Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete Beginner QC Guide

Why Play QC (Quick Civ)?

Well, maybe these screenshots will convince you.

Building 100 cavs with this start?

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Getting killed by 40 stacks?

TLDR/Cheat Sheet

Here's a quick reference guide. You can alt-tab to this in game if you forget any of the core stuff. I'd recommend you read this whole guide, but in case you don't have time, this can also serve as a TLDR.

Grow as fast as possible.

More cities = more unit output and faster science.

Space your cities very close together. If you lose 2 cities, you die. So you want your nation to be compact and easily defended.

Build many workers. 1.5 per city is a good idea.

Explore to find your allies, so you can exchange technology.

Place sentry units around your civilization, so that if an enemy plans to attack you, you will know.

Hook luxuries and strategic resources.

Build your Military, in order to protect yourself and assist your allies

What Is QC?

QC is a mod for Civ 3. The original focus was on speeding up the game, but it has evolved into a mod designed for the best multiplayer experience possible. This means that there are a lot of changes relative to vanilla civ 3.

These changes have three main goals.

Goal 1)To ensure a complete game experience (ancient -> early industrial era) in under 3 hours.

Goal 2)Balance. Different terrain and civs should make you play the game differently, but not make the game unwinnable.

Goal 3)Promoting different playstyles. So that the strategy of building a million cities doesn't completely dominate.

Goal 1)

-Production costs are halved, tech costs are halved, workers improve tiles faster. Food output is doubled.

-The despotism penalty is removed

-Irrigation without fresh water is possible with masonry. Map trading and contract trading are available at engineering. Worker speed increases at banking.

-2 city elimination is turned on. If you lose 2 cities, you die.

-Industrial era techs give powerful offensive options in order to make the game end.

Goal 2)

Land Balance:

-Luxury and bonus resources that spawn in the jungle, plains, tundra, etc, are improved, to make these starts better. Jungle and marshes can be chopped faster.

-Offshore platforms are available at monachy.

-An expensive, 1 health boat is available at polytheism, called the "ama". This boat can go on sea tiles, and prevents situations where players in isolated spots can't contact their team members

Civ Balance:

-All civs have unique units in the medieval era, and no unique unit in any other era.

-The German unique unit is a replacement for cavalry with +1 moves. The Greek, Roman, and Carthagian unique units are the same as normal, but available at feudalism instead of bronze working. The Iroquois and Celts get their unique unit (unchanged) at Education.

-Korea, England, Portugal, America, and all other civs with ancient era unique units that aren't mentioned above are removed from the game.

Goal 3)

-Settlers cost 3 population instead of 2.

-Hurry production yields 14 shields per citizen, not 20. The unhappiness that it causes last 17 turns, not 20.

-Happiness buildings give twice as many happy faces.

The First Few Turns

Your first main objective is to get in contact with your allies. To do that you need to send a warrior, scout, or in some cases a curragh, so these should be some of the first things you build. Use these units to explore the map. Even if the location you explore is not near a teammate, it can still be valuable information later.

Enter the domestic advisor screen, and turn your science up all the way to start teching as fast as possible. Ancient era techs are divided into three groups: Middle (Philosophy, then literature, map making, and code of law) Top (Iron Working, then currency and construction), and bottom (Horseback Riding, then Polytheism). Your team will assign you a tech group to research, so you can trade with each other and get to the medieval era quickly.

Space your cities very, very close together. Like, 1 or two tiles between your cities, preferably 1.

Notice the spaces between cities above. This is the safest and most efficient way to position cities in qc.

After building your first couple warriors and scouts, and maybe a worker, you should consider putting a granary in your capital. Try to grow 1 citizen per turn, by irrigating the tiles around your capitol. This will allow you to build many workers and settlers.

By the end of the ancient era, your cities may start to experience unhappiness. Set your happiness slider at 20% in order to stop this. If possible, do not use entertainers, they are very inefficient.

What Not To Build

Wonders – Avoid them unless your teammate recommends you build one.

Banks - Not Needed

Cathedrals - Not Needed

Colosseums - Definitely Not Needed

Marketplaces - Generally used for happiness in QC, but they don’t provide happiness unless you already have 3 or more luxuries hooked.

-Science buildings - By the time you reach libraries, you're in the middle ages. You only need 2 people teching in the middle ages, the team members with the best commerce. If you're new, that's not going to be you. Libraries are useless if you're not teching.

Noticing a pattern here? Buildings are worth it in single player, you have hundreds of turns to recoup the initial investment. But QC usually only lasts 30-50 turns. You do not need these improvements. If you want to invest in your civilization, and become more powerful, build workers, settlers, and granaries.

Defense Bonuses

When attacking a unit on a mountain, the defending unit receives a 100% combat bonus. 50% for hills, 25% for forest, etc. You also get 25% for fortifying, and 50% for being in a city (Size 7+) or a town with walls.

These are very significant bonuses, so be careful attacking units in any of these places. Try to bait them down from the mountain/hill. Or, better yet, place warriors on mountain tiles early game.

Sentries

On that subject, it is absolutely vital to have a sentry net. This will consist of warriors, or other cheap units, placed on mountains or hills surrounding your cities. By doing so, you can see invasions coming several turns in advance, and can prepare your defenses accordingly.

This is a sentry net. If enemy units approach us, we will know several turns in advance.

The Defensive Bombard Bug

This is unique to multiplayer. Defensive bombard is amplified in multiplayer, more with each additional player in the game. At 6 players, it results in pretty much instantaneous death for the attacking unit. So be cautious when engaging a stack of archers or longbows. Sometimes it is helpful to hit the stack with a few weak units like warriors so the defensive bombard of the units are used up for the turn, then attack with your more expensive units.

Because of this bug, archers and longbows are very effective defensive units when placed in stacks with other units. So build many of them, and group them together.

Help! I'm Being Attacked In The First 20 Turns!

99% likely you are not under attack. The enemy is scouting you. It’s common to send a warrior into an enemy’s land, to scout and disrupt them, maybe steal workers and pillage if possible. Do not panic. First, place units on your hills or mountains, to prevent the enemy from moving onto them, and gaining their defensive bonus. Guard your worked tiles, otherwise they can pillage. Wait until their unit is on a tile where they will receive no defense bonus (plains, grassland, desert, maybe forest), and then attack them with an archer.

End Of Turn Combat

In civ 3 multiplayer, players will typically execute any attack that would benefit from surprise at the end of the turn. That way, the opponent has no time to react before they can move again. So if you leave your city empty, they can drop off a unit by boat at end of turn, and take the city 2 seconds later at the start of the next turn. This is called a "double move".

How To Defend Against Stack Attacks

In civ 3, a stack is a bunch of units on the same tile. Typically, players build stacks of the same type of unit, and attack with them all at once in an attempt to overwhelm an enemy city with brute force. It’s not uncommon to see stacks of 40 knights in the medieval era, or stacks of 80 cavalry in the early industrial era.

The first step to defending against stacks is to keep sentries. Otherwise, a stack of mounted units can enter your territory at the end of your turn using a double move, and hit your city before you have the chance to reinforce it. But if you don’t have a sentry (either because your enemy keeps killing them, or because you and your enemy share a border), then it’s important to always keep your units in a defensive formation. This means keep units along your roads, and on your mountains and hills. These will slow down the enemy if they try anything sneaky (like hitting your back row cities), and they can simply be moved inside your city if the enemy commits to attacking it. Build walls in your border cities, and keep several units as a garrison, if not several dozen units. And use defensive bombard to your advantage. Keep archers or longbows in small stacks at key locations, or inside of cities.

So if you don’t have sentries, you should constantly keep units in a defensive formation. The nice thing about having sentries is you have time to prepare. So wait until you spot the stack with your sentry, and then set up the defensive formation shown below.

Defensive troop placement is shown above. Notice the emphasis on placing troops on mountains, to gain the defense bonus.

End

Join us at the CivPlayers Civ3 League for games! http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791432519323

Games are organised daily in the chatroom.

You may want to check out these other QC guides that go into a bit more detail of certain aspects of QC.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=762488798

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=688606769

If you want to watch a video on the methods of obtaining 1 per turn growth, you can go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcFHSl4wqdE

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=793439351

Beginner QC Guide