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- MCP server with stdio transport for local use
- Search episodes, transcripts, hosts, and series
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Episode: 4090
Title: HPR4090: Playing Civilization III, Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4090/hpr4090.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:29:58
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,090 for Friday 5th of April 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Playing Civilization 3 Part 1.
It is part of the series' computer strategy games.
It is the 300th show of aqua, and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
As the summary is, we begin to look at the details of playing this game.
Hello, this is Ahoca, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our ongoing series on strategy gaming, and I'm going to continue our look at Civilization
3 by starting to dig into the details of how you play the game.
Now, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm just going to say, I am using Civilization
3 complete.
This is an all-in-one edition that incorporates the two expansions, conquests, and play
the world.
This is readily available for multiple sources.
Now, when you look at how humans settle in new lands, you see that one of the biggest
issues is to look at the land and figure out what it is best used for.
Now, I used to teach economic geography, and this was a determining factor in where people
settled, access to water is necessary to irrigate crops, and you also need good farmland.
So when you start thinking about early civilizations, you know, they're always on rivers, all right?
The Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the Yellow River, and so on, the Ganges, all right?
This is just basics, really.
But you also need access to other resources, stone for building, timber, clay for making
pots, and so on.
Now, in Civilization 3, and indeed all of the Civilization games, it's also important
to take a look at your resources.
One of the biggest mistakes new players make is to ignore the land or fail to develop it
properly.
In Civilization 3 and later versions, this means building worker units and putting them
to work, building roads, mines, and irrigation.
Now, this is good, but you can do a better job with a little research into lands types
in the game and what cities can handle.
For research, a good starting point is the built-in documentation, which is called the
Civilopedia, and you can access that while you're in the game.
So it's very handy, it's generally accurate.
Every once in a while, the Civilopedia tells you something that just isn't true.
Sometimes this is because the programming changed along the way, and no one get around
to updating the documentation.
If you think you've run across something like this, you can check one of the fan sites,
like Civ fanatics or a polyton.
If the documentation got it wrong, these sites will most likely have the right information.
Now, the first point is that in all Civilization games, it is cities that produce things, and
it is cities that work the land with the population each city has available.
Don't be fooled by national borders that arise as your culture grows.
Your borders may well include tiles that no city can work because the tiles are not within
the area of any city.
Cities in Civilization III can work an area that looks like a letter X that is somewhat
distorted because of the isometric view of the map.
The tiles are all squares as they were in the first two games, and would be again in Civilization
IV.
It is with Civilization V that they switched to hexagons in place of squares.
When you settle a city, that square sits at the center.
Then around that square, you can place eight more squares, one at each side and one at
each corner.
You now have nine squares in a three by three pattern.
Then extend each side by one square, adding three squares to each side, but not adding anything
at the corners.
You now have the cross shape, and I will use the terminology of Synth players and call
it the Big Fat Cross abbreviated the BFC, which totals 21 squares.
Make sure you learn this.
It is key.
No city can work a tile that is not in its own BFC.
Second, it takes one citizen to work a square.
So if you have a city with a population of three, only a maximum of three squares can
be worked.
Now you want to develop your squares to increase their productivity.
First, every citizen in your city requires two food just to stay alive.
If you can produce more than two food per citizen, the excess will accumulate in your food
box until you have enough to add another citizen.
Then that citizen will require two food, but will be available to work another tile.
If however you produce less food than two per citizen, the difference will be drawn out
of the food box, and if it gets empty, you lose a citizen, death by starvation.
So we have a simple Malthusian model going here.
Now when you settle a city, if you pick a good spot, you may have one or two tiles that
already produce two or even three food.
But in general to increase food production, you need to build irrigation, which is done
with your worker units and requires adjacency to fresh water or to another irrigated tile.
But to build units like workers, you need production, which is shown as shields, and
that comes from building mines.
Another action that workers can undertake.
You can increase the productivity of your city by building certain buildings, but buildings
require gold to maintain them.
And one of the best sources of gold is tiles with roads on them, where the gold represents
the trade that can occur with roads.
So barring any special resource, you have three things that a tile can contribute.
Production and gold.
And your worker units can increase the amount each tile contributes by building irrigation,
mines and roads.
So this is your starting point.
You want to identify the best tiles in the BFC of your city.
Make sure your citizens are working those tiles, and improve them as necessary to increase
their contribution by using your worker units.
Now as for the different tile types and their yields, there is a nice and concise summary
at strategy wiki, I've put a link in the show notes for the terrain tile types.
And since they each have a distinct appearance, you can quickly pick them up.
But note that you can right click on any tile and get a pop-up window that will tell you
what kind of tile it is and what the yields are.
In civilization three, any tile within your city can be made to produce something, often
several things, just by putting someone to work on it.
And you can increase the yields by developing the tile with one of your worker units.
So if you have a hill tile, it will produce one food and one shield, if a citizen is placed
on it.
But you can develop it by building a mine and that adds two shields to the yield.
Now building a mine is the only thing you can do with hills, you cannot build irrigation
on them.
Another possible way to add production is to develop a mountain tile.
They do not produce any food at all and cannot be irrigated, but they will produce one
shield if a citizen is placed there, and building a mine also adds two more shields.
So these tiles can be summed up as hills, one food and one shield if they are undeveloped,
one food and three shields if they have a mine.
Mountains, one shield if they are undeveloped, three shields with a mine.
So if you had both of those tiles in the BFC of your city, which one would you choose
to put to work?
Obviously the hill style is better by producing one food, so that would be the preference.
Now also note that you cannot have both mines and irrigation on the same tile, building
one will remove the other.
Now if you open your city screen by clicking on the city, you can see where your citizens
are assigned, because there will be icons of the yield on the square being worked.
If you click on that square while in the city screen, that worker will be removed from
work and turned into an entertainer.
Now this is something you want to avoid in most circumstances.
You want to keep your citizens productively working if at all possible.
Now three more tiles you will frequently encounter are planes.
A plane will produce one food and one shield if undeveloped, or two food and a shield
if irrigated, or one food and two shields if mined.
Grasslands will produce at least two food and possibly one shield undeveloped.
And grasslands will do that and others won't.
You will get an additional food if you irrigate that tile or an additional shield if you
mined it.
Now forests will produce one food and two shields undeveloped, but there really isn't
anything you can do to develop a forest, so it's just one food and two shields.
Now back to the grasslands, we said some of them produce shields.
Now these are what are called bonus tiles and you can usually tell because there will
be a little white dot in the center of the tile, but again as with all tiles you can
right click on the tile and read out the yields on the pop up to be sure.
If you put a mine on one of the bonus grassland tiles, you will get an additional shield
for a total of two shields.
Or you can irrigate it to get a total of three food and if it is a bonus tile you will
get one shield as well.
So those bonus tiles are the best ones you can have, ignoring special resource tiles because
you can get a total yield of four combining food and shields from the one tile.
And in the early game that is very important and is the early game that will make or break
your outcome.
You need to carefully guide your sieve in the early turns to get on a winning bath.
Now there are some other tiles that you may encounter.
Coast tiles, those will produce one food but if you build a harbour they will produce
an additional food.
Now coast tiles are not land, they are the shallow water tiles along your coast.
And those are distinct from ocean.
And generally the difference is that ocean tiles are very dark and coast tiles are a little
lighter in color.
Desert tiles, going to be some of those, if undeveloped we will produce one shield.
You can put irrigation on it and it will give you one food and one shield or you can
mine it and get two shields.
Remember that is either or with mining and irrigation you can do one or the other.
You can't do both.
Flood plains, those will produce three food but zero shields if undeveloped.
If you irrigate a flood plain tile you can get four food or you can put a mine on it
and get one shield in addition to the three food.
Now the flood plains should be very desirable.
Now the one thing about it is that there is a chance that flood plains will produce
a disease outbreak.
So you don't want to go crazy with it but those do produce the most food so that's worth
noting.
Food is very important.
Now jungle tiles will produce one food and that's about it.
You can't develop them any further.
Some tiles are similar to coast.
You can get one food from them and then if you build a harbor you get one additional food.
Then there are sea tiles that are, again similar, these, they, one food and additional food
with the harbor and finally tundra tiles will produce one food undeveloped but if you
put a mine there you can get an additional shield.
So some explanations as we noted forest and jungle tiles cannot be developed.
However you can clear those tiles with your worker.
Forest when cleared will produce whatever is under the forest, often grassland but sometimes
plains or tundra.
And jungle will typically clear into plains and there are the three water tiles.
Coast is water tile adjacent to land.
Sea is a somewhat shallower water tile and ocean is the deep water tile and you can distinguish
them by the colors.
Sea is lighter blue than ocean.
So I think that's enough for this particular episode.
This is Huka for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support
free software.
Bye bye.
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