SID Difficulty

[Xtase]

Took 15 years but I finally beat sid difficuly in a domination match. Not before the time limit of course, but even still it was crazy hard. If you wana try it here are some tips and settings I set my game to.

Settings

1. hugh map
2. max civilizations
3. sedentary barbariens
4. domination victory
5. archapelago map
6. 70% water

1. Lower science to 10% and only slide it up higher if you notice you actually gain turns. The extra gold per turn is worth it.

2. Give every civilazation you meet 1 gold as a gift when you meet them, and give them your territory map every turn for about 10 turns. It will keep them friendly toward you.

3. Manually control your population and keep happy faces and sad faces evenly balanced. Somtimes you can use a tax collector or engineer instead of an entertainer and still achieve that balance.

4. research techenologies in an unbalenced way. go as far down the tree you can get before going back to an early branch. When you do learn a technology immediately trade or sell it to every civilzation that is not a threat to you. Later technologies are worht more and can be traded 2 for 1 in many cases keeping you evenly balanced on all trees.

5. Identify the strong civilizations and their enemies, trade their enemies technology to prevent them from being over run until you get strong enough to beat them.

6. Artillary units cannot fully destroy ground units, but air units can. Stealth bombers should make up half of you entire military.

7. Establish embasies in every capital and steal technology everytime you can afford it.

8. I play archapelogo maps so I try to secure a continent with 12-15 cities worht of land. That is enough to drive a decent war against your first opponent.

9. Artillary is strong enough to fend off modern armor, you will need at least 20 to defend your island. until you get stealth bombers.

10. Happiness keeps corruption and waste down, so pursue luxury resources just as fiercely, trade any excess resources you have always.

11. Modern armor can move 3 spaces per turn so when you take a city bombard all roads to that city 3 spaces out.

12. Stay away from alliances untill you get down to the last 2-3 civilizations and don't mind war with the remaining parties.

13. use transports with 1 marine and 1 army to assault new continents and islands. Bombard the city with stealth bombers and use the marine to attack the city from the water. Then move the transport into the city and unload the army. Bombard all roads leading to the city 3 spaces out. This gets even easier when you aquire nukes.

14. Use precision from jet fighters strikes on cities to destroy barracks/civil defence/sam missle batteries before you hit it with the stealth bombers.

15. Use recon stealth fighters to help uncover the fog of war.

16. use tow infantry and radar artillary is attack deterants they bombard any attackers before they get to attack your top unit.

17. modern armor can pillage roads and get back to the city if you are running low on air strikes to knock out roads.

18. Use air strikes on the roads connecting resources to your opponets cities. If they don't have oil/iron/ruber/ect. they can't make war against you.

19. Play for an all out nuke war against your final SId opponent. WHen I got to this point my opponent out number me 20 to 1 in units I hade 500 they had 10000. Nukes helped balance the war though.

20. build 2 nukes for every 1 city they have. I had 110 nukes when I launched my final attack. They had about 70.

21. Use you spy missions in your capital to identify which of your opponents cities has SDI defense and make that your first objective. SDI defense shoots down 75% of all nukes. It took about 10 strikes to get 3 bombs to hit that city. 3 hits is enough to destroy every unit in a city reguardless of how many they had in it. Use a marine to capture this city and their nuke defense shield will no longer function. Once it is down it is open season, I had about 100 nukes left and every single one is a hit. I took their force of 10000 down to about 800.

22. Remember sid is not tactially superior to chieftan sid just gets production and science on steroids. Identify iron,oil,rubber, alluminum and uranium. Secure each asap either through trae or conquest. IF you aquire it in a trade, then you should immediately be looking for a permanent soure through conquest.

I have many more tips ill post later, but these are some off the top of my head that will help give you that edge. Good luck in your conquest and as a veteran of every civilization game ever created I can say CIV 3 is easily the toughest on SID difficulty and for a long time was the only one I never could say I beat.

[Person]

this is pretty cool, its like that guy that played civ 2 for 10+ years

[JdP500]

Awesome! What Civilization did you play as? Don't think I'll ever go for it. I'm just too much of a builder to go for anything emperor or higher where military plays such a heavy role.There's a great thread up on Civfanatics of a guy beating sid with only ever having one city. It was also always war, I think. Meet a civ, trade, declare war the same turn.

[Xtase]

Sorry for the length of time on reply, I like playing as America, their Civ bonus is F-15 fighter jets. If I am not mistaken I believe they are the only CIV that has an end game unit that is specific to their CIV only. I like to dominate the air, so hainvg the best fighter jet in the game is a must.

[JdP500]

Interesting. Most people aren't a fan of the F-15. The other Civ with a late game unit is the Germans. They get Panzers instead of tanks. An extra move and blitz, I think.

[[NN]Natmeris]

Yeah, most people like America for their abilities not their unique unit.

[Xtase]

I'm a huge fan of the F-15. The problem is most people use it wrong. The jet fighters are defensive units. Never use a jet to strike ground units unless that unit has 1 hit left and you are out of stealth bombers, even then it's risky if your opponent has fighter jets set to defensive in the area. When I squared off against my final SID opponent they had over 100 stealth bombers in their arsenal. I had about 50 F-15's over the course of about 10 turns my F-15's had shot down about 70 of thier craft while set on air superiority. The remainder were brought down by sam and mobile sam batteries. The long and short is yes the F-15 will give you air superiority if used correctly.

[Liobuster]

u sir are awesome sry for the necro