So here we are again with a new game of Civ3. I hadn't really expected to ever play much Civ3 again, but for various reasons I found myself with some time to kill before starting work on a new project and thought it would be interesting to go back to this game again to try and analyze some of its strengths and weaknesses once more with a fresh perspective. Since we're getting closer to the end of Civ3's lifecycle here, I'll see if I can provide some of my observations on what the particular conditions of this variant reveal about the way in which the Civ3 AI works.
For those who didn't take part in it, Epic 48 had basically two major variant rules. The first of these was no project switching/prebuilding; any time a city changes its production, it must burn all of its shields by swapping to wealth first and then going on to its next project. A couple of old hands like me had tried this in Epic 12 (a brutal Deity game that had other variant restrictions piled on top of it), but I expect this was a new experience for most players. Generally speaking, this hurts the player in terms of getting wonders (being unable to prebuild) and doesn't allow him or her to "plan ahead" for incoming technologies, but otherwise is not too detrimental to overcome.
The other variant rule, the one with the greater impact on the game, was one that ruled out all diplomacy with the AI civs. This is known as the "tactless" variant - the player can agree to deals that the AI civs propose, but only "as is" (no negotiations); this game even expressly forbid the player from looking at the F4 screen! Now this does not sound that bad, but I knew before I started that it would make things much more difficult. For starters, there would be no brokering of techs. Sure, the player might get offered a tech trade occasionally, but that could not be counted on reliably, and any kind of "all cash" strategy simply would not be tenable. Secondly, the player cannot trade for luxuries, meaning that what he or she grabs within their own territory is all that can be relied upon. Can you say "luxury slider"? 
There probably won't be any way to avoid running at least some luxuries in this game due to the inability to trade for happiness. Thirdly and clearly related, the player also can't trade for strategic resources. This means that in order to launch the spaceship (the victory goal for this game), at a bare minimum, the players is going to need to control a native source of Aluminum, Rubber, and Uranuim. Lack any of those three, and the game can't be beaten. And this leads into the final problem, which is that it may be necessary to acquire these resources by force - and once war stops, there is absolutely NO guarantee when it will end. The player cannot ask for peace, only accept it when offered by the AI. And, as Sirian showed in his Epic 47 report, the AI civs WILL repeatedly buy in allies into their wars. It is not a question of if, but when. So going to war represents nothing less than a massive crapshoot; once those dice go into the air, there's no way of predicting how or where they're going to fall. My goal going into the game was to grab as much land as possible in the hopes of ensuring a supply of all resources needed to launch the spaceship. Getting resources like uranium and aluminum, which are invisible on the map, is of course a matter of total luck as well. Stealing techs and "warmogering" (or conquering the world by force) were also out of bounds, since they would clearly be against the spirit of the game.
Well now, that was a lot of text. Let me get into my actual narrative of what took place then. The Hittites in Conquests are Commercial and Expansionist, same as the English in the earlier versions of Civ3, so due to my success with the English in the past, I had a pretty good idea how to play them. I started by moving the scout to the western hill tile (scouts do better on flat land where they can move twice, and the east was all hills/mountains) and moved my worker to the best tile, a grasslands wheat. Not seeing anything that would justify moving, I settled Hattusas on the starting spot. Here's what it looked like:
Ah, so there's a village there too. Here on Monarch, I knew that I might even get something good out of the goody huts (on Deity, getting anything but barbs, even nothing, is considered positive). Now my desired strategy with this start was to go Scout - Granary - endless settlers, with a true farmer's gambit to grab as much land as possible. But the barbs for this game were set to raging, so I knew I couldn't go with that plan (at least, not with an acceptable level of risk!) so I resolved to start with a second scout, then a warrior, followed by a granary. Or at least that was the plan when starting out.
Now as I said initially, I sent the first scout west because that's where the flat land was. With a non-Expansionist civ, I would have gone east first, to be able to see further on the mountains (since warriors only have 1 movement point). With scouts though, you want to be able to move twice each turn, and so that dictated I go west first. Remember that, because it's going to influence the whole way my civ develops.
Hattusas starts by working the grassland wheat, prioritizing food over shields as usual. A second scout is produced in 3600BC (note the slow construction, but Hattusas was almost to size 3 at that point) and a warrior was picked next for defense, as noted. Now I didn't have my scout pop that hut you can see above, since for some reason I thought I could get barbs from it (maybe too many bad memories from Deity games!) Therefore, I resolved to let my culture from Hattusas pop the hut when it expanded in 3500BC; I'm pretty sure you're guaranteed not to get barbs when you pop a hut that way. Needless to say, that turn single-handedly changed my game:
Are you kidding me? A free settler?! Wow - that definitely changes everything. Will anyone else get this settler? That I don't know, but I would guess that most players will simply pop the hut with their scout, so there's a good chance I'm the only one who got this. And all due to my own 
decision based on forgetting that Expansionist civs can't ever get barbs from a hut. Heh. You know what they say and luck and goodness.
So, now what do I do with this guy? I've got to make some use out of this incredible stroke of luck. It didn't take too long to figure out what to do: have him found a city in a good location and start work immediately on the Pyramids. Yes, that's right - I'm jumping right into the wonder race knowing full well that if I fail, I'm going to piss a million shields down the drain. My scouts have already found a ton of land out there, and a full continent of free granaries will be insanely powerful here, so I have to at least try for it. The settler heads south and west towards a nice location on a freshwater lake surrounded by bonus grassland tiles. Tarsus is thus founded in 3300BC and went Warrior (to defend itself) - Pyramids, since I couldn't have a barb horse walk in and steal hundreds of accumulated shields. This is now THE PLAN, and the entire Ancient Age is going to be bent around achieving the success of THE PLAN.
Now I didn't have all great fortune. Hattusas was struck by disease in 3200/3150BC, which was an enormous setback, dropping the population from 4 to 2. I guess the good comes with the bad, eh? Hattusas was thus slowed considerably and this did have an effect on the growth of my overall civ. I had changed my mind to have Hattusas pop out 1 settler first to found a city for military, then go granary (again because there's raging barbs out there). Hattusas suddenly went from producing a settler at size 5 (and dropping to size 3) to building it at size 3 (and dropping back to size 1!), and since I couldn't swap its production, there was nothing I could do about it. An ugly event, but with the free settler, I wan't exactly complaining.
Here you can see what I've just described in action, with Hattusas having fallen back to size 2 and Tarsus working on its warrior for defense. A Spanish warrior has just wandered up from the south, but by the game's rules, I don't even contact him, just keep right on going about my business. That felt very strange, to say the least. He headed back south, and that was the last I heard from Spain for some time. Also notice that I'm going to have to wait a couple of turns in Tarsus to start the Pyramids after it finishes its warrior - because I don't have Masonry yet and can't swap prebuilds! Not something I even considered before it happened, heh.
The very next turn in 2950BC, a French warrior popped up near me too. I didn't know it then, but these would be the two neighbors on my continent for the rest of the game. And what's this? Joanie has a trade to propose?
Why Joanie! My sweet sweet love! 
A very nice deal, and one I'll happily take. This would be the beginning of a long and prosperous relationship between Mursillis and Joanie, the attractive researcher in the lab next door. My scouts also started going nuts on the techs from goody huts; I got Warrior Code in 2800BC, and eventually Mysticism, Horseback Riding, Mathematics, and Literature. I also got 2 conscript warriors and some gold as well - plus that inital settler. Not too shabby!
Hattusas produced its first settler in 2850BC (thanks to the disease) and then started in on its granary. This first city would produce military to protect the others from the barbs, who were starting to show up now on the edges of the blackness. In fact, there were barbs only 2 tiles from Ugarit when it was founded in 2710BC, not what you want to see when sending out your unescorted settler! Dodged a bullet there, that's for sure. Masonry was discovered in 2630BC and Tarsus started on the Pyramids the next turn in 2950BC, after finishing a second warrior for lack of anything else to build. That extra warrior would prove useful in fighting off the barbs though, so it wasn't a total waste. I was also really feeling the shields-poor start at the capital by this point as well; those hill tiles would be great down the line, but here in Despotism they were really hurting me. I ended up mixing a lot of workers between the settlers in Hattusas after its granary was built to mine those hills and get some extra 2-shield tiles beyond the bonus grassland and the mined plains tile.
As you can see, Isabella offered me a nice trade for Iron Working as well, since she didn't want to be outdone by Joanie. What a dilemma for Mursillis, he has to choose between two sexy research assistants! I gladly made this deal, since I was still some distance away from Iron Working and wanted to get an early look at where the irons were. It turned out that there was a source to the west, about 2-3 city lengths from Hattusas; not particularly close, but I didn't see anyone beating me to the location. This confirmed the overall trend of westward expansion for my civ which had been going on since I sent my first scout in that direction, and then founded Tarsus to the west with the goody hut settler. Again, this would have large ramifications down the line that I didn't understand at the time - but we'll get to that later.
Ahh! But there was a darker side to that particular trade, as Madrid started the Pyramids in 1790BC. Umm... oops? Maybe I shouldn't have made that trade. This was the first indication that perhaps there was a duplicitous nature lurking underneath Izzy's smiling face. The lady in blue might be pretty, but she's potentially going to sabotage Professor Mursillis' most important experiment! Well at this point Tarsus already has 71 shields invested, so there's no turning back. Due date for THE PLAN is 55 turns at this point, and I am irrevocably committed to it. This could turn out to be a colossal failure, so I resolved to get some more workers down to Tarsus ASAP to work on speeding up that completion date. I've got a head start - but this is an AI capital we're talking about, with no corruption in place (Tarsus proved to be more corrupted than I had expected it would be) and a slight Monarch shield discount. Cross your fingers - we've got a long way to go, but this could come down to the wire.
So here we are in 1700BC, with me still only having the 3 cities, but Hattusas ready to crank settlers now that it finally has a granary in place. I have made some incredibly bad moves with the workers around Hattusas; I have irrigated the plains tile instead of mining it, and now my worker is off in the hills mining them at a very slow pace rather than mining the other plains tile located within Hattusas' cultural borders. I should have relied on the floodplains for food and mined the plains tiles for shields and not even touched the hills. Sigh. Too long away from the game, I've lost my touch...
Ugarit should be one tile to the southeast rather than where it is, but at the time I founded it, there were barbs around and I didn't know there was the ocean there to the west. That's life sometimes. You can see the iron far to the west, and I made it a priority to expand there and claim it for myself. I didn't make it a priority to go east; I was interested in claiming the north and the west, not the east. Yes, there was jungle there (and possibly coal/rubber), but there was even MORE jungle to the west, and I was guessing that Sirian might have stuck a key resource there to see if players would expand far enough to get it. This was almost certainly over-analyzing the game, but I do stuff like that sometimes.
So Hattusas starts pumping settlers to fill that land. But increasingly, I have to divert it from settler production to workers in order to keep improving Tarsus. I can't afford to lose that wonder race; I mean, if Tarsus loses, ALL of its shields get wiped out. No swapping to Great Library (which I had the tech for) if I lose. As a result, more and more of my civ's resources started getting poured into THE PLAN. I get Writing in 1525BC, so the first thing to do was naturally to found an embassy with Madrid to see how they're doing.
Oh this is not good. NOT GOOD. Madrid already has a lower ETA than Tarsus (which is at roughly 45 turns at this point), and it has no corruption, and it's still growing, and it has an iron hill tile to play with that it still isn't using.
In a nutshell, I've lost.
I have two options. I can bite the bullet right now, flush away the 150 or so shields Tarsus has accumulated without wasting any more effort, and concentrate on the landgrab, securing as much space as I can for my civ. In a non-variant game, I would swap Tarsus over to something else right now and simply avoid the loss of shields. Or... Or I can defiantly continue, refusing to give up hope on the Pyramids, and pour everything I have into achieving THE PLAN. And I mean everything; Hattusas producing nothing but workers to improve the tiles and merge into Tarsus to increase its population, running food deficits at Tarsus if necessary, running WLTKD at 40 and even 50% luxuries to shave off some shields lost to corruption - you name it, if it's a trick I know, I'll do it, short of actually declaring war on Madrid or pillaging Madrid with the scout you see there.
What do you think I chose to do? This IS the guy who beat Final Fantasy with a Solo Black Mage, after all. 
So I redouble my efforts at Tarsus. Hattusas produces a settler in 1425BC, then goes on to produce a continuous stream of workers to help Tarsus. I settle my fifth city in 1350BC, then don't settle my sixth until 750BC! In between, Hattusas is doing nothing but produce workers. Everything goes into THE PLAN. Expansion? Sacrificed on the altar of achieving THE PLAN. In other words, don't be surprised at how strange my game looks compared to some of the others.
I soon found that Tarsus was out of tiles to work - it only had 8 tiles to choose from before culture expansion, and I needed to still get more shields! So I whipped a temple in Ugarit in 1225BC at the cost of 2 citizen's lives in order to get its borders to expand, which would pull in additional tiles for Tarsus. Anything for THE PLAN!
Sometime around here, Joanie traded me Poytheism in exchange for Writing, which I was again happy to make. Izzy is looking more and more like a jealous rival - Joanie is our true friend. You can see that through massive management of Tarsus, I have gotten it down to 11 turns remaining (it was over 40 back in 1525BC, which was 21 turns ago, so I've cut more than 10 turns off the due date). Hattusas is finally back on settler production, or so I thought, but I would end up merging that settler into Tarsus as well to take it to size 10, which was the maximum number of tiles it could work without further cultural expansion. I am totally in the dark about where Madrid is on its project; I don't have the gold to investigate, and frankly, don't want to know at this point. I am pursuing the usual Philosophy - Republic plan (although ugh do I hate that feature in Conquests, what a stupid idea). Only 5 cities, but I've explained why in clear detail so won't go into that again. Somehow I doubt this is what most of the maps looked like in 1000BC in the games of other players.
In 900BC, I finally had done all I could for Tarsus. It was producing 16 shields/turn, but only getting 11/turn after corruption (gah! so bad for so close to the capital!) That was with a food deficit, so nothing more I could do. I'm counting down the turns now, praying that I won't get a wonder pop-up message at the beginning of each one. 8...5...4... Oh please, PLEASE let me get this wonder! Somewhere around 800BC I get Philosophy and Republic; umm, no, I don't want to revolt just yet. So far, I've done the entire game up to this point in one session. I sat down planning to play for about an hour; when I look at the clock around this point, 3 1/2 hours have passed. But I can't turn away, I HAVE to see if I get this wonder or not. This is Civ3 at its best, the drama of the wonder race played out against the background of either massive triumph or horrible failure for my civ. As I'm playing this, my body is literally full of tension, it's like I'm wearing heavy weights all over my body. Only this one funny scene broke the mood temporarily:
As I've said before, you have to give it up for that Civ3 AI, it's just priceless sometimes.
Tarsus is getting closer and closer, but Madrid HAS TO be close too, they must be almost done as well. Am I going to get this wonder? Will it all be in vain?
