Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete A Guide To MPT

Introduction

MPT, or multiplayer tournament, is a mod for multiplayer civ 3, played exclusively 4v4. MPT is almost identical to vanilla civ in terms of game mechanics. However, due to the game settings, a meta-game has evolved that is radically different from vanilla civ. There is no "safe phase" at the beginning where you can expand in peace. Players either play very aggressively or very conservatively, and do not tech further than halfway through the ancient era. The mod focuses on early action and ancient era combat. As a result, it's the fastest mod we play, requiring only a 2 hour time commitment.

Late game MPT.

What Is MPT?

Since there are so few changes to the game rules, we can list them here individually. Aside from these changes, the mod is identical to the vanilla game rules.

-All civs with unique units that aren't in the ancient era have been removed. The Byzantines and Carthage have also been removed.

-Sumeria and The Aztecs are no longer agricultural. Instead The Sumerians have the commercial trait, and The Aztecs have the religious trait. The Sumerians have alphabet as a starting tech instead of pottery, and The Aztecs have ceremonial burial as a starting tech instead of pottery.

-The Hittites and the Romans are both industrious instead of commercial. They start with masonry instead of alphabet.

-Map trading and contact trading is available at Map Making.

That's it.

So why is the meta-game so radically different than a regular game of Civ 3? That has to do with the game settings.

Look how close the civs spawn to each other.

The game is played with one city elimination. Lose one city, you die. And the map is a tiny pangea, with almost no water. Civs spawn as close to 6 tiles apart.

Combine that with impis and jaguar warriors running around, and things become very dangerous.

How Dangerous?

Civs can spawn as close to 6 tiles apart. At the start of the game, a jaguar warrior can be built in 3 turns, and a Chasqui scout can be built in 4.

Each of those units moves 2 tiles per turn. That means you only have time to build 2 warriors before you could feasibly be attacked. And remember, multiplayer is played with simultaneous moves. A skilled player will move their jaguar warrior into your city at the end of turn, so you have no time to react before another turn starts. The next turn starting means they move again, taking your undefended city or worker.

I'd recommend this build order, at least until you become experienced enough to know when you can get away with something riskier.

The first 3 units you build should be warriors. The first, you fortify in your capital. The second, you use to protect your worker. The third, you should send out to explore and find your allies.

Then, if you haven't seen any enemy units, you can build a settler. Place the city 2 tiles away from your capital. To clarify, that means there is 1 tile between your capital and this new city. This means you can safely guard both cities, and the road leading between the 2 cities, with the minimum number of units.

2 tiles apart. Like this. No, that is not just a suggestion. This is the single most important piece of advice I can give you to ensure you can survive and play comfortably, instead of trying desperately to stay alive.

As a result of how easy it is to die in MPT, it's absolutely vital to have a sentry net. This means units surrounding your civilization, that allow you to see when enemies are coming. If they send a stack of units at you, you should know several turns in advance, so you have time to prepare your defences.

Notice that although my cities aren't well defended, I have a good net of sentries. If anyone sent units to me, I could slave some spearmen to deal with the attack.

So How Does The Game Normally Progress?

It's not unusual for a player to die within the first 20 turns of the game. Normally, we play on without them.

One player techs map making. Another techs Iron Working. Another techs Horseback Riding. The 4th player saves gold. Sometimes, if needed, a player will tech mathematics. It is absolutely imperative to stop teching as soon as your team is done researching the techs listed above. MPT is often won based on gold. Excess gold saved is used for upgrades.

Players kill each other one by one until one team concedes.

If the game isn't resolved by the time 90 turns have passed, the game ends, and the team with the highest score, including the score of dead players, wins.

Since we have re-established the ladder, games are occasionally resolved on score. If your team has less score, the ball is in your court. Your team should try to kill one of your enemies. If you can't do that, your team should concede.

Military Strategies: Rushes, Chokes, And Sledges

Military strategies typically depends on which civ a player has.

Rush

Civs like Egypt, The Aztecs, and The Inca will often use a "rush" strategy. Instead of expanding, you stay on 1-3 cities. You build 5-15 unique units as soon as possible, and send them to attack an enemy.

An example of a bigger "rush" strategy.

Choke

Civs like the Hittites, Sumeria, The Aztecs, and especially The Zulu will often use a "choke" strategy. This means surrounding the enemy with their unique unit, pillaging roads, capturing workers, and preventing them from expanding. This locks them in their base, rendering that player effectively useless.

An extreme example of a choke strategy is shown above. Why kill your enemies when you can make them wish they were dead?

Sledge

Civs like The Iroquois, The Celts, and Persia often use a "sledge" strategy with their unique unit. This is a mid game timing push designed to kill an enemy player. The Iroquois, for example, would build 10-20 chariots. Then they would upgrade them to mounted warriors, hurry production on another round of mounted warriors, and send them to kill an enemy.

Note that although some civs have unique units that make for very strong sledges, any civ can do an effective sledge. Usually this is done by upgrading warriors to swordsmen, or chariots to horsemen, as discussed in the "general war strategies" section.

Defending Against Common Offensive Strategies

Defending against a rush

The control-shift-g command is very useful. This lets you reinforce a city while it is being attacked. Rush strategies won't have time to cut all your roads before going in. So just place enough units in each city to buy time. Once they commit to attacking a particular city, reinforce with everything you have. All you need to do is survive, or if you die, do the maximum amount of damage to their stack.

Take advantage of the defensive bombard bug. Archers make great defensive units in multiplayer due to this bug, as long as another unit is placed "on top" of them.

Don't be scared to slave (hurry production)! Realize that the enemy is putting themselves at a huge disadvantage by doing a rush. Unlike a sledge, they don't have much to fall back on, since they sacrificed their expansion phase to do this rush. All you need to do is survive, at any cost.

Defending against a choke

Block off key tiles before the enemy units take them. If you can, take advantage of the terrain and form a wall, like the one shown on the left. You don't need to protect tiles behind the wall, because the enemy units cannot get past it. If you can do so safely, build many cities close together. Choke strategies can make either the defender or the attacker go broke. More cities is important for increasing your unit support cap, even if these cities don't have access to many productive tiles due to the choke.

Don't overreact. Many players get frustrated, and engage in unfavourable fights, especially if they get bad RNG. Realize that civs that have good choking units are weak in the late game. If absolutely needed, build catapults, to ensure that you don't lose units when trying to recapture tiles within your borders.

Try ignoring the choke. Say you're The Celts, and you secure and hook your iron, despite having many impis in your land. You upgrade 6 warriors to gallic swordsmen. You could try to kill the impis in your land, but depending on the terrain, this could be a very unfavourable fight, given how much more expensive gallic swordsmen are.

Instead, send them to the Zulu's territory. As soon as the Zulu see your gallics move towards his undefended cities, they might panic and start to withdraw their impis, sending them home to defend their land.

If you aren't in any danger of being killed, it helps to apply pressure on the choking civ. It's hard to maintain a choke while also defending at home.

Defending Against A Sledge

The first thing to identify is whether you're better off fighting inside a city, or outside. If you have walls, a 7+ population city, or if your town is on a hill, you want to bait them into attacking the city itself, because you'll receive a 50% defence bonus. If you fight over roads, or tiles between your enemy's stack and your city, you won't get that defence bonus. But if you don't have walls, or cities on hills, then fighting outside your cities doesn't give you worse odds than fighting inside them.

And this is often true, since sledges can be very meticulous. They will take time to cut your roads to prevent reinforcements, or knock down city walls with catapults. They will walk their stack around the river so they don't have to cross it to attack your city. They will slowly eliminate the advantages you have as a defender.

The key here is slowly. The more time you can buy, the better. The longer it takes for them to actually attack your city, the more time you have to reinforce, the more time your allies have to kill that civ, and the more time they spend having the unit costs from their huge stack eat away at their treasury.

So use stalling tactics. If you know what tile his stack will move onto at end of turn, send a warrior or 2 to that tile right before the turn ends. He might not kill them in time for the move to register until the start of next turn. Send in units to cut the road they're using to reinforce. Blockade tiles that lie between their stack and your city, especially ones with good defence bonuses. Like we mentioned above, if you don't get any bonuses for fighting inside your city, you might as well fight outside the city to slow down the attacking army.

All of the tips that apply to rushes apply to sledges. Reinforce as they attack your city, and use archers as defensive units for their very powerful defensive bombard.

If you cannot live, then call in your allies to relieve pressure. If you lose your city and your allies move fast enough, they can retake the city before the enemy has time to move their stack into it.

And remember, this is one city elimination. That means both you, your enemy, and his giant stack will all die.

General War Strategies

What happens if you can't use your unique unit? Well, there are other offensive strategies that do a decent job. We'll call these "general war strategies".

-Build a bunch of veteran warriors. Connect iron. Upgrade to swordsmen. Send them to kill an enemy. Disconnect iron. Build more warriors. Etc.

This strategy works well if you spawn near an enemy, or can road to them. It works less well if your enemy is far away, as they'll be able to see your stack coming, and prepare their defences. Combine with catapults to destroy enemy walls.

-Build a bunch of veteran chariots. Have your teammate pass you horseback riding. Upgrade to horseman.

This is effective at killing enemies who are further away. Note that this can only be done once. As soon as you have horseback riding, you can never build chariots again. Because of this, do not pass horseback riding to an ally unless they specifically ask for it.

-Build some boats. Put veteran archers, swordsmen, or your unique unit in them. Try to find an undefended city to capture.

Congratulations, you've found my one weakness.

-Build swordsmen or horseman, without using upgrades.

This takes painfully long if you aren't in a golden age. This is why we prefer upgrading strategies. Despite the fact that players don't tech beyond map making and military techs, managing your economy is still important, because of how strong upgrading is.

Breakdown Of Each Civ's Strategy

Persia: Build veteran warriors and archers, upgrade to immortals, and march your doomstack to kill the enemy. As an industrious civ, you can prepare a road to your enemy quite quickly.

The infamous Persian doom stack.

If you don't have an enemy near, things can be tricky. Immortals are great on boats, but you can also use the chariot upgrade strategy.

Immortals are great for freeing yourself of chokes, because of their high attack stat.

As Persia you have easy access to your unique unit, especially since you start with bronze working. If needed, you can hook iron as soon as you research iron working. This will give you an early golden age, and give you access to powerful units that you can use to defend against early aggression.

Alternatively, you might want to wait until you have a sizeable stack of veteran warriors before hooking iron.

Rome

Rome is a bit of a jack of all trades. You can try a choke strategy if you get access to legionnaires early. Legionnaires are much better at choking and pillaging roads than they are at taking cities. But a doom stack of legionnaires is always an option. The extra defence point means they soak up defensive bombard easy, and your stack isn't vulnerable to being attacked, even if you start splitting up. This makes Rome particularly good at one thing: sieging.

Otherwise, upgrading chariots is always a good option.

The Hittites

You can try a warrior upgrade strat. Or use their unique unit. It's not very good, but they're durable, and you can start stacking early. Triggering an early GA is probably best, and will allow you to either kill, or expand while still pumping out units.

You can try to choke or rush with your unique unit, or a kind of hybrid where you cut roads early, and isolate a weak city.

Idk if you guys have a better idea than this let me know.

Greece

Use the general war strategies from the section above. Your unique unit can help you defend, and maybe help choke an enemy a bit, but not much else.

Sumeria

A very unique civ. The enkidu warrior is the most cost effective unit in the game. Send a couple to each enemy to restrict their growth. We call them roaches, because they come in large numbers and they're hard to kill. Sumeria can also protect itself very cost effectively if it chooses to grow big.

The enkidu warrior is also the biggest downside of the civilization. For one, if you send them towards your enemy, you're guaranteed an early golden age. And an early golden age is pretty useless when your unique unit can't really kill anything. You might choose to avoid sending your enkidus towards your enemies in order to have a more useful golden age.

Because the enkidu warrior is so cost effective, you'll want to build a lot of them. But the unit maintenance often becomes a big problem, and you can't build as many as you'd like to without going broke.

On top of those downsides, the enkidu warrior doesn't upgrade to the swordsman! This really reduces their ability to stack units after their golden age ends.

This is one of the few civs where I'd recommend getting a granary early if it is safe to do so. Planting more cities is key to having more unit support, and being able to slave an army in the lategame.

In the midgame, use general war strategies to kill your enemies. If you've weakened an enemy by choking them, this should be easy.

The Celts

Gallic swordsmen are an incredible unique unit, they outclass every other unit in MPT. By upgrading quickly, you can send 4-6 of them towards your enemy very quickly in a rush. Alternatively, you could build up a bit (you are agricultural) and prepare a sledge.

Sadly, the gallic swordsman is the most expensive unit to upgrade, costing 45 gold per warrior. So upgrading warriors isn't really a sustainable tactic once you spend all your initial gold. But it is very cost effective to use hurry production to build gallics, since they cost exactly 20 shields, which is exactly how many shields you get from sacrificing a citizen.

It is extremely important not to throw away your gallics in stupid battles, since they are so expensive. They are the strongest unit in the game, but when attacking a city, they're just ordinary swordsman (who can retreat), that you paid a higher number of shields for. So instead of attacking head on, use their quick movement and decently high defense stats to pillage, and look for an isolated back line city to attack. They're also great for vision control. Kill enemy sentries and force them to play super defensively. Then while they're paranoid and turtling, go kill their ally on the other side of the map.

Egypt

If you have horses nearby, Egypt is a great rushing civ. It's feasible to attack an enemy with 5-6 War Chariots before the phase where they switch from warriors to archers/spearmen, meaning your units will be very effective.

Alternatively, if your horses aren't close, your enemy isn't close, or there's impassable terrain between you and your enemy, you can do a sledge. Build 5-8 cities, have your ally give you a golden age, and build the biggest stack possible. Road to your enemy (through the jungle, if needed), and unleash your stack.

Egypt continues to be relevant into the late game because their unique unit is so cost effective. Even after their golden age ends, War Chariots can be built reasonably quickly.

The Iroquois

The iroquois generally follow the strat of massing chariots, and upgrading to mounted warriors. How any chariots to build is up to you, the iroquois have a lot of flexibility as to timing. Because the upgrade cost is very cheap (15 gold per chariot), you can stack as many as you want and still be able to afford to upgrade them all, unlike the Celts. And you can also upgrade early if needed, since given the cheap cost of the mounted warrior, they are easy to build in a golden age. You aren't totally reliant on upgrading.

Like Egypt, the iroquois continue to be relevant into the late game because their unique unit is so cost effective. Even after their golden age ends, they can still be built reasonably quickly, especially if you grow big using the agricultural trait. Growing big means a sentry net is crucial, since for the iroquois, the best way to defeat an invasion is to intercept it with a stack of mounted warriors.

The Mayans

The Mayans rely entirely on the general strategies listed in the section above.

The Mayan unique unit is awful. It costs the same as a swordsman, and is weaker. Because of the defensive bombard bug in multiplayer, defensive bombard is much stronger. Not only does the Mayan unique unit lack defensive bombard, but they are also unable to build archers. This takes away a key defensive option.

I can't stress this enough, do not stack this unit. Stack warriors and chariots and upgrade them, or if that's too complicated, just build swordsmen.You should only build one or two javelin throwers, to secure your golden age and maybe to kill stray warriors to get some slave workers.

The mayans are gifted with the best trait pair in the game. They are an amazing builder civ. And because their unique unit is so bad, you have complete control over when you get your golden age.

Babylon

They probably have the best unique unit in the game that doesn't have a movement speed of 2. Because of defensive bombard, this is a very strong and versatile unit, great for naval invasions and choke strategies. Sadly, Babylon's bad traits prevent them from being a high tier civ.

While bowmen are nice unit to have, generally you will want to use general war strategies to secure kills. But sometimes, by seizing enemy roads and isolating back line cities, it's possible to kill with just bowmen.

Breakdown Of Each Civ's Strategy, Part 2

Zululand

One of the best unique units in the game. Thank god the zulu aren't agricultural, or they'd be unstoppable.

The impi is the best units in the game for choke strategies. It's absurd how many tiles you can threaten with so little risk. Just two impi standing on mountains around an enemy's capital can completely shut down their growth. Seize key tiles, and they're a nightmare to get rid of because of their high defence stat. And when you think you've finally killed them, they just retreat! Catapults are the only real weakness of the impi.

Impi are also somehow also an incredibly effective offensive unit in the early game. They just provoke such desperation from the enemy civ. They will scramble to try to protect their key tiles, because they know as soon as your impis occupy them, they'll be impossible to dislodge. This leaves your enemy overextended, and often you can just gather your impi from the countryside, and brute force a city directly to get a kill.

Make no mistake: despite having an attack stat of only "1", the impi is a great offensive unit because it forces your opponent into situations where they are vulnerable and overextended.

In the late game, you'll need general war strategies to secure kills. Horseman stacks are especially popular, since you can use impis to escort them. But honestly, you can do such good work constricting and shutting down enemy civs in the early game, that often your allies will do the clean-up work for you.

The Aztecs

The aztecs can use a choke strategy similar to The Zulu. This is effective early game, especially since the jaguar warrior can retreat. But by the mid game, it becomes less effective, due to the jaguar warrior's low defence strength. As soon as your enemy has a few veteran archers, it's easy for them kill your jaguar warriors.

But importantly, the jaguar warrior can be built incredibly quickly (and unlike the zulu, you start with the required tech to build your unique unit). This makes it easy to steal workers at the start of the game. Often enemy cities will be only guarded by one warrior. You can push your luck, and try to attack the city. If you win, they die. If not, you might retreat and live to fight another day.

Rush strategies also work with the aztecs. Mass 5-15 jaguar warriors, and focus on a single city. If the jaguar warriors you sent early to harass them were effective enough, they won't have enough units to defend their cities properly. And you should have map control, with enemies huddled in their cities unable to spot you.

Speaking of which, if the aztecs or zulu are near you, this is one of the few times I'd recommend not using a sentry net in the early game. You know they're going to abuse you. You know roughly what to expect. Keep your units at home, protecting key tiles and cities. If you notice they're leaving you alone, only then should you leave your cities, and place units on mountains/hills nearby. They might be massing a stack to kill you, or they might be focusing on your ally. This is information you want to find out.

In the late game, the aztecs use general war strategies. Although having an early golden age makes them a lot harder to execute.

The Incans

Basically the halfway point between the aztecs and the mayans. You are the jack of both trades, master of none. They aren't as good at building as the Mayans, since they aren't industrious. And they aren't as good at early game aggression as the aztecs, since their unique unit is more expensive.

But the advantage of the incans is you can choose which playstyle you want. You start the game with a scout. Find an enemy nearby? Great, mass chasqui scouts and rush or choke them. No easy targets? Great, stay at home. Save your GA until late game, and use general war strategies to kill your enemies.

You're not militaristic, unlike the Aztecs. But you are agricultural, which helps both with early game aggression and lategame building.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1669107567

A Guide To MPT