Civ3: Interface Tips
Jim Vieira
named Chumly. This is a profoundly useful post, full of many
things that many people didn't even think were in the game. I
strongly suggest reading it and maybe even printing it out as
a reference. Excellent work by Chumly and others in that
thread.
--
General Interface:
Ctrl-C accesses the civlopedia. Use this. A lot. You can use the arrow keys
to go back or up. Remember most things can be right clicked to get
civlopedia info (except the one place it'd be most intuitive, the production
box)
Ctrl-P accesses the preferences screen, CHANGE THESE. I see a lot of people
complaining about stuff that can be turned on or off.
Use the number pad and numpad enter to avoid those stupid double click radio
buttons.
Shift mousewheel to scroll left and right.
Shift right click on a city to change production.
Right click on a city/stack of units/transport then shift left click on as
many sleeping units as you want to wake - much faster than doing them one by
one.
Push delete on a queue item to delete it. Shift delete to clear the queue.
Shift Q to save it. Q to load it. Queues are set by holding shift when you
click on an item.
Double clicking on the Star on your capital will open the Establish Embassy
menu, once you have Writing (real intuitive...) Also used for embassy
missions in a city with the intelligence agency. Communists have superior
spies.
G on the city screen will open the governers menu.
Shift-L pops up the locate city window. Press the first letter of a cities
name to locate it. Push a letter multiple times to cycle through multiple
cities with the same letter. Hit enter to zoom to the city.
Ctrl-G toggles the grid. (note by me Jim V: I noticed if you have tutorial
mode
on you cannot turn the grid off any more, for those wondering why it can't
be
toggled).
F7 for Wonders of the World (can be handy for choosing targets )
F11 for silly demographic statistics Also has the top five cities.
F8 for Histograph, F9 for palace, F10 for Space Shuttle.
Advisors:
F1-6 for your advisors. Use these. A lot. If there's something you want to
do to manage your empire at large, it's probably here. F1 and F3 are your
friends. F2 and F4 are tied together. F6 is mostly for reference. F5 is
purely for reference.
F1: Domestic Advisor
Right clicking on production on the domestic advisor will let you change it
directly. Left clicking on cities will enter them. When you exit, you'll be
back at this advisor. You can quickly identify and change production here.
If you need to know the best commerce or industry city at a glance, it's
here as well. Left click on the various icons (production, maintenence, etc)
to sort and reverse sort the list. All costs and incomes are evaluated here,
and this is where you change governments or war mobilization.
F2: Trade Advisor
Trade goods can be instantly evaluated, and you can see what other
civilizations have to offer you.
F3: Military Advisor
Military units can be upgraded, disbanded, activated from the military
advisor. You can also view all units by city to instantly assess weak
defensive areas, or by unit, to evaluate your overall military and quickly
make broad decisions. Use these, I mean it. Seriously Between these, Zoom,
Locate city, the easy Goto commands, you should have NO problems managing
your empire as it gets larger. From the view by City screen, left clicking
on a city will enter it. From the view by unit screen, left clicking will
zoom to the unit, right clicking will give you orders.
You can also identify your captured workers here, and evaluate the strength
of any enemy you are at war with. Finally, don't miss the 'units supported'
box here, this is the fastest way to check how many units you can support
free of charge, and how many you have total.
F4: Foreign Advisor:
Double click on a civ to get info. Use this to plan out your diplomatic
alliances against rival civs, or to get advance warning of alliances in
place, so you don't find yourself in a 3-1 situation.
F5: Culturual Advisor:
One of the less useful advisors, not much manipulatable data here, but you
can get info on the culture value of old structures, giving you an idea of
the importance of age with culture. Either you're going to use culture, or
you're going to have it used against you.
F6: Science Advisor:
Don't forget you can set a long term goal by clicking down the tree. Early
on, you'll probably want to choose one at a time based on what your empire
needs, but later, you can go two or three down the line occasionally to save
yourself the bother.
Worker Specific Goodies:
Ctrl-R builds a road to a destination.
Ctrl-Shift-R builds a railroad to a destination.
Ctrl-N builds a road network throughout your empire to all resources.
Ctrl-B with a worker builds a road to a destination and builds a colony
there.
Ctrl-I builds Irrigation from a source to a city.
Shift-I improves closest city.
A automates settler (use this if you like to play civ blindfolded, or dose
your settlers with hallucinoginic drugs)
Shift-A is *ok*, it only does untouched terrain. Use this if you know the
boundries of your empire well and you don't mind losing fine control at the
potential cost of 1 gold.
Shift-F to clear all forests.
Shift-J to clear all jungles.
Shift-C to clear all pollution. This can be handy if pollution is a regular
problem for you, and you've got a good rail network.
Unit Specific Goodies:
C recenters on the currently selected unit, as will clicking on the unit box
itself.
Click and hold in a square to goto. Or push G. Or click and drag for the
unit itself. Combine with Z to zoom out.
Fortifying a damaged unit will reactivate it once fully healed.
General Tips:
Units gain +1 sight range on top of hills or mountains. Mountains block line
of sight.
Rivers give +1 commerce to all adjacent squares.
Flood plains look similar to rivers - they have extra green on the shore.
Don't miss them.
Access to fresh water (rivers or lakes) is required to irrigate, but
remember you can build a long chain of irrigation through your empire from
even one source.
Cities do not need an aqueduct if they are built by fresh water.
Resources must be a) within your borders or have a colony built on them (B
from a worker, or Ctrl-B to road to and then build colony) b) connected to
your trade network via roads, harbors, and airports.
Resources can expire. New resources can pop up. There are ALWAYS enough
resources for all civs. But they aren't always in the right place for you...
Trade or go to war for critical resources, or pay the consequences.
Many diplomatic events last for 20 turns - trade agreements, embargos,
mutual protection pacts, etc.
Many diplomatic tools cannot be used until you have acquired writing. Other
advances give other diplomatic options. (Ctrl-C!)
Completing a project with the whip under Despotism or Communism kills
citizens and creates an unhappy citizen for 20 turns.
Here are some others taken from peoples followups to this thread:
Shift-N to instruct a worker to build a network of roads connecting all your
cities and all resources within your border.
CTRL-E - Establish Embassies
CTRL+SHIFT+E - Plant Spy
SHIFT+E - Conduct Espionage
Also,
[ctrl]-[shift]-G pops up a list of cities that you can select for the unit
to go to.
Shift+Right-Click on cities to change production...
Michael Oberly
>I just saw this excellent message over at Apolyton by someone
>named Chumly. This is a profoundly useful post, full of many
>things that many people didn't even think were in the game. I
>strongly suggest reading it and maybe even printing it out as
>a reference. Excellent work by Chumly and others in that
>thread.
Thanks-very helpful stuff in there.
--
Mike Oberly * Rain can't wet me,
when I have my poui in my hand. *
* Rain can't wet me,
I advancing on the foe like a roaring lion!*
Soca/Calypso fan?Check out http://www.iere.com/thebarn
asf
interested?
Adam Smith
> I just saw this excellent message over at Apolyton by someone
> named Chumly. This is a profoundly useful post, full of many
> things that many people didn't even think were in the game. I
> strongly suggest reading it and maybe even printing it out as
> a reference. Excellent work by Chumly and others in that
> thread.
Hugely useful. Just about all of this is in the manual, but a lot of
it isn't documented in-game at all. As far as I can tell, for
example, there is no way to access the Wonders screen unless you know
the hotkey for it.
--
Adam Smith
Jim Vieira
"Adam Smith" <acs...@conductor-am.bu.edu> wrote in message
news:9s400l$foe$2...@news3.bu.edu...
I think you are right. I discovered very quickly thru experimentation
that it was there myself, because I figured "maybe it's like Civ2" and
started hitting F keys to see what they brought up. All the stuff like
top 5 cities and demographics are there on the same F key they used
to be. But I haven't seen anywhere to access them thru menus.
Jim
Martin Leslie Leuschen
Regards,
martinl