i've recently brought civ3 had a few games getting to understand the goverments and the general workings of the game. By the end of the last game i had only just started producing tanks, from about 2020 and just moved into the last scince era, my science research ratio was set at 70:30 for most the game though not for from the off. I was the Greeks if that affects anything.

Am i climbing the technology ladder to slow? or is this normal? what can I do to improve my tech speed? goverment wise and general gameplay?

cheers

stew 

there SCIENTIFIC-Militaristic. that should give you a good feel for it

or be a commercil country, like rome. being commercial means you produce more gold and have a higher population to put into science production

you als need alot of cities to keep your tech to pop count ratio up.

thanks for the replies i'll give it a go with the germans, i've just completed a game with the hitties managed to tech to a satisfactory speed didn't quite get to start the space race but i'm getting the hang of science management.

I completed it with a rating of 600 points and hit the mandatory retirement i still won but i only received the third from bottom ranking, am i right in assuming i need to win diplomatically or by conquest to score a higher total score?

my next idea was to play a scenario rise of rome or a normal game with lots of islands just to see put more emphasis on the navel aspect just for a change

cheers,

stewart  

The rate of tech growth is highly dependant on your rate of population growth.  Your rate of population growth is highly dependant on your city location selection, access to resources, improvement construction, unit construction, etc. etc.

Get your first city down in a location where it can grow quickly, select a tech to research, max your research to 100%, and put your worker to work. 

Generate a few warriors, using a couple to keep people happy through martial law, and using the others to explore for resources and to find good locations to drop new cities. 

Generate settlers and get them to good locations.  Use them to generate more settlers.  Use graineries to speed growth and temples to keep people happy.

Understand specialists.

Micromanage your cities to maximize tech research, construction, growth and worker happiness.

IF you get behind on population growth, then you will also get behind on tech research.  If you can get ahead on population growth and properly manage your cities to maximize your production and commerce, then you will be able to keep up on tech.

As for the tech, i always set it to 100%, i say screw the money, i don't know about the expansions, but having 0 gold and a - income does nothing to you in CIV III so i keep it there till i get to modern age then i bring it way down and start raking in major cash cause i'm so far ahead of everyone else. Oh, and don't give away tech to other factions, try to trade thier knowledge for goods or even a city.

I play c3c and when im in a higher level than chieftain(wich is 99% of the time) i automatically start losing buildings and military as soon as the low treasury kicks in.It might be that youre playing on chieftain/you havent patched your game/its an expansion feature.

Appointing a governor in all cities only to manage citizen moods.

I adjust the government expenditure to a maximum science output already at the start of the game, but avoiding that the budget gets negative. I never micromanage cities, except for deciding what they produce. 

It's very important to have one, but rather 2 regions in your hands where there are huge concentrations of luxury resources like dye, spice, and so on. I can't stress that enough. They are highly in demand throughout the game from the very moment that you can start trading, and until there are less civilizations to trade with, and they often can yield sciences or other tradable things like money that you can reinvest in order to get science. If you're really lucky a civilization may sell a science that no-one else has. That's the most lucrative thing there is. Be quick and don't wait until the first "world wars" break out, because then civilizations are partly running out of money and some of them will not be able to do any substantial trade anymore.

I build the following sequence basically, in a starting city:

Warrior - warrior - warrior - settler - warrior - temple - warrior - warrior - settler - ??? (depends).

NB as soon as spearman are available, I do those.

The first warrior garrisons the city it comes from.

The second warrior I use to explore terrain (for the goody huts or contact with other civilizatons, both of which can yield science and if you're lucky it happens more than once).

Having warriors running around, I keep them on high ground close to the border in order to have an early warning and a good defence against barbarians. If my exploring warrior is attacked, I recover their energy before continuing, because the longer their voyage continues, the harder it gets to move a second one there because of the distance. I disband them as soon as there is no significant territory to be discovered anymore.

The third warrior I position on the spot where I want to build a next city. I don't need large garrisons yet because my first cities are building settlers or workers as soon as they can, and that keeps the population low enough for one warrior to control. I don't automate workers in the beginning, they are only there to build the roads to new city locations, which also will start to generate trade income, and the settlers can build cities earlier when you can get them there already faster.

The settler builds the city on that spot where the third warrior is positioned. The sequence starts all over for that city, except for the first warrior which is already there from the capital.

The capital can continue with a worker (to build more roads), or another warrior (the second warrior of the garrison of the city itself), or a temple. The warrior and the temple are both mainly to keep the people happy.

Once the temple and a second settler is achieved, I'm just developing that first city a bit more depending on the demands of the moment. There can be a bottleneck in workers, garrison troops, settlers, a barbarian war with casualties. If not, I start granary, barracks and a modest standing field army. Just enough to handle the first effects of a possible war but not more than necessary for that. Something like 5 or 6 spearmen or so, and if I have horses, a couple of mounted units. Of course when I have reached a number of cities that's OK to me, I stop all those settlers and workers and start with only garrisons and buildings. The cities in the outer regions are usually more corrupt and cannot afford to waste time on building garrisons or settlers. I let that task be done by the more early or central cities to provide them to the periphery. It's important for the periphery to have temples and courthouses asap, because of cultural competition with neighbours.

Tax spent for science is high in the beginning, but usually drops back later on to about 30 or 40% towards the middle ages or renaissance, until I get more advanced types of government like republic or democracy.

The luxuries are very important to have a surplus in. I can't stress that enough. They never expire (like oil or iron etc) and they are highly in demand until really world wide wars come in between where you have only few civilizations left who can take care of luxury goods themselves. In the exploring phase, it's good to expand cities towards 1 or more fields where there are high concentrations like 3 dyes or spices or other luxury goods. You can trade them, and if you're lucky with the profit you can buy an advanced science that nobody has, and re-trade that for even more sciences. A new science can be highly lucrative, the more advanced it is. Before war really breaks out on a world wide scale (it usually does sooner or later somewhere in the era of infantry and tanks) most civilizations still can afford to buy what you have to sell them.

The most optimal spacing between cities is 4 empty squares between them. Cities can grow on and on until they can get the most out of the number of fields they exploit. Disadvantage is a lesser concentration of cultural influence, and in early times a long distance to get troops somewhere rapidly, and somewhat higher corruption. But in later times the higher growth and production makes it possible to complete costly units in only a few turns. The direction of my building new cities is usually decided by where the luxury resources are most abundant. Start to build the Forbidden palace as soon as you can, it takes awhile.