I'm rapidly running up against the deadline to finish the game. So, automate all the workers except for one stack of 3 to clean pollution and a couple to convert irrigation to mines when needed; warp speed from here on to finish tonight.

Should we revolt to Democracy? I'm thinking we don't need to. Techs are coming in 4 turns already, and construction of Universities should keep pace with increasing tech costs. This turned out to last the entire game; every tech from Corporation on took the minimum 4 turns, so not revolting was the right call.

Not even a sniff of war the rest of the way. The AIs propose a random assortment of the usual MPP and alliance stuff, but I refuse every one of them. Once, Babylon and America MPPed with each other, then declared war on each other on the same turn! Silly AI...

We build build build build build. Garrison all the former Babylon cities with 15-25 swordsmen each. No culture flips at all after peace was made. Motorized Transport comes in 1335 AD, but we won't be needing the tanks.

I could probably have a Diplomatic victory if I want, but I feel like going for the Space Race. I've never done that before in Civ 3 (did several times in Civ 1 and 2.)

I could get the spaceship done four turns sooner by gifting Babylon into the modern age to trade for their free Rocketry. I didn't want to chance them having tanks, though. If I hadn't been rushing to finish the game, I would've done so.

Space Race win in 1555 AD, which was the winning Honorable score in Epic One by over two centuries. Sirian was very close to me in tech speed, but he won by domination instead. 5206 points according to that screen, although the HoF screen showed 5205 points, oddly.

If you only looked at the histogram, you'd swear that France attacked England early on, but really that never happened! :)

Why this game ran up the tech tree so fast:

Babylon brought me up to tech parity very early. Also, he demanded tribute before attacking every time, rather than sneak attacking. That let me pacify him once, and then he never declared war until I had a big stack of cavalry ready to blitz him out. Also, at one point I renegotiated peace and re-accepted a straight peace treaty. That's not against the honorable rules, since I didn't ask for concessions -- but it did lock in the peace treaty for 20 more turns.

England got totally crippled, and America's conquering of London seemed to pacify them for quite a while. They had one minor war with Iroquois in the middle ages - before MPPs are available to drag in the rest of the world. Iroquois, the smallest civ after England, got the Great Library, and so kept up on tech and twice researched something themselves to add to the group tech pool.

I did not always leave research shut off in the middle ages, but picked my spots when I had a shot at getting something first. I researched Feudalism, Music Theory, Printing Press, and Military Tradition myself, and traded them around right away, speeding the group four techs even further ahead of where somebody like Sirian was.

Everybody went right to Republic and nobody left it the entire game except for one Democracy.

I left several tundra spots on the south of my lands unsettled, in my rush to the western islands. Could this have kept the AIs in "expansion" rather than "war" mode? At least a dozen settlers total were wandering across my land trying to get there.

I never once gave anyone a RoP, MPP, or alliance. Those things only invite more wars. Not giving RoP can tie up large amounts of the AI's resources just wandering around your territory. Nobody declared any wars while settlers were going through my territory, and towards the end of the industrial age, India and Babylon declared war, with India very comically lugging about 20 elephants through my territory the slow way. That's time during which the elephants aren't doing anything else. India could easily have raped a city or two of mine, but never did.

I never once asked anyone to leave my territory. Certainly helps in avoiding war.

I love discussing Civ 3, especially with fellow Realms Beyond Epic players. Send comments to erik - at - dos486.com!

- T-hawk , 6/25/2002

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