a pastebin link?

How does 'rank' corruption interact with cities built in rings ie. equidistant from the capitol?
You said the ring strategy no longer works but how can that be reconciled with 'rank' corruption?

Ouch my brain hurts. Apparently I had no idea how to play Civ 3.

TIL that rushing something at zero shields costs extra, how tf did I not realize that for so long

I think the info here will help immensely, ty :)

Had no idea captured units costed nothing! Now I finally get why captured art spwcified the country